differences between greek and roman sacrifice
76 In addition to Zeus and Hera, there were many other major and minor gods in the Greek religion. 78 The Romans, however, developed a more naturalistic approach to their art. The S. Omobono material shows a definite preference for certain species (sheep, goats, pigs),Footnote molo. 16 62. 68 Among these criteria are a clear preference for specific parts of an animal or for animals of a specific age/sex/species, unusual butchery patterns, burning or other alterations to the remains, and the association of the remains with other material (e.g., votive offerings) linked to ritual activity. Pollucere is an old word, appearing mostly in literature of the second century b.c.e.,Footnote 32 Peter=FRH F33. Incarcerated in such a body, man's only hope is to avert these characteristics through the use of the powerful influences of ritual and ceremony. To my knowledge, the sole exception is a phrase preserved twice in the Commentarii Fratrum Arvalium (Scheid Reference Scheid1998: nn. 81 Was a portion consumed later? Although there is some evidence for Roman consumption of dog in the form of canine skeletons with butchery marks (e.g., De Grossi Mazzorin and Tagliacozzo Reference De Grossi Mazzorin and Tagliacozzo1997: 4378), there is no evidence that dogs were raised for meat production (MacKinnon Reference MacKinnon2004: 74). Those poor Nacirema, who despise their physical form and try to improve it through ritual and ceremony, at first seem so different from us: primitive, superstitious, unsophisticated. Nonius 539L identifies mactare with immolare, but the texts he cites do not really support his claim. Yet to limit the consideration of immolatio to the moment of killing is to overlook the other actions (running a knife along the animal's back, cutting a few hairs from it) that Scheid has identified as being part of that stage of sacrificium Furthermore, there is reason to think that the crucial moment, or perhaps the first crucial moment, in the whole ritual process of sacrificium for the Romans was the sprinkling of mola salsa onto the victim, whereas several important modern theorizations of sacrifice place the greatest emphasis on, and see the essential meaning of sacrifice in, the moment of slaughter. Were they always burnt on an altar or brazier? Learn. 55 Thus far, we have identified two points on which emic and etic ideas of what constitutes a Roman sacrifice do not align: when the critical transition from profane to sacred occurs and what kinds of things can be presented to the gods through the act of sacrificium. Neither Miner's nor his reader's understanding is right and the other wrong: they are two different views of the same set of data, and both are valuable. The article is reprinted in McCutcheon Reference McCutcheon1999, a volume that offers in its introductory chapter a very good overview of the insider-outsider problem and that includes a selection of some of the most important scholarly contributions to the debate within the study of religion. 344L, s.v. But it does bring things into sharper focus, helping the student of Roman religion to keep in view the extent to which we have interpreted the ancient sources to fit our own (rather than the Romans) intellectual categories. He does not use the language of sacrifice, that is, he does not call the ritual a sacrificium nor does he identify the Vestal as a victim.Footnote J. C.), Quand faire, c'est croire: les rites sacrificiels des romains, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Dogs and People in Social, Working, Economic or Symbolic Interaction, Proceedings of the 9, Annalisi dei resi faunistici dell'area sacra di S. Omobono, Il Viver quotidiano in Roma arcaica: materiali dagli scavi del tempio arcaico nell'area sacra di S. Omobono, Hiera Kala: Images of Animal Sacrifice in Archaic and Classical Greece, Materia Magica: The Archaeology of Magic in Roman Egypt, Cyprus, and Spain, Rome's Vestal Virgins: A Study of Rome's Vestal Priestesses in the Late Republic and Early Empire, http://apps.brepolis.net/BrepolisPortal/default.aspx. October equus. Detry, Cleia Nacirema is American spelt backwards, and Miner shows to, and interprets for, us our own bathroom habits.Footnote milk,Footnote Test. The description of Decius ensuing death is very spare and devoid of any sacrificial imagery or terminology. Max. Although much work in anthropology and other social sciences has debated the relative merits of emic versus etic approaches, I find most useful recent research that has highlighted the value of the dynamic interplay that can develop between them.Footnote Van Straten Reference Van Straten1995: 188. But then they turn out to be us. 69 3 The literary evidence for this is slender but persuasive. WebIn Greek mythology the king of gods is known as Zeus, whereas Romans call the king of gods Jupiter. Macr., Sat. molo; Walde and Hofmann Reference Walde and Hofmann1954: 2.1046 s.v. The most common form of ritual killing among the Romans was the disposal of hermaphroditic children.Footnote Similar difficulties beset efforts, both ancient and modern, to reconstruct the technical differences among the concepts of sacer, sanctus, and religiosus: see Rives Reference Rives and Tellegen-Couperus2011. 77 The answers to these questions might reshape our understanding of what were the crucial elements of sacrificium. Sacrifices of various cakes (liba, popana, pthoes) to the Ilythiae and to Apollo and Diana were part of Augustus celebration of the Secular Games in 17 b.c.e., a clear indication that vegetal offerings were not limited to the lower social classes.Footnote Instead they seem to have conceived of it as the ritual consecration of an animal which was afterwards killed and eaten. mactus; Walde and Hofmann Reference Walde and Hofmann1954: 2.4 s.v. 34 The quotation comes from Frankfurter Reference Frankfurter2011: 75. Jupiter was a sky-god who Romans believed oversaw all aspects of life; he is thought to have originated from the Greek god Zeus. Since Greeks were the first ones, Romans followed them. favisae. mactus. In this way, the native, or emic, Roman view of sacrifice is more expansive than ours. Vuli, Hrvoje 75 25 Furthermore, because there were multiple rituals not just sacrificium through which the Romans could share food and other goods with their gods, we can see that the Romans had a wider range of ritual tools available to them for communicating with the divine. Rpke Reference Rpke, Georgoudi, Piettre and Schmidt2005 offers a different interpretation of the meal that follows the sacrifice. One does, however, sacrifice with a cow, with a pig, or with a little cruet. This assertion is based on a search of sacrific* on the Brepolis Library of Latin Texts A. The basic argument transfers well to the Roman context. Scheid Reference Scheid2005: 4457; Reference Scheid and Rpke2007: 2639. Fest. 15 1.3.90 and 1.6.115; Juv. WebFor example, the Peloponnesian War was primarily a struggle between two Greek city-states, Athens and Sparta, and was fought mainly on land and sea within the Greek world. Comparative mythology has served a variety of academic purposes. 59 It is the only one of these terms that does not come to be used outside the realm of the divine. Goats and dogs are less common, and we can expand the range of species to include horses and birds if we admit animals that are identified only as the object of immolatio, if not of sacrificium itself.Footnote Paul. 53 1. Elsner has proposed that the choice, increasingly frequent in the third century c.e., to represent the whole sacrificial ritual with libation and incense-burning scenes rather than with images involving animals is an indication of the increased emphasis on vegetarian sacrifice in that period.Footnote This draws further support from the fact that the object referred to by the instrumental ablatives that accompany the verb sacrificare is almost never a knife, an axe, a hammer, or other weapon.Footnote Marcellus, de Medicamentis 8.50; Palmer Reference Palmer and Hall1996: 234. This study argues, however, that the apparent continuity is illusory in some important ways and that we have lost sight of some fine distinctions that the Romans made among the rituals they performed. WebRoman sacrificial practices were not functionally different from Greek, although the Roman rite was distinguishable from the Greek and Etruscan. I also thank the anonymous reviewers for helpful comments, suggestions and objections that have greatly improved this piece. 38 Finally, while other rituals seem to have fallen into desuetude, or at least to have fallen out of the literature, by the late Republic or early Empire, sacrificium remained a vital part of Roman religious life for centuries. Through the insider point of view, we can understand its meaning to the people who experience it. Through the outsider point of view, we can interpret it in light of comparable behaviours in other cultures. See also n. 9 above. From an examination that is restricted to Roman sources and that sets aside Christian texts where the terms for these various rituals begin to be used in rather different ways, it appears that the hierarchy of rituals I have just described has been imposed from the outside. To give just a single example, we know that there was originally some technical distinction among the different types of divine signs sent to the Romans by the gods. Meanwhile, from the Sibylline Books some unusual sacrifices were ordered, among which was one where a Gallic man and woman and a Greek man and woman were sent down alive into an underground room walled with rock, a place that had already been tainted before by human victims hardly a Roman rite. If the commander who devoted himself did not die in battle, he was interdicted from performing any ritual on behalf of the state (publicum divinum). ex Fest. Paul. The limited sources we have are imprecise in their use of the terms even Cicero, who was an augur and was surely aware of the distinction.Footnote 6 As in other cultures, Roman sacrifice was not a single act, but instead comprised a series of actions that gain importance in relationship to each other.Footnote The ritual seems to be even more flexible than sacrificium in the range of objects on which it could be performed. 55, The link between consumption and sacrifice is also reinforced by a second category of sacrificial items that Romans did not eat: animals, including human animals, that were not regularly included in the Roman diet. It is commonplace now to treat sacrificium as a general category and to talk about magmentum and polluctum as moments within the larger ritual or special instances of it.Footnote 40 93 It is possible that this genus-species relationship in fact existed in the Roman mind, as is perhaps suggested by the fact that sacrificare means to make sacred, and these other rituals seem to be different ways of doing the same work, namely transferring items from human to divine ownership. MacBain Reference MacBain1982: 12735; Schultz Reference Schultz2010: 52930; Reference Schultz2012: 12930. from the archaic temple at the site of S. Omobono in Rome.Footnote ex Fest. Liv. They were rewarded for their endeavors with the position of judge in the Underworld. Dogs, and puppies in particular, were thought to have some medicinal and magical properties: Pliny reports that some people thought the ashes of a dog's cranium, when consumed with a beverage, could cure abdominal pain (N.H. 30.53) and, when mixed with honey wine in particular, could cure jaundice (N.H. 30.93). Studies of sacrifice have noted the etymological connection between immolare and mola salsa, but have not, for the most part, pressed its value for what it may reveal about where the Romans may have placed the emphasis. WebWhat's the Greek word for sacrifice? For example, Ares is the Greek For many readers of Latin, the most obvious translation of the Latin is except a beechwood cruet with which he would offer sacrifice, taking quo as an instrumental ablative and thereby making the vessel an instrument of sacrifice rather than the object of sacrifice itself. Plutarch is the only source for dog sacrifice at the Lupercalia (RQ 68 and 111=Mor. thysa. 82 This meant that Rhadamanthus and Minos were brothers. that contain scenes of ritual slaughter where the implements can be clearly discerned.Footnote The ritual is so closely tied to the notion of dining that polluctum could be used for everyday meals (e.g., Plaut., Rud. Curius Dentatus, famous for his victory over Pyrrhus in 275 b.c.e. See, for example, Feeney Reference Feeney, Barchiesi, Rpke and Stephens2004, an excellent discussion of the application of theoretical models of sacrifice to the poetry of Vergil and Ovid. The preceding discussion has, I hope, made clear that the Romans own notion of sacrifice is broader and more complex than is generally perceived. Although they were not suitable as daily fare, there is evidence that several of the unexpected species from the S. Omobono deposit were edible on special occasions or in dire circumstances: they are surprisingly prevalent in magical and medicinal recipes. He stresses the traditional nature of the burial of the one Vestal with the phrase as is the custom (uti mos est) and describes her death in neutral terms (necare).Footnote 89 1 For the possible link between this instance and the revelation of an unchaste Vestal, see Schultz Reference Schultz2012: 126 n. 18. The distinction is preserved by Suet., Prat. Plaut., Stich. Val. Cornell, T. J. ex Fest. Columella 2.21.4 might also refer to dog sacrifice, but the verb (feceris) leaves it ambiguous as to which ritual was being performed. Modern theorizations of sacrifice focus on animal victims, treating the sacrifice of vegetal substances, if they are considered at all, as an afterthought or simply setting vegetal offerings as a second, lesser ritual, a substitution or a pale imitation.Footnote 82. and for his old-fashioned frugality and incorruptibility.Footnote It is important to note, however, that we cannot determine conclusively from the extant sources what relationship, if any, existed among them in the Roman mind. uncovered in votive deposits throughout Italy. WebThe ancient Greeks and Romans performed many rituals in the observance of their religion. 87 Ankarloo and Clark Reference Ankarloo and Clark1999: 756; Wilburn Reference Wilburn2012: 8790. The children were drowned by the haruspices, usually in the sea. 6.343 and 11.108. Hammers appear in only fifteen scenes, two-thirds of which date between the first century b.c.e. 84 Livy, however, treats each burial in a distinct way. In addition, the acceptability of miniature serveware as objects of sacrificium shows the ability of the ritual to accommodate the varying social status of those performing it. 2019. Test. Modern etymologists disagree on the origin of the term.