Mithriaca I: The Mithraeum at S. Maria Capua Vetere

Mithriaca I is a short monograph about the Temple of Mithras at Capua. Known for the past half-century as one of the most important sanctuaries of the cult so well attested elsewhere in Italy (for example at Marino, whose Mithraeum is to be studied in Mithriaca II) and itself in use, V. suggests (p. 49), from the early second till the middle of the fourth century, it provides glimpses of the arrival in Campania from distant Persia of the grass-land magnate Mithra (miθrō yō vouru.gaoyaoitiš) who was to be hailed in the later Empire as Mithras invictus. The many older finds at S. Maria Capua Vetere, first systematically investigated and published by Minto in Notizie degli Scavi (1924), 353 ff., are now reassembled and revalued in the light of what has been discovered since, and for this task no one is better qualified, of course, than the author. Here, in the sixteenth volume of his series, he carries out his concise survey with the ease and impeccable scholarship of the expert in his own special field.