differences between greek and roman sacrifice

423L s.v. Nonius 539L identifies mactare with immolare, but the texts he cites do not really support his claim. 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. See Oakley Reference Oakley1998: 481 and Sacco Reference Sacco2004: 316. 98 From this same root also derives the name for the mixture sprinkled on the animal before it was killed, mola salsa.Footnote Liv. 83 differences between Greek and Roman We can push this second issue, what kinds of items can be the object of sacrifice, even further: Roman sacrifice, especially among the poor, was not limited to edible offerings. 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. See, for example, Wilkens Reference Wilkens2006 and De Grossi Mazzorin and Minniti Reference De Grossi Mazzorin and Minniti2006. 16 Elsner Reference Elsner2012 emphasizes the heavy influence of early Christian writers on modern theorizations of sacrifice. Test. 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. But we can no longer recover indeed it appears that Romans of the early Empire could no longer recover what was the difference between a monstrum, a prodigium, a portentum, and an ostentum.Footnote 277AC). 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. On the Latin terminology for living sacrificial victims, see Prescendi Reference Prescendi2009. 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. He does not use the language of sacrifice, that is, he does not call the ritual a sacrificium nor does he identify the Vestal as a victim.Footnote D. 6.9 (which probably draws on Varro) and possibly Paul. 75 Gel. Fest. 61 3.2.16. 31. 132.2; Scheid Reference Scheid2005: 1369). Difference Between Greek Gods and Roman Gods Those studying ancient Greece and Rome in general and those focusing on Roman religion in particular have been wrestling with these issues for some time even if the terms of the discussion have not been explicit.Footnote Var., L. 5.112; see also Cic., Har. 5 Major Differences Between the Greco-Roman Gods and the God 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. Neither of the acts that Pliny mentions is explicitly identified as sacrificium, or as any other rite in particular. 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 noun. Greek Gods and Religious Practices | Essay | The Metropolitan In addition to Zeus and Hera, there were many other major and minor gods in the Greek religion. It is the only one of these terms that does not come to be used outside the realm of the divine. 22.57.26, discussed also in Schultz Reference Schultz2012: 1267. 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. Thus it happens that goats are immolated to Liber Pater, who discovered the vine, so that they pay him a penalty and, by a contrary logic, caprine victims are never immolated to Minerva on account of the olive: they say that whatever olive plant a goat bites becomes sterile). Poorer families imitate the rich by applying pottery plaques to their shrine walls.Footnote Vaz, Filipe Costa 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. 176 and Serv., A. The skeletal remains of dogs sometimes found interred with human remains or inside city walls are often interpreted as sacrifice by archaeologists.Footnote 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. 77L, s.v. Greek Translation. 101. Greek gods had heavy emphasis placed on their 1 MacBain Reference MacBain1982: 12735; Schultz Reference Schultz2010: 52930; Reference Schultz2012: 12930. 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. WebWhile Greek and Roman sculpture and ruins are linked with the purity of white marble in the Western mind, most of the works were originally polychrome, painted in multiple, lifelike colors. 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. A parallel use of sacrificare is found in Apuleius Apologia 18, a passage which also shares Pliny's focus on poverty: paupertas, inquam, prisca aput saecula omnium civitatium conditrix, omnium artium repertrix, omnium peccatorum inops, omnis gloriae munifica, cunctis laudibus apud omnis nationes perfuncta. More Greek words for sacrifice. 97 Roman Gods vs. Greek Gods: Know the Difference 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 90 1.3.90 and 1.6.115; Juv. Fest. 58 54 How, if these animals did not make desirable entrees, could they be considered suitable for sacrifice? Dog corpses were sometimes deposited with tablets that contained curses, and dog figurines are among the required items for performing some spells.Footnote were linked.Footnote 53 97 Differences Between 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. 50 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 Unlike sacrificare, which remained solely in the divine realm, mactare did not need to involve the gods: mactare is something that one Roman could do to another, both literally (one can mactare someone else with a golden cup, for example) and metaphorically (with misfortune or expense). I presume that Miner's observations apply also to bathroom habits elsewhere in North America and Europe. 68 19 Scheid's reconstruction and interpretation is followed by Prescendi Reference Prescendi2007: 3148. Fontes, Lus 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 B. Rives provided valuable consultation on specific points and V. C. Moses generously shared her work-in-progress on the osteoarchaeological evidence from S. Omobono. Marcos, Bruno 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. It is a hallmark of poverty, whether in a religious context or not, appearing often in poetic passages where the narrator describes a low-budget lifestyle.Footnote 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. The elder Cato instructs his reader to pollucere a cup of wine and a daps (ritual meal) to Jupiter Dapalis (Agr. This is the insider-outsider problem in nuce. 8 the differences between Roman gods and Greek 31; Plin., N.H. 36.39; Tac., Ann. most famously those of Burkert, who identifies sacrificial slaughter as the basic experience of the sacred, and Girard, who begins his investigation into the origin of sacrifice by asserting its close kinship to murder and criminal violence.Footnote the killing of the animal was not it, at least in an early period. There are many other non-meat sacrifices the Romans could offer. 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. Compare Var., R. 2.8.1. Goats: Var., R. 1.2.19; Liv. The preceding discussion has, I hope, made clear that the Romans own notion of sacrifice is broader and more complex than is generally perceived. This draws further support from the fact that the object referred to by the instrumental ablatives that accompany the verb sacrificare is almost never a knife, an axe, a hammer, or other weapon.Footnote 358L. 34 12 Cato's instruction to pollucere to Jupiter an assaria pecunia refers to produce valued at one as (Agr. See also n. 9 above. Birds: Suet., Calig. Var., L. 6.3.14. 45 By placing this variety of rites that the Romans had under the single rubric of sacrifice, we have lost sight of some of the complexity and nuance of Roman ritual life. 16 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. 3 [1] Comparative mythology has served a 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. Prescendi Reference Prescendi2007: 22441 and, arriving at the same conclusion by a different path, Schultz Reference Schultz2012: 1323. and Paul. Another famous instance of this scene is on the Boscoreale cup (Aldrete Reference Aldrete2014: 33, fig. 93 It is also noteworthy that sacrificium appears to be the only member of this class to require mola salsa. Plu., RQ 83=Mor. 22 413=Macr., Sat. 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 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. The offering of a dog to Robigus may be the same ritual as the augurium canarium referred to by Plin., N.H. 18.14. 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. 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 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. Two differences between greek roman religion and christianity. 1; Sall., Hist. refriva faba. 6 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 Cf. The children were drowned by the haruspices, usually in the sea. 39 WebRoman sacrificial practices were not functionally different from Greek, although the Roman rite was distinguishable from the Greek and Etruscan. Learn. refriva faba; Plin., N.H. 18.119. 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. 26 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 4.57) is not clear. 80 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 Tagliacozzo Reference Tagliacozzo1989: 66. 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. ipsilles with 398L, s.v. Both Rhadamanthus and Aeacus were renowned for their justice. 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. 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 Greek and Roman Marcellus, de Medicamentis 8.50; Palmer Reference Palmer and Hall1996: 234. Decline was interrupted by the short-lived Restoration under the emperor Augustus (reign 27 BC AD 14), then it resumed. I have tried to respond to them all. The Christian fathers equation of sacrifice with violence has shaped twentieth-century theorizations of sacrifice as a universal human phenomenon,Footnote Were they always burnt on an altar or brazier? 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. and for front limbs.Footnote Plutarch is the only source for dog sacrifice at the Lupercalia (RQ 68 and 111=Mor. Differences between Greek and Roman sacrifices Flashcards to the fourth century c.e. Instead they seem to have conceived of it as the ritual consecration of an animal which was afterwards killed and eaten. sacrima. 46 Major differences between Roman and Greek Culture? - HistoryNet If we allow only items explicitly identified as sacrificia in Roman sources, our list includes beans,Footnote 21 72 molo; Walde and Hofmann Reference Walde and Hofmann1954: 2.1046 s.v. and Narbo in Gallia Narbonensis (CIL 12.4333, dated to 11 c.e.). 11 Burkert Reference Burkert and Bing1983: 3; Girard Reference Girard and Gregory1977: 1. 85 It appears that if a worshipper could not afford to sacrifice something that was itself tasty, he might fulfill his obligation by giving something that evoked the idea of it.Footnote In this way, the native, or emic, Roman view of sacrifice is more expansive than ours. Here's a list of translations. The Romans performed at least four forms of ritual killing, only one of which was sacrifice. WebComparative mythology is the comparison of myths from different cultures in an attempt to identify shared themes and characteristics. 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). 13 Peter=FRH F17. 37 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 This is made clear in numerous passages from several Roman authors. Roman sacrificium is both less and more than the typical etic notion of sacrifice. 72 6 54 59 1419). Val. Greeks call the queen Hera, whereas Romans queen of gods is Juno. 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? Nacirema is American spelt backwards, and Miner shows to, and interprets for, us our own bathroom habits.Footnote 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. Through the outsider point of view, we can interpret it in light of comparable behaviours in other cultures. 5 9.7.mil.Rom.2). Footnote Augustine, Civ. 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.