ABSTRACT
Anyone who turns from collecting evidence about Greek sacrifice to theprescriptions laid down in the Pentateuch cannot but be struck by the great difference in the variety of forms of sacrifice exhibited by the Greek peoples as against the Jewish.1 There are few if any significant areas of Greek life in which sacrifice is not found. In a single city, scarcely a day went by without one or more sacrifices taking place in one cult or other, public or private; virtually all meat consumed was ritually slain. One has only to look at the many ritual calendars that have survived to see the density of sacrifice. Furthermore, the range of animals sacrificed was also very great: in general, Greece had no ‘unclean’ animals, but certain animals would be forbidden at certain cults. Fish2 and to a lesser extent birds3 are not very common, but this still left boars, rams, goats, bulls, oxen, cows, deer, horses (rarely), lambs, ewes, pigs, puppies and so on. This chapter will attempt to provide a guide through the maze that is Greek sacrifice. I shall say something about the basic procedures and then consider some of the more distinctive variations, to show how Greek sacrifices articulated and were articulated by aspects of Greek culture. In the space available, the account must be very selective: there is almost no general statement about Greek sacrifice that cannot be qualified by a contrary example. Furthermore, the attempt to explain the ‘meaning’ of religious activities is beset with problems:4
the meaning an anthropologist gives may make sense to him in terms of Greek sacrifice as a whole, but it need not correspond to its meaning for the participants themselves; one has only to look at the many and varied explanations that the Romans gave for their religious rites to see the nature of the problem.5 I shall also be forced to draw on evidence from a wide chronological span. Finally, there is an element of artificiality in talking of sacrifice in isolation from other ritual activities, since it was only one way of making gifts to and contact with the gods. Although we shall be largely concerned with blood-sacrifice, therefore, we must also consider rites in their entirety, since the meaning of blood-sacrifice is often generated by its relation to other forms of offering.6
