The New Mithraeum Database

Tracing the links between the cult of Mithras and the Proud Boys’ quest for identity, power, and belonging. How ancient rituals and brotherhood ideals resurface in radical modern movements.

The scholiast Lactantius Placidus comments on Statius’ passage identifying the Sun as Titan, Osiris, and Mithras, interpreting the Persian cave figure with the bull.

Porphyry states that the Mithraists “perfect their initiate by inducting him into a mystery of the descent of souls and their exit back out again, calling the place a ‘cave’.”

Imperial slave who donated an altar to Mithras for the benefit of the emperor Caracalla.

He was from Aphrodisias in Caria, where he erected a relief depicting Mithras killing the bull.

Chrestos was a Pater who dedicated a relief to Mithras with his comrade Gauros.

Aelius Maximus identifies himself as a soldier of the Legio V Macedonica on a relief found in ancient Potaissa.

Marcellinus was an antistes who reached the grade of Leo in Rome.

Together with two other brothers, he offered a relief of the tauroctony in Rome.

Freedman, he offered a relief of Mithras as a bull killer for the well-being of his two former masters in Apulum.

Interpreting the Bas-relief of Mithras Tauroctonos from Osterburken in the Light of Porphyry’s Treatise, The Cave of the Nymphs.

Thrasyllus was an Egyptian of Greek descent grammarian, astrologer and a friend of the Roman emperor Tiberius.

Dedicated a sculpture of Mithras killing the bull in the 4th mithraeum of Aquincum together with Marcus.

Pater patrum and Pater sacrorum among other titles.

Commander of the archers at Dura Europos, he financed the second Tauroctony.

Patronus of the corpus lenunculariorum tabulariorum auxiliariorum Ostiensium.

Donor of the monumental Borghese relief.

A first distinction can be made between the rituals of the Mithraic cult. The initiates commemorate the sacrifice of the Bull followed by the sacred banquet. In addition, there is a set of initiatory practices aimed at the incorporation and progression of members into the community.