CIMRM Supplement - Tauroctony. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, USA

White marble relief (H. 0.31, W. 0.39, Th. unknown) which in all probability comes from Rome or has been made in a Roman workshop. Since 1968 in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond (U.S.A.). In a grotto is the representation of Mithras as a bullslayer. Dress: Phrygian cap; girt tunica manicata; billowing cape which is fastened on the right shoulder by means of a fibula: the sheath of a sword hanging at a belt; anaxyrides. The god is looking at the raven which is perched on his shouldercape. The dog and the snake hold their heads near the wound; the scorpion is clasping the bull's genitals. The bull's tail does not end as ears of corn. Before the bull Cautopates in the same dress as Mithras himself is standing crosslegged and with both hands he holds a flaming torch downwards; he himself also is looking sadly at the ground. In opposite direction his companion Cautes who is standing behind the bull turns his gaze and his torch upwards. He is looking at Mithras' face, whereas Cautopates turns away his body from the main scene. In the upper corners of the relief and outside the vaulted border of the rocky cave arethe heads of Sol and Luna: the first is looking upwards, the other in a crescent is looking down. Date: second half of the third century A.D. Published by M. J. Vermaseren in Hommages M. Renard III, Bruxelles 1969, 646 and Plate CCXXXIII, fig. 5. See Pl. XXVIII.

The source site states that this is a relief of Mithras slaying the bull, 3rd century AD. Marble. From the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA. Presented by the the Arthur and Margaret Glasgow Fund.

The relief is probably or certainly from Rome. It is notable for the curious way in which the gaze and angle of the heads of Cautes and Cautopates mirror those of Sol and Luna, above them.²