Dura-Europos was a Hellenistic, Parthian and Roman frontier city built on the Euphrates River. It was founded around 300 BC by Seleucus I Nicator. The Romans took Dura-Europos in 165 AD.
Scholar specializing in the history of ancient North Africa, with a particular interest in the Oriental cults (Anatolian, Egyptian, Syrian, and Iranian) that spread throughout this region.
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.
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’.”
