ABSTRACT
Burkert's conception of ritual action is grounded in biological studies of animal behaviour, for demonstrative behaviour of the sort we term ritual can be observed even in animals. Under Burkert's definition, the term 'ritual' embraces basic communicative acts such as laughter and gestures (waving, clapping, handshakes) up to the complex religious performances normally associated with the word. And, if I understand him correctly, for Burkert all ritual action is grounded in very basic and originally instinctive or pragmatic behaviour (often of an aggressive character), which has been redirected or rechannelled for communicative function. Thus it is action which is primary, and ideas and belief are always secondary and play no significant role in the generation of ritual. 4 And I would agree that many if not most ritual actions may be explained as demonstrative forms of basic human responses. Funeral customs provide several good examples, such as weeping and lamentation, natural responses of grief but which in many cultures become formal, stylized, and obligatory elements of a public funeral, indeed sometimes placed in the charge of professional keeners. 5 But I am not convinced that all 'demonstrative acts performed in a set sequence and at a set place and time' can be traced to, or reduced to, such basic spontaneous reactions. To be sure, in many cases the expressed beliefs of the participants do not adequately account for the ritual behaviour, and the meaning and function of the rites must be sought elsewhere. But in some cases it would seem that rituals owe their existence to certain basic beliefs, such as belief in superhuman beings or in life after death. Some funerary customs, e.g. the provision of the dead with food, possessions, and pets, seem best
explained as originating in a belief in the continuation of human needs beyond death, although one may in turn derive belief in an afterlife from our inability to face the reality of death. 6 The question of the role of belief in the origin and development of ritual also touches on the vexed question of the relationship between ritual and myth. Most often Greek myths directly associated with rituals were invented (or pre-existing myths adopted) to account for the origin of the rituals: they are 'aetiological myths', which ground ritual action in significant events set in the mythical past. Rituals in turn were viewed as imitations or commemorations of mythical events, which raises the possibility that in some cases ritual actions were in fact conscious re-enactments of myth. More complex interplay - where ritual re-enacts myths which themselves are patterned on earlier ritual - is also possible. But both in specifIC cases and in general the relationship between ritual action and myth remains a matter of some controversy. 7
rites, and before battle. For not all animals ritually slain by the Greeks were offered to superhuman recipients, and it is common practice to refer (whether properly or no) to all forms of ritual killing of animals as 'sacrifices', but usually with qualifications such as 'funerary sacrifices', 'sacrifices before battle', 'oath sacrifices', etc. And this brings us to another, equally important distinction, which to a great degree mirrors the conceptions and usage of the Greeks. The slaying of human beings in the same circumstances, in the same manner, and with the same ritual purposes as the customary slaying of animals, I designate as 'human sacrifice'. In terms of vocabulary, human sacrifices are those ritual killings for which the Greeks employ words usually reserved for the sacred slaughter of animals, chiefly thuein, sphazein, and their compounds. That such words would convey to the Greek ear a sense 'to kill ritually like an animal' is indicated by similes used by Aeschylus and Euripides of the sacrifice of Iphigeneia, who is hoisted above the altar 'like a she-goat' (Aesch. Ag. 232) and sacrificed 'like a calf' (Eur. IT 359), and by Hecuba's impassioned response to the proposed sacrifice of her daughter (Eur. Hec. 260-1), when she asks Odysseus what has compelled the Greeks to perform a human sacrifice (av8pwTtompaYElv) on Achilles' grave, where rather it is proper to sacrifice cattle (l3olJ8lJ"tElv).
