Mithras Tauroctonos (the Bull-Slayer)
Roman Mithraic Mysteries · deity · roman imperial mithraism · Recorded classification
Mithras is the tutelary god of the Roman Mithraic Mysteries, a graded initiatory cult of the imperial army and merchants attested by hundreds of underground mithraea from the 1st to 4th centuries CE. His iconography — rock-birth, bull-slaying, the banquet with Sol, the attendant torchbearers — is known almost entirely from monuments rather than texts.
Domains
- salvific bull sacrifice
- sun and cosmic order
Powers
- to slay the primal bull whose death brings forth life
- to be born from the living rock
Epithets
- Sol Invictus MithrasM. J. Vermaseren, Corpus Inscriptionum et Monumentorum Religionis Mithriacae (CIMRM), 2 vols. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1956-1960). (secondary)
- TauroctonosManfred Clauss, The Roman Cult of Mithras: The God and his Mysteries, trans. Richard Gordon (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000). (secondary)
Relations
- companion: Sol Invictus (the Unconquered Sun)After the bull-slaying Mithras and Sol share the sacred banquet and seal their alliance.Manfred Clauss, The Roman Cult of Mithras: The God and his Mysteries, trans. Richard Gordon (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000). (secondary)
Sources
- Mithras Tauroctonos is the central god of the Roman mystery cult, the rock-born bull-slayer whose cave-sacrifice (the tauroctony) is the cult's defining image.: Manfred Clauss, The Roman Cult of Mithras: The God and his Mysteries, trans. Richard Gordon (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000). (secondary); Roger Beck, The Religion of the Mithras Cult in the Roman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). (secondary)