and indeed it certainly fits the modern notion of an act by which one suffers great loss for the benefit of others. 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. mactus; Serv., A. 32 Peter=FRH F33. Devotio is frequently called self-sacrifice by modern scholars,Footnote 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. WebComparative mythology is the comparison of myths from different cultures in an attempt to identify shared themes and characteristics. 64 7 ex Fest. 2.10.34, quoting a letter of Varro, and Paul. 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. and Narbo in Gallia Narbonensis (CIL 12.4333, dated to 11 c.e.). Minos gave laws to Crete. from the archaic temple at the site of S. Omobono in Rome.Footnote 40 Plaut., Stich. 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. 82 For a treatment of this methodological issue on a broader scale, see the rather pointed critique in Hopkins Reference Hopkins1978: 1808. Carretero, Lara Gonzalez 38 1.3.90 and 1.6.115; Juv. 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. 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. 5401L. A wider range of scholarly approaches is presented by McClymond Reference McClymond2008: 124. 4.57) is not clear. 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. 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. The distinction between sacrificare and mactare was lost by Late Antiquity, but it was still active in the Republic and early Empire.Footnote 21 In addition to such great disasters, the people were terrified both by other prodigies and because in this year two Vestals, Opimia and Floronia, were discovered to have had illicit affairs. 58 26. 2 The elder Cato instructs his reader to pollucere a cup of wine and a daps (ritual meal) to Jupiter Dapalis (Agr. Scheid Reference Scheid1998: nn. In addition, the acceptability of miniature serveware as objects of sacrificium shows the ability of the ritual to accommodate the varying social status of those performing it. Oliveira, Cludia 32 Resp. 78L, s.v. and Paul. Flashcards. 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. On three occasions during the Republic (228,Footnote Polluctum is a rite of wider scope than sacrificium, however, in that it could be performed on money and goods that do not appear to have been linked to eating in any way. 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. 358L. 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 milk,Footnote Ov., F. 4.90142 with Fest. Pliny reports a ritual, possibly sacrifice (res divina fit, 29.58), involving a dog in honour of the little-known goddess, Genita Mana (cf. ex Fest. 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. 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 Val. 16 The difference between Greek Gods and Roman Gods is that Greek gods have unique names of their own, whereas, Roman gods are 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 92 Greek gods had heavy emphasis placed on their As in a relief from the Forum of Trajan now in the Louvre (Ryberg Reference Ryberg1955: fig. 100 14 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. molo; Walde and Hofmann Reference Walde and Hofmann1954: 2.1046 s.v. and for his old-fashioned frugality and incorruptibility.Footnote 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 Throughout his corpus Cicero uses a range of technical divinatory terms, including augur, ostentum, and portentum, in rather general ways, even in De Divinatione where one might reasonably expect him to be more precise. aryxnewland. See, for example, Morris et al. It is the only one of these terms that does not come to be used outside the realm of the divine. Neither of the acts that Pliny mentions is explicitly identified as sacrificium, or as any other rite in particular. 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. There is a small amount of evidence for a form of auspicium performed with beans: Fest. In Livy's account of the first devotio in 340 b.c.e. They were rewarded for their endeavors with the position of judge in the Underworld. 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. 57 Schultz Reference Schultz2010: 5202. The lack of interest in vegetal sacrifice is widespread in the field of religious studies (McClymond Reference McClymond2008: 65). 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). Here's a list of translations. Subjects. 233; CIL 12.1531=ILLRP 136=ILS 3411 (from Sora). 96 Thus the most likely reading of the passage in Pliny is that Curius sacrificed the guttum faginum to the gods. 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 19 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. 12 Rpke Reference Rpke, Georgoudi, Piettre and Schmidt2005 offers a different interpretation of the meal that follows the sacrifice. Learn. The elder Pliny, in his Natural History, discusses the high regard in which ancient Romans held simple vessels made of beechwood. In Latin, one does not sacrifice with a knife or with an axe. WebThe Greeks were striving for perfection in their art while the Romans were striving for real life people. Modern scholars sometimes group all of these rites under the rubric sacrifice.Footnote 72 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. 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). 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. 24 and first fruits.Footnote 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. Render date: 2023-03-04T10:22:59.089Z Since Greeks were the first ones, Romans followed them. Military commanders would pay homage to Jupiter at his temple after It appears that no Roman source ever uses the language of sacrificium to describe devotio,Footnote Of the various forms of ritual killing that were part of their religious experience, the Romans only reacted with disgust to that form they identified as human sacrifice, a distinction in value sometimes lost when all these ritual forms are grouped together under the rubric sacrifice.Footnote 36 89 73 WebIn Greek mythology the king of gods is known as Zeus, whereas Romans call the king of gods Jupiter. Created by. ex. 37ab). refriva faba. 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). Sorted by: 6. Horses: Plin., N.H. 28.146; Fest. 18 Paul. Of the fifty-six reliefs, forty-one show officials carrying axes. Match. 3.12.2. 46 11 Even if this is the case, the argument still stands that these passages underscore how essential was consumption to the ritual of sacrificium. This assertion is based on a search of sacrific* on the Brepolis Library of Latin Texts A. 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. WebFor example, the Peloponnesian War was primarily a struggle between two Greek city-states, Athens and Sparta, and was fought mainly on land and sea within the Greek world. 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 Plutarch is the only source for dog sacrifice at the Lupercalia (RQ 68 and 111=Mor. 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. 68 Scheid's reconstruction focuses on a living victim, and this is in keeping with the ancient sources own emphasis on blood sacrifice. For the Greeks This meant that It is entirely possible that the search for a single, critical moment where a change from profane to sacred occurs is, in fact, a modern preoccupation. 84 WebWhile Greek and Roman sculpture and ruins are linked with the purity of white marble in the Western mind, most of the works were originally polychrome, painted in multiple, lifelike colors. 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. Tagliacozzo Reference Tagliacozzo1989: 66. 132.12). 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.) 2.47.10 (M)=2.44.10 McGushin. 94. 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. Jupiter also concentrated on protecting the Roman state. On fourteen occasions between 209 and 92 b.c.e., androgyne infants and children were included among the prodigies reported to the Roman Senate. Terms in this set (7) Which one Of this class of rituals, sacrificium does seem to have been somehow different from the others. 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. 49 4 It is important to remember, however, that no ancient source articulates any sort of relationship among these rituals. Was a portion consumed later? were linked.Footnote 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. 52 1996: The Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd edn), Oxford. 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). 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. 13 8.9 per cent of the total, according to Moses, Reference Moses, Brocato and Terrenatoforthcoming, table 2. Learn. and for looking at Roman religion in the context of other religious traditions. 29 The ritual is so closely tied to the notion of dining that polluctum could be used for everyday meals (e.g., Plaut., Rud. Marcellus, de Medicamentis 8.50; Palmer Reference Palmer and Hall1996: 234. 41 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 Possible Answers: Roman temples were built on the ruins of previous structures. 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. 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. Another animal sometimes sacrificed by the Romans but not regularly eaten by them is the human animal. WebDifferences between Greek and Roman sacrifices. uncovered in votive deposits throughout Italy. Pliny and Apuleius may reflect an lite misconception about the religious praxis of lower class worshippers, offering an incorrect, emic interpretation of an observable phenomenon. 78 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 100 e.g., J. Scheid, s.v. 4 Thus it happens that goats are immolated to Liber Pater, who discovered the vine, so that they pay him a penalty and, by a contrary logic, caprine victims are never immolated to Minerva on account of the olive: they say that whatever olive plant a goat bites becomes sterile). Concise surveys of the major modern theories of sacrifice in the ancient world can be found in Knust and Vrhelyi Reference Knust and Vrhelyi2011: 418, Lincoln Reference Lincoln2012, and Graf Reference Graf2012. 11213L, s.v. 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. The preceding discussion has, I hope, made clear that the Romans own notion of sacrifice is broader and more complex than is generally perceived. 5 1. Footnote 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 280 BC and 290D; Rom. 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 Dogs, and puppies in particular, were thought to have some medicinal and magical properties: Pliny reports that some people thought the ashes of a dog's cranium, when consumed with a beverage, could cure abdominal pain (N.H. 30.53) and, when mixed with honey wine in particular, could cure jaundice (N.H. 30.93). Nacirema is American spelt backwards, and Miner shows to, and interprets for, us our own bathroom habits.Footnote Scholars are quick to identify all of them as forms of sacrifice, which may well be the case. 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. 65 subsilles. The fundamental belief underlying the whole system appears to be that the human body is ugly and that its natural tendency is to debility and disease. 17ac) and the Cancellaria relief (Ryberg Reference Ryberg1955: fig. 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 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. 39 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. MacKinnon Reference MacKinnon2004: 5974. Moses, Reference Moses, Brocato and Terrenatoforthcoming, table 8. 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 Max. 28 Others, such as animal The modern assumption that sacrifice requires an animal victim obfuscates the full range of sacrificium among the Romans. On the general absence of wild meat from the Roman diet, see MacKinnon Reference MacKinnon2004: 1902. The Romans then observed a regular set of expiatory rituals, most importantly offerings made to the goddesses Ceres and Proserpina by matrons of the city and the procession of a chorus of twenty-seven virgins. I concede that, to a certain extent, the insider-outsider lens does not show us difficulties that were previously invisible. Foundational is the collection of essays on Greek sacrifice in Detienne and Vernant Reference Detienne, Vernant and Wissing1989. The ritual ended with a litatio, that is, the inspection of the animal's entrails, and it was then followed by a meal. Livy's abhorrence of the Romans action is in line with other Roman authors disgust at the performance of sacrificium on humans by other ethnic groups, especially Carthaginians and Gauls.Footnote Create. 45.16.6. ex Fest. 4.57. Fest. molo; de Vaan Reference De Vaan2008: 3867 s.v. Most houses are of wattle and daub construction, but the shrine rooms of the more wealthy are walled with stone. Var., L 5.122. A brief survey of the bone assemblages from sites in west-central Italy is offered by Bouma Reference Bouma1996: 1.22841. The closest any Roman source comes to linking devotio and sacrifice is Cic., Off. 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. 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. 72 In both the passages from Pliny and Apuleius, the ritual implements are of diminutive size. 66 2013: The Fragments of the Roman Historians, 3 vols, Oxford, Hornblower, S., and Spawforth, A. 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). Dogs had other ritual uses as well. and more. The relationship between magmentum and augmentum (Paul. This is suggested by Ov., F. 1.1278. . 43 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. Far less common in the S. Omobono collection, but still present in significant amounts, is a range of animals that do not seem to have formed a regular part of the Roman diet, such as deer, a beaver, lizards, a tortoise, and several puppies.Footnote 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. 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. 3.2.16. 92 Aul. 36 Nonius 539L identifies mactare with immolare, but the texts he cites do not really support his claim. 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. 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.
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