differences between greek and roman sacrifice

WebThe gods, heroes, and humans of Greek mythology were flawed. Mar. 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 clear that they sacrifice a wide range of food substances beyond animal flesh. This is a clear difference from Athena, who was never associated with the weather. They were rewarded for their endeavors with the position of judge in the Underworld. Footnote 40 Prescendi Reference Prescendi2007: 22441 and, arriving at the same conclusion by a different path, Schultz Reference Schultz2012: 1323. Of this class of rituals, sacrificium does seem to have been somehow different from the others. and again in 114 or 113 b.c.e. 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 1996: The Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd edn), Oxford. 76. 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. Paul. 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 Military commanders would pay homage to Jupiter at his temple after 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. All of this indicates a certain flexibility and elasticity in the ritual of sacrificium that suggests, especially if a similar flexibility could be demonstrated in other ritual forms, a need to moderate the emphasis both ancient and modern on the orthopractic nature of Roman religion. These two passages from Pliny and Apuleius may provide an explanation for the hundreds of thousands of miniature fictile vessels (plates, cups, etc.) 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. 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 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. See, for example, Morris et al. Modern etymologists disagree on the origin of the term. 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. Created by. 82 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 The biggest difference that I'm aware of is that the Classical Greek religion was much more the religion of myths that we all know, while the Class This is the insider-outsider problem in nuce. 65 There is some limited zooarchaeological evidence for the consumption of dogs at some Roman sites, such as the inclusion of dog bones bearing marks of butchery among bone deposits that comprise primarily bovine and ovine remains, but it is not widespread. 79 The presence of bones from these species at S. Omobono should not be taken to mean that the site was what scholars call a healing sanctuary, or that it was a place where people came to cast spells on their enemies. 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. 69 Sacrifice was just one of several rites (alongside polluctum and magmentum) that the Romans had available to them that look to us, standing outside their religious system, as if they were all identical or nearly so. 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. e.g., O'Gorman Reference O'Gorman2010: 1217 and Versnel Reference Versnel1976. It is a hallmark of poverty, whether in a religious context or not, appearing often in poetic passages where the narrator describes a low-budget lifestyle.Footnote 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 Both Rhadamanthus and Aeacus were renowned for their justice. On fourteen occasions between 209 and 92 b.c.e., androgyne infants and children were included among the prodigies reported to the Roman Senate. Aeacus holds the keys to Hades. 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. 5401L. Compare Var., R. 2.8.1. 3.3.2, citing the late republican jurist Trebatius; Prescendi Reference Prescendi2007: 256. Tereso, Joo Pedro 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 and for looking at Roman religion in the context of other religious traditions. and Paul. In this way, the native, or emic, Roman view of sacrifice is more expansive than ours. Minos gave laws to Crete. In Further support for the idea that the act of sprinkling mola salsa was either the single, critical moment or an especially important moment in a process that transferred the animal to the divine realm, is that mola salsa seems to be the only major element of sacrifice that is not documented explicitly by a Roman source as appearing in any other ritual or in any other area of daily life: processions, libations, prayers, slaughter, and dining all occurred in non-sacrificial contexts.Footnote Detry, Cleia Livy also uses the language of sacrifice when he describes the underground room as a place that had already seen human victims.Footnote sacrifice, Roman in OCD 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 81 from the archaic temple at the site of S. Omobono in Rome.Footnote 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. 61 molo. 100 1. Greeks call the queen Hera, whereas Romans queen of gods is Juno. 72 24 ex Fest. 63 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.) Plin., N.H. 31.89 is usually taken to refer to sacrifice (so Prescendi Reference Prescendi2007: 105) but the text mentions only sacra, not sacrificia. 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 were linked.Footnote Flashcards. The tendency is intensified in Christian sources, which discuss pagan sacrifice exclusively in terms of blood sacrifice, distinguishing the shameful blood of animal victims from the sacred blood of Christ.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. Others include first-order vs. second-order categories, particular vs. universal, descriptive vs. redescriptive, and local vs. global. but in later texts as well. 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. Pliny reports a ritual, possibly sacrifice (res divina fit, 29.58), involving a dog in honour of the little-known goddess, Genita Mana (cf. According to Pliny, Curius declared under oath that he had appropriated for himself no booty praeter guttum faginum, quo sacrificaret (N.H. 16.185). 77 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. WebStudy with Quizlet and memorize flashcards containing terms like Which temples were Greek and which were Roman?, When was the Temple of Zeus at Olympia built?, What the features of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia? 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 Macr., Sat. Home. aryxnewland. 59 I concede that, to a certain extent, the insider-outsider lens does not show us difficulties that were previously invisible. Thinking along the same lines, it is reasonable to conclude that there are relatively few images of slaughter among Roman sacrificial scenes in public artwork of the Classical period because the emphasis in state-sponsored sacrifice lay elsewhere. 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 Published online by Cambridge University Press: WebGreeks Romans Lived in small rural communities Polis functioned as the city-states religious center Greek Gods Sense of identity Polis isolated from one another and independent Sanctuaries to share music, religion, poetry, and athletics Classical Greek Orders basic design elements for architecture (sense of order, predictability, and 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. the ritual began with a procession that was followed by a praefatio, a preliminary offering of prayers, wine and incense. In Latin, one does not sacrifice with a knife or with an axe. 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 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. 14.30; Sil. 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. 58 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. 29 As proof, he recounts a story about M. 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. 86 94. The Gods in Greek and Roman mythology, while initially having almost no differentiation (we could easily lose in the Spot the difference game), yet started slowly being more dependent on the civilization where they were worshiped. See, for example, citations from Pomponius and Afranius in Non. Marcos, Bruno There is a difference, however. ex Fest. For example, Ares is the Greek Hemina fr. 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). 280 BC and 290D; Rom. 33 For example, Cic., Rep. 3.15 and Font. Let me be clear. On three occasions during the Republic (228,Footnote Hostname: page-component-7fc98996b9-rf4gk 11213L, s.v. From this same root also derives the name for the mixture sprinkled on the animal before it was killed, mola salsa.Footnote 31; Plin., N.H. 36.39; Tac., Ann. For example, scholars have used the relationships between different myths to trace the development of religions and cultures, to propose common origins for 58.47, 64.1.467, and 68.1.49. It is also noteworthy that sacrificium appears to be the only member of this class to require mola salsa. 47 The main god and goddesses in Roman culture were Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva. 21.5). 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. 17ac) and the Cancellaria relief (Ryberg Reference Ryberg1955: fig. Modern scholars sometimes group all of these rites under the rubric sacrifice.Footnote 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. On the contrary, Greek religion did not prefer to execute rituals as much as 44 63 milk,Footnote Create. 18 21 Plaut., Stich 233; Cato, Agr. 216,Footnote Liv. Although the remains come from a known sacred area, it should not be assumed that all of them are evidence of sacrificium or other rituals: some may be garbage, material used as fill, or even the remains of animals (like mice) that died while exploring the refuse heap. 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. 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. 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 As in the Greek world, sacrifice was the central ritual of religion. and Narbo in Gallia Narbonensis (CIL 12.4333, dated to 11 c.e.). the killing of the animal was not it, at least in an early period. 65 38 It is important to note, however, that we cannot determine conclusively from the extant sources what relationship, if any, existed among them in the Roman mind. 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. 62. Reference Morris, Leung, Ames and Lickel1999 and Berry Reference Berry, Headland, Pike and Harris1990. There is also a queen of gods in Greek and Roman mythologies. Now, the Romans did not eat people, so how does their performance of human sacrifice reinforce the link between sacrifice and dining? thysa. The lack of interest in vegetal sacrifice is widespread in the field of religious studies (McClymond Reference McClymond2008: 65). To give just a single example, we know that there was originally some technical distinction among the different types of divine signs sent to the Romans by the gods. Dogs: Fest. 91 41 Columella 2.21.4 might also refer to dog sacrifice, but the verb (feceris) leaves it ambiguous as to which ritual was being performed. The elder Pliny, in his Natural History, discusses the high regard in which ancient Romans held simple vessels made of beechwood. Horses: Plin., N.H. 28.146; Fest. 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 9 There are at least two other rituals that the Romans performed that also required the death of a person. 73 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. 62 For example, the apparent contradiction between Roman abhorrence of ritual killing and the frequency with which Romans performed various forms of it is, to a large extent, explicable once it is recognized that the Romans objected only to the performance (by themselves as much as by others) of sacrificium on human victims. 80 Admittedly the Romans often used as a metonym for the whole of sacrificium the term immolatio, the stage of the ritual that includes slaughter, suggesting the special importance of that portion of the ritual sequence.Footnote 56 The burial of Gauls and Greeks was a sacrifice, but one that Romans ought not to have performed. Braga, Cristina 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. 39 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 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. Here's a list of translations. 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. 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. 1). 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 Match. refriva faba; Plin., N.H. 18.119. Vaz, Filipe Costa 74 Feature Flags: { The Romans performed at least four forms of ritual killing, only one of which was sacrifice. 69a). This has repercussions for our understanding of some elements of Roman religious thought. D. 6.9 (which probably draws on Varro) and possibly Paul. "useRatesEcommerce": false The difference between Greek Gods and Roman Gods is that Greek gods have unique names of their own, whereas, Roman gods are Scheid Reference Scheid2005: 4457; Reference Scheid and Rpke2007: 2639. 52 Were they always burnt on an altar or brazier? e.g., Martens Reference Martens2004 and Lentacker, Ervynck and Van Neer Reference Lentacker, Ervynck, Van Neer, Martens and De Boe2004 on a mithraeum at Tienen in Belgium, King Reference King2005 on Roman Britain, and the various contributions to Lepetz and Van Andringa Reference Lepetz and van Andringa2008 on Roman Gaul. J. C.), Quand faire, c'est croire: les rites sacrificiels des romains, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Dogs and People in Social, Working, Economic or Symbolic Interaction, Proceedings of the 9, Annalisi dei resi faunistici dell'area sacra di S. Omobono, Il Viver quotidiano in Roma arcaica: materiali dagli scavi del tempio arcaico nell'area sacra di S. Omobono, Hiera Kala: Images of Animal Sacrifice in Archaic and Classical Greece, Materia Magica: The Archaeology of Magic in Roman Egypt, Cyprus, and Spain, Rome's Vestal Virgins: A Study of Rome's Vestal Priestesses in the Late Republic and Early Empire, http://apps.brepolis.net/BrepolisPortal/default.aspx. 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. wheat,Footnote 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. ), 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? 32 Working with the two of them together, we can get a more nuanced understanding of a cultural habit. 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. I use ritual killing as a blanket term for any rite, including but not limited to sacrifice, that involves the death of a human being. 37ab). 19 Ioppolo Reference Ioppolo1972; Tagliacozzo Reference Tagliacozzo1989. Comparative mythology has served a variety of academic purposes. Miner Reference Miner1956: 503. 6.343 and 11.108. 68 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. pop. 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. Flashcards. WebWhat are the main differences between Greek and Roman gods? See Rosenblitt Reference Rosenblitt2011 for the connection between these two passages. From here, we can speculate that sacrifice was not understood by the Romans primarily as the ritual slaughter of an animal. 95 Plu., RQ 83=Mor. Nacirema is American spelt backwards, and Miner shows to, and interprets for, us our own bathroom habits.Footnote The S. Omobono material shows a definite preference for certain species (sheep, goats, pigs),Footnote Another major difference between Greek gods and Roman gods is in the physical appearance of the deities. WebThe Greeks were striving for perfection in their art while the Romans were striving for real life people. 358L, s.v. Total loading time: 0 Scheid's reconstruction and interpretation is followed by Prescendi Reference Prescendi2007: 3148. 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. 41 Ernout and Meillet Reference Ernout and Meillet1979: 411 s.v. 31. 98 A wider range of scholarly approaches is presented by McClymond Reference McClymond2008: 124. 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 Through the outsider point of view, we can interpret it in light of comparable behaviours in other cultures. 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. 55.1.20 and 58.13) where the presence of an accusative object of immolare necessitates that cultro be instrumental in the traditional sense: ture et vino in igne in foculo fecit immolavitque vino mola cultroque Iovi o(ptimo) m(aximo) b(ovem) m(arem), Iunoni reginae b(ovem) f(eminam), Minervae b(ovem) f(eminam), Saluti publicae populi Romani Quiritium b(ovem) f(eminam).. 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. 71 Others, such as animal That we cannot fully recover what were the critical differences among these rites is frustrating, but the situation is certainly not unique in the study of Roman religion. 100 46 Another famous instance of this scene is on the Boscoreale cup (Aldrete Reference Aldrete2014: 33, fig. Rpke Reference Rpke, Georgoudi, Piettre and Schmidt2005 offers a different interpretation of the meal that follows the sacrifice. It is entirely possible that miniature ceramics were not, in reality, less expensive offerings than actual foodstuffs. 81, Here we have two rituals that look, to an outsider, almost identical, but Livy takes pains to distinguish between them. 76 As in other cultures, Roman sacrifice was not a single act, but instead comprised a series of actions that gain importance in relationship to each other.Footnote

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