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TAUROBOLIUM

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Originally appearing in Volume V26, Page 456 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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TAUROBOLIUM  , the

sacrifice of a bull, usually in connexion with the worship of the
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Great
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Mother of the Gods, though not limited to it . Of
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oriental origin, its first known performance in Italy occurred in A.D . 134, at Puteoli, in honour of
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Venus Caelestis . Prudentius describes it in Peristephanon (x., 1o66 ff.) : the priest of the Mother, clad in a toga worn cinctu Gabino, with
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golden
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crown and fillets on his head, takes his place in a trench covered by a platform of planks pierced with
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fine holes, on which a bull, magnificent with flowers and gold, is slain . The
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blood rains through the platform on to the priest below, who receives it on his face, and even on his 'tongue and palate, and after the
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baptism presents himself before his
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fellow-worshippers purified and regenerated, and receives their salutations and reverence . The taurobolium in the 2nd and 3rd centuries was usually performed as a measure for the welfare of the Emperor,
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Empire, or community, its date frequently being the 24th of March, the Dies Sanguinis of the
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annual festival of the Great Mother and
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Attis . In the
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late 3rd and the 4th centuries its usual motive was the
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purification or regeneration of an individual, who was spoken of as renatus in aeternum, reborn for eternity, in consequence of the ceremony (Corp . Insc .
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Lat. vi . 510-512) . When its efficacy was not eternal, its effect was considered to endure for twenty years . It was also performed as the fulfilment of a vow, or by command of the goddess herself, and the
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privilege was limited to no sex nor class .

The place of its performance at

Rome was near the site of St Peter's, in the excavations of which several altars and inscriptions commemorative of taurobolia were discovered . The taurobolium was probably a sacred drama symbolizing the relations of the Mother and Attis (q.v.) . The descent of the priest into the sacrificial foss symbolized the
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death of Attis, the withering of the vegetation of Mother Earth; his bath of blood and emergence the restoration of Attis, the rebirth of vegetation . The ceremony may be the spiritualized descent of the
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primitive oriental practice of drinking or being baptized in the blood of an animal, based upon a belief that the strength of brute creation could be acquired by consumption of its sub-stance or contact with its blood . In spite of the phrase renatus in aeternum, there is no reason to suppose that the ceremony was in any way borrowed from
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Christianity . See Esperandieu, Inscriptions de
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Lectoure (1892), pp . 94 ff.; Zippel, Festschrift zum Doctorjubilaeum, Ludwig Friedlander, 1895, p . 489 f.; Showerman, The Great Mother of the Gods, Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin, No . 43, pp . 280-84 (Madison, 1901); Hepding, Attis, Seine Mythen and Sean Kull (
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Giessen, 1903), pp . 168 if., 201; Cumont, Le Taurobole et le Culte de Bellone, Revue d'histoire et de litterature religieuses, vi., No . 2, 1901 .

(G .

End of Article: TAUROBOLIUM
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