no net increase in the Mithraic community in Virunum. Simply, a new
album,the marble one, was started, when the old one, the bronze, was full.
Coincidentally, the existing mithraeum was rebuilt. There may have been
more than one mithraeum in the course of Virunum’s history, but the evi-
dence so far has not established the fact conclusively.
The weakness in Piccottini’s account is that it does not address emigra-
tion from Virunum or deaths subsequent to the great “mortality.” Presum-
ably, some members did die in the eighteen years between 184 and 202 CE;
and just as it is likely that several new members came from out of town (see
below), so it is likely that one or two moved away. The annual cohorts of
recruits might well have been intended to balance these losses, to keep the
mithraeum in a steady state; in which case, recruitment was an even more
mundane matter than in Piccottini’s account.
Piccottini’s account can accommodate attrition at a maximum average
rate of very little more than one member per year: 98 members listed,
minus 5 dead in the “mortality” = 93; minimum number on the marble
album,i.e., the founding group of the postulated new mithraeum = 40;
93–40 = 53; assume that the optimum capacity of the old mithraeum was
no less than the original group of the bronze album(= 34); 53–34 = 19,
which in turn = the maximum number of deaths and departures over the
eighteen years in question. Even if attrition was comprised entirely of
deaths, the mortality rate seems surprisingly low.
MITHRAISTS OF THE VIRUNUM ALBA
There is, of course, much to be said about the ninety-eight Mithraists of the
Virunum alba; about their civil status (freeborn citizen, freedman, pere-
grine, or servile), their family relationships, their ethno-cultural origins
(Latin, Greek, or native Celt), their other attested affiliations and activities,
their leaders (insofar as these can be identified); and about the cult of
Mithras in Virunum as known from the considerable remains previously dis-
covered there. All but the last of these matters are fully explored by Piccot-
tini (1994, 28–44; cf. Gordon 1996a),^5 so there is no need to review them
extensively here, except for two which particularly concern propagation: the
mithraeum’s leadership, and recruitment of kin and within familiae.First,
though, I will make some general observations.
188 PART II •MISSION?
5 On Mithraism in Virunum, see AE1994, 1334; Clauss 1995; Gordon 1996a; on Mithraism
and the oriental cults in Noricum, see Alföldy 1974, 194–97; Schön 1988. There was a
Dolichenium in Virunum (Schön 1988, nos. 198–212). Interestingly, the donor of our
mithraeum’s ceiling painting, Ti. Claudius Quintilianus, also made a dedication to Jupiter
Dolichenus (Schön 1988, no. 210).