Gr. Antiq. [ad. L. taurobolium (also in Eng. ase), f. Gr. ταυροβόλος striking or slaughtering bulls, f. ταῦρος bull + stem of βολή cast, stroke, wound. So F. taurobole.] The slaughter of a bull or bulls; spec. a pagan sacrifice of a bull in honor of Cybele, with its attendant rites, including a bath in bulls’ blood; also, the representation of such a slaughter or sacrifice in sculpture, etc.
1700. trans. Danet’s Dict. Grk. & Rom. Antiq. Tauropolium, or Tauropolion [sic], Sacrifices of Bulls, which were offered to Cybele,… to render Thanks … for her teaching Men the Art to tame those Animals.
1879. Farrar, St. Paul (1884), I. xviii. 187, note. Such were the taurobolies and kriobolies—hideous blood baths.
1882. [see KRIOBOLY].
1889. Farrar, Lives Fathers, I. ix. 562. He [Julian] washed away the lustral waters of baptism in the reeking horrors of a Tauroboly.
1891. Smith’s Dict. Grk. & Rom. Antiq., II. 762/2. A temple of the Magna Mater where these rites of taurobolium were celebrated stood on the Vatican.
1919. F. W. Bussell, Rel. Th. & Heresy in Mid. Ages, 569. Mitraism borrowed the rite of tauroboly from the mysteries of the Great Mother.
