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ANNA JUDIT TÓTH
Nevertheless, what Lydus reveals about this concept is not enough for us
to understand the original idea in the background—the text provides us with
an equation which has too many unknowns. The only chance to find a solution
is to look for an analogous idea in ancient religion or philosophy where there
are two “processions” and the east, the south, and the winter occur together,
as do the north, the west, and the summer. I suggest that the solution is easier
than it seems, because we have a very close parallel in the cult of Mithras.
It is unique even among the secretive mystery cults of Rome that no direct
source survived referring to the doctrines of this cult—which can be explained,
at least partly, by the fact that the Mithraic community did not celebrate
public festivals and no public form of the Mithras cult existed in parallel with
the mysteries, in contrary e.g. to the mystery cults of Isis, where the secret
initiation and theology coexisted with festivals like the Navigium Isidis, open
to the wider public. Given the lack of literary sources, reconstructions must
be based on the rich iconographic material found in the Mithras sanctuaries.
The scene of the tauroctony stood in the centre of the cult both in the literary
and the metaphorical sense. In recent decades, an academic consensus has
been reached on the interpretation of this scene: it is not a representation of
a myth but a stellar map, in which all characters correspond to constellations:
the bull, the scorpion, the dog, the lion, the hydra, the raven, the crater,
etc.” Although there is some debate concerning the precise meaning, the
theory itself has not been challenged. The central problem that hinders our
understanding is the polyvalent symbolism of the iconographic motives
deriving from the polyvalence of any astrological symbolism—e.g. the bull
can refer to the moon, to Venus, to the constellation of the Taurus, or to the
zodiac sign of the Bull/Taurus.’° This complex code is suitable for representing
a specific astronomical event or a place on the sky, or a date of time—or two
or three of them at the same time. Deciphering such a code would be virtually
impossible without literary sources, but fortunately we do have sources, since
certain texts of Late Antiquity reveal details of this cosmology. However,
we are not always able to determine if a source is dealing with a specifically
Mithraic concept.
For our present purpose, the precise meaning of the tauroctonic scene is
almost unimportant. It can be a representation of a significant astrological
event which affects the fate of the souls or even the fate of the whole
universe—this will not influence the meaning of Lydus’ text. The Mithras
In the interpretation of the tauroctony, I follow the hypothesis of R. Beck, as it is proposed
in Roger Beck, In the Place of the Lion: Mithras in the Tauroctony, in Hinnels John R. (ed.),
Studies in Mithraism, Roma, L’Erma di Bretschneider, 1994, 29-50; and Roger Beck, Mithras:
The Religion of the Mithras Cult in the Roman Empire. Mysteries of the Unconquered Sun,
Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2006.
On the polyvalence of symbolism: Beck, Mithras, 197-200.
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