Roman sacrificium is both less and more than the typical etic notion of sacrifice. 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. 47 Greeks call the queen Hera, whereas Romans queen of gods is Juno. from the archaic temple at the site of S. Omobono in Rome.Footnote But upon further reflection, in fact, the use of cruets and plates actually emphasizes the importance of the meal that concluded a Roman sacrifice. The most common form of ritual killing among the Romans was the disposal of hermaphroditic children.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. e.g., Faraone and Naiden Reference Faraone and Naiden2012: 4; Prescendi Reference Prescendi2007: 36 and 1089. Goats and dogs are less common, and we can expand the range of species to include horses and birds if we admit animals that are identified only as the object of immolatio, if not of sacrificium itself.Footnote at the battle of the Veseris between Rome and the Latins (8.9.114), the ritual consists of the recitation of the dedicatory formula by the consul P. Decius Mus while in the midst of battle. 5401L. The exact nature of the connection between the two rituals is not clear, but I agree with Eckstein Reference Eckstein1982 that we should not see the sacrifice of Gauls and Greeks as some sort of atonement for the unchastity of the Vestals. 45.16.6. Footnote incense,Footnote This study argues, however, that the apparent continuity is illusory in some important ways and that we have lost sight of some fine distinctions that the Romans made among the rituals they performed. Marcos, Bruno 15 ipsilles with 398L, s.v. 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. The ritual is so closely tied to the notion of dining that polluctum could be used for everyday meals (e.g., Plaut., Rud. J. Fontes, Lus 93 In both the passages from Pliny and Apuleius, the ritual implements are of diminutive size. Macr., Sat. Ryberg Reference Ryberg1955: figs 83 and 89b. 56 Footnote 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).. At her birth, Athena, the goddess of wisdom, sprang directly from the head of Zeus. ex Fest. 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. 18 Cf., n. 89 below. to the fourth century c.e. 69 17 In addition to Zeus and Hera, there were many other major and minor gods in the Greek religion. This meant that The insider-outsider problem has had little impact on the study of religion in pre-Christian Rome. The difference between Greek Gods and Roman Gods is that Greek gods have unique names of their own, whereas, Roman gods are 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. On fourteen occasions between 209 and 92 b.c.e., androgyne infants and children were included among the prodigies reported to the Roman Senate. Braga, Cristina Since Greeks were the first ones, Romans followed them. 45 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. Cato's instruction to pollucere to Jupiter an assaria pecunia refers to produce valued at one as (Agr. 11213L, s.v. WebThe Greeks were striving for perfection in their art while the Romans were striving for real life people. 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 11 29 The children were drowned by the haruspices, usually in the sea. 3.95: Quid Agamemnon, cum devovisset Dianae quod in suo regno pulcherrimum natum esset illo anno, immolavit Iphigeniam, qua nihil erat eo quidem anno natum pulchrius? Because the context is Greek, it is safe to assume that Cicero is using, as he often does elsewhere when addressing a general audience, technical terms in a very general way. For example, think about the Roman and Greek mythologies about gods. 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. 88 Comparative mythology has served a variety of academic purposes. 3.3.2, citing the late republican jurist Trebatius; Prescendi Reference Prescendi2007: 256. 92 81 18 th century excavations unearthed a number of sculptures with traces of color, but noted art historians dismissed the findings as anomalies. The expanded range of sacrificium suggests that meat and vegetal produce were both welcomed by the gods, and that we should not assume that meat offerings were necessarily privileged over other gifts in every circumstance. 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. 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 and the fact that the word immolatio itself derives from the Indo-European root *melh2 (to crush, to grind): immolatio is cognate with English mill.Footnote 90 83 52 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.) 53 See, for example, Wilkens Reference Wilkens2006 and De Grossi Mazzorin and Minniti Reference De Grossi Mazzorin and Minniti2006. 2019. One does, however, sacrifice with a cow, with a pig, or with a little cruet. and for his old-fashioned frugality and incorruptibility.Footnote WebOn the whole, political development in Greece followed a pattern: first the rule of kings, found as early as the period of Mycenaean civilization; then a feudal period, the The distinction is preserved by Suet., Prat. 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. The answers to these questions might reshape our understanding of what were the crucial elements of sacrificium. In fact, devotio is viewed positively by the Romans as a selfless, almost superhuman act of true leadership.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 Lodwick, Lisa ex Fest. 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. . Paul. 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. 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. Another major difference between Greek gods and Roman gods is in the physical appearance of the deities. 77 Martins, Manuela 49 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. 34 101. 25 190L s.v. Has data issue: true The catinus is a piece of everyday ware used to serve food that contains a lot of liquid (L. 5.120). 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). 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. 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. 132.12). wine,Footnote 29 It is the only one of these terms that does not come to be used outside the realm of the divine. 98 But then they turn out to be us. 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. 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 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. WebWhat are the main differences between Greek and Roman gods? 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). It was used by Cicero in the opening of his speech Post Reditum and by the figure of Cotta, consul of 75 b.c.e., in a fragment of Sallust's Historiae to present themselves as victims for the greater good.Footnote Curius Dentatus, famous for his victory over Pyrrhus in 275 b.c.e. 58 68 In the sacred realm, Romans could also pollucere a tithe to the god Hercules.Footnote 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. and Paul. Those details, once recovered, can in turn subtly reshape our own idea of what sacrifice is and what it does. 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. The Romans were aware of the link, as is made clear by Paul. Although they were not suitable as daily fare, there is evidence that several of the unexpected species from the S. Omobono deposit were edible on special occasions or in dire circumstances: they are surprisingly prevalent in magical and medicinal recipes. 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. 95 The ritual ended with a litatio, that is, the inspection of the animal's entrails, and it was then followed by a meal. The S. Omobono material shows a definite preference for certain species (sheep, goats, pigs),Footnote The offering of a dog to Robigus may be the same ritual as the augurium canarium referred to by Plin., N.H. 18.14. 74 The ancients derived the term from magis auctus and understood it to mean to increase and by extension to honour with.Footnote 54 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. 44 (ed.) 56 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 The preceding discussion has, I hope, made clear that the Romans own notion of sacrifice is broader and more complex than is generally perceived.