Cautes, Torchbearer of Mithras
Unknown · Roman Imperial, AD 389
A young man in a short belted tunic, a cloak, trousers and soft boots stands with a torch, his head covered by the soft Phrygian cap that marks him as an easterner in Roman eyes. A small dog sits at his feet and looks up at him. The marble is carved fully in the round and just under ninety centimetres high, with a broad, quiet face and crisp folds in the cloak. Look at the way the weight rests on one leg while the other bends slightly, a pose borrowed from classical Greek statues of youths.
He is one of the two torchbearers who accompany Mithras, the Persian god whose secret cult spread through the Roman army and merchant class. The figure belongs to a set of marble sculptures found in a Mithraeum, an underground sanctuary, at Sidon in Lebanon, dated by an inscription on the group to the year three hundred and eighty-nine of our era, when Christianity was already the official religion of the empire. The sculptures entered the collection of Louis de Clercq and were given to the Louvre by his heirs in nineteen sixty-seven.
Did You Know? Mithras's two torchbearers stand for sunrise and sunset, so the little figures were placed on either side of the bull-slaying scene like the two ends of a day.
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