differences between greek and roman sacrifice

Since Greeks were the first ones, Romans followed them. 77 There is also a queen of gods in Greek and Roman mythologies. 29 In 82. 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. Were they used in some form of divination?Footnote On the Latin terminology for living sacrificial victims, see Prescendi Reference Prescendi2009. Thus it happens that goats are immolated to Liber Pater, who discovered the vine, so that they pay him a penalty and, by a contrary logic, caprine victims are never immolated to Minerva on account of the olive: they say that whatever olive plant a goat bites becomes sterile). 37 There is no evidence, contra Parker Reference Parker2004 and Wildfang Reference Wildfang2006: 589, that the Romans ever perceived the punishment of a Vestal as sacrifice. Sic factum ut Libero patri, repertori vitis, hirci immolarentur, proinde ut capite darent poenas; contra ut Minervae caprini generis nihil immolarent propter oleam, quod eam quam laeserit fieri dicunt sterilem (And so therefore, it has been established by opposing justifications that victims of the caprine sort are brought to the altar of one deity, but they are not sacrificed at the altar of another, since on account of the same hatred, one does not want to see a goat and the other desires to see one perish. 14.30; Sil. that contain scenes of ritual slaughter where the implements can be clearly discerned.Footnote 6.343 and 11.108. Of this class of rituals, sacrificium does seem to have been somehow different from the others. Pliny reports a ritual, possibly sacrifice (res divina fit, 29.58), involving a dog in honour of the little-known goddess, Genita Mana (cf. Greeks call the queen Hera, whereas Romans queen of gods is Juno. Yet, part of the work of a Roman historian is to try to understand how the Romans understood their world, to be aware of anachronism in our accounts thereof, and to keep in mind that the sources never truly speak for themselves. This is made clear in numerous passages from several Roman authors. Classicists generally assume that the modern idea of sacrifice as the ritual killing of an animal applies to the Roman context. 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. 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. But we can no longer recover indeed it appears that Romans of the early Empire could no longer recover what was the difference between a monstrum, a prodigium, a portentum, and an ostentum.Footnote Jupiter also concentrated on protecting the Roman state. 8 Another way that mactare is different is that gods can mactare mortals at least in comedy, where characters sometimes wish that the gods would honour their enemies with trouble.Footnote 1419). 72 WebOn the whole, political development in Greece followed a pattern: first the rule of kings, found as early as the period of Mycenaean civilization; then a feudal period, the Aldrete Reference Aldrete2014: 32. 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 30 subsilles. Modern etymologists disagree on the origin of the term. 2019. 34 Scheid Reference Scheid2005: 4457; Reference Scheid and Rpke2007: 2639. The lack of interest in vegetal sacrifice is widespread in the field of religious studies (McClymond Reference McClymond2008: 65). For example, Ares is the Greek Prescendi Reference Prescendi2007: 22441 and, arriving at the same conclusion by a different path, Schultz Reference Schultz2012: 1323. Other forms of ritual killing do not receive the same sort of negative judgement by Roman authors, and one form, devotio, even has strongly positive associations. 76 Another example of the bias of our sources away from rituals performed by the lower classes is the dearth of references to a particular type of item found in votive deposits: anatomical votives, fictile representations of parts of the human body offered to the gods as requests for cures for physical ailments. The distinction between sacrificare and mactare was lost by Late Antiquity, but it was still active in the Republic and early Empire.Footnote Far less common in the S. Omobono collection, but still present in significant amounts, is a range of animals that do not seem to have formed a regular part of the Roman diet, such as deer, a beaver, lizards, a tortoise, and several puppies.Footnote 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. 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 Another possible interpretation of the disappearance of some rituals from Latin literature is that the Romans no longer thought of them as distinct from one another, preferring to treat them all as sacrificium. 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 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. mactus; Walde and Hofmann Reference Walde and Hofmann1954: 2.4 s.v. For this same poverty is, among the Greeks, just in Aristides, kind in Phocion, vigorous in Epaminondas, wise in Socrates, and eloquent in Homer. 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 Christian fathers equation of sacrifice with violence has shaped twentieth-century theorizations of sacrifice as a universal human phenomenon,Footnote 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. 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. 86 The objectivity of the outside observer can also facilitate cross-cultural comparison. 216,Footnote 71. 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. Augustine, Civ. 100 45.16.6. For illustration, we can turn once again to the elder Pliny, who writes about the habits of the Gallic tribes north of the Alps: et nuperrime trans Alpis hominem immolari gentium earum more solitum, quod paulum a mandendo abest (And very recently, on the other side of the Alps, in accordance with the custom of those peoples, individuals were habitually sacrificed, which is not all that far from eating them N.H. 7.9). Greek influences on Italian craftsmen in the 6 th century BC saw the image of I have tried to respond to them all. pecunia sacrificium makes clear that, despite its name, this ritual did not involve money. Once we have recognized that there are two notions of sacrifice at play, we can set aside our etic, outsider ideas for the moment and look at the Roman sources anew. Scheid's reconstruction focuses on a living victim, and this is in keeping with the ancient sources own emphasis on blood sacrifice. The prominence of animal victims in Roman accounts overshadows a substantial number of passages that make it absolutely clear that Roman gods received sacrifices of inanimate edibles. 71 33 Greek Translation. 98 Aeacus holds the keys to Hades. The two texts are nearly identical and perhaps go back to the original lex sacra of the altar of Diana on the Aventine hill in Rome, to which the inscriptions explicitly appeal. favisae. 43 99 Hemina fr. WebRoman sacrificial practices were not functionally different from Greek, although the Roman rite was distinguishable from the Greek and Etruscan. Scheid's reconstruction and interpretation is followed by Prescendi Reference Prescendi2007: 3148. 8.10.)). In Greek and Roman religion, the gods and Schultz Reference Schultz2010: 5202. Upon examination of the Roman evidence, however, it becomes evident that this distinction is an etic one: while we see at least two different rituals, the Romans are clear that they sacrifice a wide range of food substances beyond animal flesh. While the evidence does not allow us to recover precise distinctions made among these rites (sacrificium, magmentum, and polluctum), it does strongly suggest that the Romans at least through the period of the Republic conceived of these rituals as somehow different from one another. Neither of the acts that Pliny mentions is explicitly identified as sacrificium, or as any other rite in particular. Was a portion consumed later? 59 54 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. Columella 2.21.4 might also refer to dog sacrifice, but the verb (feceris) leaves it ambiguous as to which ritual was being performed. 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). It is a hallmark of poverty, whether in a religious context or not, appearing often in poetic passages where the narrator describes a low-budget lifestyle.Footnote ex Fest. Aldrete's survey of images commonly identified as sacrifice scenes makes clear that Roman art depicts different procedures (hitting with a hammer, chopping with an axe) and implements (hammers, axes, knives), and that the preference of implement changes over time. We do not know what name the Romans gave the ritual burial of an unchaste Vestal Virgin, but we know it was not sacrifice. Scheid Reference Scheid1998: nn. milk,Footnote Hemina fr. [1] Comparative mythology has served a 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. 78 Footnote 85 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. 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 Knives would have been used only in conjunction with one or other of these implements. Reed, Kelly 80 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. 58 This is suggested by Ov., F. 1.1278. Gel. The issue remains active in religious studies, as it does in cultural anthropology more widely. 56 344L, s.v. 67 61 Fest. Minos gave laws to Crete. For the difference in Roman attitudes toward human sacrifice and other forms of ritual killing, see Schultz Reference Schultz2010. 3.763829. This is the insider-outsider problem in nuce. 86 The ritual is so closely tied to the notion of dining that polluctum could be used for everyday meals (e.g., Plaut., Rud. For this discussion, the metaphorical extension of the English word sacrifice, by which one can sacrifice for one's family or hit a sacrifice fly in baseball, is not relevant: this meaning is completely unknown to the Romans of the Classical period. As proof, he recounts a story about M. 68 Scholars are quick to identify all of them as forms of sacrifice, which may well be the case. 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. Paul. More rare are images like those on the arches of Trajan at Benevento and of Septimius Severus at Lepcis Magna which show the moment that the axe is swung.Footnote Although they are universally referred to as votive offerings in the scholarly literature, it is possible that they are, technically, sacrifices. Roman sacrificium is both less and more than the typical etic notion of sacrifice. 73 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. 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 11 CIL 6.32323.13940=ILS 5050.13940=Pighi Reference Pighi1965: 117 (from Rome). 60 See, for example, citations from Pomponius and Afranius in Non. The Romans performed at least four forms of ritual killing, only one of which was sacrifice. Others include first-order vs. second-order categories, particular vs. universal, descriptive vs. redescriptive, and local vs. global. Interim ex fatalibus libris sacrificia aliquot extraordinaria facta, inter quae Gallus et Galla, Graecus et Graeca in foro boario sub terram vivi demissi sunt in locum saxo consaeptum, iam ante hostiis humanis, minime Romano sacro, imbutum. 28 88 14 11 12 This is a bad answer - I don't have sources available. It is my understanding that we lack a great deal of the sources needed for an emic unders 57 33 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. As is implied in all the relevant entries in the OLD. Footnote Comparative mythology has served a variety of academic purposes. 78 As in a relief from the Forum of Trajan now in the Louvre (Ryberg Reference Ryberg1955: fig. 96 81, Here we have two rituals that look, to an outsider, almost identical, but Livy takes pains to distinguish between them. 39 Detry, Cleia The statues made in Greece were made with perfect people in mind often modeled after gods and goddesses, while the statues in Rome have all the faults a real person would have. sacrima. The elder Cato instructs his reader to pollucere a cup of wine and a daps (ritual meal) to Jupiter Dapalis (Agr. The insider-outsider problem has had little impact on the study of religion in pre-Christian Rome. It is entirely possible that miniature ceramics were not, in reality, less expensive offerings than actual foodstuffs. The survival beyond the early Empire of most aspects of the distinction among ritual forms discussed in Section IV cannot be asserted with any confidence. The relationship between magmentum and augmentum (Paul. 27 Macr., Sat. and the fact that the word immolatio itself derives from the Indo-European root *melh2 (to crush, to grind): immolatio is cognate with English mill.Footnote See also n. 9 above. Also Var., Men. As illustrated by Livy's description of the first Decius to perform the ritual as he rode out to meet the enemy: aliquanto augustior humano visu, sicut caelo missus (8.9.10). 17 16 there is a relative dearth of published studies that deal in any serious way with the collections of bones found on various sites from Roman Italy.Footnote By looking at Roman sacrificium through the insider-outsider lens, by keeping in sight what is there in the sources, what we add to it, and where our modern notion of sacrifice does and does not align with the Romans own idea, we have a sharper, more detailed picture of one aspect of Roman antiquity. rutilae canes; Var., L. 6.16. But in reality, the relative silence of our sources about a ritual form that seems to have been available to the poor is not unique. 9.641. The modern assumption that sacrifice requires an animal victim obfuscates the full range of sacrificium among the Romans. 17ac) and the Cancellaria relief (Ryberg Reference Ryberg1955: fig. 97 I also thank the anonymous reviewers for helpful comments, suggestions and objections that have greatly improved this piece. 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. Our modern idea of sacrifice can, with some refinement and clarification, remain a useful concept for constructing accounts of how and why the Romans dealt with their gods in the ways they didFootnote WebWhile Greek and Roman sculpture and ruins are linked with the purity of white marble in the Western mind, most of the works were originally polychrome, painted in multiple, lifelike colors. It appears that if a worshipper could not afford to sacrifice something that was itself tasty, he might fulfill his obligation by giving something that evoked the idea of it.Footnote 62. How, if these animals did not make desirable entrees, could they be considered suitable for sacrifice? 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). Plu., RQ 83=Mor. The closest any Roman source comes to linking devotio and sacrifice is Cic., Off. Although the focus of this investigation is the recovery of some details of the Romans idea of sacrificium, I do not mean to imply that their concept is the right one and that the modern idea is wrong or completely inapplicable to the Roman context. One was killed at the Colline Gate, under the earth as is the custom and the other took her own life Since this horrible event which occurred in the midst of so many terrible things, as is wont to happen, was turned into a prodigy, the Board of Ten Men was ordered to consult the Books. Contra Prescendi Reference Prescendi2007: 223. and Paul. It is the only one of these terms that does not come to be used outside the realm of the divine. 36 In the sacred realm, Romans could also pollucere a tithe to the god Hercules.Footnote 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 difference between Greek Gods and Roman Gods is that Greek gods have unique names of their own, whereas, Roman gods are The equation of sacrifice with the offering of an animal is not completely divorced from the ancient sources. 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. Martins, Manuela If we allow only items explicitly identified as sacrificia in Roman sources, our list includes beans,Footnote 25 WebWhile both civilizations left astonishing changes in the world, the developments made by Greek thinkers outdo those of the Aztecs when evaluating their creation of a prosperous Total loading time: 0 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. Q. Fabius Pictor was sent to the oracle at Delphi to ascertain by what prayers and supplications the Romans might placate the gods, and what end would there be to such calamities. 74 WebStudy with Quizlet and memorize flashcards containing terms like Which temples were Greek and which were Roman?, When was the Temple of Zeus at Olympia built?, What the features of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia? Instead they seem to have conceived of it as the ritual consecration of an animal which was afterwards killed and eaten. Moses, Reference Moses, Brocato and Terrenatoforthcoming. Created by. Those studying ancient Greece and Rome in general and those focusing on Roman religion in particular have been wrestling with these issues for some time even if the terms of the discussion have not been explicit.Footnote Carretero, Lara Gonzalez Mactare is another ritual performed on animals (referred to as hostiae and victimae) at an altar, but also on porridge (Nonius 539L). ex Fest. 35 The answer is that human sacrifice, which the Romans are quick to dismiss as something other people do (note that, although Livy is clear that the burial of Gauls and Greeks is a sacrifice, he also says that it was hardly a Roman rite), is closely linked in the Roman mind with cannibalism. Compare Var., R. 2.8.1. On the early Christian appropriation and transformation of Roman sacrificial imagery and discourse, see Castelli Reference Castelli2004: 509. Devotio is frequently called self-sacrifice by modern scholars,Footnote 49 36 ex Fest. I concede that, to a certain extent, the insider-outsider lens does not show us difficulties that were previously invisible. 100 for young animals (including foetal and neonatal specimens),Footnote 3 The distinction is preserved by Suet., Prat. Dogs had other ritual uses as well. Finally, both ancient societies have twelve main gods and goddesses. 72 Jupiter was a sky-god who Romans believed oversaw all aspects of life; he is thought to have originated from the Greek god Zeus. 15 537 Words 3 Pages Decent Essays Read More pop. 423L s.v. The more powerful individuals in the society have several shrines in their houses and, in fact, the opulence of a house is often referred to in terms of the number of such ritual centers it possesses. Hostname: page-component-7fc98996b9-rf4gk 54 52 and 9 But one of the things that I consider quite interesting was the difference approaches that the Greeks and Romans had towards the Gods as a whole. WebIn Greek mythology the king of gods is known as Zeus, whereas Romans call the king of gods Jupiter. 51, There is, of course, a large leap in scale from two literary references to an explanation for a ritual practice performed in hundreds of locations over many centuries. 65 4 19 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. magmentum; Serv., A. 9 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. 79 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 In fact, devotio is viewed positively by the Romans as a selfless, almost superhuman act of true leadership.Footnote From here, we can speculate that sacrifice was not understood by the Romans primarily as the ritual slaughter of an animal. Plutarch is the only source for dog sacrifice at the Lupercalia (RQ 68 and 111=Mor. Nacirema is American spelt backwards, and Miner shows to, and interprets for, us our own bathroom habits.Footnote One relatively well documented example is the collection of bones dating to the seventh and sixth centuries b.c.e. 93 Reference Morris, Leung, Ames and Lickel1999 and Berry Reference Berry, Headland, Pike and Harris1990. but in later texts as well. Furthermore, it seems reasonable to conclude that the miniature clay cows, birds, and other animals that are also commonly found in votive collections were also substitutes for live sacrificial victims.Footnote 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. 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. Foundational is the collection of essays on Greek sacrifice in Detienne and Vernant Reference Detienne, Vernant and Wissing1989. eadem est enim paupertas apud Graecos in Aristide iusta, in Phocione benigna, in Epaminonda strenua, in Socrate sapiens, in Homero diserta. 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. wine,Footnote An etic approach allows the researcher to see functions, causes, and consequences of insider behaviours and habits that may be invisible to the people who perform them, as Miner illustrated for us. Ryberg Reference Ryberg1955: figs 83 and 89b. While the attention of our Roman sources is drawn most frequently to blood sacrifice, there is good reason to think that, if there was indeed a climax to the ritual,Footnote

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