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Sacrifice (Classics)

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  1. Introduction
  2.  
  3. For the purpose of this article, ancient “sacrifice” was the act of making a destructible or perishable offering to a god, hero, or spirit at an altar or other designated place, commonly accompanied by other rituals and activities. Sacrifice was characteristically a composite or nexus central for both Greek and Roman religion, and much introductory bibliography may thus be found in the separate Oxford Bibliographies articles Greek Religion by Angelos Chaniotis and Roman Religion by Elaine Fantham and Emily Fairey. Because it is not possible to separate sacrifice from other cultic practices, frequent reference is made to these more general bibliographies. Besides being more complex than other rituals, sacrifice has a distinctive intellectual history, closely tied to the development of the concept of ritual and to general ideas about ancient (and especially Greek) religion. A bibliography of sacrifice must accordingly have a comparatively large number of entries devoted to the history of the subject, just as it must have Greek and Roman entries that account for differences between these two religions. F. Naiden and J. Rives are jointly responsible for the entries of a general nature; Naiden has primary responsibility for entries dealing with Greek sacrifice, and Rives, for those dealing with Roman.
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  5. General Studies on Ritual
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  7. Sacrifice became a leading scholarly topic in the late 19th century, thanks to development of the concept of ritual by Smith 1894 and Mauss 1954. Long dominant, this concept has met with criticism by Goody 1961, Asad 1993, Bell 1997, and Bremmer 1998.
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  9. Asad, Talal. 1993. Genealogies of religion: Disciplines and reasons of power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press.
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  11. Asad shows how priests and other religious leaders use ritual as well as sermons and other religious practices to maintain or increase their authority. To be read in contrast with Bloch 1992 (cited under General Studies on Sacrifice).
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  13. Bell, Catherine M. 1997. Ritual: Perspectives and dimensions. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
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  15. Synthesizing decades of refinement of the concept of ritual, Bell contrasts the common definition of ritual as custom involving supernatural beings with a definition of “ritualization,” the use and structuring of customs so that they appear natural or self-justifying, without a necessary divine or liturgical element—a fundamental shift affecting much of the study of Greek religion.
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  17. Bremmer, J. 1998. Religion, ritual and the opposition ‘sacred vs. profane’: Notes towards a terminological genealogy. In Ansichten griechischer rituale: Geburtstags-Symposium für Walter Burkert. Edited by F. Graf, 9–33. Stuttgart: Teubner.
  18. DOI: 10.1515/9783110962406Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  19. This essay brought to the attention of classicists the intellectual problems of the fundamental category of “ritual,” and thus of the organization of the study of religion according to ritual, as in Burkert 1985 (cited under Monographs and Overviews (Greek): Since 1970).
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  21. Goody, Jack. 1961. Religion and ritual: The definitional problem. British Journal of Sociology 12:142–164.
  22. DOI: 10.2307/586928Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  23. This essay raised the issue of the connection between ritual and religion and thus between the topic of sacrifice and the topics of theology and myth, a connection that has remained problematic to the present time, as in Bell 1997 and Bremmer 1998.
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  25. Mauss, Marcel. 1954. The gift: Forms and functions of exchange in archaic societies. Translated by I. Cunnison. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.
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  27. Originally published as Essai sur le don: Forme et raison de l’échange dans les sociétés archaïques (Paris: Alcan, 1925). An important aspect of ancient sacrifice given the form of a general social principle applicable to ancient Greece or other societies held to be “archaic.”
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  29. Smith, W. Robertson. 1894. Lectures on the religion of the Semites. First series: The fundamental institutions. New ed. Edinburgh: A. & C. Black.
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  31. Although sacrifice was but one part of this treatment of early Semitic and especially Hebrew religion, the treatment of sacrificial bloodshed and social bonding through sacrifice and feasting set forth themes that have inspired later writers down through the end of the 20th century.
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  33. General Studies on Sacrifice
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  35. The study of Hubert and Mauss 1964 remains fundamental, although it has been supplemented and challenged by more recent work, such as Lincoln 1991, Jay 1992, and Bloch 1992. The emphasis on violent killing that characterizes the work of Girard 1977 and Burkert 1983 (cited under Monographs and Overviews (Greek): Since 1970) has received rebuttals from Smith 2004 and McClymond 2008. Because much important theoretical work on sacrifice has been generated by the study of Greek sacrifice, it is important also to consult the works cited under Monographs and Overviews (Greek): Before 1970 and Monographs and Overviews (Greek): Since 1970.
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  37. Bloch, Maurice. 1992. Prey into hunter: The politics of religious experience. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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  39. A description of sacrifice as a recollection of primitive hunting practices combined with reinforcement of later social structures; the most recent universal treatment of sacrifice and also the last treatment on a largely anthropological basis.
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  41. Girard, René. 1977. Violence and the sacred. Translated by Patrick Gregory. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press.
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  43. Originally published as La violence et le sacré (Paris: Grasset, 1972). Girard incorporates the notion of the scapegoat into his previously developed idea of mimetic desire to fashion his theory of sacrifice. Influential in literary studies and biblical studies, it has had much less importance for the study of Greek and Roman sacrifice, to which the scapegoat model of sacrifice is largely irrelevant.
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  45. Hubert, Henri, and Marcel Mauss. 1964. Sacrifice: Its nature and function. Translated by W. Hall. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
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  47. Originally published as “Essai sur la nature et la fonction du sacrifice,” L’année sociologique 2 (1899): 29–138, and reprinted in Mauss, Œuvres. Vol. 1, Les fonctions sociales du sacré. (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1968), 193–307. This adaptation of the sociology of Durkheim to the ritual of sacrifice has been the most influential of all monographs on the subject, even if burdened by a now-obsolete evolutionary perspective.
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  49. Jay, Nancy. 1992. Throughout all your generations forever: Sacrifice, religion, and paternity. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
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  51. A study, without parallel in classics, of the intersection of sacrifice, political ideology, and the definition and maintenance of social hierarchy, all from a partly feminist, partly Freudian, perspective.
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  53. Lincoln, Bruce. 1991. Death, war, and sacrifice: Studies in ideology and practice. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
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  55. In this volume, the leading contemporary scholar of the Indo-European elements in Greek religion places the rite in its earliest construable social contexts, and offers a broader if less precise background for sacrifice than Detienne and Vernant 1989, yet a less tendentious analysis than in Burkert 1983 (both cited under Monographs and Overviews (Greek): Since 1970).
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  57. McClymond, Kathryn. 2008. Beyond sacred violence: A comparative study of sacrifice. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press.
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  59. This comparison of Vedic and Hebrew sacrifice begins with a useful chapter on sacrificial theory and comparative method and proceeds to demonstrate that the violent element in animal sacrifice may be exaggerated and that liquid as well as solid vegetal offerings have been important.
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  61. Smith, Jonathan Z. 2004. The domestication of sacrifice. In Relating religion: Essays in the study of religion. By Jonathan Z. Smith, 145–159. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
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  63. Originally published in Violent Origins: Walter Burkert, René Girard, and Jonathan Z. Smith on Ritual Killing and Cultural Formation, ed. Robert G. Hamerton-Kelly (Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 1987), pp. 191–205, this paper directly challenges the idea that animal sacrifice has its origins in hunting practices by noting that it always employs domesticated animals and occurs in agricultural societies.
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  65. General Studies on Greek and Roman Sacrifice
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  67. Sacrifice is a topic covered in many reference works found in the separate Oxford Bibliographies articles Greek Religion and Roman Religion. Eitrem 1977 covers initial phases of a typical act, and Ziehen, et al. 1950 covers several other aspects. Burkert, et al. 2007 provides a comparative treatment, and Ekroth 2014, a survey of Greek and Roman practice. Benveniste 1973 provides linguistic background.
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  69. Benveniste, Émile. 1973. Indo-European language and society. Translated by E. Palmer. Coral Gables, FL: Univ. of Miami Press.
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  71. English translation of Le vocabulaire des institutions Indo-Européennes (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1969), to be used with P. Chantraine’s Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue Grecque: Histoire des mots (Paris: Klincksieck, 1999) for the history, or prehistory, of terms related to sacrifice.
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  73. Burkert, Walter, Marcel Sigrist, Harco Willems, et al. 2007. Sacrifice, offerings, and votives. In Religions of the ancient world: A Guide. Edited by S. I. Johnston, 325–349. Cambridge, MA: Belknap.
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  75. The only broad comparative survey, covering Etruria, the Near East, and Christianity as well as Greece and Rome.
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  77. Eitrem, S. 1977. Opferritus und voropfer der Griechen und Römer. Hildesheim, Germany: Olms.
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  79. Originally published 1915 (Christiana, Denmark: Dybwad). Never equaled by any later study, this monograph devotes successive chapters to the use of water, fire, smoke, barley, salt, hair, and blood. Inevitably, it makes only modest use of epigraphical or visual sources.
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  81. Ekroth, Gunnel. 2014. Animal sacrifice in antiquity. In The Oxford handbook of animals in classical thought and life. Edited by Gordon Lindsey Campbell, 324–354. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
  82. DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199589425.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  83. Like Burkert, et al. 2007, a broad survey but focused on the Greek and Roman traditions and with particular attention to types of victims and the preparation and consumption of meat.
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  85. Ziehen, Ludwig, Johann Haussleiter, and Bernhard Rotting. 1950–. Reallexikon für antike und Christentum: Sachwörterbuch zur auseinandersetzung des Christentums mit der antiken welt. Edited by T. Klauser, H. Kruse, and J. Waszink. Stuttgart: A. Hiersemann.
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  87. This encyclopedia lacks an entry for “Opfer” but treats the aspects of sacrifice indicated by the article titles. See “Altar,” 1.310–1.329; “Fleisch, II,” 7.1105–7.1110; and “Haar,” 13.182–13.185.
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  89. Essay Collections on Greek and Roman Sacrifice
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  91. The dauntingly complex evidence for sacrifice is perhaps the reason that essay collections have rivaled monographs in number and importance. Most of these volumes include essays on Roman and Greek sacrifice. Rudhardt and Reverdin 1981, Grottanelli and Parise 1988, and Graf 1998 all respond to the work of Burkert 1983 and Detienne and Vernant 1989 (both cited under Monographs and Overviews (Greek): Since 1970), even though these three writers did not write about Rome. Baumgarten 2008 does too but adds Near-Eastern comparanda as does Kunst and Várhelyi 2011. Georgoudi, et al. 2005 and Pirenne-Delforge and Prescendi 2011 focus on epigraphical and archaeological issues; Faraone and Naiden 2012 criticizes Burkert 1983, Detienne and Vernant 1989, and Vernant 1991 (all cited under Monographs and Overviews (Greek): Since 1970).
  92.  
  93. Baumgarten, Albert I., ed. 2008. Sacrifice in religious experience. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
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  95. Essays by experts including Jacob Milgrom on sacrifice in the ancient Near East and in Christianity, with comments on the work of Burkert 1983, Burkert 1985, Detienne and Vernant 1989, and Vernant 1991 (all cited under Monographs and Overviews (Greek): Since 1970).
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  97. Faraone, Christopher A., and F. S. Naiden, eds. 2012. Greek and Roman animal sacrifice: Ancient victims, modern observers. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
  98. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511894602Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  99. Essays on the history of the subject and on literary and art-historical questions related to sacrifice, in the first long publication directed expressly against the influential views of Burkert 1983, Burkert 1985, and Detienne and Vernant 1989 (all cited under Monographs and Overviews (Greek): Since 1970). Less attention to ritual specifics than in other essay collections; about a third of this book deals with Roman material.
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  101. Georgoudi, Stella, Renée Koch-Piettre, and Francis Schmidt, eds. 2005. La cuisine et l’autel: Les sacrifices en questions dans les sociétés de la Méditerranée ancienne. Bibliothèque de l’École des Hautes Études, Sciences Religieuses 124. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols.
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  103. A set of essays dealing with various particulars of Greek and Roman sacrificial procedure, including vegetal offerings, the role of priests, and sacrificial finance; notable for its blend of archaeological and epigraphical evidence as opposed to the literary orientation that dominated the study of sacrifice until recently. Georgoudi’s essay (pp. 115–147) deals with Greek attitudes toward sacrificial victims.
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  105. Graf, Fritz, ed. 1998. Ansichten griechischer rituale: Geburtstags-Symposium für Walter Burkert. Stuttgart: Teubner.
  106. DOI: 10.1515/9783110962406Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  107. A range of scholars deal with Burkert 1983 and Burkert 1985 (both cited under Monographs and Overviews (Greek): Since 1970), with important contributions by Hugh Lloyd-Jones (pp. 271–295) and Bremmer 1998 (cited under General Studies on Ritual). Important for the exchange of views among writers on ritual, historians of religion, and philologists.
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  109. Grottanelli, Cristiano, and Nicola F. Parise, eds. 1988. Sacrificio e società nel mondo antico. Rome: Laterza.
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  111. This set of essays is the best so far for the issues of hierarchy and solidarity in the distribution of sacrificial meat and draws comparisons with both Rome and the Near East. It is also unique in providing matched responses by representatives of the two leading recent theories of sacrifice, Burkert 1983 and Detienne and Vernant 1989 (both cited under Monographs and Overviews (Greek): Since 1970).
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  113. Kunst, Jennifer W., and Zsuzsanna Várhelyi, eds. 2011. Ancient Mediterranean sacrifice. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
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  115. This volume presents far-ranging comparisons among Christian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and second-temple Jewish sacrifice, mostly in the first few centuries CE. Essays by Frankfurter (pp. 75–94) and Rives (pp. 187–203) follow the lead given by Bremmer 1998 (cited under General Studies on Ritual) and anticipate Naiden 2012 (cited under Monographs and Overviews (Greek): Since 1970) in questioning the viability of the term “sacrifice.” Several essays deal with vegetal offerings.
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  117. Pirenne-Delforge, Vincienne, and Francesca Prescendi, eds. 2011. Nourrir les dieux? Sacrifice et représentation du divin. Liège, Belgium: Centre international d’étude de la religion Grecque antique.
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  119. A set of essays—half on Greek practices, half on Roman—that deal with the presentation of meat, vegetal, and liquid offerings and thus achieve a balance among these three types missing from the leading theories, which are all centered on offerings of meat. Ekroth (pp. 15–43) summarizes scholarship on the related topics of trapezomata and theoxenia, and Kearns (pp. 89–105) addresses the neglected topic of incense.
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  121. Rudhardt, Jean, and Olivier Reverdin, eds. 1981. Le sacrifice dans l’antiquité: Huit exposés suivis de discussions. Geneva, Switzerland: Fondation Hardt.
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  123. The first of the many recent edited volumes on sacrifice, this book provides a theoretical foundation for the others; it reacts to the views of Burkert 1983 and Detienne and Vernant 1989 (both cited under Monographs and Overviews (Greek): Since 1970), and Girard 1977 (cited under General Studies on Sacrifice). To be read as a kind of appendix or response to these major works.
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  125. Monographs and Overviews (Greek): Before 1970
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  127. The works listed cover the history of the much-contested topic of Greek sacrifice from the mid-19th century onward. Schoemann 1859 is, so to say, the pre-historic originator of the topic; Stengel 1920 adds epigraphical sources; Ziehen 1939 is the best article-length treatment, summing up previous research. Meuli 1975 is something of a turning point, adding concepts of ritual drawn partly from Smith 1894 (cited under General Studies on Ritual) and partly from anthropology. Rudhardt 1958 is intellectual and cultural in orientation; Nilsson 1967 combines ritual concepts with even greater detail than Stengel 1920.
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  129. Meuli, Karl. 1975. Griechische opferbräuche. In Gesammmelte schriften. Vol. 2. By Karl Meuli, 907–1021. Basel, Switzerland: Schwabe.
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  131. Originally published in Phyllobolia fur P. von der Muhll zum 60. Geburtstag am 1. August 1945 (Basel, Switzerland: Schwabe, 1946). Fundamental for the theory of Burkert 1983 (cited under Monographs and Overviews (Greek): Since 1970) is this attempt to establish the origins of Greek sacrifice in Siberian Neolithic hunting practices, in particular the “comedy of innocence” whereby these hunters denied responsibility for taking the animal’s life. This essay also gives the most ambitious explanation of the contrast between Chthonian and Olympian sacrifice.
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  133. Nilsson, Martin. 1967. Geschichte der Griechischen religion. 3d ed. Munich: C. H. Beck.
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  135. This handbook integrates a range of literary and epigraphical evidence into a view of Greek religion relying on older social science than came into favor with Burkert 1983 and Burkert 1985 (both cited under Monographs and Overviews (Greek): Since 1970). Like Schoemann 1859, Nilsson gives a comparatively small place to sacrifice (Vol. 1, pp. 132–157).
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  137. Rudhardt, Jean. 1958. Notions fondamentales de la pensée religieuse et actes constitutifs du culte dans la Grèce classique. Geneva, Switzerland: Droze.
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  139. A general treatment of Greek religious mentalité in the Archaic and Classical periods, with an emphasis on sacrifice as the chief part of the “culte” of the title.
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  141. Schoemann, Georg Friedrich. 1859. Opfer. In Griechische alterthümer. Vol. 2. By Georg Friedrich Schoemann, 195–228. Berlin: Weidmann.
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  143. The oldest handbook with a section on religious rituals, setting forth some of the basic views found in Burkert 1983 (cited under Monographs and Overviews (Greek): Since 1970), such guilt at killing animals, and Detienne and Vernant 1989 (cited under Monographs and Overviews (Greek): Since 1970), such as the sacrificial origin of meat from livestock. Schoemann nevertheless places sacrifice in a somewhat reduced position as compared to these scholars.
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  145. Stengel, Paul. 1920. Die Griechischen kultusaltertümer. 3d ed. Munich: C. H. Beck.
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  147. The only handbook largely devoted to sacrifice but without using concepts of ritual and thus resembling Schoemann 1859. Stengel, however, makes use of both literary and epigraphical evidence and remains a practically complete account for the former as well as a useful account for the latter.
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  149. Ziehen, Ludwig. 1939. Opfer. In Paulys real-encyclopädie der classischen altertumswissenschaft. Vol. 18.1. Edited by G. Wissowa, W. Kroll, and K. Mittelhaus, 579–627. Munich: A. Druckenmüller.
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  151. The longest and most detailed dictionary or encyclopedia article on the subject, superior to rivals in its coverage of terms, practices, categories, periods, and regions but evidently inadequate for epigraphical evidence, a weakness that no other article has corrected.
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  153. Monographs and Overviews (Greek): Since 1970
  154.  
  155. Around 1970 a break occurred in the study of Greek sacrifice, marked by the emergence of the theories of Burkert 1983 and Burkert 1985, stressing violence, and the team of Vernant and Detienne (see Detienne and Vernant 1989 and Vernant 1991), stressing commensality. Their theories dominated the field for several decades but have more recently been critiqued by Peirce 1993 and Naiden 2012. Seaford 2004 takes a very different approach. Hermary, et al. 2004 provides a systematic but segmented overview of work up to that point, with extensive bibliographies and citation of a range of evidence.
  156.  
  157. Burkert, Walter. 1983. Homo necans: The anthropology of ancient Greek sacrificial ritual and myth. Translated by P. Bing. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
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  159. Originally published as Homo necans: Interpretationen altgriechischer opferriten und mythen (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1972). Twenty years after its period of greatest popularity, this blend of the anthropology of Karl Meuli and the sociobiology of Konrad Lorenz remains compelling for its treatment of myths related to sacrifice, even if the analysis of thusia has met with objections from Georgoudi in Georgoudi, et al. 2005 (cited under Essay Collections on Greek and Roman Sacrifice); Ekroth 2007, Ekroth 2008a, and Ekroth 2008b (all cited under Animal Offerings (Greek)); Rives in Kunst and Várhelyi 2011 (cited under Essay Collections on Greek and Roman Sacrifice); and Naiden 2012.
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  161. Burkert, Walter. 1985. Greek religion. Translated by J. Raffan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
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  163. Originally published in 1977 as Griechische Religion der archaischen und klassischen Epoche, with a second edition in 2011 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer). The culmination of a century or so of theoretical reworking of Greek religion in the light of social science, to which this book adds natural science, as in Burkert 1983. A deeper yet wider-ranging use of sources than Nilsson 1967 (cited under Monographs and Overviews (Greek): Before 1970), but to be used with corresponding caution, and a book that shares with earlier handbooks a greater reliance on literary sources than is common at present.
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  165. Detienne, Marcel, and Jean-Pierre Vernant, eds. 1989. The cuisine of sacrifice among the Greeks. Translated by P. Wissing. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
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  167. Originally published as La cuisine du sacrifice en pays Grec (Paris: Gallimard, 1979). A Gallic counterpart to Burkert, this blend of Durkheim, Robertson Smith, and structuralism remains compelling as a description of the social and political role of civic animal sacrifice in the archaic and Classical period. Vernant (pp. 21–87) and Detienne (pp. 1–21) are the chief contributors but also note the contributions of Durand (pp. 87–119) and Svenbro, whose “Bibliography of Greek Sacrifice” (pp. 204–217) is the only essay of its kind.
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  169. Hermary, Antoine, M. Leguilloux, V. Chankowski, and A. Petropoulou. 2004. Les sacrifices dans le monde Grec. Thesaurus cultus et rituum antiquorum 1:59–134.
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  171. Wide-ranging surveys, with extensive citation both of primary sources (literary, epigraphic, archaeological) and secondary literature. Many other entries in this useful, if not always authoritative, reference work (Thesaurus cultus et rituum antiquorum (ThesCRA) ten volumes, [Los Angeles: Getty, 2004–2014]), are also relevant: the last two volumes contain comprehensive indices.
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  173. Naiden, F. S. 2012. Smoke signals for the gods: Greek sacrifice from the Archaic thorough Roman periods. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
  174. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199916405.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  175. This monograph puts an emphasis not on modern theories but on the ancient Greek interpretation of sacrifice as an offering meant to win the goodwill of the god. Within this context, Naiden emphasizes vegetal offerings and moral considerations. See also “Sacrifice” in The Oxford Handbook of Greek Religion (edited by E. Eidinow and J. Kindt, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 463–476.
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  177. Peirce, Sarah. 1993. Death, revelry, and thusia. Classical Antiquity 12:219–266.
  178. DOI: 10.2307/25010995Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  179. This pioneering article brought visual evidence to bear on the theories of Burkert 1983, Burkert 1985, Vernant 1991, and Detienne and Vernant 1989 and reveals the esthetic and hermeneutic complications in putting Greek evidence for animal sacrifice in the service of general theories.
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  181. Seaford, Richard. 2004. Money and the early Greek mind: Homer, philosophy, tragedy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
  182. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511483080Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  183. Chapters 1 and 2 represent the only attempt to relate sacrifice to changes in Greek shrines and in the Greek economy during the Archaic and Classical periods and to changes in Greek intellectual life. Marxist in spirit and sophisticated in treatment of sources, even if unsatisfactory in regard to the Near Eastern comparanda essential to the argument.
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  185. Vernant, Jean-Pierre. 1991. A general theory of sacrifice and the slaying of the victims in Greek thusia. In Mortals and immortals: Collected essays. Edited by F. Zeitlin, 290–313. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
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  187. Originally published in 1981 as “Théorie générale du sacrifice et mise à mort dans la thusia Grecque,” in Rudhardt and Reverdin 1981 (pp. 1–21; cited under Essay Collections on Greek and Roman Sacrifice), Vernant’s essay explains animal sacrifice as a source of food, as opposed to both Burkert’s view of this kind of sacrifice as a focus of guilt and the earlier view of it as an honor for the gods; it forms an integral part of the general theory set forth in Detienne and Vernant 1989.
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  189. Linguistic Evidence (Greek)
  190.  
  191. Greek literary and epigraphical sources provide ample evidence for sacrificial vocabulary and concepts. These sources form the basis of Stengel 1910, which develops the author’s important articles of Stengel 1886 and Stengel 1896. Casabona 1966 supplements and sometimes supplants Stengel 1910.
  192.  
  193. Casabona, Jean. 1966. Recherches sur le vocabulaire des sacrifices en Grèce des origines à la fin de l’époque classique. Publication des annales de la faculté des lettres n.s. 56. Aix-en-Provence, France: Ophrys.
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  195. The standard treatment of the essential terms for Greek sacrifice, ignored by theoreticians at their peril.
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  197. Stengel, Paul. 1886. ΣΦΑΓΙΑ. Hermes 21:307–321.
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  199. This view of a crucial term for heroic sacrifice differs somewhat from Casabona 1966.
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  201. Stengel, Paul. 1896. ΘϒEIN und ΘϒESΘAI. Hermes 31:638–642.
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  203. This view of crucial terms for divination and festal sacrifice also differs somewhat from Casabona 1966. Revised in Stengel 1910 (pp. 9–13).
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  205. Stengel, Paul. 1910. Opferbräuche der Griechen. Berlin: Teubner.
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  207. A survey of Greek sacrifice founded on analysis of terms chiefly in literary sources and thus an alternative to Casabona 1966 as well as a quintessence of the more elaborate Stengel 1920 (cited under Monographs and Overviews (Greek): Before 1970).
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  209. Epigraphical Evidence (Greek): Text Collections
  210.  
  211. The vast corpus of epigraphical evidence for Greek sacrifice sheds light on all aspects of the practice but is especially important for describing phases of rite and for supplementing archaeological evidence. In another regard, epigraphical evidence stands apart, for it provides nearly all evidence for the study of Greek sacrificial regulations. The most convenient collection of texts are the three edited volumes Sokolowski 1955, Sokolowski 1962, and Sokolowski 1969, but the additional inscriptions and also scholarship noted in the annual Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum are essential. Lupu 2009 is a small collection reflecting advances since Sokolowski; Rhodes and Osborne 2003 contains some sacrificial inscriptions.
  212.  
  213. Lupu, Eran. 2009. Greek sacred law: A collection of new documents. 2d ed. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
  214. DOI: 10.1163/ej.9789004173170.i-516Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  215. This, the only collection of “sacred laws” since Sokolowski 1969, offers twenty-seven new or reedited documents of various types—sacred calendars, polis regulations, polis contracts, deme decrees, and the bylaws of private groups.
  216. Find this resource:
  217. Rhodes, P. J., and Robin Osborne. 2003. Greek historical inscriptions: 404–323 BC. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
  218. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  219. Civic laws and decrees involving sacrifice, with ample commentary, at nos. 58, 66, 73, 81, 91, and 97.
  220. Find this resource:
  221. Sokolowski, Franciszek. 1955. Lois sacrées de l’Asie Mineure. Paris: Boccard.
  222. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  223. This volume, together with its two successors (Sokolowski 1962 and Sokolowski 1969), constitutes the largest collection of “sacred laws”—402 in all, from the Archaic through Roman periods—but organized haphazardly, with some obsolete or erroneous texts, but useful indices. Sokolowski compiled this initial volume as a complement to I. von Prott and L. Ziehen, Leges Graecorum sacrae (2 vols, Leipzig: Teubner, 1896–1906), which was limited to inscriptions from the Greek mainland.
  224. Find this resource:
  225. Sokolowski, Franciszek. 1962. Lois sacrées des cités Grecques. Supplément. Paris: Boccard.
  226. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  227. Sokolowski compiled this volume as a supplement to the earlier collection of Prott and Ziehen (cited under Sokolowski 1955), bringing together relevant inscriptions published in the intervening period.
  228. Find this resource:
  229. Sokolowski, Franciszek. 1969. Lois sacrées des cités Grecques. Paris: Boccard.
  230. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  231. A republication, with new editions of the texts, new commentaries, and updated bibliography, of the inscriptions in Prott and Ziehen (cited under Sokolowski 1955).
  232. Find this resource:
  233. Epigraphical Evidence (Greek): Studies
  234.  
  235. Aside from works on the definition and limits of sacred laws including sacrificial regulations, such as Parker 2004 and Naiden 2013, epigraphical evidence is the subject of the varied essays in Hägg 1994 and of monographic works of Rosivach 1994 and Lambert 2002. See also Cult Regulations in the separate Oxford Bibliographies article Greek Religion.
  236.  
  237. Hägg, Robin, ed. 1994. Ancient Greek cult practice from the epigraphical evidence: Proceedings of the Second International Seminar on Ancient Greek Cult, organized by the Swedish Institute at Athens, 22–24 November 1991. Stockholm: Åström.
  238. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  239. This volume remains exemplary for illustrating the many ways that epigraphical evidence illustrates the workings of Greek sacrificial cult but with an emphasis on the polis, as opposed to individuals or small groups.
  240. Find this resource:
  241. Lambert, Stephen D. 2002. The sacrificial calendar of Athens. Annual of the British School at Athens 97:353–399.
  242. DOI: 10.1017/S0068245400017433Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  243. Like Rosivach 1994, an extended treatment of civic sacrifices from the practical perspective of a polis calendar for these rites. The Attic state calendar is one of only two that survive, aside from four local calendars also from Attica. For the Attic state calendar, see Sokolowski 1962 (nos. 1, 2, 9, 10); for the Cos calendar, see Sokolowski 1969 (no. 151); and for the Attic local calendars, see Sokolowski 1969 (nos. 18, 20), Lupu 2009 (no. 1; all cited under Epigraphical Evidence (Greek): Text Collections), and Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum 33 (no. 147).
  244. Find this resource:
  245. Naiden, F. S. 2013. God, Kings, and Lawgivers. In Law and religion in the eastern Mediterranean. Edited by A. Hagedorn and R. G. Kratz, 79–105. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
  246. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199550234.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  247. A comparative survey of the origin of and background for sacred laws but not limited to sacrificial regulations. This overview takes the opposite approach from the detailed, empirical study by Parker 2004.
  248. Find this resource:
  249. Parker, Robert. 2004. What are sacred laws? In The law and the courts in ancient Greece. Edited by E. Harris and L. Rubenstein, 57–71. London: Duckworth, 2004.
  250. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  251. The first considered attempt to define Greek “sacred laws,” an omnibus description of the laws, bylaws, and decrees affecting sacrifice, especially civic sacrifices of animals. A later revision, “Law and Religion,” in The Cambridge companion to ancient Greek law (edited by M. Gagarin and D. Cohen. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2005), pp. 61–82, also addresses the issue of asebeia in relation to sacrifice.
  252. Find this resource:
  253. Rosivach, Vincent. 1994. The system of public sacrifice in 4th-century Athens. Atlanta: Scholars.
  254. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  255. The only work dealing with economic and legal aspects of sacrifice in a Greek polis, using evidence found mainly in Sokolowski 1955, Sokolowski 1962, and Sokolowski 1969 (all cited under Epigraphical Evidence (Greek): Text Collections).
  256. Find this resource:
  257. Archaeological Evidence (Greek)
  258.  
  259. This evidence falls into several major categories, according to both the type of source and the aspect of the ritual involved. Zooarchaeological evidence, studied closely only for the last thirty years or so, consists of faunal remains at altars and illuminates several controversies relating to animal sacrifice. The most recent survey is Ekroth 2013, by a leading scholar in the field; several other of the author’s essays are cited under Animal Offerings (Greek). Some of the physical objects that played a part in sacrificial ritual survive, but even so our information about them must be supplemented by epigraphical, literary, and iconographic evidence (for which see further the section on Iconographic Sources (Greek)). Zaccagnino 1998 discusses incense burners; Étienne and Le Dinahet 1991 and Hellmann 2006 treat altars; Scheer 2000, Bettinetti 2001, and Mylonopoulos 2010 discuss cult statues.
  260.  
  261. Bettinetti, Simona. 2001. La statua di culto nella pratica rituale Greca. Bari, Italy: Levante.
  262. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  263. The most thorough treatment of cult statues and of the rituals connected with them, including theoxenia in chapter 7 but without a comprehensive thesis, for which see Scheer 2000.
  264. Find this resource:
  265. Blech, Michael. 1982. Studien zum kranz bei den Griechen. Berlin: de Gruyter.
  266. DOI: 10.1515/9783110839104Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  267. The third section of this voluminous study of wreaths deals with rituals and, like the rest of the book, includes plentiful drawings. No overarching thesis but a comprehensive treatment based on both literary and archaeological evidence.
  268. Find this resource:
  269. Ekroth, Gunnel. 2013. Bare bones: Osteology and Greek sacrifice. In Animal sacrifice in the ancient Greek world. Edited by I. C. Rutherford and S. Hitch. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
  270. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  271. This essay reviews scholarship on Greek osteology, and thus updates D. Reese, “Faunal Remains from Greek Sanctuaries” in Hägg and Alroth 1997, 121–123 (cited under Occasions for Sacrifice (Greek)), the next most recent review article on this subject.
  272. Find this resource:
  273. Étienne, Roland, and Marie-Thérèse Le Dinahet, eds. 1991. L’espace sacrificiel dans les civilisations Méditerranéennes de l’antiquité: Actes du Colloque tenu à la Maison de L’orient, Lyon, 4–7 Juin 1988. Lyon, France: Bibliothèque Salomon-Reinach.
  274. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  275. These essays deal with the temenos and altar and the effect of this typical Greek setting on the conduct of sacrifice.
  276. Find this resource:
  277. Hellmann, Marie-Christine. 2006. L’architecture Grecque. Vol. 2, Architecture religieuse et funéraire. Paris: Picard.
  278. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  279. In chapter 4, extensive treatment of altars but with emphasis on large structures of the Classical and Hellenistic periods; in chapters 5–7, treatment of sanctuaries, their organization, and sanctuary buildings.
  280. Find this resource:
  281. Mylonopoulos, Joannis, ed. 2010. Divine images and human imaginations in ancient Greece and Rome. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
  282. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  283. This collection of essays provides broader and more recent bibliography on this topic.
  284. Find this resource:
  285. Scheer, Tanja Susanne. 2000. Die gottheit und ihr bild: Untersuchungen zur funktion Griechischer kultbilder in religion und politik. Munich: C. H. Beck.
  286. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  287. A study that examines the problematic character of the phrase “cult image,” which overlaps in Greek with “votive statue,” and surveys the protocols by which these objects were inaugurated as well as the history of Greek attitudes toward them.
  288. Find this resource:
  289. Zaccagnino, Cristiana. 1998. Il thymiaterion nel mondo Greco: Analisi delle fonti, tipologia, impieghi. Rome: L’Erma di Brettschneider.
  290. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  291. The only thorough treatment of incense burners, a subject that is even more neglected than the use of incense, which is itself neglected.
  292. Find this resource:
  293. Iconographic Sources (Greek)
  294.  
  295. Vase painting and sculpture provide most of the iconographic evidence, and they provide most, but not all, evidence for cult paraphernalia, discussed under Archaeological Evidence (Greek). The most important work is Van Straten 1995. Next comes Gebauer 2002 (cited under Phases of the Ritual (Greek)), but Mylonopoulos 2013, Himmelmann 1997, and Durand and Schnapp 1989 touch on closely related topics.
  296.  
  297. Durand, Jean-Louis, and Alain Schnapp. 1989. Sacrificial slaughter and initiatory hunt. In A city of images: Iconography and society in ancient Greece. Translated by Deborah Lyons. Edited by C. Bérard, 53–70. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
  298. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  299. This book rivals Van Straten 1995 in its visual evidence for sacrificial slaughter, but conflates sacrifice and hunting, somewhat in the manner of Burkert 1983 (cited under Monographs and Overviews (Greek): Since 1970).
  300. Find this resource:
  301. Himmelmann, Nikolaus. 1997. Tieropfer in der Griechischen kunst. Opladen, Germany: Westdeutschen Verlag.
  302. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-322-88514-2Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  303. This survey covers all phases of animal sacrifice but is most useful for images of sacrificial parades found in bas-relief sculpture.
  304. Find this resource:
  305. Mylonopoulos, Joannis. 2013. Gory details? The iconography of human sacrifice in Greek art. In Sacrifices humains. Perspectives croissées et répresentations. Edited by Pierre Bonnechere and Gagné Renaud, 61–85. Liège, Belgium: Presses universitaires de Liège.
  306. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  307. The only lengthy discussion of the visual as opposed to literary evidence for human sacrifice.
  308. Find this resource:
  309. Van Straten, Folkert T. 1995. Hiera kala: Images of animal sacrifice in Archaic and Classical Greece. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
  310. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  311. An unequaled collection of images on vase paintings and votive offerings, including statues and pinakes, organized according to three stages: pre-kill, kill, and post-kill, a scheme reflecting the influence of Burkert 1983 (cited under Monographs and Overviews (Greek): Since 1970), but with room for evidence arguing against undue stress on killing and for evidence relevant to a range of issues.
  312. Find this resource:
  313. Literary Sources (Greek)
  314.  
  315. Literary sources, notably Homer and tragedy, provide a basis for studying the problematic aspects of Greek sacrificial vocabulary and practice. Burkert 1966 is important for the genesis of the author’s theory of sacrifice and for inaugurating several decades of scholarly work on tragedy and sacrifice. For a contrary view, see Scullion 2002. Foley 1985 deals with the oeuvre of a single tragedian, and Seaford 1989 explains how tragedy diverges from Homer. Henrichs 2012 summarizes this scholar’s decades of work on the subject. Sacrificial motifs in genres other than epic and tragedy is a neglected subject, but see remarks in Naiden 2012 (cited under Monographs and Overviews (Greek): Since 1970).
  316.  
  317. Burkert, Walter. 1966. Greek tragedy and sacrificial ritual. Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 7:87–121.
  318. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  319. The first and most influential statement of the case that tragedy and animal sacrifice were originally and thematically connected and that tragic violence draws on the same psychology as violence in the rite.
  320. Find this resource:
  321. Foley, Helene P. 1985. Ritual irony: Poetry and sacrifice in Euripides. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press.
  322. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  323. A study of the manipulation of the norms of animal sacrifice for literary purposes, showing how this poet differs from his predecessors and peers in this respect.
  324. Find this resource:
  325. Henrichs, Albert. 2012. Animal sacrifice in Greek tragedy: Ritual, metaphor, and problematizations. In Greek and Roman animal sacrifice: Ancient victims, modern observers. Edited by Christopher A. Faraone and F. S. Naiden, 180–194. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
  326. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511894602Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  327. A generation after Burkert broached the topic of tragedy and ritual, this essay gives a general treatment of tragic diction for and representation of sacrifice, noting the pitfalls for scholars of religion.
  328. Find this resource:
  329. Scullion, Scott. 2002. Nothing to do with Dionysus: Tragedy misconceived as ritual. Classical Quarterly 52.1: 102–137.
  330. DOI: 10.1093/cq/52.1.102Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  331. Like Lloyd-Jones in Graf 1998 (cited under Essay Collections on Greek and Roman Sacrifice), this article divorces tragedy from ritual, including sacrificial ritual.
  332. Find this resource:
  333. Seaford, Richard. 1989. Homeric and tragic sacrifice. Transactions of the American Philological Association 119:87–95.
  334. DOI: 10.2307/284262Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  335. A comparison of the handling of sacrifice in two genres and two historical periods, with attention to the political implications.
  336. Find this resource:
  337. Phases of the Ritual (Greek)
  338.  
  339. The thusia was a complex ritual that comprised many elements, including the procession in advance and the banquet after. Graf 1996 and Gebauer 2002 provide studies of processions. The banquet, the crucial phase of sacrifice for Detienne and Vernant 1989, also attracted the attention of others scholars, especially in France, including Veyne 2000 and Schmitt Pantel 1992. Music was also an important feature, discussed by Brand 2004 and Kowalzig 2007.
  340.  
  341. Brand, Helmut. 2004. Griechische musikanten im kult: Von der frühzeit bis zum beginn der Spätklassik. Dettelbach, Germany: Röll.
  342. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  343. A general survey dealing with mostly with realia and thus to be used as a counterpart to Kowalzig 2007.
  344. Find this resource:
  345. Gebauer, Jörg. 2002. Pompe und thysia: Attische tieropferdarstellungen auf schwarz-und rotfiguren vasen. Munster, Germany: Ugarit-Verlag.
  346. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  347. Covering a topic omitted by Van Straten 1995 (cited under Iconographic Sources (Greek)), this monograph includes a chapter with some 150 images of processions, with attention to participants, paraphernalia, and iconographic complications, such as the presence of Dionysiac elements.
  348. Find this resource:
  349. Graf, Fritz. 1996. Pompai in Greece: Some considerations about space and ritual in the Greek polis. In The role of religion in the early Greek polis. Edited by R. Hägg, 55–65. Stockholm: Åström.
  350. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  351. This essay gives a schema for the relation between processions and acts of sacrifice: “centripetal” parades lead to shrines and culminate in acts of sacrifices, whereas “centrifugal” parades lead away from shrines and depend on previous successful sacrifices. Useful bibliography.
  352. Find this resource:
  353. Kowalzig, Barbara. 2007. Singing for the gods: Performances of myth and ritual in Archaic and Classical Greece. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
  354. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199219964.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  355. The only ambitious, theoretically informed treatment of the role of song and dance as a part of both festal sacrifice and Greek culture.
  356. Find this resource:
  357. Schmitt Pantel, Pauline. 1992. La cité au banquet: Histoire des repas publics dans les cités Grecques. Rome: École Française de Rome.
  358. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  359. A study of the history of public banquets in the Greek cities, from the Archaic to the Roman period, stressing the contributions of individual benefactors, and the impact of banquets on civic identity, in the sense envisioned by Detienne and Vernant 1989 (cited under Monographs and Overviews (Greek): Since 1970).
  360. Find this resource:
  361. Veyne, Paul. 2000. Inviter les dieux, sacrifier, banqueter: Quelques nuances de la religiosité Gréco-Romaine. Annales: Histoire, sciences sociales 55.1: 3–42.
  362. DOI: 10.3406/ahess.2000.279830Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  363. A comprehensive view of animal sacrifice as a source of food, as with Detienne and Vernant 1989 (cited under Monographs and Overviews (Greek): Since 1970), but also as a form of sacred commensality. Mauss 1954 (cited under General Studies on Ritual) lies in the background, as with Vernant.
  364. Find this resource:
  365. Animal Offerings (Greek)
  366.  
  367. The sacrifice of animals in acts of thusia has played a central role in the development of the influential theories of Burkert 1983 and Detienne and Vernant 1989 (both cited under Monographs and Overviews (Greek): Since 1970) and also in criticism of these theories. In recent years, scholarly discussion has featured work on neglected archaeological sources such as Van Straten 1995 (cited under Iconographic Sources (Greek)) and on the problematics of literary sources, as in Faraone and Naiden 2012 (cited under Essay Collections on Greek and Roman Sacrifice).
  368.  
  369. Bodson, Liliane. 1978. Hiera zoa: Contribution à l’étude de la place de l’animal dans la religion Grecque ancienne. Brussels: Académie royale de Belgique.
  370. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  371. The subject of animal offerings other than domestic quadrupeds is touched on elsewhere (e.g., Hermary, et al. 2004, cited under Monographs and Overviews (Greek): Since 1970 and Ekroth 2014, cited under General Studies on Greek and Roman Sacrifice), but this is the only monographic treatment.
  372. Find this resource:
  373. Ekroth, Gunnel. 2007. Meat in ancient Greece: Sacrificial, sacred, or secular. Food and History 5.1: 249–272.
  374. DOI: 10.1484/J.FOOD.1.100193Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  375. Ekroth’s work incorporates the results of several decades of osteological research at Greek shrines. Using such evidence, this essay blurs the line between sacrificial and other kinds of meat.
  376. Find this resource:
  377. Ekroth, Gunnel. 2008a. Burnt, cooked, or raw? Divine and human culinary desires at Greek Animal sacrifice. In Transformations in sacrificial practices from Antiquity to modern times. Edited by E. Stavrianopoulou, A. Michaels, and C. Ambos, 87–113. Berlin: LIT Verlag.
  378. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  379. This essay blurs the line between customary human and divine portions.
  380. Find this resource:
  381. Ekroth, Gunnel. 2008b. Meat, man, and God: On the division of the animal victim at Greek sacrifices. In ΜΙΚΡΟΣ ΙΕΡΟΜΝΗΜΩΝ: Μελετες εις Μνημην Michael H. Jameson. Edited by A. Matthaiou and I. Polinskaya, 259–290. Athens: Ellīnikī Epigraphikī Etaireía.
  382. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  383. A complement to Ekroth 2008a.
  384. Find this resource:
  385. Feyel, Christophe. 2006. La dokimasia des animaux sacrifiés. Revue Philologique 80:33–55.
  386. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  387. The only survey of the inspection of animal offerings, a common aspect of civic thusia.
  388. Find this resource:
  389. Gill, D. 1974. Trapezomata: A neglected aspect of Greek sacrifice. Harvard Theological Review 67.2: 117–137.
  390. DOI: 10.1017/S0017816000003217Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  391. Revised as a 1991 Harvard PhD dissertation (Greek cult tables), this is the longest treatment of the related phenomena of trapezomata and theoxenia but to be supplemented by Ekroth in Pirenne-Delforge and Prescendi 2011 (cited under Essay Collections on Greek and Roman Sacrifice).
  392. Find this resource:
  393. Roy, James. 2007. The consumption of dog meat in classical Greece. In Cooking up the past: Food and culinary practices in the Neolithic and Bronze-Age aegean. Edited by C. Mee and J. Renard, 342–354. Oxford: Oxbow.
  394. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  395. Most work on animal offerings focuses on the four common sacrificial species of domestic quadrupeds (cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs). This is one of the few essays that cover other types of animals, in this case, dogs.
  396. Find this resource:
  397. Savoldi, E. 1996. Hieros ichthys; Sacralità e proibizione nell´epica Greca arcaica. Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa 4:61–91.
  398. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  399. This is the only study devoted to the use of fish in sacrificial rituals.
  400. Find this resource:
  401. Non-Animal Offerings (Greek)
  402.  
  403. Although much scholarly attention has been devoted to animal offerings, non-animal offerings were equally prominent in Greek life. Several general studies include coverage, including Eitrem 1977; Ziehen, et al. 1950 (both cited under General Studies on Greek and Roman Sacrifice); and Ziehen 1939 (cited under Monographs and Overviews (Greek): Before 1970) as well as articles in Pirenne-Delforge and Prescendi 2011 (cited under Essay Collections on Greek and Roman Sacrifice).
  404.  
  405. Fritze, H. von. 1894. Die rauchopfer der Griechen. Berlin: Mayer & Müller.
  406. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  407. The only monographic study of this common kind of offering, but with no analysis of why incense and animal sacrifice overlap or of how the use of incense changed in the Hellenistic and Roman periods.
  408. Find this resource:
  409. Graf, Fritz. 1980. Milch, honig, und wein: Zum verständness der libation im Griechischen ritual. In Perennitas: Studi in honore di Angelo Brelich. Edited by Angelo Brelich, 209–221. Rome: Edizioni dell’Ateneo.
  410. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  411. This essay deals chiefly with libations that do not accompany animal sacrifice, but makes general observations about the cultural valence of substances used as offerings.
  412. Find this resource:
  413. Kearns, Emily. 1991. Cakes in Greek sacrifice regulations. In Ancient Greek cult practice from the epigraphical evidence: Proceedings of the Second International Seminar on Ancient Greek Cult, organized by the Swedish Institute at Athens, 22–24 November 1991. Edited by Robin Hägg, Robin, 65–70. Stockholm: Åström.
  414. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  415. Brief though it is, this is the only recent work on this kind of offerings, attested mostly in epigraphical records.
  416. Find this resource:
  417. Leitao, David D. 2003. Adolescent hair-growing and hair-cutting rituals in ancient Greece: A sociological approach. In Initiation in ancient Greek ritual and narratives. Edited by D. B. Dodd and C. A. Faraone, 109–129. London: Routledge.
  418. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  419. This, the only work on Greek offerings of hair, is intellectually more ambitious than Kearns 1991 or von Fritze 1894.
  420. Find this resource:
  421. Occasions for Sacrifice (Greek)
  422.  
  423. The term “sacrifice” comprehends several kinds of offerings made for purposes other than those served by animal sacrifice preceding a meal. Some of these offerings are made to gods, but for the purpose of divination, and some to heroes, discussed by Hägg and Alroth 1997 and Ekroth 2002, and to divinized rulers, treated by Habicht 1970, Koenen 1993, and Lanciers 1993. For remarks on divination, see Burkert 1985 (cited under Monographs and Overviews (Greek): Since 1970), pioneering the view that sacrifices of this kind served a cognitive purpose, as also in Flower 2008. For criticism of this view, see Naiden 2012 (chapter 4; cited under Monographs and Overviews (Greek): Since 1970).
  424.  
  425. Ekroth, Gunnel. 2002. The sacrificial rituals of Greek hero cults in the Archaic to early Hellenistic periods. Kernos Supp. 12. Liège, Belgium: Centre international d’étude de la religion Grecque antique.
  426. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  427. This thorough review of evidence of all sorts reversed the orthodox view of the supposedly “chthonic” character of most sacrifices to heroes and heroines.
  428. Find this resource:
  429. Flower, Michael. 2008. The seer in ancient Greece. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
  430. DOI: 10.1525/california/9780520252295.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  431. An analysis of acts of divination, especially hepatoscopy, that regards them as an aid to decision-making and thus as a kind of cognitive undertaking.
  432. Find this resource:
  433. Habicht, Christian. 1970. Gottenmenschentum und Griechische städte. 2d ed. Munich: C. H. Beck.
  434. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  435. The standard treatment of “ruler cult,” a relevant practice insofar as sacrifice combines elements of homage to authority with elements of divine worship.
  436. Find this resource:
  437. Hägg, Robin, and Brita Alroth, eds. 1997. Greek sacrificial ritual: Olympian and chthonian. Stockholm: Åström.
  438. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  439. Essays chiefly on the distinction between sacrifice for Olympian gods and sacrifice for chthonic powers, heroes, and the dead, but also dealing with sacrifices performed by plunging animals into the sea, sacrifices of pregnant animals, and sacrifices of pigs.
  440. Find this resource:
  441. Jameson, Michael. 1991. Sacrifice before battle. In Hoplites: The classical Greek battle experience. Edited by V. Hanson, 197–227. London: Routledge.
  442. DOI: 10.4324/9780203423639Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  443. An older but still influential view in which sacrifices of this kind, while made naively, gave ample scope to the imagination and emotional needs of the participants.
  444. Find this resource:
  445. Koenen, Ludwig. 1993. The Ptolemaic King as a religious figure. In Images and ideologies: Self-definition in the Hellenistic world. Edited by A. Bulloch, 25–115. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
  446. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  447. The relevant section of this book, one that deals with the best-known and most complex example of ruler cult, takes up the relation between Greek and Egyptian sacrificial rites.
  448. Find this resource:
  449. Lanciers, Eddy. 1993. Die Opfer im Hellenistischen herrscherkult und ihre rezeption bei der einheimischen bevölkerung der Hellenistischen reiche. In Ritual and sacrifice in the ancient Near East: Proceedings of the International Conference Organized by the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven from the 17th to the 29th of April 1991. Edited by J. Quaegebeur, 203–223. Leuven, Belgium: Peeters.
  450. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  451. A treatment of “ruler cult” precisely in reference to sacrifice.
  452. Find this resource:
  453. Participants (Greek)
  454.  
  455. The participants in Greek sacrifice include, first, priests as well as citizens. They also include associations and sundry social groups. (In the Oxford Bibliographies article Greek Religion, see Priests and other Religious Personnel, Associations, and Women.) Dignas and Trampedach 2008 deals with priests; Sourvinou-Inwood 2000a and Sourvinou-Inwood 2000b deal with citizens in an influential pair of essays only recently being questioned. Associations are the subject of Arnaoutoglou 2003 and women, of Osborne 1993. The monograph of Berthiaume 1982 is a standard treatment, and Stowers 1995 is a unique attempt to generalize on the subject of access to Greek sacrificial ritual. Connelly 2007 is useful both for the participation of women in sacrifice and for the study of priests.
  456.  
  457. Arnaoutoglou, Ilias. 2003. Thusias heneka kai sunousias: Private religious associations in Hellenistic Athens. Athens: Academy of Athens.
  458. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  459. Building on a century of scholarship in the field of Athenian religious associations, this monograph deals with the period with the most evidence, while giving a précis of earlier history as well as earlier scholarship.
  460. Find this resource:
  461. Berthiaume, Guy. 1982. Les rôles du mageiros: Étude sur la boucherie, la cuisine, et le sacrifice dans la Grèce ancienne. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
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  463. The only extended treatment of this subject, exploring the overlap between butchers and priests, on the one hand, and butchers and chefs, on the other, with both favorable and unfavorable consequences for the stress on sacred commensality found in Detienne and Vernant 1989 (cited under Monographs and Overviews (Greek): Since 1970) and Sourvinou-Inwood 2000a and Sourvinou-Inwood 2000b.
  464. Find this resource:
  465. Connelly, Joan Breton. 2007. Portrait of a priestess: Women and ritual in ancient Greece. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
  466. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  467. A full dossier of the activities of ancient priestesses, notably as sacrificial celebrants.
  468. Find this resource:
  469. Dignas, Beate, and Kai Trampedach, eds. 2008. Practitioners of the divine: Greek priests and religious officials from Homer to Heliodorus. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
  470. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  471. Most of these studies of Greek priesthood discuss sacrifice, including cults of Artemis and Demeter, and surveying visual representation of priests, while at the same underscoring the problematic character of the term “priest” for Greek celebrants, who were never ordained members of a legally distinct class.
  472. Find this resource:
  473. Osborne, Robin. 1993. Women and sacrifice in classical Greece. Classical Quarterly n.s. 43:392–405.
  474. DOI: 10.1017/S0009838800039914Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  475. The only essay on an important subject, modifying received views about a male monopoly of many aspects of sacrifice.
  476. Find this resource:
  477. Sourvinou-Inwood, Christiane. 2000a. Further aspects of polis religion. In Oxford readings in Greek religion. Edited by R. Buxton, 38–55. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
  478. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  479. First published in Annali dell’ Istituto universitario orientali di Napoli 10 (1988): 259–274, this is a continuation of Sourvinou-Inwood 2000b.
  480. Find this resource:
  481. Sourvinou-Inwood, Christiane. 2000b. What is polis religion? In Oxford readings in Greek religion. Edited by R. Buxton, 13–37. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
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  483. First published in The Greek city from Homer to Alexander (edited by R. Osborne and S. Price (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1990), pp. 295–322, this essay, together with Sourvinou-Inwood 200b, sets forth a view of the organization and purpose of civic sacrifices that dovetails with Detienne and Vernant 1989 (cited under Monographs and Overviews (Greek): Since 1970), who had dealt with these subjects only in broad outline.
  484. Find this resource:
  485. Stowers, Stanley. 1995. Greeks who sacrifice and those who do not: Toward an anthropology of Greek religion. In The social world of the first Christians: Essays in honor of Wayne A. Meeks. Edited by L. M. White and O. L. Yarbrough, 293–333. Minneapolis: Fortress.
  486. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  487. The only essay on the general question of restricting access to sacrifice but based on anthropology rather than the feminism and Freudianism found in Jay 1992 (cited under General Studies on Sacrifice).
  488. Find this resource:
  489. Monographs and Overviews (Roman)
  490.  
  491. Most introductions to Roman religion (see the separate Oxford Bibliographies article Roman Religion) provide basic accounts of Roman sacrificial practice; of these, Scheid 2003, written by a leading expert, provides the best short account in English. Wissowa 1912, Latte 1916, Krause 1931, and Latte 1960 are much more detailed and provide much more extensive citation of the evidence, although largely restricted to literary sources. Scheid 2005 is the only monograph that treats Roman sacrifice in a wide range of aspects; Huet, et al. 2004 provides an extensive survey.
  492.  
  493. Huet, Valérie, Francesca Prescendi, Anne Viola Siebert, et al. 2004. Les sacrifices dans le monde Romain. In Thesaurus cultus et rituum antiquorum 1:183–235.
  494. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  495. This systematic article covers the different types of sacrifice, the various participants, kinds of offerings, and the phases of the ritual, with extensive citation of the full range of evidence and secondary sources.
  496. Find this resource:
  497. Krause, K. 1931. Hostia. In Paulys real-encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft. Suppl. 5. Edited by Georg Wissowa, Wilhelm Kroll, and Karl Mittelhaus, 236–282. Munich: A. Druckenmüller.
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  499. Hostia is the distinctive Latin term for sacrificial victim. The article provides a detailed discussion of species, color, age, and other characteristics, with extensive citation of epigraphic as well as literary evidence.
  500. Find this resource:
  501. Latte, Kurt. 1916. Immolatio. In Paulys Real-encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft. Vol. 9. Edited by Georg Wissowa, Wilhelm Kroll, and Karl Mittelhaus, 1112–1133. Munich: A. Druckenmüller.
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  503. Immolatio is the most distinctive Latin term for animal sacrifice. The article begins with a taxonomy of sacrifice, classified according to both contexts and goals, and continues with types of victims and the stages of the procedure.
  504. Find this resource:
  505. Latte, Kurt. 1960. Römische religionsgeschichte. Munich: C. H. Beck.
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  507. Latte organizes his account of Roman religion according to a scheme of historical development but includes as an appendix (pp. 375–393) a systematic account of Roman sacrifice, beginning with a taxonomy, continuing with the participants and instruments, and ending with a step-by-step description of the actual ritual; copious citation of literary sources.
  508. Find this resource:
  509. Scheid, John. 2003. An introduction to Roman religion. Translated by Janet Lloyd. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press.
  510. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  511. Originally published as La religion des Romains (Paris: A. Colin, 1998). Chapter 6, “Sacrifice,” covers a wide range of cult acts that have some connection to sacrifice; the first part (pp. 79–96) provides a fairly detailed overview of the procedure, with translations of some long selections from key textual sources.
  512. Find this resource:
  513. Scheid, John. 2005. Quand faire, c’est croire: Les rites sacrificiels des Romains. Paris: Aubier.
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  515. Scheid’s unparalleled familiarity with the inscribed records of the Arval Brothers (Scheid 1990 and Scheid, et al. 1998, both cited under Epigraphical and Archaeological Evidence (Roman)) has made him one of the most important scholars of Roman sacrificial practice. This book sums up much of his work on various aspects of the subject that appeared earlier in article form.
  516. Find this resource:
  517. Wissowa, Georg. 1912. Religion und kultus der Römer. 2d ed. Munich: C. H. Beck.
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  519. Still the basic handbook on Roman religion, this provides a systematic and to a large extent purely descriptive overview of cult practices (pp. 409–432, with pp. 416–420 specifically on animal sacrifice), with full references to the sources (largely literary, but some epigraphic).
  520. Find this resource:
  521. Epigraphical and Archaeological Evidence (Roman)
  522.  
  523. The works cited under Monographs and Overviews (Roman), with some exceptions as noted, draw primarily on literary evidence. Yet other types of sources are equally important: visual (see Literary and Iconographic Sources (Roman)), epigraphic, and more recently zooarchaeological. Scheid 1990 and Scheid, et al. 1998 provide exhaustive treatment of the most important set of inscriptions for the study of sacrificial practice. King 2005 and Lepetz and Van Andringa 2008 provide regional surveys of zooarchaeological data; Groot 2008 focuses on a specific site. Siebert 1999 is an exemplary study that draws on all available types of evidence to survey one specific aspect of sacrificial procedure. Aldrete 2014 combines literary, iconographic, and comparative evidence to explicate a crucial step in sacrificial ritual. In recent decades there has been increased awareness that all the sources for Roman sacrifice must be interpreted in their own terms: see the works cited under Literary and Iconographic Sources (Roman).
  524.  
  525. Aldrete, Gregory S. 2014. Hammers, axes, bulls, and blood: Some practical aspects of Roman Animal sacrifice. Journal of Roman Studies 104:28–50.
  526. DOI: 10.1017/S0075435814000033Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  527. Aldrete offers a detailed analysis of the precise way that participants accomplished the killing and bleeding of bovines, drawing on ancient sculpture, comparative historical sources, and animal physiology.
  528. Find this resource:
  529. Groot, Maaike. 2008. Animals in ritual and economy in a Roman frontier community: Excavations in Tiel-Passewaaij. Amsterdam: Amsterdam Univ. Press.
  530. DOI: 10.5117/9789089640222Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  531. One of the most thorough and detailed studies of the zooarchaeological remains from a particular site, with thoughtful analysis of what conclusions can be drawn from it about the role of animals in economy and ritual.
  532. Find this resource:
  533. King, Anthony. 2005. Animal remains from temples in Roman Britain. Britannia 36:329–369.
  534. DOI: 10.3815/000000005784016964Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  535. This meta-study analyzes the data from some eighteen sites in Britain, spanning the entire period of the Roman occupation.
  536. Find this resource:
  537. Lepetz, Sébastien, and William Van Andringa, eds. 2008. Archéologie du sacrifice animal en Gaule Romaine: Rituels et pratiques alimentaires. Montagnac, France: Monique Mergoil.
  538. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  539. Currently the most sustained examination of using zooarchaeological evidence as a way to approach the practice of animal sacrifice in the Roman world; contains a wide range of papers, many of them studies of particular sites but a few focusing on more general methodological reflections.
  540. Find this resource:
  541. Scheid, John. 1990. Romulus et ses frères: Le collège des frères arvales, modèle du culte public dans la Rome des empereurs. Rome: École Française de Rome.
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  543. The inscribed annual records of the Arval Brothers, a minor priesthood of Rome, provide the most detailed and extensive information about actual cult practice, and Scheid’s familiarity with them is unparalleled. This monograph provides a detailed synopsis and analysis of all the procedures described in these inscriptions, with sacrificial practice treated in great detail (pp. 441–676).
  544. Find this resource:
  545. Scheid, John, Paola Tassini, and Jörg Rüpke. 1998. Recherches archéologiques à la Magliana. Commentarii fratrum arvalium qui supersunt: Les copies épigraphiques des protocoles annuels de la Confrérie Arvale, 21 av.-305 ap. J.-C. Rome: École Française de Rome, Soprintendenza archaeologica di Roma.
  546. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  547. Scheid’s massive edition of the inscribed records of the Arval Brothers supersedes the earlier edition of W. Henzen, Acta Fratrum Arvalium (Berlin: Reimeri, 1874), to which all earlier scholarship refers.
  548. Find this resource:
  549. Siebert, Anne Viola. 1999. Instrumenta sacra: Untersuchungen zu Römischen opfer-, kult- und priestergeräten. Religionsgeschichtliche versuche und vorarbeite 44. Berlin: de Gruyter.
  550. DOI: 10.1515/9783110803723Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  551. The most systematic and detailed study of the objects employed in a sacrifice: vessels for incense and wine, knives and other means of slaughter, altars, and musical instruments as well as decorative elements. It draws extensively on material and textual evidence, including an extensive catalogue of relevant monuments.
  552. Find this resource:
  553. Literary and Iconographic Sources (Roman)
  554.  
  555. The tendency of earlier scholars either to treat literary and artistic sources as unproblematic evidence for historical realities or to dismiss them as irrelevant to an understanding of Roman tradition has been called into question by more recent scholars, who insist both that these sources are part of the Roman religious tradition and at the same time that we must interpret them first and foremost as literary and artistic works. Feeney 2004 provides an overview of the theoretical and methodological problems involved in working with poetry, and Green 2008 is an example of the type of argument that can be constructed. Prescendi 2007 focuses on the sorts of antiquarian texts on which earlier scholars of sacrifice relied. For visual sources, Ryberg 1955 and Fless 1995 provide excellent collections of material with sound analysis. Moede 2007 provides a succinct account of key issues of interpretation, and Elsner 1995 is a subtle treatment of the role of imagery in shaping religious experience.
  556.  
  557. Elsner, Jaś. 1995. From the literal to the symbolic: A transformation in the nature of Roman religion and roman religious art. In Art and the Roman viewer: The transformation of art from the pagan world to Christianity. By Jaś Elsner, 190–245. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
  558. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  559. Elsner presents three case studies of the visual representation of very different sacrificial rituals: Roman public animal sacrifice on the Ara Pacis, the Mithraic tauroctony, and the Christian Eucharist; arguing that these representations have very different relationships to their subject matter (literal and imitative in the first case, and symbolic or exegetic in the latter two), he demonstrates how visual imagery not merely reflects religious experience but helps construct it.
  560. Find this resource:
  561. Feeney, Denis. 2004. Interpreting sacrificial ritual in Roman poetry: Disciplines and their models. In Rituals in ink: A conference on religion and literary production in ancient Rome held at Stanford University in February 2002. Edited by Alessandro Barchiesi, Jörg Rüpke, and Susan Stephens, 1–21. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner.
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  563. Feeney was one of the first to make a strong case that specialists in Roman religion need to take Latin literature seriously (and vice versa); he here offers a thoughtful exploration of the theoretical and methodological issues involved in bringing together the study of cult practice and literary texts, taking treatments of sacrifice in Vergil’s Georgics and Ovid’s Fasti as his case studies.
  564. Find this resource:
  565. Fless, Friederike. 1995. Opferdiener und kultmusiker auf stadtrömischen historischen reliefs: Untersuchungen zur ikongraphie, funktion und benennung. Mainz, Germany: Philipp von Zabern.
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  567. An important supplement to Ryberg 1955, this monograph provides systematic coverage of depictions of the various cult attendants who assisted at animal sacrifices, including victimarii and musicians.
  568. Find this resource:
  569. Green, Steven J. 2008. Save our cows? Augustan discourse and animal sacrifice in Ovid’s Fasti. Greece and Rome 55:39–54.
  570. DOI: 10.1017/S0017383507000307Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  571. Green argues that Ovid sets up a debate between the positive view of sacrifice promoted by Augustus and a more critical, “Pythagorean” view previously advanced by Ovid in Book 15 of his Metamorphoses.
  572. Find this resource:
  573. Moede, Katja. 2007. Reliefs, public and private. In A companion to Roman religion. Edited by Jörg Rüpke, 164–175. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
  574. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  575. A succinct analysis of the problems involved in interpreting visual material as unproblematic records of historical realities, highlighting the complex agendas that informed the production of sculptural reliefs.
  576. Find this resource:
  577. Prescendi, Francesca. 2007. Décrire et comprendre le sacrifice: Les réflexions des Romains sur leur propre religion à partir de la littérature antiquaire. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner.
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  579. This study focuses on reflections on sacrificial practices as well as relevant various myths and tales that occur in a wide range of texts: Greek and Latin, poetry and prose, although all broadly antiquarian.
  580. Find this resource:
  581. Ryberg, Inez Scott. 1955. Rites of the state religion in Roman art. Rome: American Academy in Rome.
  582. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  583. Although the approach to the material is somewhat outdated, treating it as a “visual record” rather than as complex productions shaped by ideological and aesthetic concerns (see Moede 2007), this work remains the most comprehensive collection of visual evidence, with detailed descriptions and photographic plates of generally very high quality.
  584. Find this resource:
  585. Food and Dining (Roman)
  586.  
  587. The relationship between animal sacrifice and the consumption of meat has been much debated. Many scholars have assumed that most edible meat in the Roman world came from sacrifices and that likewise most public banquets followed on animal sacrifices. The last view has been variously challenged by, for example, Kajava 1998 and some of the papers in Van Andringa 2007 and forcefully reaffirmed by Scheid in chapter 8 of Scheid 2005 (cited under Monographs and Overviews (Roman). Literary evidence makes it clear that some of the meat sold in markets came from sacrificial victims, but there is much debate over how much; McDonough 2004 is a recent contribution. Zooarchaeological evidence now provides an increasingly important addition to the literary evidence on which earlier scholars relied: MacKinnon 2004 provides a systematic general study, and many of the papers in Van Andringa 2007 consider its application to the study of sacrifice in particular.
  588.  
  589. Kajava, Mika. 1998. Visceratio. Arctos 32:109–131.
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  591. Although focusing on visceratio, the public distribution of meat, this article considers public banquets more broadly and touches repeatedly and skeptically on the relationship between the public provision of meat and the practice of animal sacrifice.
  592. Find this resource:
  593. MacKinnon, Michael. 2004. Production and consumption of animals in Roman Italy: Integrating the zooarchaeological and textual evidence. Portsmouth, RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplementary Series.
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  595. The most extensive and methodologically rigorous attempt to date to analyze all the available data for meat production and consumption in one region of the Roman empire; indispensable in providing the larger framework within which to evaluate the relationship between animal sacrifice and the consumption of meat.
  596. Find this resource:
  597. McDonough, Christopher Michael. 2004. The pricing of sacrificial meat: Eidolothuton, the ara maxima, and useful misinformation from Servius. In Augusto augurio: Rerum humanarum et divinarum commentationes in honorem Jerzy Linderski. Edited by C. F. Konrad, 69–76. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner.
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  599. McDonough brings a new bit of hitherto unnoticed textual evidence to bear on the long-standing question of the sale of sacrificial meat in the marketplace; he argues that meat from sacrificial victims was of higher quality than that from other sources and was priced accordingly.
  600. Find this resource:
  601. Van Andringa, William, ed. 2007. Sacrifices, marché de la viande et pratiques alimentaires dans les cités du monde Romain. Food and History 5. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols.
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  603. This collection brings together a number of papers that in various ways treat sacrificial practice, the commerce in meat, and the relationship between the two. Many deal primarily with the material evidence, and many focus on particular sites in Italy and the western provinces, although a few have a broader thematic focus.
  604. Find this resource:
  605. Gender (Roman)
  606.  
  607. Jay 1992 (cited under General Studies on Sacrifice), relying in part on the essay of Detienne in Detienne and Vernant 1989 (cited under Monographs and Overviews (Greek): Since 1970), argues that the prohibition of women from participation in animal sacrifice is a cross-cultural phenomenon. De Cazanove 1987 reaches a similar conclusion with regard to Roman tradition, one adopted by Scheid 1992 but soon subjected to significant criticism (for the corresponding position with regard to Greek tradition, see Osborne 1993, cited under Participants (Greek)). Scheid 2003 presents a more nuanced view; Schultz 2006 and Hemelrijk 2008 develop arguments to the contrary.
  608.  
  609. de Cazanove, Olivier. 1987. Exesto: L’incapacité sacrificielle des femmes à Rome (à propos de Plutarque Quaest. Rom. 85. Phoenix 41:159–173.
  610. DOI: 10.2307/1088742Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  611. Drawing on passages in antiquarian writers that allege restrictions on Roman women’s ability to drink wine, grind grain, and prepare meat and utilizing a structuralist methodology, de Cazanove argues that Roman women, although permitted to attend sacrifices, were forbidden to take an active role.
  612. Find this resource:
  613. Hemelrijk, Emily. 2008. Women and sacrifice in the Roman Empire. In Ritual dynamics and religious change in the Roman Empire: Proceedings of the Eighth Workshop of the International Network Impact of Empire (Heidelberg, July 5–7, 2007). Edited by Olivier Hekster, Sebastian Schmidt-Hofner, and Christian Witschel, 253–267. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
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  615. A detailed examination of the evidence, primarily epigraphic but also iconographic, for the participation of women in animal sacrifice in the western Roman Empire.
  616. Find this resource:
  617. Scheid, John. 1992. The religious roles of Roman women. In A History of women in the West. Vol. 1, From ancient goddesses to Christian saints. Edited by Pauline Schmitt-Pantel. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer, 377–408. Cambridge, MA: Belknap.
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  619. Scheid incorporates the conclusions of de Cazanove 1987 regarding the alleged sacrificial incapacity of women into this wide-ranging survey meant for a general audience (originally published in Italian in 1990), thereby giving it much greater currency.
  620. Find this resource:
  621. Scheid, John. 2003. Les rôles religieux des femmes à Rome, un complément. In Les femmes antiques entre sphère privée et sphère publique. Edited by Regula Frei-Stolba, Anne Bielman, and Olivier Bianchi, 137–151. Bern, Germany: Peter Lang.
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  623. In this later paper, meant for a specialist audience, Scheid presents a more nuanced view of women’s role sacrifice without retracting his original view.
  624. Find this resource:
  625. Schultz, Celia. 2006. Women’s religious activity in the Roman Republic. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press.
  626. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  627. As part of a wider argument that women’s religious activities in general were neither as limited nor as segregated as earlier scholars had represented them, Schultz points out the methodological flaws in the arguments for the “sacrificial incapacity of women” in Roman tradition and makes a case that women could and did preside over sacrifices, including animal sacrifices, in their own right (see esp. pp. 131–137).
  628. Find this resource:
  629. Socio-Political Contexts (Roman)
  630.  
  631. The practice of animal sacrifice, along with other aspects of public cult, was closely bound up with broader social-political relationships in the Roman world. The most obvious context is its use in Roman imperial cult: Price 1984 offers a detailed and subtle reading of its significance therein; Gradel 2002 both builds on and modifies Price. Another important context is the significance of sacrifice for cultural and political identity: Scheid 1995 and Schörner 2011 focus on the interaction of Roman and Greek; and Rives 2014, on Roman and Judaean; lastly, Gordon 1990 and Rives 1999 focus on very different issues: the former, on the emperor as an officiant at sacrifices and the latter, on the use of sacrifice in defining a common religion for the empire.
  632.  
  633. Gordon, Richard. 1990. The veil of power: Emperors, sacrificers and benefactors. In Pagan priests. Edited by Mary Beard and John North, 201–231. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press.
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  635. Gordon focuses on the figure of the emperor as the ideal celebrant in representations of animal sacrifice; he argues that this representation is closely associated with the emperor’s position as the supreme benefactor and that this association is replicated on the local level by the civic elites, whose expenditures on public benefactions earned them the privilege of presiding at public sacrifices.
  636. Find this resource:
  637. Gradel, Ittai. 2002. Emperor worship and Roman religion. Oxford: Clarendon.
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  639. Gradel argues in effect that the Romans did not use sacrifice to situate the emperor ontologically between gods and humans but instead simply to construct relationships of relative status between emperor and subject (see esp. pp. 15–26).
  640. Find this resource:
  641. Price, Simon R. F. 1984. Rituals and power: The Roman imperial cult in Asia Minor. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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  643. A seminal work on Roman imperial cult, its final chapter is devoted to the role of sacrifice. Price argues that most sacrifices in imperial cult were offered to the gods on the emperor’s behalf and that those that were offered to the emperor were carefully distinguished in subtle ways from those offered to traditional gods; the cumulative effect was to create a status for the emperor between man and god.
  644. Find this resource:
  645. Rives, James B. 1999. The decree of Decius and the religion of empire. Journal of Roman Studies 89:135–154.
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  647. Rives argues that the emperor Decius’ decree of 250 CE, which required all inhabitants of the empire to participant in a traditional sacrifice to the gods, marked a significant shift in public religion from the local and collective to the universal and individual and thus helped define a Roman imperial religion.
  648. Find this resource:
  649. Rives, James B. 2014. Animal sacrifice and political identity in Rome and Judaea. In Jews and Christians in the first and second centuries: How to write their history. Edited by Peter J. Tomson and Joshua Schwartz, 105–125. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
  650. DOI: 10.1163/9789004278479Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  651. This article surveys the differences and similarities in sacrificial practice in the Roman and Judaean traditions and argues that animal sacrifice provided a common point of reference and a basis for accommodation between two traditions that were in other respects very different and potentially at odds with one another.
  652. Find this resource:
  653. Scheid, John. 1995. Graeco ritu: A typically Roman way of honouring the gods. Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 97:15–31.
  654. DOI: 10.2307/311298Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  655. The most thoughtful discussion of the significance of Roman sacrifices conducted “in the Greek fashion.”
  656. Find this resource:
  657. Schörner, Günther. 2011. Sacrifice east and west: Experiencing ritual difference in the Roman Empire. In Reflexivity, media, and visuality, Section 4, Ritual and visuality. Edited by Petra H. Rösch and Corinna Wessels-Mevissen, 81–99. Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz.
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  659. A study of the way that Greeks and Romans viewed each other’s sacrificial practice, more wide-ranging than Scheid 1995 and incorporating iconographic sources.
  660. Find this resource:
  661. Human Sacrifice in the Greek and Roman World
  662.  
  663. The use of humans as victims in sacrificial rituals has been a topic of ongoing scholarly interest. Earlier scholarship, exemplified by Schwenn 1915, tended to focus on the question whether actual human sacrifices ever took place in the Greek and Roman world. In recent decades, by contrast, scholars have been less interested in the reality of human sacrifice and more interested in the cultural work done by stories of human sacrifice; Bonnechere 1994 and Rives 1995 are good examples of this trend. Bonnechere and Gagné 2013 provides a good introduction to the range of current research.
  664.  
  665. Bonnechere, Pierre. 1994. Le sacrifice humain en Grèce ancienne. Kernos Supplement 3. Liège, Belgium: Centre international d’étude de la religion grecque antique.
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  667. The most sustained attempt to analyze the reasons why stories of human sacrifice feature so prominently in Greek myths.
  668. Find this resource:
  669. Bonnechere, Pierre, and Renaud Gagné, eds. 2013. Sacrifices humains: Perspectives croissées et répresentations. Liège, Belgium: Presses universitaires de Liège.
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  671. Most of the essays in this collection focus on the Greek world, covering topics that range from myth to practice, but they are supplemented by comparative pieces on human sacrifice in early China, among the Aztecs, and in Vergil’s Aeneid.
  672. Find this resource:
  673. Rives, James B. 1995. Human sacrifice among pagans and Christians. Journal of Roman Studies 85:65–85.
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  675. This article traces the motif of accusations of human sacrifice as a means of marginalizing and denigrating particular groups, from Archaic Greece to the Christian Roman Empire.
  676. Find this resource:
  677. Schwenn, Friedrich. 1915. Die menschenopfer bei den Griechen und Römern. Giessen, Germany: Töpelmann.
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  679. Although its outdated methodology and theoretical framework render its conclusions of little use, this monograph remains the most comprehensive collection of literary sources available.
  680. Find this resource:
  681. Philosophical Views
  682.  
  683. In ancient Greece and Rome, those responsible for the performance of sacrifice were not likewise responsible for explaining and conceptualizing the practice, a task left to “poets and philosophers.” Discussions of poetics texts are cited under Literary Sources (Greek) and Literary and Iconographic Sources (Roman). As for philosophy, scholarly attention has focused on the rejection of animal sacrifice in the Pythagorean tradition, discussed most thoroughly by Sfameni Gasparro 1987 and Sfameni Gasparro 1989, but, as Obbink 1988 and Mikalson 2010 demonstrate, philosophers from other schools also reflect on the practice. Camplani and Zambon 2002 survey the theology of sacrifice as it developed in the imperial period; Belayche 2001 demonstrates how this ultimately informed the emperor Julian’s attempt to revive the practice in the 360s CE.
  684.  
  685. Belayche, Nicole. 2001. “Partager la table des dieux”: L’empereur Julien et les sacrifices. Revue de l’histoire des religions 218:457–486.
  686. DOI: 10.3406/rhr.2001.986Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  687. The central point of this careful study of Julian’s enthusiasm for animal sacrifice is that it was not a crude mania for ritual, as earlier scholars had supposed, but was grounded in a spiritualized conception of relations between humans and the divine.
  688. Find this resource:
  689. Camplani, Alberto, and Marco Zambon. 2002. Il sacrificio come problema in alcune correnti filosofiche di età imperiale. Annali di storia dell’esegesi 19:59–99.
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  691. A systematic survey of the treatment of sacrifice in a variety of late “pagan” texts: Neoplatonic (especially Porphyry), Hermetic, and magical (especially Zosimus of Panopolis). A recurring theme is criticism of animal sacrifice and arguments for “spiritual” sacrifice, yet many of these same texts also justify maintaining the practice of animal sacrifice as part of traditional cult.
  692. Find this resource:
  693. Mikalson, Jon D. 2010. Greek popular religion in Greek philosophy. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
  694. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199577835.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  695. This survey covers philosophical opinion from the Presocratics to the Hellenistic schools. A specific section is devoted to sacrifice (pp. 55–83), with extensive discussion of Plato and Theophrastus, but many other sections are also relevant.
  696. Find this resource:
  697. Obbink, Dirk. 1988. The origin of Greek sacrifice: Theophrastus on religious and cultural history. In Theophrastean studies. Edited by William W. Fortenbaugh and Robert W. Sharples, 272–295. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
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  699. Theophrastus’s historical and philosophical analysis of animal sacrifice, although it survives only in citations by a later writer, is the most thorough extant discussion of the practice by a classical philosopher; this paper provides a full study.
  700. Find this resource:
  701. Sfameni Gasparro, Giulia. 1987. Critica del sacrificio cruento e antropologia in Grecia: Da Pitagora a Porfirio. 1: La tradizione pitagorica, Empedocle e l’orfismo. In Sangue e antropologia: Riti e culto. Atti della V settimana, Roma, 26 Novembre–1 Dicembre 1984. Edited by Francesco Vattioni, 107–155. Rome: Pia Unione Preziosissimo Sangue.
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  703. This paper, along with Sfameni Gasparro 1989, constitutes the most comprehensive and detailed survey of one strand of philosophical writing on animal sacrifice, with extensive citation of primary sources and the secondary literature.
  704. Find this resource:
  705. Sfameni Gasparro, Giulia. 1989. Critica del sacrificio cruento e antropologia in Grecia: Da Pitagora a Porfirio. 2: Il De abstinentia porfiriano. In Sangue e antropologia nella teologia. Atti della VI settimana, Roma, 23–28 Novembre 1987. Edited by Francesco Vattioni, 461–505. Rome: Pia Unione Preziosissimo Sangue.
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  707. A continuation of Sfameni Gasparro 1987.
  708. Find this resource:
  709. “Pagans” and Christians
  710.  
  711. Although animal sacrifice was an important part of the Judaean and the Graeco-Roman traditions from which Christianity developed, by the end of the 1st century CE most Christian leaders had come to reject the practice while at the same time retaining the idea, albeit in a radically transformed sense. Young 1979 and Ferguson 1980 focus on tracing the development of the idea of “spiritual sacrifice.” Ullucci 2012 calls into question some of the underlying assumptions of this older work; Petropoulou 2008 attempts to broaden the focus. Bradbury 1995 and Stroumsa 2005 provide very different analyses of the end of animal sacrifice in the 4th century CE.
  712.  
  713. Bradbury, Scott. 1995. Julian’s pagan revival and the decline of blood sacrifice. Phoenix 49:331–356.
  714. DOI: 10.2307/1088885Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  715. An examination of Julian’s attempted revival of the practice of animal sacrifice and its ultimate failure within the larger context of cultural developments in the 4th century CE. Bradbury considers both philosophical criticism of the practice and the practice itself and argues that public animal sacrifice had already largely disappeared as a result of social and economic changes.
  716. Find this resource:
  717. Ferguson, Everett. 1980. Spiritual sacrifice in early Christianity and its environment. In Aufstieg und niedergang der Römischen welt. Vol. 2.23.2. Edited by Hildegard Temporini and Wolfgang Haase, 1151–1189. Berlin: de Gruyter.
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  719. A succinct overview of ancient criticism of animal sacrifice and advocacy of spiritual sacrifice, in a range of Graeco-Roman, Jewish, and Christian writers.
  720. Find this resource:
  721. Petropoulou, Maria-Zoe. 2008. Animal sacrifice in ancient Greek religion, Judaism, and Christianity, 100 BC to AD 200. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
  722. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199218547.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  723. A synchronic survey of these three traditions that gives equal weight to each. Petropoulou employs a clear theoretical model for her comparative project, which concludes with a discussion of why Christians rejected animal sacrifice.
  724. Find this resource:
  725. Stroumsa, Guy G. 2005. The end of sacrifice: Religious transformations in Late Antiquity. Translated by Susan Emanuel. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
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  727. Originally published as La fin du sacrifice: Les mutations religieuses de l’antiquité tardive (Paris: O. Jacob, 2005). Stroumsa puts the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple at the center of his analysis, arguing that the resulting cessation of sacrifices forced the Jews to devise new forms of worship that subsequently had a profound influence.
  728. Find this resource:
  729. Ullucci, Daniel C. 2012. The Christian rejection of animal sacrifice. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
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  731. Ullucci contests what he regards as an implicit scholarly model in which a long tradition of criticism of animal sacrifice, in both Greek and Jewish writers, culminated in the Christian rejection of the practice. He argues that rejection was historically contingent and up to the 3rd century CE took significantly diverse forms.
  732. Find this resource:
  733. Young, Frances M. 1979. The use of sacrificial ideas in Greek Christian writers from the New Testament to John Chrysostom. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Patristic Foundation.
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  735. A thorough study of the different ways that Christian writers transformed the idea of sacrifice; although this work is more theological than historical, it provides a valuable collection and analysis of the primary material.
  736. Find this resource:
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