Sull’origine di un bassorilievo mitraico a Bruxelles

Abstract

This paper tries to set a Mithraic bas-relief, now in Bruxelles, in its original context. It was found in Naples presumably in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and was bought by Franz Cumont in Rome in 1896. In the seventeenth century Giulio Cesare Capaccio and Giovanni Antonio Summonte described the Mithraic antiquities once existing in Naples, and on this basis it has been possible to locate the exact place ( the inner courtyard of a private house) where the relief was kept. There is ample evidence of Mithra’s cult in Naples, and it ca be argued that the relief was originally part of a local mithraeum. However, it should be remembered that since the late antiquity until Middle Ages and afterwards, a number of antiquities from Puteoli and the surrounding area were brought to Naples and to other places to be re-employed as building materials.