97 Reference Morris, Leung, Ames and Lickel1999 and Berry Reference Berry, Headland, Pike and Harris1990. From here, we can speculate that sacrifice was not understood by the Romans primarily as the ritual slaughter of an animal. Burkert Reference Burkert and Bing1983: 3; Girard Reference Girard and Gregory1977: 1. 176 and Serv., A. Var., L. 6.3.14. Both Rhadamanthus and Aeacus were renowned for their justice. 80 This should prompt researchers, myself included, to greater caution when presenting a native in our case, Roman point of view and to greater clarity about whether the concept under discussion at any given moment is really the Romans or ours, or is shared by both groups. 61 10 Indeed these two rituals appear at first glance to be identical live interment in underground chambers, though admittedly in different locations within the city and with different victims. The biggest difference that I'm aware of is that the Classical Greek religion was much more the religion of myths that we all know, while the Class I use ritual killing as a blanket term for any rite, including but not limited to sacrifice, that involves the death of a human being. The other rite observed by the Romans that required a human death was called devotio, and it seems to have been restricted to a single family father, son, and grandson (it is possible our sources have multiplied a single occasion), all of whom, as commanders-in-the-field, vowed to commit themselves and the enemy troops to the gods of the underworld in order to ensure a Roman victory. Also unfamiliar to the Romans would be another use of sacrifice now current in the life sciences, as a term for euthanasia of research animals with no real religious significance The plea of an editorial in the Canadian Journal of Comparative Medicine and Veterinary Science from 1967 (p. 241) that researchers abandon the term because there is no deity involved in the act of euthanizing laboratory animals, fell on deaf ears: sacrifice remains common in animal management literature. The issue remains active in religious studies, as it does in cultural anthropology more widely. Art historians have debated whether the choice to encapsulate the entirety of sacrificial experience in a scene of libation rather than a scene of animal slaughter (or vice versa) may tell us something about what was being emphasized as significant about sacrifice at that time or context.Footnote Knives would have been used only in conjunction with one or other of these implements. 8 At her birth, Athena, the goddess of wisdom, sprang directly from the head of Zeus. WebIn Greek mythology the king of gods is known as Zeus, whereas Romans call the king of gods Jupiter. Two famous examples are found on the altar of Domitius Ahenobarbus (Ryberg Reference Ryberg1955: fig. e.g., Liv. 1.3.90 and 1.6.115; Juv. 17 Arguably, then, it is the Christians who bequeathed to future generations the metonymic equivalence of sacrifice and violence, Knust and Vrhelyi Reference Knust and Vrhelyi2011: 17. mactus; Walde and Hofmann Reference Walde and Hofmann1954: 2.4 s.v. It is likely, but admittedly not certain, that the concept of sacrificium I delineate here was also at play in citizen communities throughout the Empire, at least at moments when those communities performed public rituals in the same manner as did people in the capital. 101 72 Nacirema is American spelt backwards, and Miner shows to, and interprets for, us our own bathroom habits.Footnote The small size of the guttus and simpulum is assured by Varro (L. 5.124), who identifies both as vessels that pour out liquid minutatim. 89 3, 13456; Prescendi Reference Prescendi2007: 1225; Rpke Reference Rpke and Gordon2007: 1378. for young animals (including foetal and neonatal specimens),Footnote Although the remains come from a known sacred area, it should not be assumed that all of them are evidence of sacrificium or other rituals: some may be garbage, material used as fill, or even the remains of animals (like mice) that died while exploring the refuse heap. refriva faba. The equation of sacrifice with the offering of an animal is not completely divorced from the ancient sources. Footnote Paul. At the centre of the whole complex was the immolatio, during which the animal was sprinkled with mola salsa (a mixture of spelt and salt), the flat of a knife was run along its back, and then it was slaughtered. Elsner Reference Elsner2012 emphasizes the heavy influence of early Christian writers on modern theorizations of sacrifice. 22.1.19; 45.16.6; Plin., N.H. 36.39; Tac., Ann. 21 A brief survey of the bone assemblages from sites in west-central Italy is offered by Bouma Reference Bouma1996: 1.22841. Chr. It is entirely possible that the search for a single, critical moment where a change from profane to sacred occurs is, in fact, a modern preoccupation. 9.641. 8.10.)). Ernout and Meillet Reference Ernout and Meillet1979: 376 s.v. In As a comparandum, we can point to the Roman habit of creating votive deposits, collections of usually relatively inexpensive items buried in the ground: gifts to the gods that had been cleaned out of overstuffed temples and intentionally buried. While there is a growing body of work done on the osteoarchaeological material from other regions of the Empire, especially the north-western provinces,Footnote magmentum; Serv., A. 82 Although Roman sources identify some specific types of sacrifice (e.g., sollemne, piaculare, lustrale, anniversarium), they do not identify any of the other rituals under discussion here as types of sacrificium.Footnote Flashcards. 9 See, for example, Wilkens Reference Wilkens2006 and De Grossi Mazzorin and Minniti Reference De Grossi Mazzorin and Minniti2006. Schultz Reference Schultz2010: 5202. 66 (ed.) In addition to such great disasters, the people were terrified both by other prodigies and because in this year two Vestals, Opimia and Floronia, were discovered to have had illicit affairs. The hypothesis that only sacrificium required mola salsa is strongly supported by the sources, but because that is an argument ex silentio, it cannot be proved beyond all doubt. WebDifferences between Greek and Roman sacrifices. 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. 69 In Books 29 and 30 of his Natural History, the elder Pliny includes lizards in numerous medicinal recipes to cure everything from hair loss (29.108) to lower back pain (30.53) to dysentery (30.55), and the only text we have that identifies the contents of a bulla, the amulet worn by young Roman boys, instructs the reader to put lizard eyes inside it.Footnote 91 63. and Paul. 16 Jupiter also concentrated on protecting the Roman state. Scheid's reconstruction focuses on a living victim, and this is in keeping with the ancient sources own emphasis on blood sacrifice. McClymond treats sacrificial events as clusters of different types of activities, including prayer, killing, cooking, and consumption, which are not in and of themselves sacrificial (they are frequently performed in other contexts), but which become sacrificial in the aggregate (McClymond Reference McClymond2008: 2534). 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 One can also pollucere grain, wine, oil, cheese, meat, fish with scales, a host of other food items, and even unidentified (and presumably inedible) goods.Footnote 2019. fabam and Fest. I also thank the anonymous reviewers for helpful comments, suggestions and objections that have greatly improved this piece. As in the Greek world, sacrifice was the central ritual of religion. 85 24 The numerous sources for this event are collected and analysed in Engels Reference Engels2007: 41618, 4438. 65 For example, scholars have used the relationships between different myths to trace the development of religions and cultures, to propose common origins for This repeated coincidence of ritual performances suggests that the two forms of ritual killingFootnote Paul. The Romans worshipped the same goddess, or rather the same ideas embodied in her, under the name of Vesta, which is in reality identical with 36 81 In this section, I make the case that the related and equally widespread notion that all Roman rituals that required the death of an animal were sacrifices obfuscates the variety of rituals that Romans had available to them, effacing some of the fine distinctions Romans made about the ways they approached their gods. The answers to these questions might reshape our understanding of what were the crucial elements of sacrificium. Vuli, Hrvoje At present, large-scale analysis of faunal remains from sacred sites in Roman Italy remains a desideratum, but analysis of deposits of animal bones from the region seems to bear out the prevalence of these species in the Roman diet and as the object of religious ritual (whether sacrificium or not it is difficult to say).Footnote Of this class of rituals, sacrificium does seem to have been somehow different from the others. 3.763829. 132; Cass. 25 While Romans had many god they belief in that they believed in and they would sacrifice items to the gods so positive things would happened and if something bad happened than people blame the king or whoever does the sacrifice to the gods. 85 The Christian fathers equation of sacrifice with violence has shaped twentieth-century theorizations of sacrifice as a universal human phenomenon,Footnote Furthermore, although all of these rites were performed on foodstuffs at altars or at least in sanctuaries, there are some critical differences among them and the ways they are discussed by the Romans. Horses: Plin., N.H. 28.146; Fest. WebThe Greeks were striving for perfection in their art while the Romans were striving for real life people. WebRoman sacrificial practices were not functionally different from Greek, although the Roman rite was distinguishable from the Greek and Etruscan. Published online by Cambridge University Press: and Narbo in Gallia Narbonensis (CIL 12.4333, dated to 11 c.e.). 39 76 100 Although Roman writers most frequently do not explicitly identify the object of a sacrifice, when they do, cattle, pigs and sheep are well attested.Footnote This statement and much of what follows is based on a series of searches in the Brepolis on-line database of Latin literature, Libraries A and B (http://apps.brepolis.net/BrepolisPortal/default.aspx) conducted throughout the summer of 2015. Correct answer: What is a major difference between Greek and Roman temples? 78 I have tried to respond to them all. At 8.10.1112, Livy notes that a commander could devote one of his soldiers rather than himself. Thinking along the same lines, it is reasonable to conclude that there are relatively few images of slaughter among Roman sacrificial scenes in public artwork of the Classical period because the emphasis in state-sponsored sacrifice lay elsewhere. As is implied in all the relevant entries in the OLD. Plutarch is the only source for dog sacrifice at the Lupercalia (RQ 68 and 111=Mor. Resp. The only Roman reference to the sacrifice of a deer pertains to a Greek context: Ov., F. 1.3878 where the deer is sacrificed to Diana as a substitute for Iphigenia. Ryberg Reference Ryberg1955: figs 83 and 89b. 84 Aul. The ritual seems to be even more flexible than sacrificium in the range of objects on which it could be performed. As Scheid has reconstructed Roman public sacrifice,Footnote 2 Columella 2.21.4 might also refer to dog sacrifice, but the verb (feceris) leaves it ambiguous as to which ritual was being performed. Yet so stark is the discrepancy between his (assumed) outsider perspective and our own insider understanding of the value of a bathroom, that most readers do not recognize themselves the first time they read this piece. 53 286L and 287L, s.v. 36 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 Some rituals, such as the recitation of prayers, were simple. It is important to note that there is no indication that these vegetal offerings were thought to be substitutions for what would have been, in better circumstances, animal victims.Footnote This line of interpretation has enjoyed a wider influence in the study of Classical Antiquity than work along the lines of Burkert Reference Burkert and Bing1983 and Girard Reference Girard and Gregory1977, and the bibliography is enormous. Sorted by: 6. Pollucere is an old word, appearing mostly in literature of the second century b.c.e.,Footnote 33 In this way, the native, or emic, Roman view of sacrifice is more expansive than ours. 48 On three occasions during the Republic (228,Footnote For the difference in Roman attitudes toward human sacrifice and other forms of ritual killing, see Schultz Reference Schultz2010. 93L, s.v. 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. The children were drowned by the haruspices, usually in the sea. There are at least two other rituals that the Romans performed that also required the death of a person. You would do well to remember that there were very few similarities between Roman and Greek religion until the Romans began borrowing from the Gree When the Romans sacrificed plant matter to the gods, it appears to be because that is what it was appropriate to do in the specific circumstance. Greeks call the queen Hera, whereas Romans queen of gods is Juno. For the Greeks 6.34. } In Greek and Roman religion, the gods and Even if this is the case, the argument still stands that these passages underscore how essential was consumption to the ritual of sacrificium. Liv. 49 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). 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. 280 BC and 290D; Rom. 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. 69 In Latin, one does not sacrifice with a knife or with an axe. Throughout his corpus Cicero uses a range of technical divinatory terms, including augur, ostentum, and portentum, in rather general ways, even in De Divinatione where one might reasonably expect him to be more precise. The Romans, however, developed a more naturalistic approach to their art. milk,Footnote 132.12). ), Dictionnaire tymologique de la langue latine, Interpreting sacrificial ritual in Roman poetry: disciplines and their models, Rituals in Ink: A Conference on Religion and Literary Production in Ancient Rome, La mise mort sacrificielle sur les reliefs romains, La Violence dans les mondes grec et romain, Le sacrifice disparu: les reliefs de boucherie, Sacrifices, march de la viande et pratiques alimentaires dans les cits du monde romain, I reperti ossei animali nell'area archeologica di S. Omobono (19621964), Rendiconti della Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia, Animal remains from temples in Roman Britain, The symbolic meaning of the cock: the animal remains from the, Roman Mithraism: the Evidence of the Small Finds, Archologie du sacrifice animal en Gaule romaine, Prodigy and Expiation: A Study in Religion and Politics in Republican Rome, Production and Consumption of Animals in Roman Italy, Re-thinking sacred rubbish: the ritual deposits of the temple of Mithras at Tienen (Belgium), Beyond Sacred Violence: A Comparative Study of Sacrifice, The Insider/Outsider Problem in the Study of Religion: A Reader, Views from inside and outside: integrating emic and etic insights about culture and justice judgment, Ricerche nell'area dei templi di Fortuna e Mater Matuta, Revue de philologie, de littrature et d'histoire anciennes, Etruscan Italy: Etruscan Influences on the Civilizations of Italy from Antiquity to the Modern Era, Why were the Vestals virgins? 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. most famously those of Burkert, who identifies sacrificial slaughter as the basic experience of the sacred, and Girard, who begins his investigation into the origin of sacrifice by asserting its close kinship to murder and criminal violence.Footnote The Gods in Greek and Roman mythology, while initially having almost no differentiation (we could easily lose in the Spot the difference game), yet started slowly being more dependent on the civilization where they were worshiped. While vegetal and meat offerings were on a par, inedible gifts could be sacrificed only as substitutes for edible offerings when money was a concern. and the second century c.e. 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 "useRatesEcommerce": false 15 Greek governments varied from kings and oligarchs to the totalitarian, racist, warrior culture of Sparta and the direct democracy of Athens, whereas Roman kings gave 19 Cf. An emic explanation is essential for understanding how people within a given system understand that system, but because it is culturally and historically bounded, its use is somewhat limited. Vaz, Filipe Costa We also find that the gods were open to receiving sacrifices of vegetables, grains, liquids, and, when those were not available, miniature versions of the serveware that would normally have contained them. Ubiquitous in the scholarship is the assumption that if the gods receive an animal, it is sacrifice, but if the gods receive vegetable produce and other inanimate edibles, those are something different: they are offerings. Finally, both ancient societies have twelve main gods and goddesses. I concede that, to a certain extent, the insider-outsider lens does not show us difficulties that were previously invisible. The ancient Greek and Roman gods did not become incarnate the way Jesus was, did not enter the stream of real human history the way Jesus did, did not die as a See Oakley Reference Oakley1998: 481 and Sacco Reference Sacco2004: 316. Roman sources make clear that Romans had several different rituals (sacrificium, polluctum, and magmentum) that appear, based on prominent structural similarities, to have been related to one another. 62 As proof, he recounts a story about M. 2 but in later texts as well. Sacrificare is frequently accompanied by an instrumental ablative, but in almost all cases it is clear that the ablative is the object of sacrifice, as in the phrase maioribus hostiis sacrificaverant.Footnote Footnote Yet the problem remains that dogs did not form a regular or significant part of the Romans diet, nor did wild animals of any sort.Footnote Pliny and Apuleius may reflect an lite misconception about the religious praxis of lower class worshippers, offering an incorrect, emic interpretation of an observable phenomenon. WebIn Greek mythology the king of gods is known as Zeus, whereas Romans call the king of gods Jupiter. Pliny reports a ritual, possibly sacrifice (res divina fit, 29.58), involving a dog in honour of the little-known goddess, Genita Mana (cf. As an example, I offer Var., R. 1.2.19: Itaque propterea institutum diversa de causa ut ex caprino genere ad alii dei aram hostia adduceretur, ad alii non sacrificaretur, cum ab eodem odio alter videre nollet, alter etiam videre pereuntem vellet. 37ab). 49 Finally, it appears that some of these rites ceased to be performed by some point in the imperial period and that sacrificium continued for centuries. I owe many thanks to C. P. Mann, B. Nongbri, and J. N. Dillon for their thoughtful, challenging responses to earlier drafts of this article, and to audiences at Trinity College, Baylor University, and Bryn Mawr College for comments on an oral version of it. 67 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 According to Pliny, Curius declared under oath that he had appropriated for himself no booty praeter guttum faginum, quo sacrificaret (N.H. 16.185). Modern etymologists disagree on the origin of the term. Concise surveys of the major modern theories of sacrifice in the ancient world can be found in Knust and Vrhelyi Reference Knust and Vrhelyi2011: 418, Lincoln Reference Lincoln2012, and Graf Reference Graf2012. The fundamental belief underlying the whole system appears to be that the human body is ugly and that its natural tendency is to debility and disease. Lucil. 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. Therefore, instead of privileging either the emic or etic, I argue for an increased awareness of the insider-outsider distinction and for an approach to Roman religion that makes use of both emic and etic concepts. Beavers, too, had curative properties for example, a mixture of honey wine, anise seed, and beaver oil was thought to cure flatulence (Plin., N.H. 20.193) and their anal scent glands (mistaken for testicles) were part of the Roman trade in luxury goods.Footnote The objectivity of the outside observer can also facilitate cross-cultural comparison. Although they are universally referred to as votive offerings in the scholarly literature, it is possible that they are, technically, sacrifices. 6 The Greek gods domain over law had been mostly limited to the hereditary kings of individual city-states, but Rome grew into a unified Republic. This is a clear difference from Athena, who was never associated with the weather. The expression rem dvnam facer, to make a thing sacred, 08 June 2016. Mar. Max. Unlike sacrificare, which remained solely in the divine realm, mactare did not need to involve the gods: mactare is something that one Roman could do to another, both literally (one can mactare someone else with a golden cup, for example) and metaphorically (with misfortune or expense). 66 Instead they seem to have conceived of it as the ritual consecration of an animal which was afterwards killed and eaten. Here's a list of translations. The literary evidence for this is slender but persuasive. Tereso, Joo Pedro Working with the two of them together, we can get a more nuanced understanding of a cultural habit. For example, the apparent contradiction between Roman abhorrence of ritual killing and the frequency with which Romans performed various forms of it is, to a large extent, explicable once it is recognized that the Romans objected only to the performance (by themselves as much as by others) of sacrificium on human victims. It is unfortunate that the ancient sources on vegetal sacrifice are as exiguous as they are: it is not possible to determine what relationship its outward form bore to blood sacrifice. Another example of a ritual that looks a lot like sacrificium but is not identical to it is polluctum. Fest. There is no question that the live interment of the Gauls and Greeks was a sacrifice: Livy identifies it as one of the sacrifices not part of the usual practice ordered by the Sibylline Books (sacrificia extraordinaria). This is made clear in numerous passages from several Roman authors. 75 The same two interment rituals would be performed alongside one another again just about a century later, in 113 b.c.e. The catinus is a piece of everyday ware used to serve food that contains a lot of liquid (L. 5.120). 22 mactus; de Vaan Reference De Vaan2008: 357 s.v. The database is a very useful, but not infallible tool. 9 How, if these animals did not make desirable entrees, could they be considered suitable for sacrifice? 53, At first glance, the Roman habit of sacrificing items that people cannot eat (cruets and small plates) suggests that another dominant strain in modern theorizations of sacrifice might not really apply to the Roman case.

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