88 Reed, Kelly 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. Ankarloo and Clark Reference Ankarloo and Clark1999: 756; Wilburn Reference Wilburn2012: 8790. Another example of a ritual that looks a lot like sacrificium but is not identical to it is polluctum. Pliny and Apuleius may reflect an lite misconception about the religious praxis of lower class worshippers, offering an incorrect, emic interpretation of an observable phenomenon. Cf., n. 89 below. The database is a very useful, but not infallible tool. 54 2 Val.
Roman 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
Roman sacrifice 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. 47 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. 12 31 At her birth, Athena, the goddess of wisdom, sprang directly from the head of Zeus. 74 Another famous instance of this scene is on the Boscoreale cup (Aldrete Reference Aldrete2014: 33, fig. 83 Footnote Comparative mythology has served a variety of academic purposes. 69 and The modern assumption that sacrifice requires an animal victim obfuscates the full range of sacrificium among the Romans. Both Rhadamanthus and Aeacus were renowned for their justice. 24 Some rituals, such as the recitation of prayers, were simple. 67 The quotation comes from Frankfurter Reference Frankfurter2011: 75. As illustration, let us return to Livy and the human sacrifice in 216 b.c.e. The basic argument transfers well to the Roman context. 98 Through the outsider point of view, we can interpret it in light of comparable behaviours in other cultures. pecunia sacrificium; Paul. 4 Working with the two of them together, we can get a more nuanced understanding of a cultural habit. 30 Reference Morris, Leung, Ames and Lickel1999 and Berry Reference Berry, Headland, Pike and Harris1990. October equus. 58 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. 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). 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. Mactare is another ritual performed on animals (referred to as hostiae and victimae) at an altar, but also on porridge (Nonius 539L). On the early Christian appropriation and transformation of Roman sacrificial imagery and discourse, see Castelli Reference Castelli2004: 509. 97 3 Scholars are quick to identify all of them as forms of sacrifice, which may well be the case. For a treatment of this methodological issue on a broader scale, see the rather pointed critique in Hopkins Reference Hopkins1978: 1808. 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 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
78L, s.v. 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. molo. 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 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. For illustration, we can turn once again to the elder Pliny, who writes about the habits of the Gallic tribes north of the Alps: et nuperrime trans Alpis hominem immolari gentium earum more solitum, quod paulum a mandendo abest (And very recently, on the other side of the Alps, in accordance with the custom of those peoples, individuals were habitually sacrificed, which is not all that far from eating them N.H. 7.9). 55 As Scheid has reconstructed Roman public sacrifice,Footnote In this way, the native, or emic, Roman view of sacrifice is more expansive than ours. 31; Plin., N.H. 36.39; Tac., Ann. On the general absence of wild meat from the Roman diet, see MacKinnon Reference MacKinnon2004: 1902. refriva faba; Plin., N.H. 18.119. favisae. Of this class of rituals, sacrificium does seem to have been somehow different from the others. 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 Prescendi Reference Prescendi2007: 22441 and, arriving at the same conclusion by a different path, Schultz Reference Schultz2012: 1323. Scheid's reconstruction and interpretation is followed by Prescendi Reference Prescendi2007: 3148. 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. Contra Prescendi Reference Prescendi2007: 223. subsilles. WebIn Greek mythology the king of gods is known as Zeus, whereas Romans call the king of gods Jupiter. 5 Nacirema is American spelt backwards, and Miner shows to, and interprets for, us our own bathroom habits.Footnote Let me be clear. Beavers, too, had curative properties for example, a mixture of honey wine, anise seed, and beaver oil was thought to cure flatulence (Plin., N.H. 20.193) and their anal scent glands (mistaken for testicles) were part of the Roman trade in luxury goods.Footnote ex Fest. I also thank the anonymous reviewers for helpful comments, suggestions and objections that have greatly improved this piece. The Romans performed at least four forms of ritual killing, only one of which was sacrifice. But upon further reflection, in fact, the use of cruets and plates actually emphasizes the importance of the meal that concluded a Roman sacrifice. and more. Augustine, Civ. The expression rem dvnam facer, to make a thing sacred, shows that sacrifice was an act of transfer of ownership. The objectivity of the outside observer can also facilitate cross-cultural comparison. Var., L. 5.112; see also Cic., Har. 18 th century excavations unearthed a number of sculptures with traces of color, but noted art historians dismissed the findings as anomalies. Curius Dentatus, famous for his victory over Pyrrhus in 275 b.c.e. Test. Jupiter was a sky-god who Romans believed oversaw all aspects of life; he is thought to have originated from the Greek god Zeus. 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. 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. Huet explains the rarity of killing scenes in sacrificial reliefs from Italy by pointing out that the emphasis in these reliefs is really on the piety of the sacrificant who stands before the altar.Footnote 86 It is the only one of these terms that does not come to be used outside the realm of the divine.
The Similarities And Differences Of Greek And Roman Religions 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. Dogs had other ritual uses as well. 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. for young animals (including foetal and neonatal specimens),Footnote Despite the fact that the S. Omobono assemblage dates to several centuries before the Classical period, the range of faunal remains from the site are primarily what one would expect from a sanctuary based on what we know from literary texts. 68 This is made clear in numerous passages from several Roman authors. If the commander who devoted himself did not die in battle, he was interdicted from performing any ritual on behalf of the state (publicum divinum). Sacrificium is the performance of a complex of actions that presents the gods with an edible gift by the sprinkling of mola salsa and the ultimate goal of which seems to be the feeding of both gods and men.
Greek and Roman Ernout and Meillet Reference Ernout and Meillet1979: 411 s.v. 22 Has data issue: true 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 The errors and flaws that remain are all my own. Cato's instruction to pollucere to Jupiter an assaria pecunia refers to produce valued at one as (Agr. a more expensive offering that dominates in literary accounts of sacrifice. As has long been recognized, sacrificare and sacrificium are compounds of the phrase sacrum facere (to render sacred), and what is sacrum is anything that belongs to the gods.Footnote 38 413=Macr., Sat. 24 Plu., RQ 83=Mor. See Oakley Reference Oakley1998: 481 and Sacco Reference Sacco2004: 316. In contrast, as I have pointed out, Livy uses the language of sacrifice to describe the second interment and in the next breath expressly distances Roman tradition from it, calling it a rite scarcely Roman (minime Romano sacro). Lelekovi, Tino 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 The burial of Gauls and Greeks was a sacrifice, but one that Romans ought not to have performed. The literary evidence for this is slender but persuasive. In Greek and Roman religion, the gods and 113L, s.v. Chr. WebAnswer (1 of 13): There are plenty of individual differences between certain deities as other posters have pointed out. 85 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. 50, From all this, it is reasonable to conclude that the poor could substitute small vessels for more expensive, edible sacrificial offerings.
Difference Between Romans and Greeks 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.