Thoughts on Antiquity, Patristics, putting things online, information access, and more
Roger Beck, The Religion of the Mithras Cult in the Roman Empire: Mysteries of the Unconquered Sun, Oxford University Press, 2006, makes the following interesting remark on p.209-10: … the nominal solstice on 25 December, becomes the Sun’s birthday, the ‘Natalis Invicti’, as the Calendar of Filocalus famously notes—to which phrase in Greek (heliou genethlion) […]
Christmas is coming, and with it comes the annual flood of stale old stories cynically designed to cast doubt on whether Christmas is a Christian festival, and eagerly believed by those who feel that way inclined. The favourite “authority” for these folk is Wikipedia — once one of their friends has suitably amended it, of […]
In the Mithraeum under the church of Santa Prisca in Rome, there are a number of verses written on plaster around the walls, in between or above various images in the frescoes. The frescoes themselves have been badly damaged, partly because of the poor quality of the material on which they were placed, but also […]
I’m still (10:30am) in the West Room in Cambridge University Library, where I have been working on Vermaseren’s The excavations in the Mithraeum of the church of Santa Prisca. The objective is to obtain an image of the inscription said to record that Mithras “saved” people by the shedding of the eternal blood, not least in […]
Under the church of Santa Prisca in Rome is a crypt which was once a Mithraeum. It was excavated in the 1960’s by Martin Vermaseren and G. Van Essen, and contains some striking frescos. But it is probably best known for a series of inscriptions which I think are scratched in plaster. One of these, […]
The inscription painted on crumbling stucco in the Mithraeum under Santa Prisca has provoked much discussion. This image comes from Martin Vermaseren, The excavations in the Mithraeum of the Church of Santa Prisca in Rome, p.215 in the Google preview. It’s a diagram, not a plate; although apparently plate LXVIII shows it. These are lines 13-15 […]
Under the church of Santa Prisca in Rome is the remains of a Mithraeum. It is notable because of an inscription somewhere in it, which is often supposed to refer to Mithras “saving” people “by the eternal blood”. There seems to be more than a little doubt about whether it really does say this, tho. […]
The last in our short series of short anonymous late Latin Christian poems discussing paganism is the Carmen ad Antonium, the Poem to Anthony. This is preserved in a couple of manuscripts of the poems of Paulinus of Nola, where it appears, following the poems of Paulinus, but without name or title. It was first printed […]
I mentioned that Brian Croke and Jill Harries had put together a volume of documents around the fall of paganism and the final establishment of Christianity during the fourth century, entitled Religious Conflict in Fourth-Century Rome. Some pages of this have reached me, and I have been pretty impressed. Among the texts translated for the first […]
Before the internet, people could circulate documents containing quotations from ancient writers in reasonable safety. It was very hard for anyone to check them. This difficulty was enhanced by the tendency of these collections of quotations to be vague about the precise reference. But the internet has thrown light into quite a few dark corners. […]