Taurobolium

thumb|Taurobolium, or Consecration of the Priests of Cybele under Antoninus Pius. Engraving by Bernhard Rode c.1780 thumb|upright=1.5|Three sides of a taurobolium altar showing bucrania and a sacrificial knife, with a dedication to the Great Idaean Mother of the Gods, from [[Lugdunum (Lyon)]] In the Roman Empire of the second to fourth centuries, taurobolium referred to practices involving the sacrifice of a bull, which after mid-second century became connected with the worship of Cybele, the Great Mother of the Gods. Though not previously limited to her cult, after AD 159 all private taurobolia inscriptions mention the Magna Mater. ==History== thumb|upright|One of the 20 taurobolium altars in Musée Eugène-Camoreyt in Lectoure (France) Originating in Asia Minor, its earliest attested performance in Italy occurred in AD 134, at Puteoli, in honor of Venus Caelestis, as documented by an inscription.

The earliest inscriptions, of the second century in Asia Minor, point to a bull chase in which the animal was overcome, linked with a panegyris in honour of a deity or deities, but not an essentially religious ceremony, though a bull was sacrificed and its flesh distributed. The addition of the taurobolium and the institution of an archigallus were innovations in the cult of the Magna Mater made by Antoninus Pius on the occasion of his vicennalia, the twentieth year of his reign, in 158 and 159. The first dated reference to Magna Mater in a taurobolium inscription dates from 160. The vires, or testicles of the bull, were removed from Rome and dedicated at a taurobolium altar at Lugdunum, 27 November 160. Jeremy Rutter makes the suggestion that the bull's testicles substituted for the self-castration of devotees of Cybele, abhorrent to the Roman ethos.