ANTAEUS COMMUNICATIONES EX INSTITUTO ARCHAELOGICO ACADEMIAE SCIENTIARUM HUNGARICAE 24/ 1997-1998 PANNONIA AND BEYOND STUDIES IN HONOUR OF LASZLO BARKOCZI Istvan Toth THE COMPOSITION OF THE MITHRAS RELIEF FROM INTERCISA The sculptural composition of the large Mithras relief in Intercisa, was made according to very consciously realised, strict compositional concepts apart from the basically given compositional possibilities of the scene of the bull slaying.1 The skeleton of the composition is provided by a complex geometric structure. Each detail of the scene is integrated into this structure without allowing the geometric composition to rule over the looseness of the forms. At the same time, what we would like to prove, the composition in itself was a means of expression: it appears in the relief as the bearer of information for the initiated members of the mysterium community, hidden from he eyes of the outsiders. First, it should be stated that the relief in Intercisa does not contain any element either in the whole of the composition or in the details that would not be repeated on the multitudes of Roman Mithras reliefs or that would be unique. The uniqueness of this relief is provided by the clarity of the composition and the connections clearly reflected in this clarity. The most conspicuous unit of the composition is, following the general struc­ tural scheme of the topic, a large unilateral triangle with vertexes defined by the top of the Phrygian cap on Mithras’s head, the right foot held straight and the hoof of the left foreleg of the bull. The left leg of the triangle is explicitely outlined by the nearly totally straight line of Mithras’s body and stretched leg. The base of the triangle is similarly explicit, it is the base level of the picture field and the line of the feet and the belly of the bull resting on this level and diverging only slightly from the straight line. The right leg can only be delineated by an imagin­ ary line connecting the two vertexes. This imaginary line overlap real lines at some points, as the Phrygian cap and the right-side outline of Mithras’s hair, the dorsal arc of the jaw of the bull, the direction of the hind leg of the dog. On the whole, however, is lacks the delineation with tangible plastic means. In addition, several motives break this imaginary line as Mithras’s two arms and the body of the dog. In these cases, the direction of the outlines approaching the horizontal (i. e. the base of the triangle) favourably relieves the empty rigidity of the triangle composition and, at the same time, the too pronounced appearance of the other two sides. Totally independent of the above described triangle, another plane can be constructed, without difficulty, in the main scene of the relief. This is a large arc, 1 In general: F Cumont: Die Mysterien des Mitras. Berlin - Leipzig 1923, 213ff.; F. Seal: Mithras: Typengeschichtliche Untersuchungen. Berlin 1931, passim; T. Nagy: A sarkeszi Mithreum es az aquincumi Mithra-emlekek (Le Mithreum de Sarkeszi et les monuments Mithratiques d’Aquin- cum). BudReg 15 (1950) 47-119; L. A. Campbell: Mithraic Iconography and Ideology. EPRO 11. Leiden 1968; M. J. Vermaseren: Mithras the Secret God. New York 1963 80ff'.; S. Insler: A new interpretation of the bull-slaying motif. In- M. B. de Boer - T. A. Edridge (eds): Hommages a Maarten J. Vermaseren. EPRO 68:1-3. Leiden 1978, 519ff; D. Ulansey: The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries. Cosmology and salvation in the ancient world. New York - Oxford 1989, passim. 536 from all respects independent of the equilateral triangle, delineated by the edges of the chlamys and the connected tunic flying from Mithras’s shoulder and which can easily be joined, in the eyes of the viewer, with the right-side outline of the bull’s head. The arc is not closed in the upper part of the relief, an imaginary segment falls out of the picture field. Consequently, the eye sensing this element of the composition, automatically turns toward the upper third of the scene, that is towards Mithras’s head. The geometric centre of the arc is, certainly not ac­ cidentally, on Mithras’s right shoulder, which is the most prominent point of the relief, somewhat to the left from the vertical altitude of the triangle (i. e. the vertical axis of the whole composition). The fact that the centre of the arc, the centroid of the triangle and the point of intersection defined by the diagonals of the oblong of the relief do not overlap but lie to some distance from each other along the approximately vertical axis must be due to a conscious aspiration. It directs the eyes of the viewer to several points at the same time and so breaks the dominance of the geometric forms over anything else. Analysing the geometric elements of the composition of the main scene, yet another possibility must be considered. The top of Mithras’s cap, the end of the bull’s tail, the elbow point of its left hind leg forced under the body, the hoof of its right foreleg and its nose delineate a regular pentagon which encompasses the whole bulk of the scene. The realisation of the pentagon in itself suggests note­ worthy implications. It is, however, even more important that this structural unit involves the presence of the „pentagram” within the composition of the relief, which can be drawn into the regular pentagon. This plane, as it is well-known, was the symbol of perfection since Pythagoras and his school. In an aesthetic meaning it was due to its feature that the straight segments of the regular pen­ tagon are proportioned to each other according to ratios of the golden section. This fact gives the key of structural perfection of the Intercisa relief. This pentagram cannot, of course, be defined with graphic lines in the relief. Its hidden presence is only „known” by everybody who has realised it. And who knew it in the Antiquity that this magic plane can be drawn into the pentagon must also have known what it meant within the Pythagorean and the new Py­ thagorean system of ideas. The Pythagorean doctrines did not stand far from the followers of a religion that composed the iconography of its sacrificial pictures from the personified forms of constellations, that placed the initiation phases into the secret knowledge under the protection of planet deities and the preacher of which called himself „studious astrologiae”.2 The person who ordered the Intercisa relief (and who must have been a priest of the shrine community with a special rank) must certainly have been a person who, with the help of a sculptor with skills much higher than the provincial level, wanted to express his affinity to these ideas.3 The composition of the relief suggests yet another general implication beside the above ones. Art historical and typological research of the depiction of Mithras’s bull slaying, which is identical in the main elements all over the Empire, but 2 See e. g. J. R. Hinnels: Reflexions on the bull-slaying scene. In: J. R. Hinnels (ed.): Mithraic studies. Vol. 2. Manchester 1975, 290ff; R. Turcan: Mithras Platonicus. EPRO 47. Leiden 1975, passim. 3 I. Toth: Az intercisai Mithraeum nagy kultuszkepe (manuscript).  537 which can be grouped into several typological units based on the details, has, for a century, been discussing the interpretation of local varieties, the comparison of contextual or so-called ’pattern book’ differences of the depictions, their origin and interpretation. Regarding the differences in the details, the most important feature of the Pannonian and the Italian reliefs is that, unlike the Balkan, the Dacian and the German reliefs, the two-handled jug and the lion (the Leo and the Crater constellations) are missing under the belly of the bull. So these reliefs lack the composed, natural series of the astrologically connected constellations which make the backbone of S. Insler’s interpretation4 that is the regular stages of the imaginary heavenly route of the Sun in 30 degrees (i. e. monthly). This lack seems so important and not only a divergence from the pattern book as the recent results concerning the birth of the Mithras cult (papers by M. P Nielsson,5 S. Wikander,6 P Beskow,. R. Merkelbach7 and the author) demonstrated Pannonia and Italy to be the most likely scene of the development of the cult.8 It seems, accordingly, that the iconografically ,,defective” Italian and Pannonian reliefs rep­ resent a kind of archetype of the Mithras tauroktonos depictions, the original scheme in comparison to which the Balkan, the Dacian and the German depictions and also those in the city of Rome in the 3rd centuiy meant a conscious amplification and ideological development. The Intercisa relief represents the purest and artistically highest manifestation if the known Pannonian (and Italian) bull slaying type. We identify the Intercisa relief as the first, original composition of the so- called Pannonian type of Mithras slaying the bull due to the perfection of the structure, the artistic features of the execution, the ultimately clear shaping of the detail depictions and its compositional role. We think that all that could be depicted from the essence of the Mithras culture of Pannonian origin (in our opinion) is present on this relief in an artistically perfect shape, i. e. the constel­ lation series representing the idea of revival, all the essential elements of the salvational sacrifices, and the fight between man and animal was composed as the artistic compositional problem haunting since the depictions Artemis subduing the stag and the Lapitha fight in the Parthenon frieze. There is no motive in the Mithras relief from Intercisa that would be super­ fluous either in a contextual or an artistic aspect: each figure and each gesture bears a contextual, a messenger function. The perfection of the depiction from a formal aspect, at the same time, persuades us that there was such an overall clear pictural tradition before the artist that he could turn into the par excellence de­ piction of Mithras slaying the bull with his compositional adeptness and artistic skill. This relief, against its late dating, seems to convey the pictural tradition that came to life in the moment of the birth of the cult in the South-Pannonian Poetovio at the end of the 1st century and defined for centuries the local pictural type of the tauroktonos depiction, which could resist later dogmatic developments. 4 See note 1. 5 M. P Nillsson: Geschichte der griechischen Religion. Bd II. Miinchen 1961, 675. 6 S. Wikander: Etudes sur les mysteres de Mithras. Arsbok/Vetenskaps-Societaten i Lund 1951, 78sqq. 7 R. Merkelbach: Mithras. Hain 1984, 77, 160f. 8 I. Toth: Das lokale System der mithraischen Personifikationen im Gebiet von Poetovio. AV 28 (1977) 391ff; idem: Istenek a Duna partjan. Szekesfehervar 1991 44ff.