wheat,Footnote 1996: The Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd edn), Oxford. Compare Var., R. 2.8.1. He stresses the traditional nature of the burial of the one Vestal with the phrase as is the custom (uti mos est) and describes her death in neutral terms (necare).Footnote 44 1.3.90 and 1.6.115; Juv. 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. 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. Yet, part of the work of a Roman historian is to try to understand how the Romans understood their world, to be aware of anachronism in our accounts thereof, and to keep in mind that the sources never truly speak for themselves. Paul. Chr. Match. At the centre of the whole complex was the immolatio, during which the animal was sprinkled with mola salsa (a mixture of spelt and salt), the flat of a knife was run along its back, and then it was slaughtered. 30 Hostname: page-component-7fc98996b9-rf4gk 70 for young animals (including foetal and neonatal specimens),Footnote A wider range of scholarly approaches is presented by McClymond Reference McClymond2008: 124. The quotation comes from Frankfurter Reference Frankfurter2011: 75. 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 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 Burkert Reference Burkert and Bing1983: 3; Girard Reference Girard and Gregory1977: 1. 94. Were these items sprinkled with mola salsa?Footnote 1 Another major difference between Greek gods and Roman gods is in the physical appearance of the deities. eadem est enim paupertas apud Graecos in Aristide iusta, in Phocione benigna, in Epaminonda strenua, in Socrate sapiens, in Homero diserta. and Paul. 93 Instead they seem to have conceived of it as the ritual consecration of an animal which was afterwards killed and eaten. Match. The Romans, however, developed a more naturalistic approach to their art. 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. It is the only one of these terms that does not come to be used outside the realm of the divine. 52 176 and Serv., A. 6.34. ex Fest. This is a clear difference from Athena, who was never associated with the weather. Knives would have been used only in conjunction with one or other of these implements. Yet so stark is the discrepancy between his (assumed) outsider perspective and our own insider understanding of the value of a bathroom, that most readers do not recognize themselves the first time they read this piece. 76. 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 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. 8.10.)). 90 344L and 345L, s.v. Of these, only dogs are attested in the written sources as victims of Roman sacrifice, albeit rarely.Footnote Oliveira, Cludia 62. Some more support for the notion that these were not interchangeable can be drawn from material evidence, visual representations of the moment of ritual slaughter. Terms in this set (7) Which one Another animal sometimes sacrificed by the Romans but not regularly eaten by them is the human animal. Nacirema is American spelt backwards, and Miner shows to, and interprets for, us our own bathroom habits.Footnote and the second century c.e. hasContentIssue true, Copyright The Author(s) 2016. On the Latin terminology for living sacrificial victims, see Prescendi Reference Prescendi2009. 61 1 Answer. 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. Livy, however, treats each burial in a distinct way. The article is reprinted in McCutcheon Reference McCutcheon1999, a volume that offers in its introductory chapter a very good overview of the insider-outsider problem and that includes a selection of some of the most important scholarly contributions to the debate within the study of religion. There are at least two other rituals that the Romans performed that also required the death of a person. 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 The distinction between sacrificare and mactare was lost by Late Antiquity, but it was still active in the Republic and early Empire.Footnote 58 64 99 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 67 1. 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. Aeacus holds the keys to Hades. 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. 7 46 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. Nonius 539L identifies mactare with immolare, but the texts he cites do not really support his claim. 87 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. 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. 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 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. 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. 8 For example, Cic., Rep. 3.15 and Font. These two passages from Pliny and Apuleius may provide an explanation for the hundreds of thousands of miniature fictile vessels (plates, cups, etc.) 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 the killing of the animal was not it, at least in an early period. Hemina fr. and refriva faba. 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. 277AC). Dog corpses were sometimes deposited with tablets that contained curses, and dog figurines are among the required items for performing some spells.Footnote 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.) 60 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. The same two interment rituals would be performed alongside one another again just about a century later, in 113 b.c.e. 3 e.g., J. Scheid, s.v. Fest. WebIt housed an altar for animal sacrifice and was said to constantly burn incense. The catinus is a piece of everyday ware used to serve food that contains a lot of liquid (L. 5.120). 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 WebWhat are the main differences between Greek and Roman gods? Created by. 3.2.16. A brief survey of the bone assemblages from sites in west-central Italy is offered by Bouma Reference Bouma1996: 1.22841. 57 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 Max. Greeks call the queen Hera, whereas Romans queen of gods is Juno. Hammers appear in only fifteen scenes, two-thirds of which date between the first century b.c.e. As in the Greek world, sacrifice was the central ritual of religion. In Livy's account of the first devotio in 340 b.c.e. 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. 80 The difference between Greek Gods and Roman Gods is that Greek gods have unique names of their own, whereas, Roman gods are favisae. 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 17 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 refriva faba; Plin., N.H. 18.119. Miner Reference Miner1956: 503. 2.10.34, quoting a letter of Varro, and Paul. 2 and Another example of the bias of our sources away from rituals performed by the lower classes is the dearth of references to a particular type of item found in votive deposits: anatomical votives, fictile representations of parts of the human body offered to the gods as requests for cures for physical ailments. 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 } View all Google Scholar citations 13 Peter=FRH F17. As is implied in all the relevant entries in the OLD. 61 This line of interpretation has enjoyed a wider influence in the study of Classical Antiquity than work along the lines of Burkert Reference Burkert and Bing1983 and Girard Reference Girard and Gregory1977, and the bibliography is enormous. They were rewarded for their endeavors with the position of judge in the Underworld. If we allow only items explicitly identified as sacrificia in Roman sources, our list includes beans,Footnote 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. The problem is widely acknowledged, but see specifically Moussy Reference Moussy1977; Reference Moussy1990; Engels Reference Engels2007: 25982. 75 92 Another example of a ritual that looks a lot like sacrificium but is not identical to it is polluctum. At present, large-scale analysis of faunal remains from sacred sites in Roman Italy remains a desideratum, but analysis of deposits of animal bones from the region seems to bear out the prevalence of these species in the Roman diet and as the object of religious ritual (whether sacrificium or not it is difficult to say).Footnote mactus. Thus the most likely reading of the passage in Pliny is that Curius sacrificed the guttum faginum to the gods. WebRoman sacrificial practices were not functionally different from Greek, although the Roman rite was distinguishable from the Greek and Etruscan. 75 14 MacBain Reference MacBain1982: 12735; Schultz Reference Schultz2010: 52930; Reference Schultz2012: 12930. 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. 4 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 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. On fourteen occasions between 209 and 92 b.c.e., androgyne infants and children were included among the prodigies reported to the Roman Senate. WebComparative mythology is the comparison of myths from different cultures in an attempt to identify shared themes and characteristics. 101. This is made clear in numerous passages from several Roman authors. 537 Words 3 Pages Decent Essays Read More Although the remains come from a known sacred area, it should not be assumed that all of them are evidence of sacrificium or other rituals: some may be garbage, material used as fill, or even the remains of animals (like mice) that died while exploring the refuse heap. 41 It appears that no Roman source ever uses the language of sacrificium to describe devotio,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. From here, we can speculate that sacrifice was not understood by the Romans primarily as the ritual slaughter of an animal. 63. 35 Aldrete Reference Aldrete2014: 32. 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. 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. You would do well to remember that there were very few similarities between Roman and Greek religion until the Romans began borrowing from the Gree Marcellus, de Medicamentis 8.50; Palmer Reference Palmer and Hall1996: 234. 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. Scheid Reference Scheid2005: 1002; Reference Scheid2012: 84. While there appears to have been an original distinction among the rites of sacrificium, polluctum, and magmentum, we cannot recover the details of it in any serious way. and for his old-fashioned frugality and incorruptibility.Footnote 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. See, for example, Morris et al. Most houses are of wattle and daub construction, but the shrine rooms of the more wealthy are walled with stone. Columella 2.21.4 might also refer to dog sacrifice, but the verb (feceris) leaves it ambiguous as to which ritual was being performed. 4.57. 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. 2 and Paul. For the possible link between this instance and the revelation of an unchaste Vestal, see Schultz Reference Schultz2012: 126 n. 18. MacKinnon Reference MacKinnon2004: 5974. This has repercussions for our understanding of some elements of Roman religious thought. 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). Lodwick, Lisa The hypothesis that only sacrificium required mola salsa is strongly supported by the sources, but because that is an argument ex silentio, it cannot be proved beyond all doubt. 95 For the Greeks Roman sacrificium is both less and more than the typical etic notion of sacrifice. I have tried to respond to them all. mactus; Serv., A. ipsilles with 398L, s.v. Perhaps these reliefs preserve the performance of one or more of the rituals that seem to have faded in popularity by the high imperial period: magmentum and polluctum. Devotio is frequently called self-sacrifice by modern scholars,Footnote 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. Macr., Sat. 2013: The Fragments of the Roman Historians, 3 vols, Oxford, Hornblower, S., and Spawforth, A. Finally, it appears that some of these rites ceased to be performed by some point in the imperial period and that sacrificium continued for centuries. 20 The Gods in Greek and Roman mythology, while initially having almost no differentiation (we could easily lose in the Spot the difference game), yet started slowly being more dependent on the civilization where they were worshiped. Home. e.g., O'Gorman Reference O'Gorman2010: 1217 and Versnel Reference Versnel1976. 5401L. 280 BC and 290D; Rom. 74 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. In Latin, one does not sacrifice with a knife or with an axe. 78 Although they are universally referred to as votive offerings in the scholarly literature, it is possible that they are, technically, sacrifices. Fest. Although there is some evidence for Roman consumption of dog in the form of canine skeletons with butchery marks (e.g., De Grossi Mazzorin and Tagliacozzo Reference De Grossi Mazzorin and Tagliacozzo1997: 4378), there is no evidence that dogs were raised for meat production (MacKinnon Reference MacKinnon2004: 74). 50, From all this, it is reasonable to conclude that the poor could substitute small vessels for more expensive, edible sacrificial offerings. 24 91 It is important to note that there is no indication that these vegetal offerings were thought to be substitutions for what would have been, in better circumstances, animal victims.Footnote In this way, the native, or emic, Roman view of sacrifice is more expansive than ours. What we find is that for the Romans, to sacrifice was not simply to kill in a ritual fashion. aryxnewland. 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. Scheid Reference Scheid1998: nn. 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. 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. The closest any Roman source comes to linking devotio and sacrifice is Cic., Off. WebThe Greeks were striving for perfection in their art while the Romans were striving for real life people. 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. 190L s.v. 38 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. For a treatment of this methodological issue on a broader scale, see the rather pointed critique in Hopkins Reference Hopkins1978: 1808. Render date: 2023-03-04T10:22:59.089Z 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. Ubiquitous in the scholarship is the assumption that if the gods receive an animal, it is sacrifice, but if the gods receive vegetable produce and other inanimate edibles, those are something different: they are offerings. pecunia sacrificium; Paul. Subjects. 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 Moses (Reference Moses, Brocato and Terrenatoforthcoming, table 2) reports that these species account for 89.9 per cent of the total number of individual animal specimens recovered. 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). nor does any Roman author ever express any sort of discomfort with this rite akin to Livy's shrinking back from the sacrifice of Gauls and Greeks. 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? The burial of Gauls and Greeks was a sacrifice, but one that Romans ought not to have performed. ex Fest. An emic explanation is essential for understanding how people within a given system understand that system, but because it is culturally and historically bounded, its use is somewhat limited. 68 WebDifferences between Greek and Roman sacrifices. In the sacred realm, Romans could also pollucere a tithe to the god Hercules.Footnote mactus; Walde and Hofmann Reference Walde and Hofmann1954: 2.4 s.v. 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. 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. On the early Christian appropriation and transformation of Roman sacrificial imagery and discourse, see Castelli Reference Castelli2004: 509. 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. Minos gave laws to Crete. 85 Scholars are quick to identify all of them as forms of sacrifice, which may well be the case. 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. 25 Those details, once recovered, can in turn subtly reshape our own idea of what sacrifice is and what it does. On the contrary, Greek religion did not prefer to execute rituals as much as Ioppolo Reference Ioppolo1972; Tagliacozzo Reference Tagliacozzo1989. Greek Gods vs Roman Gods. This is suggested by Ov., F. 1.1278. Poorer families imitate the rich by applying pottery plaques to their shrine walls.Footnote 286L and 287L, s.v. 93 and more. This meant that 53 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. 59 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. were linked.Footnote The most common form of ritual killing among the Romans was the disposal of hermaphroditic children.Footnote 65 subsilles. Horses: Plin., N.H. 28.146; Fest. 16 Martins, Manuela 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. 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. Both Rhadamanthus and Aeacus were renowned for their justice. 17 84 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 1; Sall., Hist. 69a). Of this class of rituals, sacrificium does seem to have been somehow different from the others.
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