In Poorer families imitate the rich by applying pottery plaques to their shrine walls.Footnote 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. molo; Walde and Hofmann Reference Walde and Hofmann1954: 2.1046 s.v. wheat,Footnote 93 46 Moses (Reference Moses, Brocato and Terrenatoforthcoming, table 2) reports that these species account for 89.9 per cent of the total number of individual animal specimens recovered. Ernout and Meillet Reference Ernout and Meillet1979: 411 s.v. Published by The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies. I concede that, to a certain extent, the insider-outsider lens does not show us difficulties that were previously invisible. Scheid's reconstruction and interpretation is followed by Prescendi Reference Prescendi2007: 3148. Footnote 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 64 3 Create. Horses: Plin., N.H. 28.146; Fest. The children were drowned by the haruspices, usually in the sea. 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. Test. and for his old-fashioned frugality and incorruptibility.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 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. 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. 92 They were rewarded for their endeavors with the position of judge in the Underworld. 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. The literary evidence for this is slender but persuasive. 69 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. 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. and MacBain Reference MacBain1982: 12735; Schultz Reference Schultz2010: 52930; Reference Schultz2012: 12930. Greeks call the queen Hera, whereas Romans queen of gods is Juno. 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. We do not know what name the Romans gave the ritual burial of an unchaste Vestal Virgin, but we know it was not sacrifice. 48 There is also a queen of gods in Greek and Roman mythologies. As is implied in all the relevant entries in the OLD. 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. 6.3.14. Were they used in some form of divination?Footnote Vaz, Filipe Costa 47 Plaut., Stich. 45 74 for young animals (including foetal and neonatal specimens),Footnote e.g., J. Scheid, s.v. 73 Minos gave laws to Crete. 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. Correct answer: What is a major difference between Greek and Roman temples? 50 1419). As illustration, let us return to Livy and the human sacrifice in 216 b.c.e. 16 Created by. 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. 69a). 41 83 358L. The Christian fathers equation of sacrifice with violence has shaped twentieth-century theorizations of sacrifice as a universal human phenomenon,Footnote Prescendi Reference Prescendi2007: 22441 and, arriving at the same conclusion by a different path, Schultz Reference Schultz2012: 1323. 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 5 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 Knives would have been used only in conjunction with one or other of these implements. Were they always burnt on an altar or brazier? The offering of a dog to Robigus may be the same ritual as the augurium canarium referred to by Plin., N.H. 18.14. Perhaps these reliefs preserve the performance of one or more of the rituals that seem to have faded in popularity by the high imperial period: magmentum and polluctum. 43 Match. the killing of the animal was not it, at least in an early period. Another example of the bias of our sources away from rituals performed by the lower classes is the dearth of references to a particular type of item found in votive deposits: anatomical votives, fictile representations of parts of the human body offered to the gods as requests for cures for physical ailments. 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. 56 As proof, he recounts a story about M. Oliveira, Cludia 287L, s.v. 84 Tereso, Joo Pedro 55 1034 seems to draw an equivalence between sacrificare and mactare (cf. The description of Decius ensuing death is very spare and devoid of any sacrificial imagery or terminology. 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). Chr. Ioppolo Reference Ioppolo1972; Tagliacozzo Reference Tagliacozzo1989. As suggested by Bouma Reference Bouma1996: 1.23841. 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. Moses, Reference Moses, Brocato and Terrenatoforthcoming, table 8. Gel. 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. uncovered in votive deposits throughout Italy. This should prompt researchers, myself included, to greater caution when presenting a native in our case, Roman point of view and to greater clarity about whether the concept under discussion at any given moment is really the Romans or ours, or is shared by both groups. 21 61 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 Some more support for the notion that these were not interchangeable can be drawn from material evidence, visual representations of the moment of ritual slaughter. Footnote 99 37 87 17ac) and the Cancellaria relief (Ryberg Reference Ryberg1955: fig. The S. Omobono material shows a definite preference for certain species (sheep, goats, pigs),Footnote 2013: The Fragments of the Roman Historians, 3 vols, Oxford, Hornblower, S., and Spawforth, A. Sorted by: 6. The expression rem dvnam facer, to make a thing sacred, 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. 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. 35 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 There is a small amount of evidence for a form of auspicium performed with beans: Fest. From here, we can speculate that sacrifice was not understood by the Romans primarily as the ritual slaughter of an animal. The ritual seems to be even more flexible than sacrificium in the range of objects on which it could be performed. 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. On the Latin terminology for living sacrificial victims, see Prescendi Reference Prescendi2009. For example, Cic., Rep. 3.15 and Font. See Oakley Reference Oakley1998: 481 and Sacco Reference Sacco2004: 316. 6.34. October equus. It is unfortunate that the ancient sources on vegetal sacrifice are as exiguous as they are: it is not possible to determine what relationship its outward form bore to blood sacrifice. Although it is sixty years old, the lesson still works well. 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 Military commanders would pay homage to Jupiter at his temple after 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). 1. Braga, Cristina 190L s.v. 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 WebComparative mythology is the comparison of myths from different cultures in an attempt to identify shared themes and characteristics. The Romans, however, developed a more naturalistic approach to their art. Let me be clear. 2 8.9 per cent of the total, according to Moses, Reference Moses, Brocato and Terrenatoforthcoming, table 2. 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. To my knowledge, the sole exception is a phrase preserved twice in the Commentarii Fratrum Arvalium (Scheid Reference Scheid1998: nn. Our author makes clear that the sacrifice of two Gauls and two Greeks happened alongside another ritual: the punishment of an unchaste Vestal Virgin. 19 24 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. While Romans had many god they belief in that they believed in and they would sacrifice items to the gods so positive things would happened and if something bad happened than people blame the king or whoever does the sacrifice to the gods. How, if these animals did not make desirable entrees, could they be considered suitable for sacrifice? 77 This assertion is based on a search of sacrific* on the Brepolis Library of Latin Texts A. 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. and 45.16.6. 27 Classicists generally assume that the modern idea of sacrifice as the ritual killing of an animal applies to the Roman context. ex Fest. Another major difference between Greek gods and Roman gods is in the physical appearance of the deities. 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. 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 22.57.26, discussed also in Schultz Reference Schultz2012: 1267. There are many other non-meat sacrifices the Romans could offer. 233; CIL 12.1531=ILLRP 136=ILS 3411 (from Sora). 9 ), the Romans followed instructions from the Sibylline Books to bury alive pairs of Gauls and Greeks, one man and one woman of each, in the Forum Boarium. 4 67 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 Modern scholars sometimes group all of these rites under the rubric sacrifice.Footnote Greek Gods vs Roman Gods. 5401L. 423L s.v. Reed, Kelly 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 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. The main god and goddesses in Roman culture were Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva. Max. mactus; Serv., A. WebThe gods, heroes, and humans of Greek mythology were flawed. 88 50, From all this, it is reasonable to conclude that the poor could substitute small vessels for more expensive, edible sacrificial offerings. 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. 77 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. 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. 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. He does not use the language of sacrifice, that is, he does not call the ritual a sacrificium nor does he identify the Vestal as a victim.Footnote 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.