luciano albanese

1. Luciano ALBANESE luciano.albanese@uniroma1.it ―Porfirio, l‘Antro delle ninfe e i misteri di Mithra‖ The aim of this paper is to compare the Porphyry‘s lecture of tauroctony in The Cave of The Nymphs (borrowed from Eubulus and Pallas, maybe also Numenius?) with the mithraic archaelogical finds. 2. José David Mendoza ÁLVAREZ, luckyman76@hotmail.com , ―Mitras y otros cultos orientales en el anfiteatro de Itálica‖, /“Mithras and Other oriental Cults in the Amphitheater of Italica.‖ This research is part of our project Doctoral Thesis that discusses the amphitheater of Italica, which we intend to show the results for the cult practiced therein. Thus, we present a new hypothesis of possible rooms of religion distributed along the annular gallery under the podium. 3. Giovanna BASTIANELLI , gawain@virgilio.it. ―Mithras in Umbria‖ Many finds testify to the cult of Mithras in Regio VI, Umbria. These include inscriptions, two altars, two reliefs, and two Tauroctonies, which were either foun...

Summary Porphyry's Cave of Nymphs is dedicated to deciphering the philosophical and theological significance of the cave described by Homer in the Thirteenth Canto of the Odyssey. However, within the exegesis of the Homeric cave awaits another exegesis concerning the cave in which Mithras sacrifices the bull and in which the initiation of the worshippers and the common meal take place. According to Porphyry, the cave of the Nymphs is the place in which the worshippers were initiated into the platonic mystery of the descent and ascent of souls. Mithras, assimilated to the Demiurge of the Timaeus, generates souls by killing the bull he has caught, ridden and dragged into the cave which symbolises the cosmos. The souls, which are created by the bull/moon like bees in a sort of bougonia (cf. Virgil, Georgics IV), and which are animated by his blood, descend into the cycle of generation and incarnation and are dragged down by Boreas, the cold wind that keeps them cool in the place of...