6 At 8.10.1112, Livy notes that a commander could devote one of his soldiers rather than himself. Comparative mythology Subjects. 8.10.)). Cornell, T. J. Cf., n. 89 below. Scheid Reference Scheid1998: nn. As an example, I offer Var., R. 1.2.19: Itaque propterea institutum diversa de causa ut ex caprino genere ad alii dei aram hostia adduceretur, ad alii non sacrificaretur, cum ab eodem odio alter videre nollet, alter etiam videre pereuntem vellet. Sacrifices of wine and incense are common in the Commentarii Fratrum Arvalium, e.g. 2019. ex Fest. Roman sacrificium is both less and more than the typical etic notion of sacrifice. noun. 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. 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 2.10.34, quoting a letter of Varro, and Paul. Scheid's reconstruction focuses on a living victim, and this is in keeping with the ancient sources own emphasis on blood sacrifice. 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. 22. We do not know what name the Romans gave the ritual burial of an unchaste Vestal Virgin, but we know it was not sacrifice. 9.7.mil.Rom.2). What we find is that for the Romans, to sacrifice was not simply to kill in a ritual fashion. According to Pliny, Curius declared under oath that he had appropriated for himself no booty praeter guttum faginum, quo sacrificaret (N.H. 16.185). WebComparative mythology is the comparison of myths from different cultures in an attempt to identify shared themes and characteristics. Prescendi Reference Prescendi2007: 22441 and, arriving at the same conclusion by a different path, Schultz Reference Schultz2012: 1323. differences between Greek and Roman 25 22.57.26, discussed also in Schultz Reference Schultz2012: 1267. 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. It is entirely possible that miniature ceramics were not, in reality, less expensive offerings than actual foodstuffs. 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 Classicists generally assume that the modern idea of sacrifice as the ritual killing of an animal applies to the Roman context. 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. van Straten has offered a stronger explanation: the absence of slaughter scenes in Greek art is due to a lack of interest in this particular aspect of sacrifice on the part of those Greeks whose religious beliefs are reflected in this material, shall we say, the common people of the Classical period.Footnote Cic., Red. pecunia sacrificium makes clear that, despite its name, this ritual did not involve money. sacrifice, Roman in OCD Marcos, Bruno 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. 61 On the early Christian appropriation and transformation of Roman sacrificial imagery and discourse, see Castelli Reference Castelli2004: 509. 30 Somewhat surprising is the considerably smaller presence of bovines,Footnote CIL 6.32323.13940=ILS 5050.13940=Pighi Reference Pighi1965: 117 (from Rome). Hammers appear in only fifteen scenes, two-thirds of which date between the first century b.c.e. 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 In 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. More Greek words for sacrifice. Greek influences on Italian craftsmen in the 6 th century BC saw the image of 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. 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. 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 35 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. 65 Braga, Cristina For a treatment of this methodological issue on a broader scale, see the rather pointed critique in Hopkins Reference Hopkins1978: 1808. It is entirely possible that the search for a single, critical moment where a change from profane to sacred occurs is, in fact, a modern preoccupation. 10 86 28 60 As illustration, let us return to Livy and the human sacrifice in 216 b.c.e. 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. An exception is Scheid Reference Scheid2005: 52. WebDifferences between Greek and Roman sacrifices. 54 Differences Between Greek and Roman 216,Footnote Here's a list of translations. These two passages from Pliny and Apuleius may provide an explanation for the hundreds of thousands of miniature fictile vessels (plates, cups, etc.) This is suggested by Ov., F. 1.1278. 14 favisae. 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). 96 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. The prevalence of Roman images of sacrificial victims standing before the altar, that is, of the instant before mola salsa is sprinkled on them, is due to the importance of that moment. The most common form of ritual killing among the Romans was the disposal of hermaphroditic children.Footnote 1419). 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. 77 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 Van Straten Reference Van Straten1995: 188. The closest any Roman source comes to linking devotio and sacrifice is Cic., Off. 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. Roman Gods vs. Greek Gods: Know the Difference The biggest difference that I'm aware of is that the Classical Greek religion was much more the religion of myths that we all know, while the Class 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. 18 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. Roman sacrifice Test. 29 Finally, while other rituals seem to have fallen into desuetude, or at least to have fallen out of the literature, by the late Republic or early Empire, sacrificium remained a vital part of Roman religious life for centuries. The elder Pliny, in his Natural History, discusses the high regard in which ancient Romans held simple vessels made of beechwood. Although it is sixty years old, the lesson still works well. 82. 12 344L and 345L, s.v. Has data issue: true 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. 31 68 Miner Reference Miner1956: 503. 86 Macr., Sat. 3.763829. 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. 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 (ed.) Differences and Another major difference between Greek gods and Roman gods is in the physical appearance of the deities. 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). 12 WebThe Greeks were striving for perfection in their art while the Romans were striving for real life people. 49 1; Sall., Hist. This is a clear difference from Athena, who was never associated with the weather. fabam and Fest. 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 refriva faba. and more. 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. As in the Greek world, sacrifice was the central ritual of religion. 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. WebOne major difference between Greek and Roman religion and Christianity is their understanding of the concept of deity. Plu., RQ 83=Mor. 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 What are the differences between the Greek Hestia and the Roman sources make clear that Romans had several different rituals (sacrificium, polluctum, and magmentum) that appear, based on prominent structural similarities, to have been related to one another. 423L s.v. The most famous account is Livy's description of the Romans reaction to their losses at Cannae and Canusium to Hannibal in 216 b.c.e.,Footnote 11 Aul. Scheid Reference Scheid2005: 4457; Reference Scheid and Rpke2007: 2639. e.g., O'Gorman Reference O'Gorman2010: 1217 and Versnel Reference Versnel1976. Dog corpses were sometimes deposited with tablets that contained curses, and dog figurines are among the required items for performing some spells.Footnote The skeletal remains of dogs sometimes found interred with human remains or inside city walls are often interpreted as sacrifice by archaeologists.Footnote Huet Reference Huet and Bertrand2005; Reference Huet and van Andringa2007. MacKinnon Reference MacKinnon2004: 5974. 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. 132; Cass. Greek and Roman 92 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. For the difference in Roman attitudes toward human sacrifice and other forms of ritual killing, see Schultz Reference Schultz2010. Finally, both ancient societies have twelve main gods and goddesses. 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. 50 The children were drowned by the haruspices, usually in the sea. For an argument that wild animals are more common in ancient Mediterranean, and specifically in Etruscan, sacrifice than is generally acknowledged, see Rask Reference Rask2014. aryxnewland. 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 Minerva and Athena: Roman vs. Greek Goddesses of War 69 mactus. Finally, both ancient societies have twelve main gods and goddesses. 79 Other forms of ritual killing do not receive the same sort of negative judgement by Roman authors, and one form, devotio, even has strongly positive associations. Aldrete counts at least fifty-six sculptural reliefs dating from the seventh century b.c.e. 67 3.95: Quid
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