The =Salle des Saisons= contains busts, mostly of the extreme =decadence=, and works with a =semi-barbaric= tinge. The bust of Honorius, by the far door, shows the last traces of classical work rapidly passing into =Byzantine= stiffness and lifelessness. Note the feebleness of the eyes and general ineffectiveness of plastic treatment. Eugenius, opposite him, equally displays decadence in a somewhat different direction, provincial and Gaulish, foreshadowing barbaric Romanesque workmanship. A fine Muse, however, stands next to Honorius. There are also several very decent reliefs from sarcophagi. The figure of Tiridates, wearing the barbaric trousers, is a fine example of Greco-Roman art applied to a member of an alien civilisation. Close to it, the famous =Mithra= of the Capitol, stabbing a bull, with other representations of the same subject beneath and beside it. These reliefs are extremely illustrative of a most interesting phase of the later Empire. Rome was then a cosmopolitan city, crowded with Syrians, Jews, Egyptians, Asiatic Greeks, and other Orientals. Many of these people introduced into Italy and the Provinces the worship of their own local deities: the cult of Isis, of Serapis, and of other Eastern gods competed with Christianity for the mastery of the Empire. Among these intrusive religions, one of the most successful was the worship of Mithra, which came to Rome indirectly from Persia, and directly from the southern shores of the Black Sea. The mystic deity himself is always represented in an underground cave, stabbing a bull; he was regarded as a personification or avatar of the Sun God. His worship spread rapidly to every part of the Roman world, and was immensely popular: similar reliefs have been found in all Romanized regions from Britain to North Africa. The best of those in this room comes from the cave of Mithra in the Capitol at Rome itself, where the eastern god was permitted even to invade the precincts of the Capitoline Jupiter. Notice the barbaric Oriental dress and the voluptuous, soft Oriental treatment; also, the action in the cave, and the personages on the upper earth above it. Compare all these reliefs with one another, and notice their origin as given on the labels. Observe also the close similarity and religious fixity of the representations. They should be studied with care, as illustrative of the conflict of new religions with old in the Roman Empire, out of which Christianity at last emerged triumphant. Their number and costliness shows the strength of this strange faith; their inferior art betokens both eastern influence and the approach of the decadence. Compare the Oriental tinge in the Mithra reliefs with that of some Early Christian works in the small Christian room of the Renaissance Sculpture.