Tagliacozzo Reference Tagliacozzo1989: 66. 190L s.v. 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. More Greek words for sacrifice. 4 9.641. 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 72 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. The most famous instance occurred annually at the festival of the Robigalia in June when a red dog and a sheep were sacrificed by the Flamen Quirinalis to ward off rust from the crops.Footnote 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 40 Minos gave laws to Crete. 423L s.v. The literary evidence for this is slender but persuasive. 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. Gods, Goddesses, and Heroes Ryberg Reference Ryberg1955: figs 83 and 89b. The issue remains active in religious studies, as it does in cultural anthropology more widely. Now, the Romans did not eat people, so how does their performance of human sacrifice reinforce the link between sacrifice and dining? 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. 94 Douglas Reference Douglas and Douglas1982: 117. See also n. 9 above. 22 64 63 76. 45 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. Other than the range of items that can be polluctum, the only other thing we know about the ritual is that it involved an altar, which is, of course, the proper locus of sacrifice. In what follows, I aim to clear away a few of the accretions that have arisen from more than a century of modern theorizing about the nature and meaning of sacrifice as a universal human phenomenon in order to gain a better understanding of those actions that the Romans identify by the Latin words sacrificium and sacrificare.Footnote There is also a queen of gods in Greek and Roman mythologies. 17ac) and the Cancellaria relief (Ryberg Reference Ryberg1955: fig. ex Fest. Elsner Reference Elsner2012 emphasizes the heavy influence of early Christian writers on modern theorizations of sacrifice. for young animals (including foetal and neonatal specimens),Footnote 8.10.)). As suggested by Bouma Reference Bouma1996: 1.23841. 54 Burkert Reference Burkert and Bing1983: 3; Girard Reference Girard and Gregory1977: 1. 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 83 For example, think about the Roman and Greek mythologies about gods. 6.343 and 11.108. 53 All of this indicates a certain flexibility and elasticity in the ritual of sacrificium that suggests, especially if a similar flexibility could be demonstrated in other ritual forms, a need to moderate the emphasis both ancient and modern on the orthopractic nature of Roman religion. 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. 33 57 The objectivity of the outside observer can also facilitate cross-cultural comparison. differences between 78 Macr., Sat. Footnote 51 Modern scholars sometimes group all of these rites under the rubric sacrifice.Footnote 22. 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. In Livy's account of the first devotio in 340 b.c.e. Although there is substantial evidence for other types of sacrificial offerings in the literary sources (see below, Section III), Roman authors do not discuss them at length, preferring instead to talk about grand public sacrifices of multiple animal victims. 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. Cornell, T. J. which I quote at some length because we shall return to this passage later on: Territi etiam super tantas clades cum ceteris prodigiis, tum quod duae Vestales eo anno, Opimia atque Floronia, stupri compertae et altera sub terra, uti mos est, ad portam Collinam necata fuerat, altera sibimet ipsa mortem consciverat; Hoc nefas cum inter tot, ut fit, clades in prodigium versum esset, decemviri libros adire iussi sunt et Q. Fabius Pictor Delphos ad oraculum missus est sciscitatum quibus precibus suppliciisque deos possent placare et quaenam futura finis tantis cladibus foret. 31; Plin., N.H. 36.39; Tac., Ann. Significant exceptions to this rule in the study of Roman sacrifice are the treatment of the sacrifice of wheat and wine in Scheid Reference Scheid2012 and the argument for the increased popularity of vegetal sacrifice in Late Antiquity advanced by Elsner Reference Elsner2012. Test. In the sacred realm, Romans could also pollucere a tithe to the god Hercules.Footnote Every household has one or more shrines devoted to this purpose. 4 Some rituals, such as the recitation of prayers, were simple. WebThe ancient Greeks and Romans performed many rituals in the observance of their religion. Match. Plutarch is the only source for dog sacrifice at the Lupercalia (RQ 68 and 111=Mor. Although it is sixty years old, the lesson still works well. The insider-outsider problem has had little impact on the study of religion in pre-Christian Rome. 56 59 5401L. At 8.10.1112, Livy notes that a commander could devote one of his soldiers rather than himself. There are many other non-meat sacrifices the Romans could offer. Reference Morris, Leung, Ames and Lickel1999 and Berry Reference Berry, Headland, Pike and Harris1990. 11 This assertion is based on a search of sacrific* on the Brepolis Library of Latin Texts A. An exception is Scheid Reference Scheid2005: 52. Paul. Compare Var., R. 2.8.1. Analyses of the traditions about Curius and his contemporary Fabricius, both famous for prudentia and paupertas, are found in Berrendonner Reference Berrendonner2001 and Vigourt Reference Vigourt2001. 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 Plaut., Amph. The Romans then observed a regular set of expiatory rituals, most importantly offerings made to the goddesses Ceres and Proserpina by matrons of the city and the procession of a chorus of twenty-seven virgins. How to say sacrifice in Greek - WordHippo Even if this is the case, the argument still stands that these passages underscore how essential was consumption to the ritual of sacrificium. Roman Sacrifice, Inside and Out* | The Journal of Roman Studies 45 63 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. sacrifice, Roman in OCD 34 The ultimate conclusion of this investigation is that, although in many important ways this ritual comes close to aligning with the dominant modern understanding of sacrifice, Roman sacrificium is both more and less than the ritualized killing of a living being as an offering to the divine:Footnote 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. This is made clear in numerous passages from several Roman authors. For example, Ares is the Greek 98 The difference between Greek Gods and Roman Gods is that Greek gods have unique names of their own, whereas, Roman gods are The tendency is intensified in Christian sources, which discuss pagan sacrifice exclusively in terms of blood sacrifice, distinguishing the shameful blood of animal victims from the sacred blood of Christ.Footnote 1; Sall., Hist. 81 41 Others include first-order vs. second-order categories, particular vs. universal, descriptive vs. redescriptive, and local vs. global. 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 17 a more expensive offering that dominates in literary accounts of sacrifice. 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). and again in 114 or 113 b.c.e. Or the chastity of women and the safety of the state, Language in Relation to a Unified Theory of the Structure of Human Behavior, La vittima non un'ostia: Riflessioni storiche e linguistiche su un termine di uso corrente, Etruscan animal bones and their implications for sacrificial studies, Gste der Gtter Gtter als Gste: zur Konstrucktion des rmischen Opferbanketts, La Cuisine et l'autel: les sacrifices en questions dans les socits de la Mditerrane ancienne, Commentarii Fratrum Arvalium Qui Supersunt: les copies pigraphiques des protocoles annuels de la confrrie Arvale (21 av.304 ap. Despite the fact that the Romans buried broken or superfluous gifts to the gods in deposits for hundreds of years, there are to my knowledge only two references to the practice in all of Latin literature.Footnote WebAnswer (1 of 13): There are plenty of individual differences between certain deities as other posters have pointed out. 74 For the Greeks 49 In both the passages from Pliny and Apuleius, the ritual implements are of diminutive size. 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. Plut., RQ 52=Mor. e.g., Liv. Created by. ex Fest. Resp. 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. Scheid Reference Scheid1998: nn. There is a small amount of evidence for a form of auspicium performed with beans: Fest. As is implied in all the relevant entries in the OLD. frag. Marcellus, de Medicamentis 8.50; Palmer Reference Palmer and Hall1996: 234. 1 Answer. Jupiter also concentrated on protecting the Roman state. 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 77 75 Aul. 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. Moses (Reference Moses, Brocato and Terrenatoforthcoming, table 2) reports that these species account for 89.9 per cent of the total number of individual animal specimens recovered. 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. 97 113L, s.v. 73 Modern etymologists disagree on the origin of the term. Expert solutions. ), 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? Hemina fr. Greek gods had heavy emphasis placed on their 89 Roman mactus; de Vaan Reference De Vaan2008: 357 s.v. 99 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). 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 Our author makes clear that the sacrifice of two Gauls and two Greeks happened alongside another ritual: the punishment of an unchaste Vestal Virgin. The most recent and most comprehensive analysis of the material details the criteria applied to the osteoarchaeological evidence for determining what is likely to be evidence for sacrifice.Footnote ex Fest. 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. There is also evidence that the Romans had a variety of rites, only one of which was sacrificium, that involved presenting foodstuffs to the gods. 1.3.90 and 1.6.115; Juv. Poorer families imitate the rich by applying pottery plaques to their shrine walls.Footnote 3.2.16. The catinus is a piece of everyday ware used to serve food that contains a lot of liquid (L. 5.120). Sacrificium is the performance of a complex of actions that presents the gods with an edible gift by the sprinkling of mola salsa and the ultimate goal of which seems to be the feeding of both gods and men. For example, Cic., Rep. 3.15 and Font. 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. Decline was interrupted by the short-lived Restoration under the emperor Augustus (reign 27 BC AD 14), then it resumed. 344L and 345L, s.v. Were these items sprinkled with mola salsa?Footnote 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). Nacirema is American spelt backwards, and Miner shows to, and interprets for, us our own bathroom habits.Footnote On fourteen occasions between 209 and 92 b.c.e., androgyne infants and children were included among the prodigies reported to the Roman Senate. 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 Scholars frequently stress the connection between sacrifice and eating: The idea of food underlies the idea of sacrifice.Footnote This is the insider-outsider problem in nuce. 132.12). 14 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). rutilae canes; Var., L. 6.16. 6 WebThe first way that Roman is different than Christian is because of there believe in gods. WebIt housed an altar for animal sacrifice and was said to constantly burn incense. Footnote 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. 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 Devotio is primarily a form of vow that is, ideally, followed by a death (si is homo qui devotus est moritur, probe factum videri (Liv. Scholars are quick to identify all of them as forms of sacrifice, which may well be the case. 25 Possible Answers: Roman temples were built on the ruins of previous structures. 67 The relationship between magmentum and augmentum (Paul. 74 75 It is understandable that, from the etic viewpoint, two rituals performed in roughly the same way should appear to be identical to each other, even if emic accounts distinguish between them. Those details, once recovered, can in turn subtly reshape our own idea of what sacrifice is and what it does. ex Fest. This repeated coincidence of ritual performances suggests that the two forms of ritual killingFootnote 37ab). See, however, C. Ando's concluding essay in Faraone and Naiden Reference Faraone and Naiden2012 along with A. Hollman's review of that same volume in BMCR 2013.04.44 and, in the same vein but with reference to ancient Egypt, Frankfurter Reference Frankfurter2011. 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 A parallel use of sacrificare is found in Apuleius Apologia 18, a passage which also shares Pliny's focus on poverty: paupertas, inquam, prisca aput saecula omnium civitatium conditrix, omnium artium repertrix, omnium peccatorum inops, omnis gloriae munifica, cunctis laudibus apud omnis nationes perfuncta. 5 28 The burial of Gauls and Greeks was a sacrifice, but one that Romans ought not to have performed. favisae. 1034 seems to draw an equivalence between sacrificare and mactare (cf. History Greek & Roman Civilization - studocu.com 287L, s.v. 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. 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. From this same root also derives the name for the mixture sprinkled on the animal before it was killed, mola salsa.Footnote Braga, Cristina 5 Major Differences Between the Greco-Roman Gods and the God 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. molo; Walde and Hofmann Reference Walde and Hofmann1954: 2.1046 s.v. Hemina fr. Birds: Suet., Calig. The errors and flaws that remain are all my own. This is suggested by Ov., F. 1.1278. 83 68 Ankarloo and Clark Reference Ankarloo and Clark1999: 756; Wilburn Reference Wilburn2012: 8790. 95 80 Lelekovi, Tino 71 pecunia sacrificium makes clear that, despite its name, this ritual did not involve money. Mar. 17 6.34. The offering of a dog to Robigus may be the same ritual as the augurium canarium referred to by Plin., N.H. 18.14. Livy, however, treats each burial in a distinct way. 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. 69 What we find is that for the Romans, to sacrifice was not simply to kill in a ritual fashion. As in a relief from the Forum of Trajan now in the Louvre (Ryberg Reference Ryberg1955: fig. 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. 19 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. Cic., Red. Detry, Cleia noun. The present study turns the insider-outsider lens on the study of Roman sacrifice: it aims to trace, through an analysis of a set of Latin religious terminology, how Romans thought about sacrifice and to highlight how this conception, which I refer to by the Latin term sacrificium, relates to two dominant aspects of modern theorizations of sacrifice as a universal human behaviour: sacrifice as violence and sacrifice as ritual meal. 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. 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 It is also noteworthy that sacrificium appears to be the only member of this class to require mola salsa. In light of the importance of ritual killing in modern theoretical treatments of sacrifice, the relative paucity of slaughter scenes in Roman art requires some explanation. 35 Published by The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies. I presume that Miner's observations apply also to bathroom habits elsewhere in North America and Europe. 87 Plaut., Stich 233; Cato, Agr. Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Rome 37 43 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 66 Roman sacrifice - Oxford Reference Here I use it as a tool to get at one aspect of Roman religious thought; I do not offer a sustained methodological critique of contemporary approaches of Roman antiquity. 21.5). 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 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 26. Rhadamanthus and Minos were brothers. 36 Plu., RQ 83=Mor. 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. For a more extended analysis of the distinction between the punishment of unchaste Vestals and, on the one hand, sacrifice and, on the other, secular capital punishment, see Schultz Reference Schultz2012. from the archaic temple at the site of S. Omobono in Rome.Footnote and To explain the decision to sometimes portray one weapon instead of the other, Aldrete posits that various gods, cults, and rituals may have dictated certain procedures or tools.Footnote WebGreeks Romans Lived in small rural communities Polis functioned as the city-states religious center Greek Gods Sense of identity Polis isolated from one another and independent Sanctuaries to share music, religion, poetry, and athletics Classical Greek Orders basic design elements for architecture (sense of order, predictability, and 13 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. 76 84 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. 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