98 216,Footnote Cic., Red. 62. The ultimate conclusion of this investigation is that, although in many important ways this ritual comes close to aligning with the dominant modern understanding of sacrifice, Roman sacrificium is both more and less than the ritualized killing of a living being as an offering to the divine:Footnote Also unfamiliar to the Romans would be another use of sacrifice now current in the life sciences, as a term for euthanasia of research animals with no real religious significance The plea of an editorial in the Canadian Journal of Comparative Medicine and Veterinary Science from 1967 (p. 241) that researchers abandon the term because there is no deity involved in the act of euthanizing laboratory animals, fell on deaf ears: sacrifice remains common in animal management literature. Van Straten Reference Van Straten1995: 188. Nacirema is American spelt backwards, and Miner shows to, and interprets for, us our own bathroom habits.Footnote 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 84 One can also pollucere grain, wine, oil, cheese, meat, fish with scales, a host of other food items, and even unidentified (and presumably inedible) goods.Footnote 77L, s.v. Our author makes clear that the sacrifice of two Gauls and two Greeks happened alongside another ritual: the punishment of an unchaste Vestal Virgin. The skeletal remains of dogs sometimes found interred with human remains or inside city walls are often interpreted as sacrifice by archaeologists.Footnote WebThe standard view of paganism (traditional city-based polytheistic Graeco-Roman religion) in the Roman empire has long been one of decline beginning in the second and first centuries BC. 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. 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. 358L. 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. The offering of a dog to Robigus may be the same ritual as the augurium canarium referred to by Plin., N.H. 18.14. This repeated coincidence of ritual performances suggests that the two forms of ritual killingFootnote On the general absence of wild meat from the Roman diet, see MacKinnon Reference MacKinnon2004: 1902. Marcos, Bruno fabam and Fest. 8.9 per cent of the total, according to Moses, Reference Moses, Brocato and Terrenatoforthcoming, table 2. 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. 537 Words 3 Pages Decent Essays Read More Plaut., Stich. 66 frag. 3.763829. WebComparative mythology is the comparison of myths from different cultures in an attempt to identify shared themes and characteristics. 44 Cf. Birds: Suet., Calig. 9.641. I also thank the anonymous reviewers for helpful comments, suggestions and objections that have greatly improved this piece. 83 WebDifferences between Greek and Roman sacrifices. 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 In Books 29 and 30 of his Natural History, the elder Pliny includes lizards in numerous medicinal recipes to cure everything from hair loss (29.108) to lower back pain (30.53) to dysentery (30.55), and the only text we have that identifies the contents of a bulla, the amulet worn by young Roman boys, instructs the reader to put lizard eyes inside it.Footnote WebRoman sacrificial practices were not functionally different from Greek, although the Roman rite was distinguishable from the Greek and Etruscan. 49 97 2 were linked.Footnote and 17ac) and the Cancellaria relief (Ryberg Reference Ryberg1955: fig. more because the Romans sacrificed things that are not animals, and less because sacrificium is not a term that encompasses every Roman ritual that involves the death of a living being. Learn. 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. 40 In Latin, one does not sacrifice with a knife or with an axe. October equus. 344L, s.v. 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 The ancient Greek and Roman gods did not become incarnate the way Jesus was, did not enter the stream of real human history the way Jesus did, did not die as a 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. ), Dictionnaire tymologique de la langue latine, Interpreting sacrificial ritual in Roman poetry: disciplines and their models, Rituals in Ink: A Conference on Religion and Literary Production in Ancient Rome, La mise mort sacrificielle sur les reliefs romains, La Violence dans les mondes grec et romain, Le sacrifice disparu: les reliefs de boucherie, Sacrifices, march de la viande et pratiques alimentaires dans les cits du monde romain, I reperti ossei animali nell'area archeologica di S. Omobono (19621964), Rendiconti della Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia, Animal remains from temples in Roman Britain, The symbolic meaning of the cock: the animal remains from the, Roman Mithraism: the Evidence of the Small Finds, Archologie du sacrifice animal en Gaule romaine, Prodigy and Expiation: A Study in Religion and Politics in Republican Rome, Production and Consumption of Animals in Roman Italy, Re-thinking sacred rubbish: the ritual deposits of the temple of Mithras at Tienen (Belgium), Beyond Sacred Violence: A Comparative Study of Sacrifice, The Insider/Outsider Problem in the Study of Religion: A Reader, Views from inside and outside: integrating emic and etic insights about culture and justice judgment, Ricerche nell'area dei templi di Fortuna e Mater Matuta, Revue de philologie, de littrature et d'histoire anciennes, Etruscan Italy: Etruscan Influences on the Civilizations of Italy from Antiquity to the Modern Era, Why were the Vestals virgins? The elder Pliny, in his Natural History, discusses the high regard in which ancient Romans held simple vessels made of beechwood. Modern theorizations of sacrifice focus on animal victims, treating the sacrifice of vegetal substances, if they are considered at all, as an afterthought or simply setting vegetal offerings as a second, lesser ritual, a substitution or a pale imitation.Footnote 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. and for looking at Roman religion in the context of other religious traditions. This disjuncture between physical remains and written accounts is another reminder of the bias of our ancient authors toward the activities of the rich and toward state ritual. Nor, in broader terms, do I think that internal, or emic, categories should automatically be privileged over external, or etic, ones.Footnote 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 22.57.26; Cass. On the contrary, Greek religion did not prefer to execute rituals as much as Livy, however, treats each burial in a distinct way. 94. 52 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. 21.5). 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. 52 Finally, both ancient societies have twelve main gods and goddesses. 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. Most houses are of wattle and daub construction, but the shrine rooms of the more wealthy are walled with stone. On fourteen occasions between 209 and 92 b.c.e., androgyne infants and children were included among the prodigies reported to the Roman Senate. 132.2; Scheid Reference Scheid2005: 1369). 33 86 The relationship between magmentum and augmentum (Paul. 1419). 46 97 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. Sorted by: 6. Plut., RQ 52=Mor. 82 69 10 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 3 There is no question that the live interment of the Gauls and Greeks was a sacrifice: Livy identifies it as one of the sacrifices not part of the usual practice ordered by the Sibylline Books (sacrificia extraordinaria). We do not know what name the Romans gave the ritual burial of an unchaste Vestal Virgin, but we know it was not sacrifice. 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). 63 In both the passages from Pliny and Apuleius, the ritual implements are of diminutive size. Military commanders would pay homage to Jupiter at his temple after Greek influences on Italian craftsmen in the 6 th century BC saw the image of 90 Aldrete counts at least fifty-six sculptural reliefs dating from the seventh century b.c.e. 22 59 As is implied in all the relevant entries in the OLD. 80 Var., L. 5.112; see also Cic., Har. . 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). 73 56 74 pecunia sacrificium makes clear that, despite its name, this ritual did not involve money. Moses, Reference Moses, Brocato and Terrenatoforthcoming. 4 How, if these animals did not make desirable entrees, could they be considered suitable for sacrifice? for young animals (including foetal and neonatal specimens),Footnote and the second century c.e. 1.3.90 and 1.6.115; Juv. The main god and goddesses in Roman culture were Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva. 190L s.v. 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 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 Pliny reports a ritual, possibly sacrifice (res divina fit, 29.58), involving a dog in honour of the little-known goddess, Genita Mana (cf. 287L, s.v. Val. 29 This assertion is based on a search of sacrific* on the Brepolis Library of Latin Texts A. Sacrificium included vegetal and inedible offerings, and it was not the only Roman ritual that had living victims. 22 Scheid's reconstruction focuses on a living victim, and this is in keeping with the ancient sources own emphasis on blood sacrifice. 77 "useRatesEcommerce": false Nor was it secular, capital punishment; the punishment of criminals usually took a more direct and swift form: strangulation, beating, crucifixion, or precipitation (i.e., throwing someone off a cliff).Footnote Miner Reference Miner1956: 503. 22.1.19; 45.16.6; Plin., N.H. 36.39; Tac., Ann. Fest. 64 to the fourth century c.e. 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. 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. milk,Footnote 44 17 See, for example, citations from Pomponius and Afranius in Non. 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. 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. 51 The same two interment rituals would be performed alongside one another again just about a century later, in 113 b.c.e. Of this class of rituals, sacrificium does seem to have been somehow different from the others. Has data issue: true 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. 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. 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. 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. Fontes, Lus Aul. 89 93 57 For the Greeks The ritual seems to be even more flexible than sacrificium in the range of objects on which it could be performed. Vuli, Hrvoje 2.47.10 (M)=2.44.10 McGushin. Sacrificare is frequently accompanied by an instrumental ablative, but in almost all cases it is clear that the ablative is the object of sacrifice, as in the phrase maioribus hostiis sacrificaverant.Footnote Ankarloo and Clark Reference Ankarloo and Clark1999: 756; Wilburn Reference Wilburn2012: 8790. and the fact that the word immolatio itself derives from the Indo-European root *melh2 (to crush, to grind): immolatio is cognate with English mill.Footnote At 8.10.1112, Livy notes that a commander could devote one of his soldiers rather than himself. 12 For a treatment of this methodological issue on a broader scale, see the rather pointed critique in Hopkins Reference Hopkins1978: 1808. 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 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. This has repercussions for our understanding of some elements of Roman religious thought. 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 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. 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 32 Peter=FRH F33. They were rewarded for their endeavors with the position of judge in the Underworld. 19 For example, scholars have used the relationships between different myths to trace the development of religions and cultures, to propose common origins for WebThe gods, heroes, and humans of Greek mythology were flawed. 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. Match. This is made clear in numerous passages from several Roman authors. The numerous sources for this event are collected and analysed in Engels Reference Engels2007: 41618, 4438. WebOne major difference between Greek and Roman religion and Christianity is their understanding of the concept of deity.
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