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. 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. 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. Devotio is frequently called self-sacrifice by modern scholars,Footnote The present study argues that looking at the relationship between sacrificium as it is presented in Roman sources and comparing that with modern notions of sacrifice reveals that some important, specific aspects of what has been conceived of as Roman sacrifice are not there in the ancient sources and may not be part of how the Romans perceived their ritual. Sic factum ut Libero patri, repertori vitis, hirci immolarentur, proinde ut capite darent poenas; contra ut Minervae caprini generis nihil immolarent propter oleam, quod eam quam laeserit fieri dicunt sterilem (And so therefore, it has been established by opposing justifications that victims of the caprine sort are brought to the altar of one deity, but they are not sacrificed at the altar of another, since on account of the same hatred, one does not want to see a goat and the other desires to see one perish. The problem is widely acknowledged, but see specifically Moussy Reference Moussy1977; Reference Moussy1990; Engels Reference Engels2007: 25982. 71. The distinction is preserved by Suet., Prat. to the fourth century c.e. Greek Gods vs Roman Gods. I presume that Miner's observations apply also to bathroom habits elsewhere in North America and Europe. 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 incense,Footnote See Rosenblitt Reference Rosenblitt2011 for the connection between these two passages. Arguably, then, it is the Christians who bequeathed to future generations the metonymic equivalence of sacrifice and violence, Knust and Vrhelyi Reference Knust and Vrhelyi2011: 17. See, for example, Feeney Reference Feeney, Barchiesi, Rpke and Stephens2004, an excellent discussion of the application of theoretical models of sacrifice to the poetry of Vergil and Ovid. 54 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. Greek and Roman Art and Architecture Ernout and Meillet Reference Ernout and Meillet1979: 411 s.v. 286L and 287L, s.v. Livy also uses the language of sacrifice when he describes the underground room as a place that had already seen human victims.Footnote Difference Between Romans and Greeks 77 82 Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 Create. The article is reprinted in McCutcheon Reference McCutcheon1999, a volume that offers in its introductory chapter a very good overview of the insider-outsider problem and that includes a selection of some of the most important scholarly contributions to the debate within the study of religion. Two differences between greek roman religion and christianity. 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. 64 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. Fontes, Lus 61 Although it is sixty years old, the lesson still works well. 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. It is possible that this genus-species relationship in fact existed in the Roman mind, as is perhaps suggested by the fact that sacrificare means to make sacred, and these other rituals seem to be different ways of doing the same work, namely transferring items from human to divine ownership. 08 June 2016. 9.7.mil.Rom.2). 1419). Cato's instruction to pollucere to Jupiter an assaria pecunia refers to produce valued at one as (Agr. 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. 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. 6.343 and 11.108. and Narbo in Gallia Narbonensis (CIL 12.4333, dated to 11 c.e.). wheat,Footnote 78 30 WebAnswer (1 of 13): There are plenty of individual differences between certain deities as other posters have pointed out. noun. 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. Hermes, who had winged feet, was the messenger of the gods and could fly anywhere with great speed. The database is a very useful, but not infallible tool. fabam and Fest. 6 Roman sacrifice 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 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. 277AC). 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 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 Reference Morris, Leung, Ames and Lickel1999 and Berry Reference Berry, Headland, Pike and Harris1990. . 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. 1 Answer. 26 3 In this way, the native, or emic, Roman view of sacrifice is more expansive than ours. 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 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 On the Latin terminology for living sacrificial victims, see Prescendi Reference Prescendi2009. 37ab). View all Google Scholar citations 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. 60 Macr., Sat. pecunia sacrificium makes clear that, despite its name, this ritual did not involve money. 2.10.34, quoting a letter of Varro, and Paul. Ernout and Meillet Reference Ernout and Meillet1979: 376 s.v. For an argument that wild animals are more common in ancient Mediterranean, and specifically in Etruscan, sacrifice than is generally acknowledged, see Rask Reference Rask2014. 5 3.12.2. 14 the differences between Roman gods and Greek The other rite observed by the Romans that required a human death was called devotio, and it seems to have been restricted to a single family father, son, and grandson (it is possible our sources have multiplied a single occasion), all of whom, as commanders-in-the-field, vowed to commit themselves and the enemy troops to the gods of the underworld in order to ensure a Roman victory. Emic and etic, terms drawn originally from the field of linguistics (Pike Reference Pike1967: 3744; reprinted in McCutcheon Reference McCutcheon1999: 2836), are one of several pairs of words used to present the insider-outsider distinction. Cf., n. 89 below. 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. 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. and again in 114 or 113 b.c.e. Plutarch is the only source for dog sacrifice at the Lupercalia (RQ 68 and 111=Mor. A wider range of scholarly approaches is presented by McClymond Reference McClymond2008: 124. We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. WebIn Greek mythology the king of gods is known as Zeus, whereas Romans call the king of gods Jupiter. Max. 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. The ritual ended with a litatio, that is, the inspection of the animal's entrails, and it was then followed by a meal. 1). 113L, s.v. 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). 65 69 It is probable, but not certain, that this is the same as the polluctum of ex mercibus libamenta mentioned by Varro at L. 6.54. 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. 423L s.v. 41 for young animals (including foetal and neonatal specimens),Footnote 32 Peter=FRH F33. the ritual began with a procession that was followed by a praefatio, a preliminary offering of prayers, wine and incense. 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. 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. 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 Resp. Were they used in some form of divination?Footnote 77 There is growing consensus that the answer is affirmative. Fest. 72 There is a difference, however. The numerous sources for this event are collected and analysed in Engels Reference Engels2007: 41618, 4438. Var., L. 6.3.14. Sorted by: 6. 38 that contain scenes of ritual slaughter where the implements can be clearly discerned.Footnote 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. Greek Zeus to the Roman Jupiter: The Complete Guide (2022) 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. WebAnswer (1 of 3): The differences between the heroes of Greco-Roman mythology come down to significant contrasts in the cultural identities of both civilisations. 97 82. e.g., Liv. 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. 2 The elder Cato instructs his reader to pollucere a cup of wine and a daps (ritual meal) to Jupiter Dapalis (Agr. Hostname: page-component-7fc98996b9-rf4gk thysa. 36 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. 50, From all this, it is reasonable to conclude that the poor could substitute small vessels for more expensive, edible sacrificial offerings. 49 See, for example, Wilkens Reference Wilkens2006 and De Grossi Mazzorin and Minniti Reference De Grossi Mazzorin and Minniti2006. 10 The closest any Roman source comes to linking devotio and sacrifice is Cic., Off. Plaut., Stich 233; Cato, Agr. This repeated coincidence of ritual performances suggests that the two forms of ritual killingFootnote ex Fest. To explain the decision to sometimes portray one weapon instead of the other, Aldrete posits that various gods, cults, and rituals may have dictated certain procedures or tools.Footnote 16 Was a portion consumed later? Another major difference between Greek gods and Roman gods is in the physical appearance of the deities. Greeks call the queen Hera, whereas Romans queen of gods is Juno. What are the differences between the Greek Hestia and the Knives would have been used only in conjunction with one or other of these implements. It is entirely possible that miniature ceramics were not, in reality, less expensive offerings than actual foodstuffs. WebComparative mythology is the comparison of myths from different cultures in an attempt to identify shared themes and characteristics. 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. ex Fest. Liv. 46 20 As Scheid has reconstructed Roman public sacrifice,Footnote Flashcards. 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). 132.2; Scheid Reference Scheid2005: 1369). From an examination that is restricted to Roman sources and that sets aside Christian texts where the terms for these various rituals begin to be used in rather different ways, it appears that the hierarchy of rituals I have just described has been imposed from the outside. Study sets, textbooks, questions. 90 The ancients derived the term from magis auctus and understood it to mean to increase and by extension to honour with.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. A brief survey of the bone assemblages from sites in west-central Italy is offered by Bouma Reference Bouma1996: 1.22841. 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. 42 subsilles. 96 Plaut., Amph. Greek 65 For example, think about the Roman and Greek mythologies about gods. Nacirema is American spelt backwards, and Miner shows to, and interprets for, us our own bathroom habits.Footnote This is the insider-outsider problem in nuce. The Ancient Greek Underworld 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. Footnote These two passages from Pliny and Apuleius may provide an explanation for the hundreds of thousands of miniature fictile vessels (plates, cups, etc.) ex Fest. 63 The equation of sacrifice with the offering of an animal is not completely divorced from the ancient sources. and first fruits.Footnote 12 Vuli, Hrvoje From here, we can speculate that sacrifice was not understood by the Romans primarily as the ritual slaughter of an animal. The description of Decius ensuing death is very spare and devoid of any sacrificial imagery or terminology. In Latin, one does not sacrifice with a knife or with an axe. 37 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 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 It appears that no Roman source ever uses the language of sacrificium to describe devotio,Footnote Similar difficulties beset efforts, both ancient and modern, to reconstruct the technical differences among the concepts of sacer, sanctus, and religiosus: see Rives Reference Rives and Tellegen-Couperus2011. 58 Prescendi Reference Prescendi2007: 22441 and, arriving at the same conclusion by a different path, Schultz Reference Schultz2012: 1323. Roman Carretero, Lara Gonzalez 55, The link between consumption and sacrifice is also reinforced by a second category of sacrificial items that Romans did not eat: animals, including human animals, that were not regularly included in the Roman diet. Were these items sprinkled with mola salsa?Footnote Aldrete counts at least fifty-six sculptural reliefs dating from the seventh century b.c.e. milk,Footnote Neither of the acts that Pliny mentions is explicitly identified as sacrificium, or as any other rite in particular. 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. 24 frag. 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. molo. 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. 30 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. 81, Here we have two rituals that look, to an outsider, almost identical, but Livy takes pains to distinguish between them. 80 One relatively well documented example is the collection of bones dating to the seventh and sixth centuries b.c.e. 1996: The Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd edn), Oxford. The expression rem dvnam facer, to make a thing sacred, 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. By looking at Roman sacrificium through the insider-outsider lens, by keeping in sight what is there in the sources, what we add to it, and where our modern notion of sacrifice does and does not align with the Romans own idea, we have a sharper, more detailed picture of one aspect of Roman antiquity. Also Var., Men. 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. 68 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 2 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. If we allow only items explicitly identified as sacrificia in Roman sources, our list includes beans,Footnote 56 For the difference in Roman attitudes toward human sacrifice and other forms of ritual killing, see Schultz Reference Schultz2010. Aldrete Reference Aldrete2014: 32. refriva faba; Plin., N.H. 18.119. e.g., O'Gorman Reference O'Gorman2010: 1217 and Versnel Reference Versnel1976. refriva faba. Sacrifices of wine and incense are common in the Commentarii Fratrum Arvalium, e.g. 11 66 49 Oliveira, Cludia Lucil. WebRoman sacrificial practices were not functionally different from Greek, although the Roman rite was distinguishable from the Greek and Etruscan. The most famous vegetal offering occurred at the Liberalia, the festival of the god Liber, described by Varro: Liberalia dicta, quod per totum oppidum eo die sedent sacerdotes Liberi anus hedera coronatae cum libis et foculo pro emptore sacrificantes (The Liberalia is so called because on that day priestesses of Liber, old women crowned with ivy, settle themselves throughout the whole town with cakes and a brazier, making sacrifices on behalf of the customer).Footnote 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. Neither Miner's nor his reader's understanding is right and the other wrong: they are two different views of the same set of data, and both are valuable. Contra Prescendi Reference Prescendi2007: 223. 358L. 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 An emic explanation is essential for understanding how people within a given system understand that system, but because it is culturally and historically bounded, its use is somewhat limited. 78L, s.v. One does, however, sacrifice with a cow, with a pig, or with a little cruet. The quotation comes from Frankfurter Reference Frankfurter2011: 75. Mactare is another ritual performed on animals (referred to as hostiae and victimae) at an altar, but also on porridge (Nonius 539L). Scheid Reference Scheid2005: 1002; Reference Scheid2012: 84. 37 67 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.
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