Mithras

Mithras was the god of one of the most widespread mystery cults of the Roman empire, especially among soldiers and officials. Bearing a name and some features from the Persian god Mithra, the Roman Mithras was largely a new creation, worshipped in small underground temples (mithraea) through a series of grades of initiation kept strictly secret — so that much about the cult remains a mystery to us still.

At the center of every shrine stood the image of Mithras slaying a great bull, the tauroctony, a scene rich in astral symbolism whose precise meaning is debated; many scholars read it as a cosmic act bound up with the turning of the heavens. As a solar savior-god of light, Mithras was closely tied to the cult of the Unconquered Sun and to the sun, and his mysteries — promising the soul a passage through the planetary spheres — ran parallel to the Platonic and theurgic concern with the soul's ascent through the cosmos.