Roger Beck
Biographic Data
| ID | 3663299 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Roger Beck |
| GIVEN NAMES | Roger |
| FAMILY NAME | Beck |
| SIGNATURE | BECK R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Toronto |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 53 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 108 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 52 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1965 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Naturalism and Protectionism in the Study of Religions
How should we study religion? Must we be religious ourselves to truly understand it? Do we study religion to advance our knowledge, or should the study of religions help to reintroduce the sacred into our increasingly secularized world?
Attilio Mastrocinque: The Mysteries of Mithras. A Different Account
Dorian Gieseler Greenbaum, The Daimon in Hellenistic Astrology: Origins and Influence
Dorian Gieseler Greenbaum, The Daimon in Hellenistic Astrology: Origins and Influence(Leiden: Brill, 2015), xiii + 573 pp., €186.00 (hbk), ISBN: 978-9004306-20-2
Imagery and Narrative in an Ancient Horoscope: P.Lond. 130 (Greek Horoscopes No. 81)
In a Greek papyrus horoscope from the first century CE, highly elaborate descriptions of planetary journeyings have replaced the usual matter-of-fact listing of celestial longitudes. An analysis of the horoscope’s language and narrative form demonstrates how ancient astrologers understood the stars and planets as agents that communicate by their appearances, configurations, and motions
Intende, Lector - Echoes of Myth, Religion and Ritual in the Ancient Novel: Echoes of Myth, Religion and Ritual in the Ancient Novel
Representation of myth in the novel, as a poetic, narrative and aesthetic device, is one of the most illuminating issues in the area of ancient religion, for such narratives investigate in various ways fundamental problems that concern all human beings. This volume brings together twenty contributions (six of them to a Roundtable organized by Anton Bierl on myth), originally presented at the Fourth International Conference on the Ancient novel (I…
The Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: I. Introduction and Comparisons
This chapter discusses Mithraism as a symbol system in the manner of the symbolist anthropologists, particularly Clifford Geertz. Comparisons are made between Mithraic culture and the culture of the Chamulas of southern Mexico, especially in regard to the construction of space in general and sacred space in particular. The Mithraic sevenfold grade structure is discussed as a symbol system. A principle of ‘harmony of tension in opposition’ is post…
Doctrine Redefined
This chapter redefines ‘doctrine’ in the context of Mithraism. The old scholarly view that something equivalent to creedal propositions can be found in Mithraism is challenged, as is its ancestor, the ancient philosophical view of ‘reason for the wise, symbols for the vulgar’. If Mithraic teaching is to be recovered, it is better sought in the one area where there is agreement between substantial archaeological evidence, the design and structure …
Star-Talk: The Symbols of the Mithraic Mysteries as Language Signs
This chapter is the first of two devoted to Mithraism's rich astral symbolism and to a discussion on whether, on both ancient and modern semiotic criteria, it might function as a quasi-language. To accommodate ancient authors both Christian (e.g. Origen, Augustine) and pagan (e.g. Plato, Plotinus), ‘star-talk’ is postulated as a fictitious language not only about the stars but also of, i.e. spoken by, the stars. Star-talk is the idiom of the Mith…
The Problem of Referents: Interpretation with Reference to What?
This chapter looks at the question of referents: to what does Mithraic iconography allude? Is it to Persian myths and beliefs about Mithra? Or are the referents, especially in the tauroctony, the image of the bull-killing Mithras, to the heavens as culturally constructed? Are they primarily astronomical and/or astrological?
Excursus: The Esoteric Quartering, a Lost Helicoidal Model of Lunar Motion, and the Origin of the ‘Winds’ and ‘Steps’ of the Moon. The Identity of ‘Antiochus the Athenian’
Transition: From Old Ways to New Ways
Conclusions: A New Basis for Interpreting the Mysteries
This concluding chapter revisits the summary description of the religion of the Mithras cult proposed in Chapter 1.
The Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II. The Mithraeum
This chapter explores the initiate's understanding of his mithraeum as ‘an image of the universe for induction into a mystery of the descent and departure of souls’. The mithraeum is analyzed in detail using both the evidence from Porphyry's On the Cave and the archaeological sites to construct a normative template for the mithraeum. Other ‘images of the universe’ from antiquity are compared: the Pantheon, Nero's Domus Aurea, Varro's aviary, the …
Cognition and Representation
This chapter explains how the Cognitive Science of Religion can serve as a powerful new method for exploring the making of representations in a religion and the cognitive processes by which an initiate apprehends a religion's symbol system. Following Dan Sperber's approach (Explaining Culture), all religions may be described in terms of the interplay of representations over time: public representations in the media of sacred spaces, physical imag…
Introduction to Interpreting the Mysteries: Old Ways, New Ways
This introductory chapter provides an introduction to interpreting Mithraism as a mystery cult. The sense in which ‘religion’ is used is defined. Old methods are contrasted with a new method that focuses on cognition, on how the initiate gets to know his religion through apprehending ‘images, suppositions, and representations’. A summary description of the cult's religion is given in terms of ‘axioms’, instantiated in ‘motifs’ (e.g. descent and a…
Old Ways: The Reconstruction of Mithraic Doctrine from Iconography
This chapter critiques the traditional method, established by Franz Cumont. Cumont's method was first to reconstruct Mithraic myth from Mithraic iconography and then to extrapolate Mithraic doctrine and beliefs from the myth.
The Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III. The Tauroctony
The Religion of the Mithras Cult in the Roman Empire: Mysteries of the Unconquered Sun
This book provides a new description of Mithraism, one of the mystery cults of the Roman Empire, from the perspective of its initiates. Mithraism, which was centred on the sun god Mithras, is described as a complex of symbolic representations created, apprehended, and transmitted not only in the medium of an extraordinarily rich and detailed iconography, but also in ritual action and language, in cult life and hierarchy, and in the design of its …
Mystery Religions, Aretalogy and the Ancient Novel
New thoughts on the genesis of the mysteries of Mithras
Ritual, Myth, Doctrine, and Initiation in the Mysteries of Mithras: New Evidence from a Cult Vessel
Despite the wealth of the cult's material remains, we still know relatively little about the ritual of the Mithraic mysteries. What was it, in the sense of liturgy performed, that Mithraists actually did in mithraea? How did it relate to myth, to the story of the god, which, by contrast, is singularly well documented on the monuments? Was it, in some way, a mimesis or re-enactment of that story? How, if at all, was it an expression of the initiat…
The Mysteries of Mithras: A New Account of their Genesis
In 1896 Franz Cumont published, as the second volume of his Textes et monuments figurés relatifs aux mystères de Mithra , the dossier of documents on the basis of which he was to render, three years later, the first truly historical account of the transformation of Mithra-worship from a branch of Iranian Mazdaism to a Roman mystery cult. This transformative process, as he envisaged it, was long and evolutionary. He used a geological metaphor to d…
Qui Mortalitatis Causa Convenerunt: The Meeting of the Virunum Mithraists on June 26, A. D. 184
IN 1992 A BRONZE PLAQUE recording the dedication of a mithraeum was discovered in Virunum, the principal town and administrative capital of the province of Noricum.1 The mithraeum, as the text of the plaque reveals, had collapsed in some sort of catastrophe, probably natural, and the members rebuilt it at their own expense.2 The plaque functioned as the mithraeum's album. The original thirty-four contributors to the rebuilding were listed in the …
Mystery Religions, Aretalogy and the Ancient Novel
Whether there exists some special relationship between ancient narrative fiction on the one side and the mystery religions on the other has long been a standard critical topos , at least in the scholarship of the former. An integral connection between the novels and the mystery cults was propounded by R. Merkelbach. Merkelbach's theory is the extreme case on the role of religion in the novel. In effect it collapses the latter into the former as a…
Some empirical evidence on rent-seeking
The Novel in the Ancient World
This is the second publication in Brill's handbook series The Classical Tradition. The subject of this volume is that group of works of extended prose narrative fiction which bears many similarities to the modern novel and which appeared in the later classical periods in Greece and Rome. The ancient novel has enjoyed renewed popularity in recent years not only among students of literature, but also among those looking for new sources on the popul…
Eumolpus "Poeta", Eumolpus "Fabulator: "A Study of Characterization in the "Satyricon
THE CHARACTERIZATION OF THE POET EUMOLPUS in Petronius' Satyricon is a topic of some importance, since it impinges on the vexed question of the purpose of the work's two major poems, the Troiae halosis and Bellum civile, for which Eumolpus is cast in the role of ostensible composer. Are we supposed to take this attribution seriously and at face value, reading the poems as the expression of the man and of such talents as he possesses? Or is the po…
A History of Zoroastrianism, Zoroastrianism under Macedonian and Roman Rule
This volume traces the history of Zoroastrianism at times and places where its existence has previously been largely ignored, or treated only episodically. Literary, archaeological and numismatic evidence has been drawn on (some of it only recently brought to light), and local developments are distinguished. In Iran itself some 200 years of Macedonian rule had little effect on the national religion. To the east, Zoroastrianism survived in the Gre…
The Religion of the Mithras Cult in the Roman Empire: Mysteries of the Unconquered Sun
This book provides a new description of Mithraism, one of the mystery cults of the Roman Empire, from the perspective of its initiates. Mithraism, which was centred on the sun god Mithras, is described as a complex of symbolic representations created, apprehended, and transmitted not only in the medium of an extraordinarily rich and detailed iconography, but also in ritual action and language, in cult life and hierarchy, and in the design of its …
Ritual, Myth, Doctrine, and Initiation in the Mysteries of Mithras: New Evidence from a Cult Vessel
Despite the wealth of the cult's material remains, we still know relatively little about the ritual of the Mithraic mysteries. What was it, in the sense of liturgy performed, that Mithraists actually did in mithraea? How did it relate to myth, to the story of the god, which, by contrast, is singularly well documented on the monuments? Was it, in some way, a mimesis or re-enactment of that story? How, if at all, was it an expression of the initiat…
Ovid, Augustus, and a Nut Tree
SUCH DISCUSSION as there has been of the Nux, a short elegiac poem poised somewhat insecurely on the fringes of the Ovidian corpus, has naturally tended to concentrate on the problem of authorship.' Moreover the arguments used in favour of either rejection or acceptance have been mainly concerned with matters of form, i.e., metre, vocabulary, and style, rather than content. It is the purpose of the present paper to examine part of the subject mat…
Some Observations on the Narrative Technique of Petronius
Qui Mortalitatis Causa Convenerunt: The Meeting of the Virunum Mithraists on June 26, A. D. 184
IN 1992 A BRONZE PLAQUE recording the dedication of a mithraeum was discovered in Virunum, the principal town and administrative capital of the province of Noricum.1 The mithraeum, as the text of the plaque reveals, had collapsed in some sort of catastrophe, probably natural, and the members rebuilt it at their own expense.2 The plaque functioned as the mithraeum's album. The original thirty-four contributors to the rebuilding were listed in the …
The Mithras cult as association
"Encolpius at the "Cena
PETRONIUS WROTE the Satyricon in the form of the recollections of a first-person narrator looking back at and reconstructing the adventures and encounters of his own past life. In the account of Trimalchio's banquet this act of recollection and reconstruction is made explicit in a number of places, as for example when the narrator says of the guest-gifts sexcenta huiusmodi fuerunt quae iam exciderunt memoriae meae (there were hundreds of things o…
Intende, Lector - Echoes of Myth, Religion and Ritual in the Ancient Novel: Echoes of Myth, Religion and Ritual in the Ancient Novel
Representation of myth in the novel, as a poetic, narrative and aesthetic device, is one of the most illuminating issues in the area of ancient religion, for such narratives investigate in various ways fundamental problems that concern all human beings. This volume brings together twenty contributions (six of them to a Roundtable organized by Anton Bierl on myth), originally presented at the Fourth International Conference on the Ancient novel (I…
New thoughts on the genesis of the mysteries of Mithras
Cultores Mithrae: Die Anhangerschaft des Mithras-Kultes
The Rock-Cut Mithraea of Arupium (Dalmatia)
T HE FIRST OBJECTIVE OF THIS ARTICLE is to lay a ghost-or rather, a pair of ghosts. The ghosts are two Mithraic monuments listed under a single entry as no. 1850 in the basic inventory of the cult's remains, M. J. Vermaseren's Corpus Inscriptionum et Monumentorum Religionis Mithriacae (CIMRM).1 They do not appear in L. Zotovic's more recent catalogue of the Mithraic monuments of Jugoslavia,2 but since they are neither explicitly disposed of there…
A Principle of Composition in Homeric Verse
(0) 1 12 3 34 5 5? First of all, word-ends are noticeably less frequent at 31 and 4 than at any other of the individual points in the first half of the line.2 Statistics show increasingly high totals for the first four points (1, 11, 2, and 3) and again for the alternatives for the medial caesura (5 and 5-), but at the two intervening points the totals drop considerably. The following, as an example, are H. N. Porter's figures for two sample pass…
Ovid, Augustus, and a Nut Tree
SUCH DISCUSSION as there has been of the Nux, a short elegiac poem poised somewhat insecurely on the fringes of the Ovidian corpus, has naturally tended to concentrate on the problem of authorship.' Moreover the arguments used in favour of either rejection or acceptance have been mainly concerned with matters of form, i.e., metre, vocabulary, and style, rather than content. It is the purpose of the present paper to examine part of the subject mat…
A Principle of Composition in Homeric Verse
(0) 1 12 3 34 5 5? First of all, word-ends are noticeably less frequent at 31 and 4 than at any other of the individual points in the first half of the line.2 Statistics show increasingly high totals for the first four points (1, 11, 2, and 3) and again for the alternatives for the medial caesura (5 and 5-), but at the two intervening points the totals drop considerably. The following, as an example, are H. N. Porter's figures for two sample pass…
Some Observations on the Narrative Technique of Petronius
Petron: Uberlieferung und Rekonstruktion
"Encolpius at the "Cena
PETRONIUS WROTE the Satyricon in the form of the recollections of a first-person narrator looking back at and reconstructing the adventures and encounters of his own past life. In the account of Trimalchio's banquet this act of recollection and reconstruction is made explicit in a number of places, as for example when the narrator says of the guest-gifts sexcenta huiusmodi fuerunt quae iam exciderunt memoriae meae (there were hundreds of things o…
Eumolpus "Poeta", Eumolpus "Fabulator: "A Study of Characterization in the "Satyricon
THE CHARACTERIZATION OF THE POET EUMOLPUS in Petronius' Satyricon is a topic of some importance, since it impinges on the vexed question of the purpose of the work's two major poems, the Troiae halosis and Bellum civile, for which Eumolpus is cast in the role of ostensible composer. Are we supposed to take this attribution seriously and at face value, reading the poems as the expression of the man and of such talents as he possesses? Or is the po…
Cleomede: "Theorie Elementaire ("De motu circulari corporum caelestium)
Soteriology, the Mysteries, and the Ancient Novel: Iamblichus Babyloniaca as a Test-Case
Mithras-Orion: Greek Hero and Roman Army God
The Rock-Cut Mithraea of Arupium (Dalmatia)
T HE FIRST OBJECTIVE OF THIS ARTICLE is to lay a ghost-or rather, a pair of ghosts. The ghosts are two Mithraic monuments listed under a single entry as no. 1850 in the basic inventory of the cult's remains, M. J. Vermaseren's Corpus Inscriptionum et Monumentorum Religionis Mithriacae (CIMRM).1 They do not appear in L. Zotovic's more recent catalogue of the Mithraic monuments of Jugoslavia,2 but since they are neither explicitly disposed of there…
Merkelbach's Mithras
Ancient Mystery Cults
Politics, Property Rights, and Cottage Development
This paper explores recreational land use planning issues, giving special attention to the applicability of benefit/cost analysis and the economics of property rights. The analysis suggests that the political process does not function as well as is often assumed, and an explanation is offered based on the public choice theory of government. An Alberta plan for its major water-based recreational resources is used to illustrate generalizations abou…
Planetary Gods and Planetary Orders in the Mysteries of Mithras
In central and eastern Asia Minor: Greater Phrygia with Galatia, Cappadocia and Pontus, Cilicia
Preliminary Material
Index
Select Bibliography
Under Alexander and the Successors
In Commagene, Syria and Egypt
Thus Spake not Zarathuštra: Zoroastrian pseudepigrapha of the Greco-Roman world
Zoroastrian contributions to eastern Mediterranean religion and thought in Greco-Roman times
A History of Zoroastrianism, Zoroastrianism under Macedonian and Roman Rule
This volume traces the history of Zoroastrianism at times and places where its existence has previously been largely ignored, or treated only episodically. Literary, archaeological and numismatic evidence has been drawn on (some of it only recently brought to light), and local developments are distinguished. In Iran itself some 200 years of Macedonian rule had little effect on the national religion. To the east, Zoroastrianism survived in the Gre…
The Mithras cult as association
Reading Petronius
Art (26 works) · Philosophy (26 works) · History (25 works) · Classical Antiquity Studies (24 works) · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies (22 works) · Literature (18 works) · Ancient history (15 works) · History (13 works) · Eurasian Exchange Networks (11 works) · Political science (10 works)