differences between greek and roman sacrificeeast hampton press classifieds

86 46 Even if this is the case, the argument still stands that these passages underscore how essential was consumption to the ritual of sacrificium. WebIn Greek mythology the king of gods is known as Zeus, whereas Romans call the king of gods Jupiter. 5401L. Plutarch is the only source for dog sacrifice at the Lupercalia (RQ 68 and 111=Mor. For many readers of Latin, the most obvious translation of the Latin is except a beechwood cruet with which he would offer sacrifice, taking quo as an instrumental ablative and thereby making the vessel an instrument of sacrifice rather than the object of sacrifice itself. The most common form of ritual killing among the Romans was the disposal of hermaphroditic children.Footnote e.g., J. Scheid, s.v. Neither of the acts that Pliny mentions is explicitly identified as sacrificium, or as any other rite in particular. 132.2; Scheid Reference Scheid2005: 1369). 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 Martins, Manuela Hemina fr. WebAnswer (1 of 13): There are plenty of individual differences between certain deities as other posters have pointed out. 35 Create. Cornell, T. J. Marcos, Bruno 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. A brief survey of the bone assemblages from sites in west-central Italy is offered by Bouma Reference Bouma1996: 1.22841. 43 87 The biggest difference that I'm aware of is that the Classical Greek religion was much more the religion of myths that we all know, while the Class 36 90 2019. The equation of sacrifice with the offering of an animal is not completely divorced from the ancient sources. Some rituals, such as the recitation of prayers, were simple. We can push this second issue, what kinds of items can be the object of sacrifice, even further: Roman sacrifice, especially among the poor, was not limited to edible offerings. Plaut., Amph. In Greek and Roman religion, the gods and 6.34. 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 44 45.16.6. Although they are universally referred to as votive offerings in the scholarly literature, it is possible that they are, technically, sacrifices. Cf., n. 89 below. 30 The most famous account is Livy's description of the Romans reaction to their losses at Cannae and Canusium to Hannibal in 216 b.c.e.,Footnote ex. 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. Nor, in broader terms, do I think that internal, or emic, categories should automatically be privileged over external, or etic, ones.Footnote thysa. 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. The ancients derived the term from magis auctus and understood it to mean to increase and by extension to honour with.Footnote If we allow only items explicitly identified as sacrificia in Roman sources, our list includes beans,Footnote 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. This statement and much of what follows is based on a series of searches in the Brepolis on-line database of Latin literature, Libraries A and B (http://apps.brepolis.net/BrepolisPortal/default.aspx) conducted throughout the summer of 2015. While there has been tentative speculation that the reason behind a preference for procession scenes in Greek representations of sacrifice in the Archaic and Classical periods is due to a growing squeamishness inside Greek culture,Footnote Livy, however, treats each burial in a distinct way. 95 Moses, Reference Moses, Brocato and Terrenatoforthcoming, table 8. As proof, he recounts a story about M. Scheid's reconstruction focuses on a living victim, and this is in keeping with the ancient sources own emphasis on blood sacrifice. Devotio is frequently called self-sacrifice by modern scholars,Footnote Were these items sprinkled with mola salsa?Footnote 6 17 52 and This assertion is based on a search of sacrific* on the Brepolis Library of Latin Texts A. Fest. Foundational is the collection of essays on Greek sacrifice in Detienne and Vernant Reference Detienne, Vernant and Wissing1989. 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 283F284C; Liv., Per. 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. 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 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. The closest any Roman source comes to linking devotio and sacrifice is Cic., Off. 7 One does, however, sacrifice with a cow, with a pig, or with a little cruet. 79 Every household has one or more shrines devoted to this purpose. Compare Var., R. 2.8.1. 18 On fourteen occasions between 209 and 92 b.c.e., androgyne infants and children were included among the prodigies reported to the Roman Senate. 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 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. Liv. 15, The apparent alignment of emic (Roman) and etic (modern) perceptions of the centrality of slaughter to the Roman sacrificial process, however, is not complete. 16 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. 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). Yet the problem remains that dogs did not form a regular or significant part of the Romans diet, nor did wild animals of any sort.Footnote Of these, three-fourths come from the first and second centuries c.e. 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? In contrast, as I have pointed out, Livy uses the language of sacrifice to describe the second interment and in the next breath expressly distances Roman tradition from it, calling it a rite scarcely Roman (minime Romano sacro). 4 As is implied in all the relevant entries in the OLD. Knives would have been used only in conjunction with one or other of these implements. 10 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. J. 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. The preceding discussion has, I hope, made clear that the Romans own notion of sacrifice is broader and more complex than is generally perceived. WebThe ancient Greeks and Romans performed many rituals in the observance of their religion. Test. 11 Horses: Plin., N.H. 28.146; Fest. 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. Lucil. 13 Peter=FRH F17. 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. 45 Roman sacrificium is both less and more than the typical etic notion of sacrifice. 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. Columella 2.21.4 might also refer to dog sacrifice, but the verb (feceris) leaves it ambiguous as to which ritual was being performed. 37 2.47.10 (M)=2.44.10 McGushin. Modern scholars sometimes group all of these rites under the rubric sacrifice.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. Schultz Reference Schultz2010: 5202. Through the insider point of view, we can understand its meaning to the people who experience it. 42 66 Poverty, I say, is the ancient founder of all states throughout the ages, the discoverer of all arts, devoid of all transgressions, resplendent in every type of glory, and enjoying every praise among all the nations. 75 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 Goats and dogs are less common, and we can expand the range of species to include horses and birds if we admit animals that are identified only as the object of immolatio, if not of sacrificium itself.Footnote 27 Greek gods had heavy emphasis placed on their 21 It was used by Cicero in the opening of his speech Post Reditum and by the figure of Cotta, consul of 75 b.c.e., in a fragment of Sallust's Historiae to present themselves as victims for the greater good.Footnote refriva faba. At 8.10.1112, Livy notes that a commander could devote one of his soldiers rather than himself. I presume that Miner's observations apply also to bathroom habits elsewhere in North America and Europe. 41 and Narbo in Gallia Narbonensis (CIL 12.4333, dated to 11 c.e.). 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. 60 At the centre of the whole complex was the immolatio, during which the animal was sprinkled with mola salsa (a mixture of spelt and salt), the flat of a knife was run along its back, and then it was slaughtered. In this way, the native, or emic, Roman view of sacrifice is more expansive than ours. According to Pliny, Curius declared under oath that he had appropriated for himself no booty praeter guttum faginum, quo sacrificaret (N.H. 16.185). 51 68 Paul. There is growing consensus that the answer is affirmative. 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 41 This meant that that contain scenes of ritual slaughter where the implements can be clearly discerned.Footnote 93 nor does any Roman author ever express any sort of discomfort with this rite akin to Livy's shrinking back from the sacrifice of Gauls and Greeks. 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. 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). Footnote 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 is a small group of other rituals that share certain structural similarities with sacrificium, but which the Romans during the Republic and early Empire appear to have distinguished from it. The offering of a dog to Robigus may be the same ritual as the augurium canarium referred to by Plin., N.H. 18.14. 57 85 29 The small size of the guttus and simpulum is assured by Varro (L. 5.124), who identifies both as vessels that pour out liquid minutatim. 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 Of this class of rituals, sacrificium does seem to have been somehow different from the others. 58 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 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. Parents: Aeacus: Zeus and Aegina; Rhadamanthus and Minos: Zeus and Europa. 286L and 287L, s.v. 94. 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. Aeacus holds the keys to Hades. 3.2.16. Correct answer: What is a major difference between Greek and Roman temples? 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. The prevalence of Roman images of sacrificial victims standing before the altar, that is, of the instant before mola salsa is sprinkled on them, is due to the importance of that moment. mactus. eadem est enim paupertas apud Graecos in Aristide iusta, in Phocione benigna, in Epaminonda strenua, in Socrate sapiens, in Homero diserta. 87 It is also clear from literary sources that on a handful of occasions, including instances well within the historical period, the Roman state sacrificed human victims to the gods, a topic we shall address more fully later on. 233; CIL 12.1531=ILLRP 136=ILS 3411 (from Sora). It appears that no Roman source ever uses the language of sacrificium to describe devotio,Footnote 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. Macr., Sat. Pollucere is an old word, appearing mostly in literature of the second century b.c.e.,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. 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. Fest. Also Var., Men. 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. Dear Mr. Chang, Aside from the obvious differences in language (one culture speaks as much Latin as the Vatican, while the other is all Greek to me), the Romans art largely imitated that of the Greeks. e.g., O'Gorman Reference O'Gorman2010: 1217 and Versnel Reference Versnel1976. 23 67 The S. Omobono material shows a definite preference for certain species (sheep, goats, pigs),Footnote Vuli, Hrvoje 3.763829. Hermes, who had winged feet, was the messenger of the gods and could fly anywhere with great speed. 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 Somewhat surprising is the considerably smaller presence of bovines,Footnote Poorer families imitate the rich by applying pottery plaques to their shrine walls.Footnote 78 Were they used in some form of divination?Footnote 89 Another example of a ritual that looks a lot like sacrificium but is not identical to it is polluctum. 33 344L and 345L, s.v. Greek Gods and Religious Practices | Essay | The Metropolitan and indeed it certainly fits the modern notion of an act by which one suffers great loss for the benefit of others. Paul. For example, scholars have used the relationships between different myths to trace the development of religions and cultures, to propose common origins for 26. 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. 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. Ernout and Meillet Reference Ernout and Meillet1979: 411 s.v. Further support for the idea that the act of sprinkling mola salsa was either the single, critical moment or an especially important moment in a process that transferred the animal to the divine realm, is that mola salsa seems to be the only major element of sacrifice that is not documented explicitly by a Roman source as appearing in any other ritual or in any other area of daily life: processions, libations, prayers, slaughter, and dining all occurred in non-sacrificial contexts.Footnote 1034 seems to draw an equivalence between sacrificare and mactare (cf. Furthermore, there is reason to think that the crucial moment, or perhaps the first crucial moment, in the whole ritual process of sacrificium for the Romans was the sprinkling of mola salsa onto the victim, whereas several important modern theorizations of sacrifice place the greatest emphasis on, and see the essential meaning of sacrifice in, the moment of slaughter. The basic argument transfers well to the Roman context. 413=Macr., Sat. The main god and goddesses in Roman culture were Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva. Rhadamanthus and Minos were brothers. 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. 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 18 th century excavations unearthed a number of sculptures with traces of color, but noted art historians dismissed the findings as anomalies. On the general absence of wild meat from the Roman diet, see MacKinnon Reference MacKinnon2004: 1902. This is suggested by Ov., F. 1.1278. 69 MacBain Reference MacBain1982: 12735; Schultz Reference Schultz2010: 52930; Reference Schultz2012: 12930. 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. ex Fest. Greeks call the queen Hera, whereas Romans queen of gods is Juno. The Christian fathers equation of sacrifice with violence has shaped twentieth-century theorizations of sacrifice as a universal human phenomenon,Footnote The most famous vegetal offering occurred at the Liberalia, the festival of the god Liber, described by Varro: Liberalia dicta, quod per totum oppidum eo die sedent sacerdotes Liberi anus hedera coronatae cum libis et foculo pro emptore sacrificantes (The Liberalia is so called because on that day priestesses of Liber, old women crowned with ivy, settle themselves throughout the whole town with cakes and a brazier, making sacrifices on behalf of the customer).Footnote 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 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. Sacrificium included vegetal and inedible offerings, and it was not the only Roman ritual that had living victims. wine,Footnote While there appears to have been an original distinction among the rites of sacrificium, polluctum, and magmentum, we cannot recover the details of it in any serious way. Through the outsider point of view, we can interpret it in light of comparable behaviours in other cultures. 57 21.5). There is some limited zooarchaeological evidence for the consumption of dogs at some Roman sites, such as the inclusion of dog bones bearing marks of butchery among bone deposits that comprise primarily bovine and ovine remains, but it is not widespread. 34 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. 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. and 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. 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 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. 1. 9 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 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. 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 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. 14 54 358L. An emic explanation is essential for understanding how people within a given system understand that system, but because it is culturally and historically bounded, its use is somewhat limited. The limited sources we have are imprecise in their use of the terms even Cicero, who was an augur and was surely aware of the distinction.Footnote 39 40 37 33 It is entirely possible that miniature ceramics were not, in reality, less expensive offerings than actual foodstuffs. noun. It is probable, but not certain, that this is the same as the polluctum of ex mercibus libamenta mentioned by Varro at L. 6.54. 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. In 88 Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings. We do not know what name the Romans gave the ritual burial of an unchaste Vestal Virgin, but we know it was not sacrifice. See also n. 9 above. WebOne major difference between Greek and Roman religion and Christianity is their understanding of the concept of deity. Aldrete counts at least fifty-six sculptural reliefs dating from the seventh century b.c.e. But then they turn out to be us. That we cannot fully recover what were the critical differences among these rites is frustrating, but the situation is certainly not unique in the study of Roman religion. WebComparative mythology is the comparison of myths from different cultures in an attempt to identify shared themes and characteristics. This repeated coincidence of ritual performances suggests that the two forms of ritual killingFootnote 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). See, for example, Feeney Reference Feeney, Barchiesi, Rpke and Stephens2004, an excellent discussion of the application of theoretical models of sacrifice to the poetry of Vergil and Ovid. ex Fest. 8.10.)). Bottom line: The Greeks tended towards greater personification of their gods; the Romans tended towards their religion being a series of quid pro quo transactions with 3.12.2. Macr., Sat. fabam and Fest. 3 83 Van Straten Reference Van Straten1995: 188. but in later texts as well. 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. 16 30 38 Another famous instance of this scene is on the Boscoreale cup (Aldrete Reference Aldrete2014: 33, fig. WebIn Greek mythology the king of gods is known as Zeus, whereas Romans call the king of gods Jupiter. There is a difference, however. 56 Here's a list of translations. The distinction is preserved by Suet., Prat. How, if these animals did not make desirable entrees, could they be considered suitable for sacrifice? 81, Here we have two rituals that look, to an outsider, almost identical, but Livy takes pains to distinguish between them. 64 and Paul. [1] Comparative mythology has served a Huet Reference Huet and Bertrand2005; Reference Huet and van Andringa2007. Finally, both ancient societies have twelve main gods and goddesses. pecunia sacrificium makes clear that, despite its name, this ritual did not involve money. 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.

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