Connection Between Mithraism and Roman Army Garrisons
| Authors | |
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| Year of publication | 2017 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | Our general research question is if the spread of Mithraism was influenced by the Roman army and its infrastructure, as has been often argued in previous research. Our specific hypothesis is that, in case of a strong connection between the Roman army and the spread of Mithraism, there will be a spatial correlation between Roman army garrisons and locations of attested Mithraic evidence. For this study, we adapt a model of transport network in Roman World called ORBIS (http://orbis.stanford.edu/) that includes both road network and maritime model of transport. This model provides a substrate for creating a subnetwork of transportation routes connecting Roman army garrisons. By visual inspection of the results, we observed evidence in agreement with our hypothesis in certain regions of Roman world, specifically near Rhone river and north-eastern boundaries, but also didn’t find a match in more central regions. The result was measured also by statistical testing of shortest distances between Mithraic and garrison locations. |
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