ABSTRACT
Perhaps because they seem in many ways similar to those of our own society, the symbolic values of blood in the ancient world have not been studied as exhaustively as one might expect. It is undoubtedly the case that from the earliest times in Greece, blood functions metonymically for wounding and violent death on the one hand and for family group and descent on the other. But while blood is certainly conspicuous in both literary texts and religious practice, it is less central at an early date than one might suppose. In epic, bloodshed serves as a marker of general slaughter or appears in post-mortem descriptions of particularly significant heroes, while the majority of individual death scenes are more interested in body parts and internal organs than in spilt blood. The case of sacrifice is analogous: the victim’s blood is certainly collected and used to mark the altar (although more sparingly than was once thought), but it is the internal organs (intestines and liver) which play the more important part in the post-kill phase of the action. Only in a few special cases (pre-battle slaughter sacrifice, some hero cult, purification ritual) is there a different emphasis, with the shedding of the victim’s blood being central. Tragedy, especially Aeschylean tragedy, contrasts strongly with epic in that death is regularly marked and signified with blood. It frequently uses the imagery of the bloodier kinds of sacrifice in either literal (mythical human sacrifice) or figurative mode but only seldom evokes dismemberment or the appearance of inner body parts. This difference relates to tragedy’s typical subject matter: given that in the genre both violence and kinship are often prominent and prominently conjoined, blood is a particularly appropriate image and symbol. Further, tragic characters are treated with a measure of decorum, like the major Iliadic figures, whose deaths lack the gruesomeness which attends those of many minor warriors. While body parts are dehumanising and can even be seen as grimly comic, blood is a powerful way of showing suffering and death with dignity.
