differences between greek and roman sacrifice

WebThe Greeks were striving for perfection in their art while the Romans were striving for real life people. There is also a queen of gods in Greek and Roman mythologies. As is implied in all the relevant entries in the OLD. I presume that Miner's observations apply also to bathroom habits elsewhere in North America and Europe. Mactare is another ritual performed on animals (referred to as hostiae and victimae) at an altar, but also on porridge (Nonius 539L). 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 46 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. 60 The most common form of ritual killing among the Romans was the disposal of hermaphroditic children.Footnote 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. To my knowledge, the sole exception is a phrase preserved twice in the Commentarii Fratrum Arvalium (Scheid Reference Scheid1998: nn. 08 June 2016. 12 413=Macr., Sat. In this way, the native, or emic, Roman view of sacrifice is more expansive than ours. In Livy's account of the first devotio in 340 b.c.e. 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). 283F284C; Liv., Per. 83 Roman sacrifice ex Fest. 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 77L, s.v. Plaut., Stich. 58 What we find is that for the Romans, to sacrifice was not simply to kill in a ritual fashion. 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. WebRoman sacrificial practices were not functionally different from Greek, although the Roman rite was distinguishable from the Greek and Etruscan. 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). Moses, Reference Moses, Brocato and Terrenatoforthcoming. sacrima. and differences between At N.H. 29.578, Pliny tells us that a dog was crucified annually at a particular location in Rome, and that puppies used to be considered to be such pure eating that they were used in place of victims (hostiarum vice) to appease the divine; puppy was still on the menu at banquets for the gods in Pliny's own day. Livy, however, treats each burial in a distinct way. Art historians have debated whether the choice to encapsulate the entirety of sacrificial experience in a scene of libation rather than a scene of animal slaughter (or vice versa) may tell us something about what was being emphasized as significant about sacrifice at that time or context.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. Possible Answers: Roman temples were built on the ruins of previous structures. Pliny reports a ritual, possibly sacrifice (res divina fit, 29.58), involving a dog in honour of the little-known goddess, Genita Mana (cf. 76. 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. This is a bad answer - I don't have sources available. It is my understanding that we lack a great deal of the sources needed for an emic unders There is growing consensus that the answer is affirmative. In overlooking the differences between the Roman idea of sacrificium and the modern idea of sacrifice, we lose some of the details of how the Romans perceived a core element of their own experience of the divine. 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. ex Fest. for this article. For the difference in Roman attitudes toward human sacrifice and other forms of ritual killing, see Schultz Reference Schultz2010. 22 Of these, only dogs are attested in the written sources as victims of Roman sacrifice, albeit rarely.Footnote Our author makes clear that the sacrifice of two Gauls and two Greeks happened alongside another ritual: the punishment of an unchaste Vestal Virgin. See also Scheid Reference Scheid2012: 901. 91 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. 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). 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). 358L, s.v. 31 29 It is entirely possible that miniature ceramics were not, in reality, less expensive offerings than actual foodstuffs. As in the Greek world, sacrifice was the central ritual of religion. 13 Rarest of all are images depicting the litatio, the inspection of the animal's entrails that Romans performed after ritual slaughter to determine the will of the gods.Footnote 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 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. 69 Val. 53 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 190L s.v. 92 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. More Greek words for sacrifice. Rhadamanthus and Minos were brothers. Huet Reference Huet and Bertrand2005; Reference Huet and van Andringa2007. 18 Test. Greek and Roman 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. 101 Braga, Cristina Macr., Sat. 25 Compare Var., R. 2.8.1. Greek The corresponding substantive is magmentum, a type of offering laid out only at certain temples.Footnote Curius Dentatus, famous for his victory over Pyrrhus in 275 b.c.e. 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). 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. to the fourth century c.e. Learn. The S. Omobono material shows a definite preference for certain species (sheep, goats, pigs),Footnote e.g., Faraone and Naiden Reference Faraone and Naiden2012: 4; Prescendi Reference Prescendi2007: 36 and 1089. In Latin, one does not sacrifice with a knife or with an axe. But in reality, the relative silence of our sources about a ritual form that seems to have been available to the poor is not unique. WebWhat are the main differences between Greek and Roman gods? Hammers appear in only fifteen scenes, two-thirds of which date between the first century b.c.e. 7 90 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. uncovered in votive deposits throughout Italy. 1.3.90 and 1.6.115; Juv. The equation of sacrifice with the offering of an animal is not completely divorced from the ancient sources. In Greek and Roman religion, the gods and Here's a list of translations. 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. 86 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. sacrifice, Roman in OCD RITUAL AND SACRIFICE - Ancient Greece and Rome: An 30 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. 82 View all Google Scholar citations If we allow only items explicitly identified as sacrificia in Roman sources, our list includes beans,Footnote 42 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. frag. 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. 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 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. The two texts are nearly identical and perhaps go back to the original lex sacra of the altar of Diana on the Aventine hill in Rome, to which the inscriptions explicitly appeal. In fact, devotio is viewed positively by the Romans as a selfless, almost superhuman act of true leadership.Footnote But then they turn out to be us. 9 Lucil. On three occasions during the Republic (228,Footnote 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. The relationship between magmentum and augmentum (Paul. 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. Roman Sacrifice, Inside and Out* | The Journal of Roman Studies and 450 Krenkel; Hor., Sat. milk,Footnote incense,Footnote Greek gods had heavy emphasis placed on their Greek Zeus to the Roman Jupiter: The Complete Guide (2022) 2013: The Fragments of the Roman Historians, 3 vols, Oxford, Hornblower, S., and Spawforth, A. Resp. By placing this variety of rites that the Romans had under the single rubric of sacrifice, we have lost sight of some of the complexity and nuance of Roman ritual life. The vast majority of the bones come from pigs, sheep, and goats. 98 39 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 55 63. 280 BC and 290D; Rom. 100 38 Another animal sometimes sacrificed by the Romans but not regularly eaten by them is the human animal. 25 Other forms of ritual killing do not receive the same sort of negative judgement by Roman authors, and one form, devotio, even has strongly positive associations. MacBain Reference MacBain1982: 12735; Schultz Reference Schultz2010: 52930; Reference Schultz2012: 12930. 17ac) and the Cancellaria relief (Ryberg Reference Ryberg1955: fig. 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 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. Reed, Kelly Decline was interrupted by the short-lived Restoration under the emperor Augustus (reign 27 BC AD 14), then it resumed. Marcos, Bruno There is also a queen of gods in Greek and Roman mythologies. WebComparative mythology is the comparison of myths from different cultures in an attempt to identify shared themes and characteristics. and Paul. 5401L. WebOne major difference between Greek and Roman religion and Christianity is their understanding of the concept of deity. eadem est enim paupertas apud Graecos in Aristide iusta, in Phocione benigna, in Epaminonda strenua, in Socrate sapiens, in Homero diserta. Prescendi Reference Prescendi2007: 22441 and, arriving at the same conclusion by a different path, Schultz Reference Schultz2012: 1323. 82. Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Rome 2.10.34, quoting a letter of Varro, and Paul. Ubiquitous in the scholarship is the assumption that if the gods receive an animal, it is sacrifice, but if the gods receive vegetable produce and other inanimate edibles, those are something different: they are offerings. The only Roman reference to the sacrifice of a deer pertains to a Greek context: Ov., F. 1.3878 where the deer is sacrificed to Diana as a substitute for Iphigenia. The literary evidence for this is slender but persuasive. Comparative mythology - Wikipedia 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 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. 73 Pollucere is an old word, appearing mostly in literature of the second century b.c.e.,Footnote 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 Ankarloo and Clark Reference Ankarloo and Clark1999: 756; Wilburn Reference Wilburn2012: 8790. While the evidence does not allow us to recover precise distinctions made among these rites (sacrificium, magmentum, and polluctum), it does strongly suggest that the Romans at least through the period of the Republic conceived of these rituals as somehow different from one another. 61 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 e.g., J. Scheid, s.v. 2.47.10 (M)=2.44.10 McGushin. 84 Fest. 34 Liv. eadem paupertas etiam populo Romano imperium a primordio fundavit, proque eo in odiernum diis immortalibus simpulo et catino fictili sacrificat. Cornell, T. J. WebThe gods, heroes, and humans of Greek mythology were flawed. Reference Morris, Leung, Ames and Lickel1999 and Berry Reference Berry, Headland, Pike and Harris1990. 22.1.19; 45.16.6; Plin., N.H. 36.39; Tac., Ann. Greek Translation. 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. 74 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 and the second century c.e. 7 97L: Immolare est mola, id est farre molito et sale, hostiam perspersam sacrare (To immolate is to make sacred a victim sprinkled with mola, that is, with ground spelt and salt), a passage which also suggests that the link between immolatio and mola salsa was active in the minds of Romans in the early imperial period when the ultimate source of Paulus redaction, the dictionary written by Verrius Flaccus, was compiled.Footnote Neither of the acts that Pliny mentions is explicitly identified as sacrificium, or as any other rite in particular. 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 Despite the fact that the S. Omobono assemblage dates to several centuries before the Classical period, the range of faunal remains from the site are primarily what one would expect from a sanctuary based on what we know from literary texts. Also the same poverty has established from the very beginning an empire for the Roman people and, on behalf of this, still today she sacrifices to the immortal gods a little ladle and a dish made of clay. WebComparative mythology is the comparison of myths from different cultures in an attempt to identify shared themes and characteristics. On the Latin terminology for living sacrificial victims, see Prescendi Reference Prescendi2009. rutilae canes; Var., L. 6.16. 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 skeletal remains of dogs sometimes found interred with human remains or inside city walls are often interpreted as sacrifice by archaeologists.Footnote It is important to remember, however, that no ancient source articulates any sort of relationship among these rituals. mactus; Serv., A. 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. Finally, while other rituals seem to have fallen into desuetude, or at least to have fallen out of the literature, by the late Republic or early Empire, sacrificium remained a vital part of Roman religious life for centuries. 3.12.2. This is suggested by Ov., F. 1.1278. 17 at the battle of the Veseris between Rome and the Latins (8.9.114), the ritual consists of the recitation of the dedicatory formula by the consul P. Decius Mus while in the midst of battle. 176 and Serv., A. Plaut., Stich 233; Cato, Agr. The answers to these questions might reshape our understanding of what were the crucial elements of sacrificium. Jupiter also concentrated on protecting the Roman state. 32 Peter=FRH F33. 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. 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 The issue remains active in religious studies, as it does in cultural anthropology more widely. 16 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. The main god and goddesses in Roman culture were Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva.

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