Explanation: The top figure is a depiction of the Roman Emperor Aurelian, who put a great deal of effort into encouraging sun worship in the Roman Empire. There is some controversy over whether Aurelian’s sun worship was derived from Syria and had only Roman influences, or was derived from native Roman traditions and had Syrian influences. He is generally highly regarded as a general and a driven man, both contemporarily and by modern historians.

The bottom figure is a bust of Akhenaten, I believe, who tried to implement sun worship in Egypt and failed.

Sol Invicutus is nothing like that jerk Akhenaten’s Aten worship. Atenism was monism, ie monotheism that seeks to eradicate all worship of other gods. Thankfully, Egyptians were able to overthrow this deranged tyrant as notable by his son Tutankhaten having to change his name to Tutankh*amun, to revere Amun rather than the Aten, one of the powerful deities in the original Egyptian pantheon.

Another notable time monist tyranny has taken hold and sadly not been strangled in the crib is in the Grecoroman world where Judaism and Christiantiy teamed up to overthrow the Greek (and copycat Roman) pantheon, ending 1500 years of multicultural polytheism united in the Greek speaking world, leading to thousands of years of darkness and ignorance that we find ourselves in today, with occasional bright points such as the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason where the remaining source texts in Greek and (to a lesser degree) Latin were studied and some part of the philosophy of antiquity was renewed, leading to nascent reemergences of Democracy, Science, Medicine, Justice, and other ancient virtues.

If only I could be so grossly incandescent!