Mareinos

Mareinos is attested in a Greek inscription from the Mithraeum of Dura Europos dated to the reign of Caracalla (212–217 CE), where he is described as petitor and honoured alongside the fathers Libeianos and Theodoros and the community of the syndexioi (TNMM 468).

Several scholars have suggested that Mareinos may be identical with a figure named Mareos or Mareneios known from painted inscriptions within the sanctuary. One of these inscriptions combines the formula Nama, a traditional Mithraic expression of reverence of Iranian origin, with his name. On this basis, Maarten J. Vermaseren proposed that Mareinos may have participated in the execution of the painted decoration of the Mithraeum, while later authors have suggested that the same individual may also appear elsewhere in the sanctuary as a melloleon (“candidate for the grade of Leo”), a leo, and eventually as an antipater.

Although these identifications cannot be demonstrated with certainty, they raise the possibility that Mareinos is one of the rare Mithraists whose progression through several stages of initiation can be partially reconstructed from the surviving evidence. If correct, he would also represent an unusual example of a devotee directly associated with the artistic decoration of a Mithraic sanctuary.

Furthermore, we know of a certain Mareneios who, if it is indeed the same man, was μελλόλέων, meaning ’about to become a lion’, then λέων or ’new lion’. A homonym –or is it always the same?– mentioned after two Fathers (TNMM 468) is presented as τετίτω or candidate, before being described as ἀντίπατρος, that is, antipater, a title whose exact meaning remains to be defined.