Everybody knows, Rome never ceases to amaze, and in fact it was during the excavation process in 1931 for the construction of the costume and the warehouses of the Roman Opera that the Roman Temple of Mithras was discovered and excavated: a huge ancient complex located not far away from the short side of the Circus Maximus, where is the starting cage of the carriages for the battles of the Gladiators, which surely many will have noticed during one of their tours of the Colosseum in Rome.
In the third century AD, on the ground floor of the complex, a Temple of Mithras was rebuilt, a place of worship dedicated to Mithras, consisting of a series of interconnected rooms and covered by a barrel vault.
The first structure was interpreted as a kind of apparatus. The second room is accessed by a door, on the side walls of the door there are two niches, decorated with only partially reserved niches, in which small statues must be placed.
In the third room appeared the typical elements of the Temple of Mithras, the masonry podium, where the participants in the sacred banquet were seated. In the last room another podium was found, in front of which there was a large arched opening with two niches, originally decorated with small niches, the one on the right kept an underground clay vessel. In the center of the floor there is a large piece of alabaster, inserted in a very simple geometric pattern, made with different types of marble.
The walls are plastered, including an arch at the bottom, with a semicircular brick inside, to place an unknown statuette of Mithras. Still on the same wall, in the upper left corner, there is still an aedicule without bas-relief, and on the right side of the arch, the relief depicts the death of a cosmic bull (tauroctonia), whose death favors human life and reproduction. ‘ universe.
The event of this precious sculpture combined with the original cult image placed on the back wall, together with other clues, can identify the two different phases of the Temple of Mithras, which is characterized by a wonderful marble decoration.
