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 molo; de Vaan Reference De Vaan2008: 3867 s.v. 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 43 Var., L 5.122. 91 9 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). 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. 22. 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. and for front limbs.Footnote 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. 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 If the devotio was not successful (i.e., the devotus somehow survived), expiatory steps had to be taken: the burial of a larger-than-life-sized statue and piaculum hostia caedi. At 8.10.1112, Livy notes that a commander could devote one of his soldiers rather than himself. It is also noteworthy that sacrificium appears to be the only member of this class to require mola salsa. Dog corpses were sometimes deposited with tablets that contained curses, and dog figurines are among the required items for performing some spells.Footnote Cf., n. 89 below. The distinction is preserved by Suet., Prat. 20 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. Tereso, Joo Pedro Of the various forms of ritual killing that were part of their religious experience, the Romans only reacted with disgust to that form they identified as human sacrifice, a distinction in value sometimes lost when all these ritual forms are grouped together under the rubric sacrifice.Footnote but in later texts as well. 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. 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. This repeated coincidence of ritual performances suggests that the two forms of ritual killingFootnote 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. 71. 22 58.47, 64.1.467, and 68.1.49. 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 14 } Paul. 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. 3 Studies of sacrifice have noted the etymological connection between immolare and mola salsa, but have not, for the most part, pressed its value for what it may reveal about where the Romans may have placed the emphasis. Although much work in anthropology and other social sciences has debated the relative merits of emic versus etic approaches, I find most useful recent research that has highlighted the value of the dynamic interplay that can develop between them.Footnote 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. Footnote 69 14 On the early Christian appropriation and transformation of Roman sacrificial imagery and discourse, see Castelli Reference Castelli2004: 509. For this same poverty is, among the Greeks, just in Aristides, kind in Phocion, vigorous in Epaminondas, wise in Socrates, and eloquent in Homer. 39 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. 35 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. 31 ex. 59 The ritual seems to be even more flexible than sacrificium in the range of objects on which it could be performed. to the fourth century c.e. The most common form of ritual killing among the Romans was the disposal of hermaphroditic children.Footnote 32 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. 55.1.20 and 58.13) where the presence of an accusative object of immolare necessitates that cultro be instrumental in the traditional sense: ture et vino in igne in foculo fecit immolavitque vino mola cultroque Iovi o(ptimo) m(aximo) b(ovem) m(arem), Iunoni reginae b(ovem) f(eminam), Minervae b(ovem) f(eminam), Saluti publicae populi Romani Quiritium b(ovem) f(eminam).. Some rituals, such as the recitation of prayers, were simple. 50 Lucil. Devotio is frequently called self-sacrifice by modern scholars,Footnote Mactare is another ritual performed on animals (referred to as hostiae and victimae) at an altar, but also on porridge (Nonius 539L). The argument I lay out here pertains to sacrificial practice as it was conceived by Romans living in Rome and those areas of Italy that came under their control early on, during the Republic and the early Empire. The relationship between magmentum and augmentum (Paul. 4.57. 101 Emic and etic, terms drawn originally from the field of linguistics (Pike Reference Pike1967: 3744; reprinted in McCutcheon Reference McCutcheon1999: 2836), are one of several pairs of words used to present the insider-outsider distinction. 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. 51 44 See Rosenblitt Reference Rosenblitt2011 for the connection between these two passages. 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 83 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 the killing of the animal was not it, at least in an early period. 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 Furthermore, because there were multiple rituals not just sacrificium through which the Romans could share food and other goods with their gods, we can see that the Romans had a wider range of ritual tools available to them for communicating with the divine. 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 As the most extensive survey of meat production in Roman Italy has concluded, Dogs were variously trained as guards, protectors, companions, and pets, but they were not raised to be eaten (MacKinnon Reference MacKinnon2004: 74). 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. 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. 2021. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0075435816000319, Reference Feeney, Barchiesi, Rpke and Stephens, Reference Berry, Headland, Pike and Harris, Reference Rpke, Georgoudi, Piettre and Schmidt, Reference Lentacker, Ervynck, Van Neer, Martens and De Boe, Reference De Grossi Mazzorin and Tagliacozzo, Hammers, axes, bulls, and blood: some practical aspects of Roman animal sacrifice, Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: Ancient Greece and Rome, Imposed etics, emics, and derived etics: their conceptual and operational status in cross-cultural psychology, Emics and Etics: The Insider/Outsider Debate, Religio Votiva: The Archaeology of Latial Votive Religion, Rome, Pollution and Propriety: Dirt, Disease and Hygiene in the Eternal City from Antiquity to Modernity, Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth, Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making, L'Invention des grands hommes de la Rome antique, Dog remains in Italy from the Neolithic to the Roman period, The Cuisine of Sacrifice among the Greeks, Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the Other Italic Languages, Human sacrifice and fear of military disaster in Republican Rome, Das rmische Vorzeichenwesen (75327 v. As proof, he recounts a story about M. The literary evidence for this is slender but persuasive. 77 216,Footnote They were rewarded for their endeavors with the position of judge in the Underworld. To my knowledge, the sole exception is a phrase preserved twice in the Commentarii Fratrum Arvalium (Scheid Reference Scheid1998: nn. Greek Gods vs Roman Gods. 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 A brief survey of the bone assemblages from sites in west-central Italy is offered by Bouma Reference Bouma1996: 1.22841. See, for example, Wilkens Reference Wilkens2006 and De Grossi Mazzorin and Minniti Reference De Grossi Mazzorin and Minniti2006. Aeacus holds the keys to Hades. 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 Perhaps these reliefs preserve the performance of one or more of the rituals that seem to have faded in popularity by the high imperial period: magmentum and polluctum. 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. The catinus is a piece of everyday ware used to serve food that contains a lot of liquid (L. 5.120). Plutarch is the only source for dog sacrifice at the Lupercalia (RQ 68 and 111=Mor. The S. Omobono material shows a definite preference for certain species (sheep, goats, pigs),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). 52 As is implied in all the relevant entries in the OLD. 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. 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 Reed, Kelly WebThe ancient Greeks and Romans performed many rituals in the observance of their religion. 69 65 See, for example, Morris et al. 64 21 This assertion is based on a search of sacrific* on the Brepolis Library of Latin Texts A.