Cautopates- Roman SpiritSpirit"The Torch-Bearer"
Description
In every mithraeum across the Roman Empire, the same figure stands to the left of the bull-slaying Mithras: a youth in Persian dress, his torch turned downward, its flame guttering toward the earth.
Mythology & Lore
The Lowered Torch
Cautopates appears in the tauroctony, the central icon of every mithraeum, standing to Mithras's left while his twin Cautes stands to the right. The two are mirror images. Cautes holds his torch upright, flame burning high. Cautopates holds his inverted, flame pointing down. In many reliefs he stands with legs crossed, leaning slightly, as though waiting.
He wears the same Persian cap and tunic as Mithras himself, smaller in scale but dressed identically. At the Mithraeum of Dura-Europos, excavated on the Euphrates frontier, both torch-bearers flank the painted tauroctony on the rear wall, their colors still visible when the sanctuary was uncovered in the 1930s. At the Walbrook Mithraeum in London, marble heads of both Cautes and Cautopates survived the temple's destruction, their Persian caps intact.
No text from the Mithraic mysteries names Cautopates or explains his role. The cult kept no scriptures that survived. What remains is stone and paint: hundreds of identical figures across three continents, each holding his torch the same way, each standing in the same place, each turned toward the same dying light.