differences between greek and roman sacrifice

35 This should prompt researchers, myself included, to greater caution when presenting a native in our case, Roman point of view and to greater clarity about whether the concept under discussion at any given moment is really the Romans or ours, or is shared by both groups. Decline was interrupted by the short-lived Restoration under the emperor Augustus (reign 27 BC AD 14), then it resumed. Nor, in broader terms, do I think that internal, or emic, categories should automatically be privileged over external, or etic, ones.Footnote This is suggested by Ov., F. 1.1278. 20 Cf. 3 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. There is also a queen of gods in Greek and Roman mythologies. Poverty, I say, is the ancient founder of all states throughout the ages, the discoverer of all arts, devoid of all transgressions, resplendent in every type of glory, and enjoying every praise among all the nations. If we allow only items explicitly identified as sacrificia in Roman sources, our list includes beans,Footnote There is a small amount of evidence for a form of auspicium performed with beans: Fest. 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. The limited sources we have are imprecise in their use of the terms even Cicero, who was an augur and was surely aware of the distinction.Footnote The burial of Gauls and Greeks was a sacrifice, but one that Romans ought not to have performed. What are the differences between the Greek Hestia and the 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 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. For a treatment of this methodological issue on a broader scale, see the rather pointed critique in Hopkins Reference Hopkins1978: 1808. 6.34. the differences between Roman gods and Greek The distinction is preserved by Suet., Prat. 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 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. Feature Flags: { 72 132.2; Scheid Reference Scheid2005: 1369). Var., L. 6.3.14. One does, however, sacrifice with a cow, with a pig, or with a little cruet. Greek Gods and Religious Practices | Essay | The Metropolitan 49 Live interment was only performed by the Romans as ritual killing, but live interment was not the only form of ritual killing (whether human sacrifice or not) that the Romans had available to them. Difference Between Greek Gods and Roman Gods What are the differences between Greek and Roman heroes? 8.9 per cent of the total, according to Moses, Reference Moses, Brocato and Terrenatoforthcoming, table 2. 46 The problem is widely acknowledged, but see specifically Moussy Reference Moussy1977; Reference Moussy1990; Engels Reference Engels2007: 25982. This is made clear in numerous passages from several Roman authors. and Were they used in some form of divination?Footnote 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. Cato's instruction to pollucere to Jupiter an assaria pecunia refers to produce valued at one as (Agr. Paul. 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. From here, we can speculate that sacrifice was not understood by the Romans primarily as the ritual slaughter of an animal. 14 Foundational is the collection of essays on Greek sacrifice in Detienne and Vernant Reference Detienne, Vernant and Wissing1989. Tagliacozzo Reference Tagliacozzo1989: 66. 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. 423L s.v. 48 32 73 48 Also Var., Men. 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). Was a portion consumed later? 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 The corresponding substantive is magmentum, a type of offering laid out only at certain temples.Footnote 81 Paul. Curius Dentatus, famous for his victory over Pyrrhus in 275 b.c.e. ex Fest. Hostname: page-component-7fc98996b9-rf4gk ex Fest. Compare Var., R. 2.8.1. For example, scholars have used the relationships between different myths to trace the development of religions and cultures, to propose common origins for and the second century c.e. 9.7.mil.Rom.2). 43 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. eadem est enim paupertas apud Graecos in Aristide iusta, in Phocione benigna, in Epaminonda strenua, in Socrate sapiens, in Homero diserta. 96 They were rewarded for their endeavors with the position of judge in the Underworld. This repeated coincidence of ritual performances suggests that the two forms of ritual killingFootnote ex Fest. 74 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. ), 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. Roman e.g., J. Scheid, s.v. Columella 2.21.4 might also refer to dog sacrifice, but the verb (feceris) leaves it ambiguous as to which ritual was being performed. 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 Greek and Roman On the Latin terminology for living sacrificial victims, see Prescendi Reference Prescendi2009. and for looking at Roman religion in the context of other religious traditions. 5 5401L. There is a difference, however. Scholars are quick to identify all of them as forms of sacrifice, which may well be the case. Comparative mythology has served a variety of academic purposes. Plutarch is the only source for dog sacrifice at the Lupercalia (RQ 68 and 111=Mor. Cf., n. 89 below. 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. 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 D. 6.9 (which probably draws on Varro) and possibly Paul. 76 Another major difference between Greek gods and Roman gods is in the physical appearance of the deities. Since Greeks were the first ones, Romans followed them. 37 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. Liv. Every household has one or more shrines devoted to this purpose. molo; de Vaan Reference De Vaan2008: 3867 s.v. 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 15, The apparent alignment of emic (Roman) and etic (modern) perceptions of the centrality of slaughter to the Roman sacrificial process, however, is not complete. 47 11213L, s.v. Our modern idea of sacrifice can, with some refinement and clarification, remain a useful concept for constructing accounts of how and why the Romans dealt with their gods in the ways they didFootnote Created by. Plut., RQ 52=Mor. WebIn Greek mythology the king of gods is known as Zeus, whereas Romans call the king of gods Jupiter. 38 Dogs: Fest. The present study turns the insider-outsider lens on the study of Roman sacrifice: it aims to trace, through an analysis of a set of Latin religious terminology, how Romans thought about sacrifice and to highlight how this conception, which I refer to by the Latin term sacrificium, relates to two dominant aspects of modern theorizations of sacrifice as a universal human behaviour: sacrifice as violence and sacrifice as ritual meal. favisae. See Oakley Reference Oakley1998: 481 and Sacco Reference Sacco2004: 316. For the Greeks Lucil. In this way, the native, or emic, Roman view of sacrifice is more expansive than ours. Far less common in the S. Omobono collection, but still present in significant amounts, is a range of animals that do not seem to have formed a regular part of the Roman diet, such as deer, a beaver, lizards, a tortoise, and several puppies.Footnote subsilles. Greek Zeus to the Roman Jupiter: The Complete Guide (2022) Aldrete's survey of images commonly identified as sacrifice scenes makes clear that Roman art depicts different procedures (hitting with a hammer, chopping with an axe) and implements (hammers, axes, knives), and that the preference of implement changes over time. Hemina fr. There are at least two other rituals that the Romans performed that also required the death of a person. 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. Home. 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 Val. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings. 84 14 The Similarities And Differences Of Greek And Roman Religions The issue remains active in religious studies, as it does in cultural anthropology more widely. 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. 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. 24 Finally, both ancient societies have twelve main gods and goddesses. Cornell, T. J. 66 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. In fact, devotio is viewed positively by the Romans as a selfless, almost superhuman act of true leadership.Footnote Goats: Var., R. 1.2.19; Liv. 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 Devotio is frequently called self-sacrifice by modern scholars,Footnote 83 34 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. 75 But then they turn out to be us. 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. 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. 44 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. Neither of the acts that Pliny mentions is explicitly identified as sacrificium, or as any other rite in particular. 33 82 73 Oliveira, Cludia 24 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. WebThe standard view of paganism (traditional city-based polytheistic Graeco-Roman religion) in the Roman empire has long been one of decline beginning in the second and first centuries BC. 176 and Serv., A. For the possible link between this instance and the revelation of an unchaste Vestal, see Schultz Reference Schultz2012: 126 n. 18. 19 57 Of these, only dogs are attested in the written sources as victims of Roman sacrifice, albeit rarely.Footnote 4 Flashcards. Comparative mythology - Wikipedia Test. 101 5 18 Augustine, Civ. e.g., O'Gorman Reference O'Gorman2010: 1217 and Versnel Reference Versnel1976. Differences between Greek and Roman sacrifices Flashcards 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. 80 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. 64 Greek gods had heavy emphasis placed on their MacBain Reference MacBain1982: 12735; Schultz Reference Schultz2010: 52930; Reference Schultz2012: 12930. See, for example, Morris et al. Schultz Reference Schultz2010: 5202. a more expensive offering that dominates in literary accounts of sacrifice. The ritual seems to be even more flexible than sacrificium in the range of objects on which it could be performed. 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 answer is that human sacrifice, which the Romans are quick to dismiss as something other people do (note that, although Livy is clear that the burial of Gauls and Greeks is a sacrifice, he also says that it was hardly a Roman rite), is closely linked in the Roman mind with cannibalism. 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. Moses, Reference Moses, Brocato and Terrenatoforthcoming. 9.641. Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Rome The catinus is a piece of everyday ware used to serve food that contains a lot of liquid (L. 5.120). 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. and for his old-fashioned frugality and incorruptibility.Footnote See, for example, Wilkens Reference Wilkens2006 and De Grossi Mazzorin and Minniti Reference De Grossi Mazzorin and Minniti2006. 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 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 60 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 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 18 th century excavations unearthed a number of sculptures with traces of color, but noted art historians dismissed the findings as anomalies. 70 WebGreeks Romans Lived in small rural communities Polis functioned as the city-states religious center Greek Gods Sense of identity Polis isolated from one another and independent Sanctuaries to share music, religion, poetry, and athletics Classical Greek Orders basic design elements for architecture (sense of order, predictability, and The expression rem dvnam facer, to make a thing sacred, thysa. Another famous instance of this scene is on the Boscoreale cup (Aldrete Reference Aldrete2014: 33, fig. Footnote As in the Greek world, sacrifice was the central ritual of religion. Therefore, instead of privileging either the emic or etic, I argue for an increased awareness of the insider-outsider distinction and for an approach to Roman religion that makes use of both emic and etic concepts. 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. WebRomans invested much of their time serving the gods, performing rituals and sacrifices in honor of them. refriva faba. At 8.10.1112, Livy notes that a commander could devote one of his soldiers rather than himself. 11 frag. Aeacus holds the keys to Hades. The equation of sacrifice with the offering of an animal is not completely divorced from the ancient sources. Among these criteria are a clear preference for specific parts of an animal or for animals of a specific age/sex/species, unusual butchery patterns, burning or other alterations to the remains, and the association of the remains with other material (e.g., votive offerings) linked to ritual activity. 97 The ancient Greek and Roman gods did not become incarnate the way Jesus was, did not enter the stream of real human history the way Jesus did, did not die as a 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. For example, think about the Roman and Greek mythologies about gods. CIL 6.32323.13940=ILS 5050.13940=Pighi Reference Pighi1965: 117 (from Rome). Plaut., Stich 233; Cato, Agr. and again in 114 or 113 b.c.e. 1). There is a small group of other rituals that share certain structural similarities with sacrificium, but which the Romans during the Republic and early Empire appear to have distinguished from it. Expert solutions. 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. The difference between Greek Gods and Roman Gods is that Greek gods have unique names of their own, whereas, Roman gods are 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. more because the Romans sacrificed things that are not animals, and less because sacrificium is not a term that encompasses every Roman ritual that involves the death of a living being. This has repercussions for our understanding of some elements of Roman religious thought. The Romans performed at least four forms of ritual killing, only one of which was sacrifice. 98 72 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 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 skeletal remains of dogs sometimes found interred with human remains or inside city walls are often interpreted as sacrifice by archaeologists.Footnote 12 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. Others, such as animal Differences Paul. molo; Walde and Hofmann Reference Walde and Hofmann1954: 2.1046 s.v. Ioppolo Reference Ioppolo1972; Tagliacozzo Reference Tagliacozzo1989. the ritual began with a procession that was followed by a praefatio, a preliminary offering of prayers, wine and incense. Possible Answers: Roman temples were built on the ruins of previous structures. 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 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. 6 44 Of the fifty-six reliefs, forty-one show officials carrying axes. As is implied in all the relevant entries in the OLD. It is also noteworthy that sacrificium appears to be the only member of this class to require mola salsa. As proof, he recounts a story about M. Ryberg Reference Ryberg1955: figs 83 and 89b. 95 incense,Footnote 71. Studies of sacrifice have noted the etymological connection between immolare and mola salsa, but have not, for the most part, pressed its value for what it may reveal about where the Romans may have placed the emphasis. 8.10.)). I use ritual killing as a blanket term for any rite, including but not limited to sacrifice, that involves the death of a human being. pecunia sacrificium; Paul. Roman Gods vs. Greek Gods: Know the Difference 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 45 50, From all this, it is reasonable to conclude that the poor could substitute small vessels for more expensive, edible sacrificial offerings. 94. Chr. WebThe first way that Roman is different than Christian is because of there believe in gods. 86 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)..

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