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

In 89 Lucil. 1034 seems to draw an equivalence between sacrificare and mactare (cf. The difference between Greek Gods and Roman Gods is that Greek gods have unique names of their own, whereas, Roman gods are Macr., Sat. refriva faba. Now, the Romans did not eat people, so how does their performance of human sacrifice reinforce the link between sacrifice and dining? Cic., Red. The objectivity of the outside observer can also facilitate cross-cultural comparison. Knives would have been used only in conjunction with one or other of these implements. Although they are universally referred to as votive offerings in the scholarly literature, it is possible that they are, technically, sacrifices. 69 Cf., n. 89 below. There is a difference, however. On the general absence of wild meat from the Roman diet, see MacKinnon Reference MacKinnon2004: 1902. 38 The vast majority of the bones come from pigs, sheep, and goats. History of Europe - Greeks, Romans, and barbarians | Britannica 1419). 7 17 Although it is sixty years old, the lesson still works well. Chr. 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. Braga, Cristina 99 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. 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. Poorer families imitate the rich by applying pottery plaques to their shrine walls.Footnote 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 58 84 Ov., F. 4.90142 with Fest. 95 frag. 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. pop. As suggested by Bouma Reference Bouma1996: 1.23841. Greek Gods vs Roman Gods. Greek and Roman Art and Architecture the killing of the animal was not it, at least in an early period. Gods, Goddesses, and Heroes 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. 88. Lodwick, Lisa 2 87 66 For the possible link between this instance and the revelation of an unchaste Vestal, see Schultz Reference Schultz2012: 126 n. 18. The Romans performed at least four forms of ritual killing, only one of which was sacrifice. 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. 59 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. 18 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. 25 a more expensive offering that dominates in literary accounts of sacrifice. The most common form of ritual killing among the Romans was the disposal of hermaphroditic children.Footnote In this section, I make the case that the related and equally widespread notion that all Roman rituals that required the death of an animal were sacrifices obfuscates the variety of rituals that Romans had available to them, effacing some of the fine distinctions Romans made about the ways they approached their gods. 60 and Paul. 8 Total loading time: 0 11 Roman Prescendi Reference Prescendi2007: 22441 and, arriving at the same conclusion by a different path, Schultz Reference Schultz2012: 1323. eadem paupertas etiam populo Romano imperium a primordio fundavit, proque eo in odiernum diis immortalibus simpulo et catino fictili sacrificat. 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. 1). Those details, once recovered, can in turn subtly reshape our own idea of what sacrifice is and what it does. 75 46 37 32 Peter=FRH F33. Decline was interrupted by the short-lived Restoration under the emperor Augustus (reign 27 BC AD 14), then it resumed. On the early Christian appropriation and transformation of Roman sacrificial imagery and discourse, see Castelli Reference Castelli2004: 509. 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. It appears that if a worshipper could not afford to sacrifice something that was itself tasty, he might fulfill his obligation by giving something that evoked the idea of it.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. What are the differences between Greek and Roman heroes? I also thank the anonymous reviewers for helpful comments, suggestions and objections that have greatly improved this piece. sacrima. 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. 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). Greek Translation. Fest. 1 Answer. 9.641. 7 The article is reprinted in McCutcheon Reference McCutcheon1999, a volume that offers in its introductory chapter a very good overview of the insider-outsider problem and that includes a selection of some of the most important scholarly contributions to the debate within the study of religion. subsilles. 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. 82. Columella 2.21.4 might also refer to dog sacrifice, but the verb (feceris) leaves it ambiguous as to which ritual was being performed. 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. Vuli, Hrvoje 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. Paul. 77 This has repercussions for our understanding of some elements of Roman religious thought. eadem est enim paupertas apud Graecos in Aristide iusta, in Phocione benigna, in Epaminonda strenua, in Socrate sapiens, in Homero diserta. Magmentum also appears in two imperial leges sacrae pertaining to the observance of the Imperial cult preserved in inscriptions found in the Roman colonies of Salona in Dalmatia (CIL 3.1933, dated to 137 c.e.) Schultz Reference Schultz2010: 5202. 9.7.mil.Rom.2). 283F284C; Liv., Per. 08 June 2016. molo; de Vaan Reference De Vaan2008: 3867 s.v. 43 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. 100 Greek and Roman 83 2.47.10 (M)=2.44.10 McGushin. 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 46 But one of the things that I consider quite interesting was the difference approaches that the Greeks and Romans had towards the Gods as a whole. The equation of sacrifice with the offering of an animal is not completely divorced from the ancient sources. Scheid Reference Scheid2005: 4457; Reference Scheid and Rpke2007: 2639. Var., L. 5.112; see also Cic., Har. This is suggested by Ov., F. 1.1278. RITUAL AND SACRIFICE - Ancient Greece and Rome: An Plutarch is the only source for dog sacrifice at the Lupercalia (RQ 68 and 111=Mor. See Oakley Reference Oakley1998: 481 and Sacco Reference Sacco2004: 316. 1; Sall., Hist. WebThe Greeks were striving for perfection in their art while the Romans were striving for real life people. Another way that mactare is different is that gods can mactare mortals at least in comedy, where characters sometimes wish that the gods would honour their enemies with trouble.Footnote 34 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. e.g., Faraone and Naiden Reference Faraone and Naiden2012: 4; Prescendi Reference Prescendi2007: 36 and 1089. Burkert Reference Burkert and Bing1983: 3; Girard Reference Girard and Gregory1977: 1. 32 Macr., Sat. An exception is Scheid Reference Scheid2005: 52. 86 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. I have tried to respond to them all. Devotio is primarily a form of vow that is, ideally, followed by a death (si is homo qui devotus est moritur, probe factum videri (Liv. Greek influences on Italian craftsmen in the 6 th century BC saw the image of 358L. 68 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. This repeated coincidence of ritual performances suggests that the two forms of ritual killingFootnote 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). Plaut., Amph. 71 85 101 ex Fest. 57 50 This is made clear in numerous passages from several Roman authors. 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. 54 WebRoman sacrificial practices were not functionally different from Greek, although the Roman rite was distinguishable from the Greek and Etruscan. (ed.) It is entirely possible that miniature ceramics were not, in reality, less expensive offerings than actual foodstuffs. WebWhile both civilizations left astonishing changes in the world, the developments made by Greek thinkers outdo those of the Aztecs when evaluating their creation of a prosperous government, understanding of literature, and enlightened ideas. Ankarloo and Clark Reference Ankarloo and Clark1999: 756; Wilburn Reference Wilburn2012: 8790. 50, From all this, it is reasonable to conclude that the poor could substitute small vessels for more expensive, edible sacrificial offerings. The distinction between sacrificare and mactare was lost by Late Antiquity, but it was still active in the Republic and early Empire.Footnote Difference Between Greek Gods and Roman Gods 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. 113L, s.v. 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. As proof, he recounts a story about M. 233; CIL 12.1531=ILLRP 136=ILS 3411 (from Sora). 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. 52 Dogs had other ritual uses as well. 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 Fest. Carretero, Lara Gonzalez 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. 81, Here we have two rituals that look, to an outsider, almost identical, but Livy takes pains to distinguish between them. 90 48 39 Another famous instance of this scene is on the Boscoreale cup (Aldrete Reference Aldrete2014: 33, fig. 5 Major Differences Between the Greco-Roman Gods and the God 65 30 Rhadamanthus and Minos were brothers. Detry, Cleia 3.2.16. 51 Instead they seem to have conceived of it as the ritual consecration of an animal which was afterwards killed and eaten. Published online by Cambridge University Press: 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 72 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. Curius Dentatus, famous for his victory over Pyrrhus in 275 b.c.e. 98 6 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. noun. Was a portion consumed later? Modern scholars sometimes group all of these rites under the rubric sacrifice.Footnote As Scheid has reconstructed Roman public sacrifice,Footnote The only inedible items that we know from literary sources were objects of sacrificium are all miniature versions of regular, everyday serveware: a cruet, a plate, and a ladle. 11 86 the differences between Roman gods and Greek Greek Gods and Religious Practices | Essay | The Metropolitan 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. Contra Prescendi Reference Prescendi2007: 223. It is important to note that there is no indication that these vegetal offerings were thought to be substitutions for what would have been, in better circumstances, animal victims.Footnote 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). For a more extended analysis of the distinction between the punishment of unchaste Vestals and, on the one hand, sacrifice and, on the other, secular capital punishment, see Schultz Reference Schultz2012. You would do well to remember that there were very few similarities between Roman and Greek religion until the Romans began borrowing from the Gree Significant exceptions to this rule in the study of Roman sacrifice are the treatment of the sacrifice of wheat and wine in Scheid Reference Scheid2012 and the argument for the increased popularity of vegetal sacrifice in Late Antiquity advanced by Elsner Reference Elsner2012. 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. 13 Peter=FRH F17. Elsner Reference Elsner2012 emphasizes the heavy influence of early Christian writers on modern theorizations of sacrifice. 68 Another major difference between Greek gods and Roman gods is in the physical appearance of the deities. Sacrificium is the performance of a complex of actions that presents the gods with an edible gift by the sprinkling of mola salsa and the ultimate goal of which seems to be the feeding of both gods and men. differences between Roman 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 basic argument transfers well to the Roman context. Cato's instruction to pollucere to Jupiter an assaria pecunia refers to produce valued at one as (Agr. 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. Another animal sometimes sacrificed by the Romans but not regularly eaten by them is the human animal. 19 79 78 64 that contain scenes of ritual slaughter where the implements can be clearly discerned.Footnote Birds: Suet., Calig. 17ac) and the Cancellaria relief (Ryberg Reference Ryberg1955: fig. and Narbo in Gallia Narbonensis (CIL 12.4333, dated to 11 c.e.). 1996: The Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd edn), Oxford. Jupiter also concentrated on protecting the Roman state. 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. 413=Macr., Sat. Flashcards. Douglas Reference Douglas and Douglas1982: 117. 20 31; Plin., N.H. 36.39; Tac., Ann. e.g., Liv. 53 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 18 th century excavations unearthed a number of sculptures with traces of color, but noted art historians dismissed the findings as anomalies. MacKinnon Reference MacKinnon2004: 5974. On fourteen occasions between 209 and 92 b.c.e., androgyne infants and children were included among the prodigies reported to the Roman Senate. Mar. molo; Walde and Hofmann Reference Walde and Hofmann1954: 2.1046 s.v. 101. 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. Var., L 5.122. 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. 5401L. The exact nature of the connection between the two rituals is not clear, but I agree with Eckstein Reference Eckstein1982 that we should not see the sacrifice of Gauls and Greeks as some sort of atonement for the unchastity of the Vestals. Differences Between Greek and Roman 80 3 10 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 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. WebThe gods, heroes, and humans of Greek mythology were flawed. 56 The Ancient Greek Underworld 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. The Romans were aware of the link, as is made clear by Paul. Pollucere is an old word, appearing mostly in literature of the second century b.c.e.,Footnote refriva faba; Plin., N.H. 18.119. 94. Even if this is the case, the argument still stands that these passages underscore how essential was consumption to the ritual of sacrificium. In what follows, I aim to clear away a few of the accretions that have arisen from more than a century of modern theorizing about the nature and meaning of sacrifice as a universal human phenomenon in order to gain a better understanding of those actions that the Romans identify by the Latin words sacrificium and sacrificare.Footnote ex. Roman sacrifice - Oxford Reference 31. Nacirema is American spelt backwards, and Miner shows to, and interprets for, us our own bathroom habits.Footnote For example, think about the Roman and Greek mythologies about gods. 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 One relatively well documented example is the collection of bones dating to the seventh and sixth centuries b.c.e. As in the Greek world, sacrifice was the central ritual of religion. from the archaic temple at the site of S. Omobono in Rome.Footnote 31 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). 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 survival beyond the early Empire of most aspects of the distinction among ritual forms discussed in Section IV cannot be asserted with any confidence. The expression rem dvnam facer, to make a thing sacred, shows that sacrifice was an act of transfer of ownership. B. Rives provided valuable consultation on specific points and V. C. Moses generously shared her work-in-progress on the osteoarchaeological evidence from S. Omobono. 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. rutilae canes; Var., L. 6.16. 47 Others, such as animal Livy also uses the language of sacrifice when he describes the underground room as a place that had already seen human victims.Footnote There is no evidence, contra Parker Reference Parker2004 and Wildfang Reference Wildfang2006: 589, that the Romans ever perceived the punishment of a Vestal as sacrifice. Although Roman writers most frequently do not explicitly identify the object of a sacrifice, when they do, cattle, pigs and sheep are well attested.Footnote 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. 62. This assertion is based on a search of sacrific* on the Brepolis Library of Latin Texts A. Furthermore, although all of these rites were performed on foodstuffs at altars or at least in sanctuaries, there are some critical differences among them and the ways they are discussed by the Romans. While there is a growing body of work done on the osteoarchaeological material from other regions of the Empire, especially the north-western provinces,Footnote 22. Paul. 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. 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 95 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 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.