The article examines two recently discovered Mithraic representations of Cautes from Alba Iulia, focusing on a rare iconographic type showing the torchbearer with a bucranium.
In polemical passages from the late second and early third centuries, Tertullian portrays the cult of Mithras as a demonic imitation of Christian rites and provides rare early references to Mithraic initiation and ritual symbolism.
An anonymous late-antique Christian poem, traditionally attributed to Pseudo-Paulinus of Nola (Poema 32, vv. 109–111), that ridicules pagan cults and presents Mithras, Isis, and Serapis as gods of concealment, contradiction, and unstable forms rather than light…
Late antique legendary biography of Alexander the Great (c. AD 300), where history, myth, and imperial ideology merge around figures of divine kingship and solar power.
In the eighteenth year of Diocletian’s reign, Galerius Maximianus, persuaded by the sorcerer Theoteknos, consulted demonic oracles in a cave and was urged to initiate the persecution of the Christians.
Radcliffe G. Edmonds III analyses the absence of the moon in the Mithras Liturgy. He argues that this absence reflects a deliberate cosmological framework in which lunar powers linked to genesis are excluded from the ritual of ascent.
Mithras the Cattle-Rustler: The Persian Cult of Fire as Divided into Sexed Powers and the Hidden Cave Rites of the Magi.
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.
Passage from Plutarch’s Life of Pompey, recounting the rise, power, and insolence of the Cilician pirates before Pompey’s campaign to suppress them.
Two extracts from De abstinentia ab esu animalium by Porphyry on sacrifices and the importance of abstinence from animal food among Persian Magi.
Of Isis and Osiris or Of the Ancient Religion and Philosophy of Egypt, Plutarch, The Moralia.
Deux extraits rapportés par Eznik de Goghp, Ve siècle, sur la création du Soleil selon les mythologies des mages.
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.
Commentaries by Pseudo-Nonnus, also known as Nonnus the Abbot, on Gregory Nazianzen’s In Julianum Imperatorem Invectivae Duae and In Sancta Lumina.
The scholiast Lactantius Placidus comments on Statius’ passage identifying the Sun as Titan, Osiris, and Mithras, interpreting the Persian cave figure with the bull.
Questions on the old and new testaments, 113.11. Ambrosiaster, 5th cent.
Two excerpts from the ’Life of Commodus’ in Lampridius’ Historia Augusta, dating from the 4th century CE.
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’.”
During the first semester of his sophomore year at Crozer, King composed a paper for Enslin’s course on Greek religion, focusing on Mithraism.
