Roger Pearse

It's got to be some kind of transference thing, hasn't it? Do you have the reference from Clauss? I'd like to nail this as dead as possible, and then we need never be troubled by it again.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse

Some of this stuff is being discussed at a blog here.

God Fearing Atheist

On page 326, he footnotes this:

"Invested in the dignity of their office, prefects could create a sensation at temple and church alike."

with:

"It was during his urban prefecture of 376/377 that Furius Maecius Gracchus destroyed a Mithraeum and received baptism: Hieron. Ep. 107.2, Prud. c. Symm. 1.561-565."

God Fearing Atheist

I was hoping you did! I read it some time ago via interlibrary loan.

God Fearing Atheist

RE Smith's background, the dust jacket of DCP reads:

John Holland Smith was born in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, and graduated from Exeter College, Oxford, England. He lived for several years in Germany, Malta and Italy and travelled widely in France, Greece and Turkey. A novelist and translator as well as an historian, his books include The Great Schism, a study in the disintegration of the Papacy at the end of the Middle Ages, Constantine the Great, Francis of Assisi and Joan of Arc.

Roger Pearse

Me too. I have photocopies of some of it somewhere, but my time this weekend has just evaporated altogether, so I won't get to them. Perhaps next weekend I can dig it up. I really ought to own a copy.

We need to dig up Prudentius. I bet he's on google books. I'll try and take a look next week.

Must run,

Roger Pearse

Jabu Khan

Try the Journal of Roman Studies too. Where was the Barberini Mithreaum. There was some discoveries in Rome in 1946 of several pagan temples in Rome one a mithraeum I don't know if any were near Vatican Hill. If the Barbarinin Mithraeum sits under the Piazza Barbarini that is close I think. Also heard mention of a Piazza Montenara Mithraeum or a temple of an unknown god that could be a suspect.

Jabu Khan

Nevermind the Barberini Mithraeum I see is in the basement of the Palazzo Barberini and dates back to the 2nd century.

Clivedurdle

And how is it possible to discuss the 380's without mentioning Ambrose, and what is this about a cult of victory - it was the official religion and its main symbol!

http://www.britannica.com/ebc/article-9372313/Mithraism

youngalexander

See Clauss pg 30, The Pagan Revival section.

If we are to understand the motives of those involved in the 'pagan revival' we must look a little more closely at their own religious views, which are documented in a whole series of inscriptions. One of their religious centres was the temple of the Mater Magna on the Vatican Hill (the Phrygianum), where they put up numerous alters. (46) The best known representative of this group, ..., was Vettius Agorius Praetextatus... he was pater patrum in the cult of Mithras (V 420;CIL VI 1779)

Does not necessarily mean that "Mithraists had a presence", altho it seems likely.

(46) See H. Bloch, 'The Pagan Revival in the West at the End of the Fourth Century,' in The Conflict between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century, A. Momigliano (ed.) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), 193-218

Trusting that this is of assistance.