Sacrificium
(
θυσία). Sacrifices among the ancients formed the chief
part of every religious act. According to the kind of sacrifice offered, they were divided
into
1.
bloodless offerings and
2.
blood-offerings. The former consisted in firstfruits, viands, and cakes of various shape
and make, which were some of them burned and some of them laid on the altars and sacrificial
tables, and removed after a time; libations of wine, milk, water with honey or milk, and
frankincense, for which in early times native products (wood and the berries of cedars,
junipers, bay-trees, etc.) were used. Asiatic spices, such as incense and myrrh, scarcely
came into use before the seventh century in Greece or until towards the end of the Republic
at Rome.
For blood-offerings cattle, goats, sheep, and swine were used by preference. Other animals
were only employed in special cults. Thus horses were offered in certain Greek regions to
Poseidon and Helios, and at Rome on the occasion of the October feast to
Mars; dogs to Hecaté and Robigus, asses to Priapus, cocks to Asclepius, and geese
to Isis. Sheep and cattle, apparently, could be of
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Sacrificial Attendant. (Roman relief.)
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fered to any gods among the Greeks. As regards swine and goats, the regulations
varied according to the different regions. Swine were sacrificed especially to Demeter and
Dionysus, goats to the last-named divinity and to Apollo and Artemis as well as to
Aphrodité, while they were excluded from the service of Athené, and it
was only at Sparta that they were presented to Heré. At Epidaurus they might not
be sacrificed to Asclepius, though elsewhere this was done without scruple. Part of the
spoils of the chase—such as the antlers or fell of the stag, or the head and feet
of the boar or the bear—was offered to Artemis Agrotera.
As regards the sex and colour of the victims, the Romans agreed in general with the Greeks
in following the rule of sacrificing male creatures to gods, female to goddesses, and those
of dark hue to the infernal powers. At Rome, however, there were special regulations
respecting the victims appropriate to the different divinities. Thus the appropriate offering
for Iupiter was a young steer of a white colour, or at least with a white spot on its
forehead; for Mars, in the case of expiatory sacrifices, two bucks or a steer; the latter
also for Neptune and Apollo; for Vulcan, a red calf and a boar; for Liber and Mercury, a
he-goat; for Iuno, Minerva, and Diana, a heifer; for Iuno, as Lucina, a ewe lamb or (as also
for Ceres and the Bona Dea) a sow; for Tellus, a pregnant, and for Proserpina a barren,
heifer; and so on.
The regulations as regards the condition of the victims were not the same everywhere in
Greece. Still, in general with them, as invariably with the Romans, the rule held good that
only beasts which were without blemish, and had not yet been used for labour, should be
employed. Similarly, there were definite rules, which were, however, not the same everywhere,
concerning the age of the victims. Thus, by Athenian law, lambs could not be offered at all
before their first shearing, and sheep only when they had borne lambs. The Romans
distinguished victims by their ages as
lactantes, sucklings, and
maiores, full grown. The sacrifice of sucklings was subject to certain
limitations: young pigs had to be five days old, lambs seven, and calves thirty. Animals were
reckoned
maiores if they were
bidentes—i.
e. if their upper and lower rows of teeth were complete. There were exact requirements for
all cases as regards their sex and condition, and to transgress these was an offence that
demanded expiation. If the victims could not be obtained as the regulations required, the
pontifical law allowed their place to be taken by a representation in wax or dough, or by a
different animal in substitution for the sort required. In many cults different creatures
were combined for sacrifice—e. g. a bull, a sheep, and a pig (see
Suovetaurilia), or a pig, a buck, and a ram, and
the like. In State sacrifices victims were sometimes sacrificed in great numbers; e. g.
at the Athenian festival in commemoration of the victory at Marathon 500 goats were slain.
(See
Hecatombé.) Human sacrifices as a
means of expiation were not unknown to the earliest Greek and Roman worship, and continued in
certain cases (e. g. at the feast of the Lycaean Zeus and of Iupiter Latiaris) until the
imperial period. Where, however, they continued to exist, criminals who were in any case
doomed to death were selected, and in many places opportunity was further given them for
escape. As a rule, these human sacrifices gave way to symbolical exercises in which the rite
either merely suggested the original form, or else for human victims effigies or puppets were
substituted. Of the former kind was the symbolical whipping of the Spartan boys at the altar
of Artemis Orthia till blood was drawn (see
Diamastigosis); of the latter was the casting of puppets made of rushes into the
Tiber in May (see
Argei), and the use of
oscilla. See Pausan. ix. 8, 1; vii. 19, 2; Macrob. i. 7, 34; and Mannhardt,
Wald- und Feldkülte, pp. 265 foll.
In general, it was considered that purity in soul and body was an indispensable requirement
for a sacrifice that was to be acceptable to a divinity. Accordingly, the celebrant washed at
least his hands and feet, and appeared in clean (for the most part, white) robes. One who had
incurred bloodguiltiness could not offer sacrifice at all; he who had polluted himself by
touching anything unclean, particularly a corpse, needed special purification by fumigation.
Precautions were also taken to insure the withdrawal of all persons who might be otherwise
unpleasing to the divinity; from many sacrifices women were excluded; from others, men; from
many, slaves and freedmen. At Rome, in early times, all plebeians were excluded by the
patricians.
The victims were generally decked out with ribbons and wreaths (
infulae,
vittae), and sometimes the cattle had their horns gilded. If the creature voluntarily
followed to the altar or even bowed its head, this was considered as a favourable sign; it
was an unfavourable sign if it offered resistance or tried to escape. In that case, with the
Romans, the object of the sacrifice was deemed to be frustrated. Among the Greeks those who
took part in the sacrifice wore wreaths; a firebrand from the altar was dipped in water, and
with the water thus consecrated they sprinkled themselves and the altar. They then strewed
the head of the victim with baked barley-grains, and cast some hairs cut from its head into
the sacrificial fire. After those present had been called upon to observe a devout silence,
and avoid everything that might mar the solemnity of the occasion, the gods were invited,
amid the sound of flutes or hymns sung to the lyre and dancing, to accept the sacrifice
propitiously. The hands of the worshippers were raised, or extended, or pointed downwards,
according as the prayer was made to a god of heaven, of the sea, or of the lower world
respectively. The victim was then felled to the ground with a mace or a hatchet, and its
throat cut with the sacrificial knife. During this operation the animal's head was held up if
the sacrifice belonged to the upper gods, and bowed down if it belonged to those of the lower
world or the dead. The blood caught from it was, in the former case, poured round the altar;
in the latter, into a ditch. In the case just mentioned the sacrifice was
entirely burned (and this was also the rule with animals that were not edible), and the ashes
were poured into the ditch. In sacrifices to the gods of the upper world, only certain
portions were burned to the gods, such as thigh-bones or chine-bones cut off the victim, some
of the entrails, or some pieces of flesh with a layer of fat, rolled round the whole,
together with libations of wine and oil, frankincense, and sacrificial cakes. The remainder,
after removing the god's portion, as it was called, for the priests engaged in the sacrifice,
was either roasted at once for the sacrificial banquet and so consumed, or taken home. Festal
sacrifices at the public expense were often combined with a public meal. Sacrifice was made
to the gods of the upper air in the morning; to those of the lower world in the evening.
Among the Romans, as among the Greeks, reverent silence prevailed during the sacrificial
operations in case a careless word should become an evil omen, and to prevent any disturbance
by external surroundings a flute-player played and the offerer of the sacrifice himself
veiled his head during the rite. The prayer, formulated by the
pontifices, and unintelligible to the priests themselves from its archaic language
(
Quint.i. 6, 40), was repeated
by the votary after the priest, who read it from a written form, as any deviation from the
exact words made the whole sacrifice of no avail. As a rule, the worshipper turned his face
to the east, or, if the ceremony took place before the temple, to the image of the divinity,
grasping the altar with his hands; and, when the prayer was ended, laid his hands on his
lips, and turned himself from left to right (in many cults from right to left), or, again,
walked round the altar and then seated himself. Then the victim (
victima
if a large one,
hostia if a small one), selected as being without
blemish, was consecrated, the priest sprinkling salted grains of dried and pounded spelt
(
mola salsa) and pouring wine from a cup upon its head, and also in
certain sacrifices cutting some of the hairs off its head, and finally making a stroke with
his knife along the back of the creature from its head to its tail. Cattle were killed with
the mace, calves with the hammer, small animals with the knife, by the priest's attendants
appointed for the purpose, to whom also the dissection of the victims was assigned. If the
inspectors of sacrifice (see
Haruspex) declared
that the entrails (
exta), cut out with the knife, were not normal, this
was a sign that the offering was not pleasing to the divinity; and if it was a male animal
which had been previously slaughtered, a female was now killed. If the entrails again proved
unfavourable, the sacrifice was regarded as of no avail. On the other hand, in the case of
prodigies, sacrifices were offered until favourable signs appeared. In other sin-offerings
there was no inspection of entrails. Sin-offerings were either entirely burned or given to
the priests. Otherwise the flesh was eaten by the offerers, and only the entrails, which were
roasted on spits, or boiled, were offered up, together with particular portions of the meat,
in the proper way, and placed in a dish upon the altar, after being sprinkled with
mola salsa and wine. The slaughter of the victim took place in the morning,
while the
exta were offered at evening, the intervening time being taken
up by the process of preparation. See A. Lang,
Myth, Ritual, and
Religion, 2 vols.
(1887); Tylor,
Primitive Culture, 2
vols.
(1871);
Frazer, Totemism (1887);
Hartung, Die Religion der Römer (1836); the excellent
accounts in Marquardt's
Privatleben der Römer, pp. 183 foll., and in
Gardner and Jevons,
Greek Antiquities, bk. iii. ch. 6
(1895), and
cf. the article
Religio.