differences between greek and roman sacrifice differences between greek and roman sacrifice

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). Test. The modern assumption that sacrifice requires an animal victim obfuscates the full range of sacrificium among the Romans. Flashcards. Those details, once recovered, can in turn subtly reshape our own idea of what sacrifice is and what it does. 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 Main Differences Between Romans and Greeks Romans appeared in history from 753 BC to 1453 while the Greeks thrived from 7000 BC (Neolithic Greeks) to 146 BC. 12 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 Terms in this set (7) Which one 1 Answer. 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. 344L, s.v. As in the Greek world, sacrifice was the central ritual of religion. Most houses are of wattle and daub construction, but the shrine rooms of the more wealthy are walled with stone. Horses: Plin., N.H. 28.146; Fest. The objectivity of the outside observer can also facilitate cross-cultural comparison. Minos gave laws to Crete. 36 67 Detry, Cleia WebThe standard view of paganism (traditional city-based polytheistic Graeco-Roman religion) in the Roman empire has long been one of decline beginning in the second and first centuries BC. frag. 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 57 Augustine, Civ. Huet Reference Huet and Bertrand2005; Reference Huet and van Andringa2007. 56 83 MacBain Reference MacBain1982: 12735; Schultz Reference Schultz2010: 52930; Reference Schultz2012: 12930. 21.5). 450 Krenkel; Hor., Sat. 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. 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 CIL 6.32323.13940=ILS 5050.13940=Pighi Reference Pighi1965: 117 (from Rome). 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. 75 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. Reed, Kelly 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 69 77 132.12). In Livy's account of the first devotio in 340 b.c.e. and first fruits.Footnote The ancients derived the term from magis auctus and understood it to mean to increase and by extension to honour with.Footnote As has long been recognized, sacrificare and sacrificium are compounds of the phrase sacrum facere (to render sacred), and what is sacrum is anything that belongs to the gods.Footnote 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. The difference between Greek Gods and Roman Gods is that Greek gods have unique names of their own, whereas, Roman gods are 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 31. pecunia sacrificium; Paul. The issue remains active in religious studies, as it does in cultural anthropology more widely. ipsilles with 398L, s.v. Livy also uses the language of sacrifice when he describes the underground room as a place that had already seen human victims.Footnote 176 and Serv., A. 43 Knives would have been used only in conjunction with one or other of these implements. This is made clear in numerous passages from several Roman authors. 33 There is also a queen of gods in Greek and Roman mythologies. mactus. It is important to remember, however, that no ancient source articulates any sort of relationship among these rituals. 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. 85 There is a small amount of evidence for a form of auspicium performed with beans: Fest. 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. This is a clear difference from Athena, who was never associated with the weather. 86 uncovered in votive deposits throughout Italy. It is entirely possible that miniature ceramics were not, in reality, less expensive offerings than actual foodstuffs. Scheid's reconstruction focuses on a living victim, and this is in keeping with the ancient sources own emphasis on blood sacrifice. Decline was interrupted by the short-lived Restoration under the emperor Augustus (reign 27 BC AD 14), then it resumed. The children were drowned by the haruspices, usually in the sea. Another animal sometimes sacrificed by the Romans but not regularly eaten by them is the human animal. 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 Scheid Reference Scheid1998: nn. 40 Poorer families imitate the rich by applying pottery plaques to their shrine walls.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. Some more support for the notion that these were not interchangeable can be drawn from material evidence, visual representations of the moment of ritual slaughter. 66 86 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. Scheid Reference Scheid2005: 4457; Reference Scheid and Rpke2007: 2639. Var., L 5.122. 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. 23, The importance of sprinkling mola salsa might explain a pattern in Roman public artwork from the republican through the high imperial periods. Finally, both ancient societies have twelve main gods and goddesses. 101. 94. 73 82. Both Rhadamanthus and Aeacus were renowned for their justice. Another famous instance of this scene is on the Boscoreale cup (Aldrete Reference Aldrete2014: 33, fig. I follow Elsner Reference Elsner2012: 121 in setting aside the plethora of images of the tauroctony of Mithras and the taurobolium of Cybele and Attis. October equus. Dogs had other ritual uses as well. rutilae canes; Var., L. 6.16. Some rituals, such as the recitation of prayers, were simple. 132.2; Scheid Reference Scheid2005: 1369). 64 69 These two passages from Pliny and Apuleius may provide an explanation for the hundreds of thousands of miniature fictile vessels (plates, cups, etc.) The database is a very useful, but not infallible tool. 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). On the early Christian appropriation and transformation of Roman sacrificial imagery and discourse, see Castelli Reference Castelli2004: 509. 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. 89 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). Possible Answers: Roman temples were built on the ruins of previous structures. As in a relief from the Forum of Trajan now in the Louvre (Ryberg Reference Ryberg1955: fig. molo; de Vaan Reference De Vaan2008: 3867 s.v. } 73 The most common form of ritual killing among the Romans was the disposal of hermaphroditic children.Footnote 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. Of this class of rituals, sacrificium does seem to have been somehow different from the others. It is also noteworthy that sacrificium appears to be the only member of this class to require mola salsa. Nacirema is American spelt backwards, and Miner shows to, and interprets for, us our own bathroom habits.Footnote Nonius 539L identifies mactare with immolare, but the texts he cites do not really support his claim. 3.3.2, citing the late republican jurist Trebatius; Prescendi Reference Prescendi2007: 256. 1419). The catinus is a piece of everyday ware used to serve food that contains a lot of liquid (L. 5.120). and Paul. 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. e.g., Liv. incense,Footnote 58 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 88. 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 Devotio is frequently called self-sacrifice by modern scholars,Footnote Through the insider point of view, we can understand its meaning to the people who experience it. 24 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. 4.57. This study argues, however, that the apparent continuity is illusory in some important ways and that we have lost sight of some fine distinctions that the Romans made among the rituals they performed. Greek Gods vs Roman Gods. 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. Footnote WebComparative mythology is the comparison of myths from different cultures in an attempt to identify shared themes and characteristics. refriva faba; Plin., N.H. 18.119. 17 more because the Romans sacrificed things that are not animals, and less because sacrificium is not a term that encompasses every Roman ritual that involves the death of a living being. In the sacred realm, Romans could also pollucere a tithe to the god Hercules.Footnote 31; Plin., N.H. 36.39; Tac., Ann. 55 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. Hemina fr. Columella 2.21.4 might also refer to dog sacrifice, but the verb (feceris) leaves it ambiguous as to which ritual was being performed. 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. Mar. Cato's instruction to pollucere to Jupiter an assaria pecunia refers to produce valued at one as (Agr. Aldrete counts at least fifty-six sculptural reliefs dating from the seventh century b.c.e. Liv. The Christian fathers equation of sacrifice with violence has shaped twentieth-century theorizations of sacrifice as a universal human phenomenon,Footnote Jupiter was a sky-god who Romans believed oversaw all aspects of life; he is thought to have originated from the Greek god Zeus. and For example, scholars have used the relationships between different myths to trace the development of religions and cultures, to propose common origins for 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. 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