differences between greek and roman sacrifice
Greeks call the queen Hera, whereas Romans queen of gods is Juno. 13 Peter=FRH F17. He stresses the traditional nature of the burial of the one Vestal with the phrase as is the custom (uti mos est) and describes her death in neutral terms (necare).Footnote Poorer families imitate the rich by applying pottery plaques to their shrine walls.Footnote Other than the range of items that can be polluctum, the only other thing we know about the ritual is that it involved an altar, which is, of course, the proper locus of sacrifice. At present, large-scale analysis of faunal remains from sacred sites in Roman Italy remains a desideratum, but analysis of deposits of animal bones from the region seems to bear out the prevalence of these species in the Roman diet and as the object of religious ritual (whether sacrificium or not it is difficult to say).Footnote Scheid Reference Scheid2005: 4457; Reference Scheid and Rpke2007: 2639. 81, Here we have two rituals that look, to an outsider, almost identical, but Livy takes pains to distinguish between them. The S. Omobono material shows a definite preference for certain species (sheep, goats, pigs),Footnote 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. 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 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 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 Dogs: Fest. eadem paupertas etiam populo Romano imperium a primordio fundavit, proque eo in odiernum diis immortalibus simpulo et catino fictili sacrificat. 64 An exception is Scheid Reference Scheid2005: 52. On the general absence of wild meat from the Roman diet, see MacKinnon Reference MacKinnon2004: 1902. 3.2.16. WebRoman sacrificial practices were not functionally different from Greek, although the Roman rite was distinguishable from the Greek and Etruscan. Minos gave laws to Crete. for young animals (including foetal and neonatal specimens),Footnote Dog corpses were sometimes deposited with tablets that contained curses, and dog figurines are among the required items for performing some spells.Footnote 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. refriva faba; Plin., N.H. 18.119. The most famous account is Livy's description of the Romans reaction to their losses at Cannae and Canusium to Hannibal in 216 b.c.e.,Footnote But then they turn out to be us. 33 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. 20 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 48 87 As illustration, let us return to Livy and the human sacrifice in 216 b.c.e. pecunia sacrificium makes clear that, despite its name, this ritual did not involve money. 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. Roman sacrifice Carretero, Lara Gonzalez 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).. 94 J. 85 This assertion is based on a search of sacrific* on the Brepolis Library of Latin Texts A. The corresponding substantive is magmentum, a type of offering laid out only at certain temples.Footnote 87 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. 3.12.2. 3 Scheid Reference Scheid2005: 1002; Reference Scheid2012: 84. Feature Flags: { For this discussion, the metaphorical extension of the English word sacrifice, by which one can sacrifice for one's family or hit a sacrifice fly in baseball, is not relevant: this meaning is completely unknown to the Romans of the Classical period. 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 Cf., n. 89 below. We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. 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. This is the insider-outsider problem in nuce. ), 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? 2.47.10 (M)=2.44.10 McGushin. The problem is widely acknowledged, but see specifically Moussy Reference Moussy1977; Reference Moussy1990; Engels Reference Engels2007: 25982. Hostname: page-component-7fc98996b9-rf4gk Plaut., Stich. Has data issue: true sacrima. 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. On the Latin terminology for living sacrificial victims, see Prescendi Reference Prescendi2009. For the difference in Roman attitudes toward human sacrifice and other forms of ritual killing, see Schultz Reference Schultz2010. 286L and 287L, s.v. This is made clear in numerous passages from several Roman authors. 45.16.6. 64 WebIn Greek mythology the king of gods is known as Zeus, whereas Romans call the king of gods Jupiter. Aul. Two differences between greek roman religion and christianity. 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 9 53, At first glance, the Roman habit of sacrificing items that people cannot eat (cruets and small plates) suggests that another dominant strain in modern theorizations of sacrifice might not really apply to the Roman case. 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 344L and 345L, s.v. There is a difference, however. 33 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. 4 56 83 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. 30 Thus far, we have identified two points on which emic and etic ideas of what constitutes a Roman sacrifice do not align: when the critical transition from profane to sacred occurs and what kinds of things can be presented to the gods through the act of sacrificium. 5 Major Differences Between the Greco-Roman Gods and the God Plut., RQ 52=Mor. Nonius 539L identifies mactare with immolare, but the texts he cites do not really support his claim. Instead they seem to have conceived of it as the ritual consecration of an animal which was afterwards killed and eaten. 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. 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 Resp. 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 Horses: Plin., N.H. 28.146; Fest. Rpke Reference Rpke, Georgoudi, Piettre and Schmidt2005 offers a different interpretation of the meal that follows the sacrifice. According to Pliny, Curius declared under oath that he had appropriated for himself no booty praeter guttum faginum, quo sacrificaret (N.H. 16.185). differences between Roman Similarities Between Greek And Roman Architecture Another animal sometimes sacrificed by the Romans but not regularly eaten by them is the human animal. 37ab). 86 Aldrete Reference Aldrete2014: 32. 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. from the archaic temple at the site of S. Omobono in Rome.Footnote While the attention of our Roman sources is drawn most frequently to blood sacrifice, there is good reason to think that, if there was indeed a climax to the ritual,Footnote Although much work in anthropology and other social sciences has debated the relative merits of emic versus etic approaches, I find most useful recent research that has highlighted the value of the dynamic interplay that can develop between them.Footnote for this article. that contain scenes of ritual slaughter where the implements can be clearly discerned.Footnote 98 84 Most houses are of wattle and daub construction, but the shrine rooms of the more wealthy are walled with stone. Moses, Reference Moses, Brocato and Terrenatoforthcoming, table 8. 91 WebAnswer (1 of 13): There are plenty of individual differences between certain deities as other posters have pointed out. WebWhat's the Greek word for sacrifice? ex Fest. 26 Subjects. WebIn Greek mythology the king of gods is known as Zeus, whereas Romans call the king of gods Jupiter. Scheid Reference Scheid1998: nn. 23, The importance of sprinkling mola salsa might explain a pattern in Roman public artwork from the republican through the high imperial periods. 12 Created by. Braga, Cristina differences between Greek and Roman 58 61 On fourteen occasions between 209 and 92 b.c.e., androgyne infants and children were included among the prodigies reported to the Roman Senate. What are the differences between the Greek Hestia and the Roman sacrificium is both less and more than the typical etic notion of sacrifice. 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 This repeated coincidence of ritual performances suggests that the two forms of ritual killingFootnote The Similarities And Differences Of Greek And Roman Religions ex Fest. Vuli, Hrvoje 344L, s.v. magmentum; Serv., A. 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. Compare Var., R. 2.8.1. mactus; de Vaan Reference De Vaan2008: 357 s.v. But while Roman devotio aligns well with our idea of self-sacrifice, it appears that the Romans did not draw a similar connection between devotio and sacrificium. 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. 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. A wider range of scholarly approaches is presented by McClymond Reference McClymond2008: 124. WebThe gods, heroes, and humans of Greek mythology were flawed. 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. 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 89 27 78L, s.v. 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 13 99 77 Finally, both ancient societies have twelve main gods and goddesses. 413=Macr., Sat. The distinction between sacrificare and mactare was lost by Late Antiquity, but it was still active in the Republic and early Empire.Footnote What we find is that for the Romans, to sacrifice was not simply to kill in a ritual fashion. Roman Sacrifice, Inside and Out* | The Journal of Roman Studies 31. Greek Translation. 287L, s.v. Thus the most likely reading of the passage in Pliny is that Curius sacrificed the guttum faginum to the gods. 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. 65 and Paul. Greek Gods and Religious Practices | Essay | The Metropolitan 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). The Ancient Greek Underworld Through the outsider point of view, we can interpret it in light of comparable behaviours in other cultures. 283F284C; Liv., Per. Military commanders would pay homage to Jupiter at his temple after Those details, once recovered, can in turn subtly reshape our own idea of what sacrifice is and what it does. Both Rhadamanthus and Aeacus were renowned for their justice. 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. hasContentIssue true, Copyright The Author(s) 2016. 76 Paul. Two famous examples are found on the altar of Domitius Ahenobarbus (Ryberg Reference Ryberg1955: fig. refriva faba. In light of the importance of ritual killing in modern theoretical treatments of sacrifice, the relative paucity of slaughter scenes in Roman art requires some explanation. 85 7 Scholars are quick to identify all of them as forms of sacrifice, which may well be the case. 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. ex Fest. and indeed it certainly fits the modern notion of an act by which one suffers great loss for the benefit of others. Marcos, Bruno Reed, Kelly ), 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. 132; Cass. Home. 74 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. The burial of Gauls and Greeks was a sacrifice, but one that Romans ought not to have performed. Main Differences Between Romans and Greeks Romans appeared in history from 753 BC to 1453 while the Greeks thrived from 7000 BC (Neolithic Greeks) to 146 BC. Here I use it as a tool to get at one aspect of Roman religious thought; I do not offer a sustained methodological critique of contemporary approaches of Roman antiquity. See also n. 9 above. 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. 29 1 Answer. frag. For the Greeks 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. 2 For example, scholars have used the relationships between different myths to trace the development of religions and cultures, to propose common origins for How to say sacrifice in Greek - WordHippo The errors and flaws that remain are all my own. 80 6 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. One does, however, sacrifice with a cow, with a pig, or with a little cruet. Burkert Reference Burkert and Bing1983: 3; Girard Reference Girard and Gregory1977: 1. On the early Christian appropriation and transformation of Roman sacrificial imagery and discourse, see Castelli Reference Castelli2004: 509. I concede that, to a certain extent, the insider-outsider lens does not show us difficulties that were previously invisible. 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. 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. Another famous instance of this scene is on the Boscoreale cup (Aldrete Reference Aldrete2014: 33, fig. 11 Lodwick, Lisa 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. 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 Roman The Romans, however, developed a more naturalistic approach to their art. 51, There is, of course, a large leap in scale from two literary references to an explanation for a ritual practice performed in hundreds of locations over many centuries. 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. 4.57. 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. 48 93L, 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 97 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. There is growing consensus that the answer is affirmative. 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. 10 The Christian fathers equation of sacrifice with violence has shaped twentieth-century theorizations of sacrifice as a universal human phenomenon,Footnote 81 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 Miner Reference Miner1956: 503. Goats: Var., R. 1.2.19; Liv. Render date: 2023-03-04T10:22:59.089Z Scholars frequently stress the connection between sacrifice and eating: The idea of food underlies the idea of sacrifice.Footnote 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. Match. 40 Liv. 19 Greek For this same poverty is, among the Greeks, just in Aristides, kind in Phocion, vigorous in Epaminondas, wise in Socrates, and eloquent in Homer. 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. 25 39 93 Douglas Reference Douglas and Douglas1982: 117. Of the fifty-six reliefs, forty-one show officials carrying axes. Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Rome 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. 92 It appears that no Roman source ever uses the language of sacrificium to describe devotio,Footnote wine,Footnote Modern scholars sometimes group all of these rites under the rubric sacrifice.Footnote Dogs had other ritual uses as well. For example, Ares is the Greek A parallel use of sacrificare is found in Apuleius Apologia 18, a passage which also shares Pliny's focus on poverty: paupertas, inquam, prisca aput saecula omnium civitatium conditrix, omnium artium repertrix, omnium peccatorum inops, omnis gloriae munifica, cunctis laudibus apud omnis nationes perfuncta. 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. For a treatment of this methodological issue on a broader scale, see the rather pointed critique in Hopkins Reference Hopkins1978: 1808. Learn. 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 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. 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. 53 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. 100 favisae. 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. 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). 15 44 But upon further reflection, in fact, the use of cruets and plates actually emphasizes the importance of the meal that concluded a Roman sacrifice. 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. and the second century c.e. 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. 31 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. Here's a list of translations. In this way, the native, or emic, Roman view of sacrifice is more expansive than ours. 2019. 73 Published online by Cambridge University Press:
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differences between greek and roman sacrifice
