The New Mithraeum Database

Vetera was the name of the location of two successive Roman legionary camps in the province of Germania Inferior near present-day Xanten on the Lower Rhine.

Sandstone base from Vetera (Xanten), Germania Inferior, with a relief of Cautes in Oriental dress holding a long burning torch.

This bust of a lion-headed figure has been was part of a French private collection.

This is one of the three reliefs depicting Mithras killing the bull that the Louvre Museum acquired from the Roman Villa Borghese collection.

In these two key passages, Justin Martyr interprets Mithraic rituals and myths as demonic parodies of Christ’s incarnation, the Eucharist, and biblical revelation.

A marble head in the Uffizi Gallery, long interpreted as a “dying Alexander,” but probably representing Mithras tauroctonos.

The Mithraeum of Sutri was built inside a rocky hill that also hosted the Roman theatre of the city.

Currently in the Musei Vaticani, this Tauroctony includes Mithras’s birth restored as Venus anaduomene.

Terracotta krater from the southern part of the Friedberg Mithraeum, discovered in 1849. The vessel is decorated in relief with serpents, a scorpion and a ladder-like motif.

There have probably been three mithraea discovered at Friedberg.

In Letter 107 to Laeta, Jerome combines a pastoral reflection on conversion with an account of the urban prefect Gracchus, who ordered the destruction of a Mithraic cave in Rome, listing the seven grades of initiation associated with the cult.

This Mithraic temple, also known as the Mithraeum of the Olympii, dates to the 3rd century and was rediscovered in 15th-century Rome, but it has not been preserved.

The Mithraeum of Rudchester was discovered in 1844 on the brow of the hill outside the roman station.

Roman relief from a sanctuary on the Janiculum Hill (Rome), showing a male figure bound by a serpent coiled seven times.

This tauroctony may have come from Hermopolis and its style suggests a Thraco-Danubian origin.

Sandstone relief of Mithras killing the bull, broken in two parts and partly restored, with dog, serpent and scorpion preserved; formerly in Vienna, now on loan to the Museum Carnuntinum.

The altar of the Mithraeum of San Clemente bears the Tauroctony on the front, Cautes and Cautopates on the right and left sides and a serpent on the back.

Vicus Baudobriga was a Roman settlement on the left bank of the Rhine, founded during the conquest of Gaul. Its development reflects the Rhine’s shifting role as frontier, trade route, and fortified border before Roman withdrawal.

Statue of Cautes from Bodobrica, discovered around 1940, depicting the torchbearer standing before a tree or rock and associated with a bucranium.

This tauroctony relief is distinguished by the rare depiction of Tellus reclining beneath the bull.