Les monuments mithriaques sont rares en Syrie. Les sculptures de Sidon, datées de 188, constituent l’essentiel de la documentation malgré des incertitudes sur leur origine exacte.
Le groupe caractéristique « lion, serpent, cratère » marque le rapport avec le culte mithriaque, car comme nous croyons l’avoir montré, ce groupe ne symbolise pas la lutte des éléments, terre, eau et feu, mais la participation des animaux-attributs au sacrifice, par Mithra, du taureau divin, amenant le renouvellement de la nature.
In Plutarch’s Life of Alexander, the grieving Darius binds the eunuch Tireus by the light of Mithras to reveal the truth about his captive wife Statira, a solemn appeal that leads to unexpected praise for Alexander’s honor and restraint.
Dion Chrysostom, c. 100 A.D., a philosophical writer under the emperors Nerva and Trajan, composed a series of discourses or essays (λόγοι) on various subjects, in one of which he reports concerning the doctrines and practices of the magi.
The scholiast Lactantius Placidus comments on Statius’ passage identifying the Sun as Titan, Osiris, and Mithras, interpreting the Persian cave figure with the bull.
Pseudo-Plutarch, De fluviis. Goodwin, Ed. Plutarch. Plutarch’s Morals. Translated from the Greek by several hands. Corrected and revised by. William W. Goodwin, PH. D. Boston. Little, Brown, and Company. Cambridge. Press of John Wilson and son.
