differences between greek and roman sacrifice differences between greek and roman sacrifice

The elder Pliny, in his Natural History, discusses the high regard in which ancient Romans held simple vessels made of beechwood. 344L and 345L, s.v. ex Fest. 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. 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 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. Instead, their presence should be attributed to the status of those species as valuable and efficacious: the prevalence of dogs, lizards, and beavers in medicinal and magical recipes for potions is an indication of the exceptional value the animals were thought to have, an indication that they were somehow special, and therefore might be worthy of the gods. 4 Scholars frequently stress the connection between sacrifice and eating: The idea of food underlies the idea of sacrifice.Footnote 54 10 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. Both Rhadamanthus and Aeacus were renowned for their justice. 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 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. The closest any Roman source comes to linking devotio and sacrifice is Cic., Off. Feature Flags: { 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.) Roman sacrificium is both less and more than the typical etic notion of sacrifice. Furthermore, there is reason to think that the crucial moment, or perhaps the first crucial moment, in the whole ritual process of sacrificium for the Romans was the sprinkling of mola salsa onto the victim, whereas several important modern theorizations of sacrifice place the greatest emphasis on, and see the essential meaning of sacrifice in, the moment of slaughter. 52 21.5). 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. 69 (ed.) Neither of the acts that Pliny mentions is explicitly identified as sacrificium, or as any other rite in particular. 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). 92 20 33 The ritual seems to be even more flexible than sacrificium in the range of objects on which it could be performed. Finally, both ancient societies have twelve main gods and goddesses. The Romans performed at least four forms of ritual killing, only one of which was sacrifice. 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. We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. 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. Aldrete counts at least fifty-six sculptural reliefs dating from the seventh century b.c.e. Var., L. 6.3.14. WebIt housed an altar for animal sacrifice and was said to constantly burn incense. 3 68 100 64 537 Words 3 Pages Decent Essays Read More 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 101 ex Fest. 95 ex Fest. 8.9 per cent of the total, according to Moses, Reference Moses, Brocato and Terrenatoforthcoming, table 2. 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. molo; de Vaan Reference De Vaan2008: 3867 s.v. Lelekovi, Tino Gel. 49 56 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. Expert solutions. 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. One was killed at the Colline Gate, under the earth as is the custom and the other took her own life Since this horrible event which occurred in the midst of so many terrible things, as is wont to happen, was turned into a prodigy, the Board of Ten Men was ordered to consult the Books. Classicists generally assume that the modern idea of sacrifice as the ritual killing of an animal applies to the Roman context. and The ritual is so closely tied to the notion of dining that polluctum could be used for everyday meals (e.g., Plaut., Rud. 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. On the early Christian appropriation and transformation of Roman sacrificial imagery and discourse, see Castelli Reference Castelli2004: 509. 3.3.2, citing the late republican jurist Trebatius; Prescendi Reference Prescendi2007: 256. 132.12). 92 See, for example, Morris et al. ex Fest. 73 In Greek and Roman religion, the gods and 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. and 38 Var., L 5.122. Var., L. 5.112; see also Cic., Har. 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. 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. Horses: Plin., N.H. 28.146; Fest. e.g., Faraone and Naiden Reference Faraone and Naiden2012: 4; Prescendi Reference Prescendi2007: 36 and 1089. 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. 17ac) and the Cancellaria relief (Ryberg Reference Ryberg1955: fig. Jupiter also concentrated on protecting the Roman state. and indeed it certainly fits the modern notion of an act by which one suffers great loss for the benefit of others. 9 While there is a growing body of work done on the osteoarchaeological material from other regions of the Empire, especially the north-western provinces,Footnote 22.57.26; Cass. 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. Greek influences on Italian craftsmen in the 6 th century BC saw the image of 87 WebWhat are the main differences between Greek and Roman gods? 72 This is made clear in numerous passages from several Roman authors. Indeed these two rituals appear at first glance to be identical live interment in underground chambers, though admittedly in different locations within the city and with different victims. 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. 23 46 58 80 2019. In Latin, one does not sacrifice with a knife or with an axe. View all Google Scholar citations Curius Dentatus, famous for his victory over Pyrrhus in 275 b.c.e. Greek Translation. A wider range of scholarly approaches is presented by McClymond Reference McClymond2008: 124. 37 For example, scholars have used the relationships between different myths to trace the development of religions and cultures, to propose common origins for 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. 36 and Paul. Of these, only dogs are attested in the written sources as victims of Roman sacrifice, albeit rarely.Footnote 49 To my knowledge, the sole exception is a phrase preserved twice in the Commentarii Fratrum Arvalium (Scheid Reference Scheid1998: nn. 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. noun. Pliny reports a ritual, possibly sacrifice (res divina fit, 29.58), involving a dog in honour of the little-known goddess, Genita Mana (cf. Fest. 32 Peter=FRH F33. 1 Answer. As in the Greek world, sacrifice was the central ritual of religion. Macr., Sat. Plaut., Amph. magmentum; Serv., A. 21 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. 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 132; Cass. In Books 29 and 30 of his Natural History, the elder Pliny includes lizards in numerous medicinal recipes to cure everything from hair loss (29.108) to lower back pain (30.53) to dysentery (30.55), and the only text we have that identifies the contents of a bulla, the amulet worn by young Roman boys, instructs the reader to put lizard eyes inside it.Footnote It is likely, but admittedly not certain, that the concept of sacrificium I delineate here was also at play in citizen communities throughout the Empire, at least at moments when those communities performed public rituals in the same manner as did people in the capital. Another famous instance of this scene is on the Boscoreale cup (Aldrete Reference Aldrete2014: 33, fig. Cf., n. 89 below. ipsilles with 398L, s.v. Vaz, Filipe Costa D. 6.9 (which probably draws on Varro) and possibly Paul. 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. 55 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. 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. 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 Cf. Oliveira, Cludia 24 45 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 Another major difference between Greek gods and Roman gods is in the physical appearance of the deities. Was a portion consumed later? fabam and Fest. If we allow only items explicitly identified as sacrificia in Roman sources, our list includes beans,Footnote 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. Some rituals, such as the recitation of prayers, were simple. but in later texts as well. Footnote which I quote at some length because we shall return to this passage later on: Territi etiam super tantas clades cum ceteris prodigiis, tum quod duae Vestales eo anno, Opimia atque Floronia, stupri compertae et altera sub terra, uti mos est, ad portam Collinam necata fuerat, altera sibimet ipsa mortem consciverat; Hoc nefas cum inter tot, ut fit, clades in prodigium versum esset, decemviri libros adire iussi sunt et Q. Fabius Pictor Delphos ad oraculum missus est sciscitatum quibus precibus suppliciisque deos possent placare et quaenam futura finis tantis cladibus foret. Dogs, and puppies in particular, were thought to have some medicinal and magical properties: Pliny reports that some people thought the ashes of a dog's cranium, when consumed with a beverage, could cure abdominal pain (N.H. 30.53) and, when mixed with honey wine in particular, could cure jaundice (N.H. 30.93). 63. 6.34. 11213L, s.v. This meant that In fact, devotio is viewed positively by the Romans as a selfless, almost superhuman act of true leadership.Footnote 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). The insider-outsider problem has had little impact on the study of religion in pre-Christian Rome. 24 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. 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. This is a bad answer - I don't have sources available. It is my understanding that we lack a great deal of the sources needed for an emic unders The database is a very useful, but not infallible tool. The only Roman reference to the sacrifice of a deer pertains to a Greek context: Ov., F. 1.3878 where the deer is sacrificed to Diana as a substitute for Iphigenia. The basic argument transfers well to the Roman context. Ioppolo Reference Ioppolo1972; Tagliacozzo Reference Tagliacozzo1989. Augustine, Civ. On the contrary, Greek religion did not prefer to execute rituals as much as for this article. 68 Cornell, T. J. 1996: The Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd edn), Oxford. 83 233; CIL 12.1531=ILLRP 136=ILS 3411 (from Sora). The argument I lay out here pertains to sacrificial practice as it was conceived by Romans living in Rome and those areas of Italy that came under their control early on, during the Republic and the early Empire. Greek gods had heavy emphasis placed on their a more expensive offering that dominates in literary accounts of sacrifice. Nacirema is American spelt backwards, and Miner shows to, and interprets for, us our own bathroom habits.Footnote 46 Sacrificium included vegetal and inedible offerings, and it was not the only Roman ritual that had living victims. 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? 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 Resp. It is important to remember, however, that no ancient source articulates any sort of relationship among these rituals. 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. 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. Through the outsider point of view, we can interpret it in light of comparable behaviours in other cultures. Vuli, Hrvoje 3.2.16. Analyses of the traditions about Curius and his contemporary Fabricius, both famous for prudentia and paupertas, are found in Berrendonner Reference Berrendonner2001 and Vigourt Reference Vigourt2001. The main god and goddesses in Roman culture were Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva. 3 Macr., Sat. 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. 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. 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 The Christian fathers equation of sacrifice with violence has shaped twentieth-century theorizations of sacrifice as a universal human phenomenon,Footnote They were rewarded for their endeavors with the position of judge in the Underworld. 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. ex Fest. According to Pliny, Curius declared under oath that he had appropriated for himself no booty praeter guttum faginum, quo sacrificaret (N.H. 16.185).