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 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. It is the only one of these terms that does not come to be used outside the realm of the divine. Moses, Reference Moses, Brocato and Terrenatoforthcoming, table 8. The Romans were aware of the link, as is made clear by Paul. Tereso, Joo Pedro ), the Romans followed instructions from the Sibylline Books to bury alive pairs of Gauls and Greeks, one man and one woman of each, in the Forum Boarium. 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. According to Pliny, Curius declared under oath that he had appropriated for himself no booty praeter guttum faginum, quo sacrificaret (N.H. 16.185). 11 49 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. 87 101 Scholars are quick to identify all of them as forms of sacrifice, which may well be the case. 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. 100 On a wider scale, the arguments made here about the nature of Roman sacrificium further undermine the increasingly discredited idea that sacrifice as a universal human behaviour is primarily, if not exclusively, about the violence of killing an animal victim. The distinction between sacrificare and mactare was lost by Late Antiquity, but it was still active in the Republic and early Empire.Footnote 77 11 As in the Greek world, sacrifice was the central ritual of religion. 38 Dogs had other ritual uses as well. Another example of a ritual that looks a lot like sacrificium but is not identical to it is polluctum. Rpke Reference Rpke, Georgoudi, Piettre and Schmidt2005 offers a different interpretation of the meal that follows the sacrifice. 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. There are at least two other rituals that the Romans performed that also required the death of a person. 8.10.)). Instead, their presence should be attributed to the status of those species as valuable and efficacious: the prevalence of dogs, lizards, and beavers in medicinal and magical recipes for potions is an indication of the exceptional value the animals were thought to have, an indication that they were somehow special, and therefore might be worthy of the gods. Plutarch is the only source for dog sacrifice at the Lupercalia (RQ 68 and 111=Mor. differences between Greek and Roman Live interment was only performed by the Romans as ritual killing, but live interment was not the only form of ritual killing (whether human sacrifice or not) that the Romans had available to them. Published by The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies. The elder Cato instructs his reader to pollucere a cup of wine and a daps (ritual meal) to Jupiter Dapalis (Agr. 64 78 Create. and 62. 61 98 WebDifferences between Greek and Roman sacrifices. One does, however, sacrifice with a cow, with a pig, or with a little cruet. 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. 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). Hammers appear in only fifteen scenes, two-thirds of which date between the first century b.c.e. 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. Roman Roman Gods vs. Greek Gods: Know the Difference 85 Lelekovi, Tino 78 A brief survey of the bone assemblages from sites in west-central Italy is offered by Bouma Reference Bouma1996: 1.22841. Even if this is the case, the argument still stands that these passages underscore how essential was consumption to the ritual of sacrificium. Modern etymologists disagree on the origin of the term. Both Rhadamanthus and Aeacus were renowned for their justice. There is a difference, however. Others, such as animal 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. 99 One relatively well documented example is the collection of bones dating to the seventh and sixth centuries b.c.e. 56 There is also a queen of gods in Greek and Roman mythologies. Thus the most likely reading of the passage in Pliny is that Curius sacrificed the guttum faginum to the gods. 65 Differences And Similarities Between The Aztec And Greek | ipl.org 92 94 Greek and Roman van Straten has offered a stronger explanation: the absence of slaughter scenes in Greek art is due to a lack of interest in this particular aspect of sacrifice on the part of those Greeks whose religious beliefs are reflected in this material, shall we say, the common people of the Classical period.Footnote Prescendi Reference Prescendi2007: 22441 and, arriving at the same conclusion by a different path, Schultz Reference Schultz2012: 1323. In addition to Zeus and Hera, there were many other major and minor gods in the Greek religion. molo; de Vaan Reference De Vaan2008: 3867 s.v. 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. 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. Fest. but in later texts as well. 33 The distinction is preserved by Suet., Prat. 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 69a). 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 58 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). Hemina fr. Marcellus, de Medicamentis 8.50; Palmer Reference Palmer and Hall1996: 234. from the archaic temple at the site of S. Omobono in Rome.Footnote 7 Was a portion consumed later? 40 that contain scenes of ritual slaughter where the implements can be clearly discerned.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. hasContentIssue true, Copyright The Author(s) 2016. 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. Neither of the acts that Pliny mentions is explicitly identified as sacrificium, or as any other rite in particular. 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. 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. Dog corpses were sometimes deposited with tablets that contained curses, and dog figurines are among the required items for performing some spells.Footnote 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. 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. 38 In both the passages from Pliny and Apuleius, the ritual implements are of diminutive size. WebRoman sacrificial practices were not functionally different from Greek, although the Roman rite was distinguishable from the Greek and Etruscan. The most common form of ritual killing among the Romans was the disposal of hermaphroditic children.Footnote 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. How to say sacrifice in Greek - WordHippo Admittedly the Romans often used as a metonym for the whole of sacrificium the term immolatio, the stage of the ritual that includes slaughter, suggesting the special importance of that portion of the ritual sequence.Footnote mactus; de Vaan Reference De Vaan2008: 357 s.v. Looking at Roman sacrifice through the insider-outsider lens lets us see more clearly that, for the Romans, sacrifice was both more and less than it is for many scholars writing about it today. 41 Test. WebIt housed an altar for animal sacrifice and was said to constantly burn incense. Martins, Manuela In fact, devotio is viewed positively by the Romans as a selfless, almost superhuman act of true leadership.Footnote Comparative mythology - Wikipedia 13 45.16.6. 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. Footnote 35 53 e.g., J. Scheid, s.v. Somewhat surprising is the considerably smaller presence of bovines,Footnote For example, Cic., Rep. 3.15 and Font. 88. 16 For example, Ares is the Greek 10 Correct answer: What is a major difference between Greek and Roman temples? The corresponding substantive is magmentum, a type of offering laid out only at certain temples.Footnote 132.2; Scheid Reference Scheid2005: 1369). 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. The database is a very useful, but not infallible tool. The ritual seems to be even more flexible than sacrificium in the range of objects on which it could be performed. 13 Peter=FRH F17. 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. In Livy's account of the first devotio in 340 b.c.e. Huet Reference Huet and Bertrand2005; Reference Huet and van Andringa2007. 344L and 345L, s.v. Rhadamanthus and Minos were brothers. 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. 3.3.2, citing the late republican jurist Trebatius; Prescendi Reference Prescendi2007: 256. Comparative mythology Learn. 96 11213L, s.v. The most common images of blood sacrifice in Roman art are procession scenes of animals being led to the altar or standing before it, waiting for mola salsa to be applied to them.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 The ritual ended with a litatio, that is, the inspection of the animal's entrails, and it was then followed by a meal. Cornell, T. J. Hermes, who had winged feet, was the messenger of the gods and could fly anywhere with great speed. 101. ex Fest. 2 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 is the insider-outsider problem in nuce. Huet explains the rarity of killing scenes in sacrificial reliefs from Italy by pointing out that the emphasis in these reliefs is really on the piety of the sacrificant who stands before the altar.Footnote See Oakley Reference Oakley1998: 481 and Sacco Reference Sacco2004: 316. The present study argues that looking at the relationship between sacrificium as it is presented in Roman sources and comparing that with modern notions of sacrifice reveals that some important, specific aspects of what has been conceived of as Roman sacrifice are not there in the ancient sources and may not be part of how the Romans perceived their ritual. 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. Var., L 5.122. 37 refriva faba. 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. 3.763829. 6 3.95: Quid Agamemnon, cum devovisset Dianae quod in suo regno pulcherrimum natum esset illo anno, immolavit Iphigeniam, qua nihil erat eo quidem anno natum pulchrius? Because the context is Greek, it is safe to assume that Cicero is using, as he often does elsewhere when addressing a general audience, technical terms in a very general way. 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. This meant that 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). 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). 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. 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 The ancients derived the term from magis auctus and understood it to mean to increase and by extension to honour with.Footnote Douglas Reference Douglas and Douglas1982: 117. Liv. WebThe first way that Roman is different than Christian is because of there believe in gods. 86 80 Fest. 75 and the second century c.e. 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 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. 42 22 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). 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