MITHRAISM
IN
THE ROMAN EMPIRE
49
,
most
ancient
sanctuaries
qf_jlie_
Mazdean
sect. -
^This warlike post, the most important in the seems also to have been the
entire region,
religious center from which the foreign cult radiated into the smaller towns of the sur
rounding country. Stix-Neusiedl, where it was certainly practised from the middle of the second century, was only a dependent village of this powerful city. But farther to the south the temple of Scarbantia was enriched by a
Towards the
decurio colonicz Carnunti.
east the
territory of /Equinoctium has furnished a vo tive inscription to the Petrce Genetrici, and still
Vindobona (Vienna) the soldiers legion had likewise learned, doubtless from the neighboring camp, to cele brate the Mysteries. Even in Africa, traces farther off at of
the
tenth
are found of the influence which the great Pannonian city exercised on the development of Mithraism.
Several leagues from Vienna, passing across the frontier of Noricum, we come upon the hamlet of CommagentZ) the name of which is doubtless due to the fact that a squadron of
Commageneans
(an ala
Commagenorum) was
not surprised, there there quartered. One fore, to learn that a bas-relief of the taurocis
tonous god has been discovered here. Never theless, in this province, as in Rhsetia, the army does not seem to have taken, as it did in Pannonia, an active part in the propagation of the
/v