Plu., RQ 83=Mor. On the early Christian appropriation and transformation of Roman sacrificial imagery and discourse, see Castelli Reference Castelli2004: 509. Greek Translation. This is made clear in numerous passages from several Roman authors. Published by The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies. In addition to Zeus and Hera, there were many other major and minor gods in the Greek religion. ex Fest. Differences between Greek and Roman sacrifices Flashcards That we cannot fully recover what were the critical differences among these rites is frustrating, but the situation is certainly not unique in the study of Roman religion. D. 6.9 (which probably draws on Varro) and possibly Paul. But upon further reflection, in fact, the use of cruets and plates actually emphasizes the importance of the meal that concluded a Roman sacrifice. Instead they seem to have conceived of it as the ritual consecration of an animal which was afterwards killed and eaten. The errors and flaws that remain are all my own. They were rewarded for their endeavors with the position of judge in the Underworld. Differences Between Greek and Roman Footnote 22.57.26, discussed also in Schultz Reference Schultz2012: 1267. 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. What are the differences between Greek and Roman heroes? 22. Even if this is the case, the argument still stands that these passages underscore how essential was consumption to the ritual of sacrificium. 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 Parents: Aeacus: Zeus and Aegina; Rhadamanthus and Minos: Zeus and Europa. Fest. 3.12.2. 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. differences between Roman ex Fest. Roman sacrifice The ultimate conclusion of this investigation is that, although in many important ways this ritual comes close to aligning with the dominant modern understanding of sacrifice, Roman sacrificium is both more and less than the ritualized killing of a living being as an offering to the divine:Footnote 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. ex Fest. 59 83 344L, s.v. Knives would have been used only in conjunction with one or other of these implements. Minerva and Athena: Roman vs. Greek Goddesses of War 6 1 The quotation comes from Frankfurter Reference Frankfurter2011: 75. 95 The most common form of ritual killing among the Romans was the disposal of hermaphroditic children.Footnote Var., L. 5.112; see also Cic., Har. Another major difference between Greek gods and Roman gods is in the physical appearance of the deities. Greek Zeus to the Roman Jupiter: The Complete Guide (2022) 50 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. 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. Roman sacrificium is both less and more than the typical etic notion of sacrifice. 68 The most common images of blood sacrifice in Roman art are procession scenes of animals being led to the altar or standing before it, waiting for mola salsa to be applied to them.Footnote 24 It is understandable that, from the etic viewpoint, two rituals performed in roughly the same way should appear to be identical to each other, even if emic accounts distinguish between them. 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. 6 sacrima. incense,Footnote Finally, both ancient societies have twelve main gods and goddesses. 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. Van Straten Reference Van Straten1995: 188. For the possible link between this instance and the revelation of an unchaste Vestal, see Schultz Reference Schultz2012: 126 n. 18. Greek gods had heavy emphasis placed on their Comparative mythology has served a variety of academic purposes. 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. Both Rhadamanthus and Aeacus were renowned for their justice. from the archaic temple at the site of S. Omobono in Rome.Footnote e.g., J. Scheid, s.v. 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 molo. At N.H. 29.578, Pliny tells us that a dog was crucified annually at a particular location in Rome, and that puppies used to be considered to be such pure eating that they were used in place of victims (hostiarum vice) to appease the divine; puppy was still on the menu at banquets for the gods in Pliny's own day. As in the Greek world, sacrifice was the central ritual of religion. 75 As illustration, let us return to Livy and the human sacrifice in 216 b.c.e. 92 Furthermore, although all of these rites were performed on foodstuffs at altars or at least in sanctuaries, there are some critical differences among them and the ways they are discussed by the Romans. 96 On three occasions during the Republic (228,Footnote 10 The insider-outsider problem has had little impact on the study of religion in pre-Christian Rome. There are many other non-meat sacrifices the Romans could offer. While vegetal and meat offerings were on a par, inedible gifts could be sacrificed only as substitutes for edible offerings when money was a concern. Differences 43 87 MacKinnon Reference MacKinnon2004: 5974. 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. 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? 76. 344L and 345L, s.v. WebIn Greek mythology the king of gods is known as Zeus, whereas Romans call the king of gods Jupiter. 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. 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. Ernout and Meillet Reference Ernout and Meillet1979: 376 s.v. 68 86 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. 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. 36 Interim ex fatalibus libris sacrificia aliquot extraordinaria facta, inter quae Gallus et Galla, Graecus et Graeca in foro boario sub terram vivi demissi sunt in locum saxo consaeptum, iam ante hostiis humanis, minime Romano sacro, imbutum. 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. Of the fifty-six reliefs, forty-one show officials carrying axes. 1419). 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 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. Despite the fact that the Romans buried broken or superfluous gifts to the gods in deposits for hundreds of years, there are to my knowledge only two references to the practice in all of Latin literature.Footnote The equation of sacrifice with the offering of an animal is not completely divorced from the ancient sources. sacrifice, Roman in OCD 60 On a wider scale, the arguments made here about the nature of Roman sacrificium further undermine the increasingly discredited idea that sacrifice as a universal human behaviour is primarily, if not exclusively, about the violence of killing an animal victim. 4.57. 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. As suggested by Bouma Reference Bouma1996: 1.23841. 67 See Oakley Reference Oakley1998: 481 and Sacco Reference Sacco2004: 316. The expression rem dvnam facer, to make a thing sacred, 88. 7 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. 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 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. In the sacred realm, Romans could also pollucere a tithe to the god Hercules.Footnote 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. mactus; Walde and Hofmann Reference Walde and Hofmann1954: 2.4 s.v. 1996: The Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd edn), Oxford. (ed.) An exception is Scheid Reference Scheid2005: 52. The issue remains active in religious studies, as it does in cultural anthropology more widely. Aul. Total loading time: 0 Val. and for looking at Roman religion in the context of other religious traditions. I also thank the anonymous reviewers for helpful comments, suggestions and objections that have greatly improved this piece. A brief survey of the bone assemblages from sites in west-central Italy is offered by Bouma Reference Bouma1996: 1.22841. frag. e.g., Liv. 11 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 refriva faba; Plin., N.H. 18.119. Match. 132; Cass. Has data issue: true Greek Gods and Religious Practices | Essay | The Metropolitan WebIt housed an altar for animal sacrifice and was said to constantly burn incense. 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. Burkert Reference Burkert and Bing1983: 3; Girard Reference Girard and Gregory1977: 1. 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 The S. Omobono material shows a definite preference for certain species (sheep, goats, pigs),Footnote Tereso, Joo Pedro In overlooking the differences between the Roman idea of sacrificium and the modern idea of sacrifice, we lose some of the details of how the Romans perceived a core element of their own experience of the divine. Livy's abhorrence of the Romans action is in line with other Roman authors disgust at the performance of sacrificium on humans by other ethnic groups, especially Carthaginians and Gauls.Footnote mactus; Serv., A. According to Pliny, Curius declared under oath that he had appropriated for himself no booty praeter guttum faginum, quo sacrificaret (N.H. 16.185). 08 June 2016. 38 Hermes, who had winged feet, was the messenger of the gods and could fly anywhere with great speed. The relationship between magmentum and augmentum (Paul. 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. 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. The expression rem dvnam facer, to make a thing sacred, shows that sacrifice was an act of transfer of ownership. 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 37 See also n. 9 above. 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. It is the only one of these terms that does not come to be used outside the realm of the divine. More Greek words for sacrifice. 6.343 and 11.108. 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 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. 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 58 How to say sacrifice in Greek - WordHippo Difference Between Romans and Greeks 12 The modern assumption that sacrifice requires an animal victim obfuscates the full range of sacrificium among the Romans. Moses, Reference Moses, Brocato and Terrenatoforthcoming, table 8. 31 132.12). 34 2013: The Fragments of the Roman Historians, 3 vols, Oxford, Hornblower, S., and Spawforth, A. See, for example, Morris et al. Modern theorizations of sacrifice focus on animal victims, treating the sacrifice of vegetal substances, if they are considered at all, as an afterthought or simply setting vegetal offerings as a second, lesser ritual, a substitution or a pale imitation.Footnote 9 54 The Romans worshipped the same goddess, or rather the same ideas embodied in her, under the name of Vesta, which is in reality identical with 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. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings. 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. molo; de Vaan Reference De Vaan2008: 3867 s.v. uncovered in votive deposits throughout Italy. 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. 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. 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. 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 283F284C; Liv., Per. WebComparative mythology is the comparison of myths from different cultures in an attempt to identify shared themes and characteristics. Bottom line: The Greeks tended towards greater personification of their gods; the Romans tended towards their religion being a series of quid pro quo transactions with From this same root also derives the name for the mixture sprinkled on the animal before it was killed, mola salsa.Footnote On fourteen occasions between 209 and 92 b.c.e., androgyne infants and children were included among the prodigies reported to the Roman Senate. ), 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. to the fourth century c.e. 3, 13456; Prescendi Reference Prescendi2007: 1225; Rpke Reference Rpke and Gordon2007: 1378. 3 Fest. 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. 20 Every household has one or more shrines devoted to this purpose. Roman 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. A wider range of scholarly approaches is presented by McClymond Reference McClymond2008: 124. Now, the Romans did not eat people, so how does their performance of human sacrifice reinforce the link between sacrifice and dining? 64 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. 100 44 Neither of the acts that Pliny mentions is explicitly identified as sacrificium, or as any other rite in particular. 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. Sacrifices of wine and incense are common in the Commentarii Fratrum Arvalium, e.g. 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. the differences between Roman gods and Greek 90 Since Greeks were the first ones, Romans followed them. 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 87 In both the passages from Pliny and Apuleius, the ritual implements are of diminutive size. The objectivity of the outside observer can also facilitate cross-cultural comparison. 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. Modern etymologists disagree on the origin of the term. 44 11 To my knowledge, the sole exception is a phrase preserved twice in the Commentarii Fratrum Arvalium (Scheid Reference Scheid1998: nn. 6.34. The catinus is a piece of everyday ware used to serve food that contains a lot of liquid (L. 5.120). 9 Sorted by: 6. Aldrete Reference Aldrete2014: 32. Greek Rarest of all are images depicting the litatio, the inspection of the animal's entrails that Romans performed after ritual slaughter to determine the will of the gods.Footnote Ernout and Meillet Reference Ernout and Meillet1979: 411 s.v. The preceding discussion has, I hope, made clear that the Romans own notion of sacrifice is broader and more complex than is generally perceived.

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