CIMRM 641 - Two-sided relief from Fiano Romano. Italy.


Side A - the tauroctony. From Wikimedia Commons.

Side B - the banquet of the sun. Sol and Mithras banqueting with Luna and the twin divinities Cautes and Cautopates, his attendants. Marble, side B of a two-faced Roman relief, 2nd or 3rd century AD. From Wikimedia Commons. This states that it is in the Louvre, in Paris: Department of Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities, Denon, ground floor, room 25; Accession number Ma 3441 (MND 1911). Taken by Marie-Lan Nguyen (2007).

CIMRM entry

641. White marble relief (H. 0.62 Br. 0.67 D. 0.16) on a travertine base (H. 0.10 Br. 0.76 D. 0.50). Worked on two sides. Found at Fiano Romano "couché dans un petit reduit de briques" in 1926. Paris, Louvre. Probably second century.

Cumont in RA (S. 6), 1946, 183ff and figs. 1-2. See figs. 179-180, given by Franz Cumont.

Obverse: Mithras, slaying the bull, whose tail ends in a bundle of ears. The dog, serpent, scorpion and raven. The upper corners are occupied by a rocky vault, from which the dressed busts of Sol (l) and Luna (r) emerge. Luna has a crescent behind her shoulders; around Sol's head a crown of twelve rays and another, which darts out in the direction of Mithras.

Reverse: In the middle, a bull's hide, of which the head and one hindleg are clearly visible. Sol and Mithras lying on it side by side. Mithras in Eastern attire, holding a long torch in his l.h. and stretching out his r.h. behind Sol. The latter is only dressed in a short cape, fastened on the r. shoulder by a fibula. Around Sol's head an aureole and a crown of eleven rays. He holds a whip in his l.h. and extends the other hand towards a torchbearer, who stands before him and offers him a rhyton. Another torchbearer, dressed in Eastern attire like his companion, and with an upraised torch in his l.h., holds with his right a caduceus in the water or fire, which comes out from the ground. Beside it an altar in the coils of a crested snake. In the left upper corner a cloud-like semicircle, in which the dressed bust of Luna with a crescent behind her shoulders. She looks away from the scene. Traces of red painting on the attire of the torchbearers and the reclining persons.


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