A writer in the _Athenæum_ thus describes a Roman Mithræum:[34] “Discovery was made during some excavations at Ostia of a handsome house containing among its various rooms a _mithræum_.... Into the kitchen opens a narrow and tortuous passage, from which by a small half-concealed staircase the _mithræum_ is reached; ... it is quadrangular and regular in shape, as is usually the case in buildings of the kind. Almost the whole length of the two lateral walls run two seats, and on the side opposite the door is seen a little elevation, which served as the place for the usual statue of Mithras in the act of thrusting his dagger into the neck of the mystic Bull. A very singular peculiarity of this little Ostian _mithræum_ is that it is entirely covered with mosaics--pavements, seats, and walls alike. The various figures and the symbols are splendidly drawn, and all executed in black _tesseræ_ on a white ground. Upon each side of the seats, turned to the entrance door, is figured a genius bearing a lamp, that is, the genius of the spring equinox, with the face raised, and that of the autumn equinox, with the face cast down.... It is known, in fact, that the whole myth of Mithras is related to the phases of the sun ... hence are represented in the ground below the seats all the twelve signs of the zodiac, by means of the usual symbols, but each accompanied by a large star.” [34] _Athenæum_, 1886, October 30 and November 6. In the many sculptures of the Mithras group similar to that above described, which have been so well figured in Lajard’s _Culte de Mithras_, various heavenly bodies are represented. The Scorpion (the constellation Scorpio of the Zodiac opposed to Taurus) joins with Mithras in his attack upon the Bull, and always the genii of the spring and autumn equinoxes are present in joyous and mournful attitudes. In looking at these plates the conviction is clearly forced upon our minds that the Bull so persistently, and, it may be added, so serenely, slain by Mithras in these Roman representations, is the Zodiacal Bull, overcome, and as it were destroyed or banished from heaven, in the daytime by the sun-god, and at night by Scorpio, the constellation in opposition. With almost equal conviction we arrive at the conclusion that this triumph of Mithras was associated traditionally--in Roman days it could only have been traditionally--with the occurrence, at a remote date, of the spring equinox during the time that the sun was in conjunction with the constellation Taurus.