Currently, I’m listening to lecture series from the Great Teaching Company titled Late Antiquity: Crisis and Transformation taught by Professor Thomas F. X. Noble

Mithraism was a popular cult that flourished between the 2nd and 4th centuries AD, and was a competitor of Christianity in the ancient Roman world.

Although Mithra was a Persian deity, and the Romans who practiced Mithraism may have viewed their cult as originating in ancient Persia, it appears that Mithraism was largely an Imperial Roman invention.

Mithraism was popular among members of the Roman military. It excluded women from participating.

Mithraism was practiced in a Mithraeum, the most distinctive feature of which was a depiction of the bull-slaying scene. In it, the God Mithra slays a sacred bull (called the ‘tauroctony’). A scorpion clutches the bull’s genitals. Mithra faces the god Sol (Sun). A raven hovers overhead or is perched on the bull’s back.

Tauroctony in Kunsthistorisches Museum