We return to the scenes with the Bull, which here reach their climax. This is the sacrifice of the Bull by Mithras, which forms the central point of the whole legend. Its representation, generally in bas-relief, was displayed in the most conspicuous position in the apse of the Mithraic chapel, where it occupied the place of the modern altar-piece, and such art as the Roman sculptors succeeded in displaying was employed to make it as impressive and as striking as possible[865]. It shows the god grasping with his left hand the nostrils of the beast, and kneeling with his left knee in the middle of the Bull’s back, while with his right hand he plunges the broad-bladed dagger with which he was armed at his birth into the Bull’s shoulder[866]. A dog leaps forward to lap the blood flowing from the wound, while at the same time a scorpion seizes the Bull by the genitals. A serpent also forms part of the group, but his position varies in the different monuments, while that of the other animals does not. Sometimes, he lifts his head towards the blood, as if to share it with the dog, sometimes he is extended along the ground beneath the Bull’s belly in apparent indifference to the tragedy enacted above him[867]. Before the Bull stands generally a youth clothed like Mithras himself in Phrygian cap, tunic, and mantle, as well as the anaxyrides or tight trousers in which the Greeks depicted most Easterns, while another youth similarly attired stands behind the dying victim. These two human figures are alike in every particular save that one of them bears a torch upright with the flame pointing upwards, while the other holds a similar torch reversed so that the flame juts towards the earth. We know from a Latin inscription that the torch-bearer with uplifted torch was called Cautes, he with the reversed one Cautopates, but of neither name has any satisfactory derivation or etymology yet been discovered[868].