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In ancient Rome of the second to fourth centuries, taurobolium[1] referred to practices involving the sacrifice of a bull, which after mid-second century became connected with the worship of the Great Mother of the Gods; though not previously limited to her cultus, after 159 CE all private taurobolia inscriptions mention Magna Mater. Ancient Rome was a Civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC Animal Sacrifice is the Ritual killing of an Animal as part of a Religion. Appearances of the Bull (also known as Taurus) in Mythology and worship are widespread in the ancient world Originally a Hittite and Phrygian Goddess, Cybele (Κυβέλη was a deification of the Earth Mother and was worshipped in This article discusses cult in the original and typically ancient sense of "religious practice" (cultus [2] Originating in Asia Minor,[3] its earliest attested performance in Italy occurred in 134 BCE, at Puteoli, in honor of Venus Caelestis,[4] documented by an inscription. Anatolia (Anadolu Ανατολία Anatolía) or Asia minor, comprising most of modern Turkey, is the geographic region bounded by the Black Pozzuoli is a city of the Province of Naples, in the Italian region of Campania. Venus was a major Roman Goddess principally associated with Love, Beauty and fertility, the equivalent of the Greek goddess [5].

The earliest inscriptions, of the second century in Asia Minor, point to a bull chase in which the animal was overcome, linked with a panegyris in honour of a deity or deities, but not an essentially religious ceremony, though a bull was sacrificed and its flesh distributed. The addition of the taurobolium and the institution of an archigallus were innovations in the cult of Magna Mater made by Antoninus Pius on the occasion of his vicennalia, or twentieth year of reign, in 158-59. Titus Aurelius Fulvus Boionius Arrius Antoninus ( September 19, 86 &ndash March 7 161) generally known in English as Antoninus Pius [6] The first dated reference to Magna Mater in a tauribolium inscription dates from 160. The vires, or testicles of the bull, were removed from Rome and dedicated at a tauribolium altar at Lugdunum,27 November 160. This article is about the city in Gaul for other uses of Lugdunum see Lugdunum (disambiguation Colonia Copia Claudia Augusta Lugdunum (modern Jeremy Rutter makes the suggestion that the bull's testicles substituted for the self-castration of devotees of Cybele, abhorrent to the Roman ethos. [7]

Public taurobolia, enlisting the benevolence of Magna Mater on behalf of the emperor, became common in Italy and Gaul, Hispania and Africa. The last public taurobolium for which there is an inscription was carried out for Diocletian and Maximian at Mactar in Numidia at the close of the third century; the Christian emperors would hardly have encouraged such a rite in their honour.

The best-known and most vivid description, though of the quite different taurobolium as it was revived in aristocratic pagan circles, is the notorious one that has coloured early scholarship, which was provided in an anti-pagan poem by the late fourth-century Christian Prudentius in Peristephanon:[8] the priest of the Great Mother, clad in a silk toga worn cinctu Gabino, with golden crown and fillets on his head, takes his place in a trench covered by a platform of planks pierced with fine holes, on which a bull, magnificent with flowers and gold, is slain. Aurelius Prudentius Clemens was a Roman Christian Poet, born in the Roman Province of Tarraconensis (now Northern The blood rains through the platform onto the priest below, who receives it on his face, and even on his tongue and palate, and after the baptism presents himself before his fellow-worshippers purified and regenerated, and receives their salutations and reverence. Prudentius does not explicitly mention the taurobolium, but the ceremony, in its new form, is unmistakable from other contemporaneous sources: "At Novaesium on the Rhine in Germania Inferior, a blood pit was found in what was probably a Metroon," Jeremy Rutter observes. Neuss (ˈnɔʏs is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Germania Inferior was a Roman province located on the left bank of the Rhine, in today's southern and western Netherlands, parts of Originally a Hittite and Phrygian Goddess, Cybele (Κυβέλη was a deification of the Earth Mother and was worshipped in

Recent scholarship has called into question the reliability of Prudentius' description. It is a late account by a Christian who was hostile to paganism, and may have distorted the rite for effect. [9] Earlier inscriptions that mention the rite suggest a less gory and elaborate sacrificial rite. Therefore, Prudentius' description may be based on a late evolution of the taurobolium. [10]

The taurobolium in the second and third centuries was usually performed as a measure for the welfare of the Emperor, Empire, or community; H. Oppermann[11] denies early reports that its date was frequently 24 March, the Dies Sanguinis ("Day of Blood") of the annual festival of the Great Mother Cybele and Attis; Opp[ermann reports that there were no taurobolia in late March. Originally a Hittite and Phrygian Goddess, Cybele (Κυβέλη was a deification of the Earth Mother and was worshipped in Attis (sometimes written as "Atys" was Cybele 's lover Eunuch attendant and driver of her lion-driven chariot In the late third and the fourth centuries its usual motive was the purification or regeneration of an individual, who was spoken of as renatus in aeternum, "reborn for eternity", in consequence of the ceremony. [12] When its efficacy was not eternal, its effect was considered to endure for twenty years. It was also performed as the fulfilment of a vow, or by command of the goddess herself, and the privilege was not limited by sex or class. In its fourth-century revival in high pagan circles, Rutter has observed, "We might even justifiably say that the taurobolium, rather than a rite effectual in itself was a symbol of paganism. It was a rite apparently forbidden by the Christian emperors and thus became a hallmark of the pagan nobility in their final struggle against Christianity and the Christian emperors. "[13]The place of its performance at Rome was near the site of St Peter's, in the excavations of which several altars and inscriptions commemorative of taurobolia were discovered. The Basilica of Saint Peter (Basilica Sancti Petri officially known in Italian as the Basilica di San Pietro in Vaticano and commonly known as St

A criobolium, substituting a ram for the bull, was also practiced, sometimes together with the taurobolium;. [14]

Encyclopaedia Brittanica 1911, under the influence of Sir James George Frazer's The Golden Bough, suggested "The taurobolium was probably a sacred drama symbolizing the relations of the Mother and Attis (q. The Golden Bough A Study in Magic and Religion is a wide-ranging comparative study of Mythology and Religion, written by Scottish anthropologist Sir v. ). The descent of the priest into the sacrificial foss symbolized the death of Attis, the withering of the vegetation of Mother Earth; his bath of blood and emergence the restoration of Attis, the rebirth of vegetation. The ceremony may be the spiritualized descent of the primitive oriental practice of drinking or being baptized in the blood of an animal, based upon a belief that the strength of brute creation could be acquired by consumption of its substance or contact with its blood. In spite of the phrase renatus in aeternum, there is no reason to suppose that the ceremony was in any way borrowed from Christianity. Christianity ( Greek Χριστιανισμός from the word Xριστός ( Christ)is a monotheistic Religion centered on the life and teachings "

Notes

  1. ^ Franz Cumont derived the word from the epithet of Artemis Tauropolos (whom he identified with Persian Anahita, a connection no longer sustained); see Cumont, "Le Taurobole et le Culte de Bellone," Revue d'histoire et de littérature religieuses, 6. Franz-Valéry-Marie Cumont ( Aalst Belgium, January 3 1868 – Brussels, August 25 1947) was a Belgian archaeologist ae Aredvi Sura Anahita ( ae Arədvī Sūrā Anāhitā) is the Avestan language name of an Indo-Iranian Cosmological figure venerated as the divinity 2, 1901.
  2. ^ Jeremy B. Rutter, "The Three Phases of the Taurobolium" Phoenix 22. 3 (Autumn 1968), pp. 226-249, recognizes three phases of the taurobolium, a first phase (ca 135-59) in which the ceremony was not linked to the cult of the Great Mother, a second expansive phase (ca 159-290) west of the Adriatic and a brief third phase (ca 376-90) confined to aristocratic pagan circles.
  3. ^ "There can be no doubt that the taurobolium originated in Asia Mionor", Rutter observes (Rutter 1968:227.
  4. ^ Venus Caelestis, by interpretatio Romana, denoted Tanit, the goddess of Carthage; her cult statue had been brought to Rome after the destruction of Carthage, but was returned. Interpretatio graeca is a Latin term for the common tendency of Ancient Greek writers to equate foreign divinities to members of their own pantheon Tanit was a Phoenician lunar Goddess, worshiped as the Patron goddess at Carthage where from the fifth century BCE onwards her name is associated Carthage (Καρχηδών Karkhēdōn, Carthago from the Phoenician קרת חדשת phn-Latn Qart-ḥadašt meaning new town) refers
  5. ^ C. I. L. , X. 1596; inscription quoted by Rutter 1968:231.
  6. ^ J. Beaujeu, La religion romaine à l'apogée de l'empire, (Paris) 1955, I. 313ff, and P. Lambrechts, "Les fêtes 'phrygiennes' de Cybèle et d'Attis," Bulletin de l'Institut Historique Belge de Rome (1952) pp 141-70, both noted in Rutter 1968:234 note 26. This was the moment when Attis first appeared on a Roman coin.
  7. ^ Rutter 1968:235.
  8. ^ X, Romanus contra gentiles, lines 1006-85.
  9. ^ Antonía Tripolitis, Religions of the Hellenistic-Roman Age (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans) 2002.
  10. ^ Robert Duthoy, The Taurobolium, Leiden 1969.
  11. ^ Oppermann, in RE 5A, (1934) s. v. "taurobolium".
  12. ^ Corp. Insc. Lat. Vi. 510-512.
  13. ^ Rutter 1968:242.
  14. ^ Rutter 1968:226.

References

See also

A tauroctony is an artistic depiction of the mythic hero and ancient religious savior Mithras engaged in the ritual slaying of a bull Tauromachy (from Greek ταυρομαχία - tauromachia, "bull-fight" from ταύρος - tauros, "bull" + Bull-leaping (also taurokathapsia, from Greek grc ταυροκαθάψια is a motif of Middle Bronze Age figurative art notably of
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