Human Sacrifice in Ancient Greece

Dennis D. Hughes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134966387
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia antica

Numerous ancient texts describe human sacrifices and other forms of ritual killing: in 480 BC Themistocles sacrifices three Persian captives to Dionysus; human scapegoats called pharmakoi are expelled yearly from Greek cities, and according to some authors they are killed; Locrin girls are hunted down and slain by the Trojans; on Mt Lykaion children are sacrificed and consumed by the worshippers; and many other texts report human sacrifices performed regularly in the cult of the gods or during emergencies such as war and plague. Archaeologists have frequently proposed human sacrifice as an explanation for their discoveries: from Minoan Crete children's bones with knife-cut marks, the skeleton of a youth lying on a platform with a bronze blade resting on his chest, skeletons, sometimes bound, in the dromoi of Mycenaean and Cypriot chamber tombs; and dual man-woman burials, where it is suggested that the woman was slain or took her own life at the man's funeral. If the archaeologists' interpretations and the claims in the ancient sources are accepted, they present a bloody and violent picture of the religious life of the ancient Greeks, from the Bronze Age well into historical times. But the author expresses caution. In many cases alternative, if less sensational, explanations of the archaeological are possible; and it can often be shown that human sacrifices in the literary texts are mythical or that late authors confused mythical details with actual practices.Whether the evidence is accepted or not, this study offers a fascinating glimpse into the religious thought of the ancient Greeks and into changing modern conceptions of their religious behaviour.

1
Sacrifice and ritual killing: terminology and types

'Human sacrifice in ancient Greece' does not accurately describe the scope of the material covered in this study, which includes a variety of ritual killings, not all of which are properly termed 'human sacrifices'. I have chosen (and retained) the present title, not only because 'The ritual killing of human beings in ancient Greece' would be a rather inelegant title, but also because its terminology possibly would be unfamiliar to many readers, while 'human sacrifice' is a term commonly used and understood by everyone. But it is the validity of this common use and broad application of the term which is questionable, and in this study I shall follow, with some modification, a distinction, frequently drawn by specialists in ancient religion, between ritual killing of humans (or ritual murder) and human sacrifice. According to this distinction, which 'goes well beyond the purely terminological plane',¹ human sacrifices form a subset of 'ritual killings of humans', but not all ritual killings are properly called 'human sacrifices'. In this brief introductory chapter I shall discuss this and other distinctions of terminology and outline the various types of ritual killings to be treated in the chapters which follow.

A ritual act, in the words of Walter Burkert, is an 'action redirected for demonstration', a 'spontaneous reaction artificially exaggerated for purposes of demonstration'; or, in a fuller definition by the same scholar, ritual is 'a programme of demonstrative acts to be performed in a set sequence and often at a set place and time'.² The chief characteristics of ritual, therefore, are its demonstrative or communicative function, exaggeration and repetition for demonstrative effect, and the adherence to an unvarying, prescribed set of actions. Burkert's definition of ritual, however, serves only to describe the form assumed by countless kinds of human behaviour, and in any given case it remains for the religious historian or anthropologist to identify and elucidate the underlying behaviour (i.e. the unritualized behaviour upon which the ritual act is modelled) and its causes, the thing which is communicated by the ritual act, and its social function: for ritual action is always social action, even if directed only towards a limited social group; and generally rituals may be seen to perform a stabilizing and integrating function in society, defining roles within the group and promoting group solidarity.³ The beliefs of the participants (in the case of ancient religion, most frequently in the form of myths associated with rituals) must also be taken mto account, although in many cases the expressed purpose of a ritual may conceal rather than elucidate its fundamental nature.

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

The formal definition of rituals as demonstrative acts performed in a prescribed manner and on set occasions is unaffected by questions of the role of belief in their formation and continuation; and, the question of meaning aside, in most cases it is easy enough to tell the difference between ritual and everyday, pragmatic, non-ritual activity. Thus a ritual killing (whether of an animal or a human victim) is a killing performed in a particular situation or on a particular occasion (a religious ceremony, a funeral, before battle, etc.) in a prescribed, stereotyped manner, with a communicative function of some kind. Ritual killings of human beings are to be clearly distinguished from non-ritual killings, such as murder and killing in battle. Other kinds of killing, e.g. vengeance killing and execution, may or may not be ritual acts; both often involve some ritual elements.⁸

But not every ritual killing is a sacrifice. Religious historians often draw a distinction 'between properly called human sacrifices — those offered to some superhuman recipient — and other rites which may require the killing of human beings without belonging to the cult of superhuman beings'.⁹ While I acknowledge the utility of this distinction (and its validity from a phenomenological point of view), nevertheless I shall, in this respect deferring to common usage, extend my use of the word 'sacrifice' to include not only offerings made to gods and heroes but also certain types of ritual killing performed at funerals, during oaths and purification 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

on Achilles' grave, where rather it is proper to sacrifice cattle

The following are the chief categories of ritual killing of animals in Greek custom, together with some of the terms frequently associated with them:¹⁰ (1) the 'Olympian sacrifice'

— after elaborate preliminaries, the victim was slaughtered, and its bones (particularly the pelvis with the tail), gall bladder, and fat were burned on the altar as an offering to the gods, but the remainder of the animal was consumed by the worshippers; one thinks first and foremost of large public sacrifices offered in the major festivals of the Greek cities, but thusiai were also performed on lesser occasions such as family sacrifices to Zeus Ktesios, weddings, and the introduction of children, ephebes, and brides to the phratry; the Classical thusia closely resembles the earlier Homeric sacrifice

, where the thighbones wrapped in fat, together with small pieces of flesh taken from the whole animal, were burned for the god;¹¹ (2) sacrifices offered to heroes

- the victims were not consumed, but deposited in bothroi or burned entire

; (3) offerings to the dead, 'funerary sacrifices' (again

, but also frequently

and its compounds)^ where the victims were burned whole or abandoned at the grave;¹² (4) unconsumed and wholly burnt offerings

) performed in the cult of deities, chiefly chthonic deities;¹³ (5) sacrifices performed before battle or before crossing rivers or other frontiers on the march

— the victims slain before an encounter were not eaten, nor were they as a rule offered to a specific deity;¹⁴ (6) oath sacrifices

), where the participants swore an oath around a slain (and apparently dismembered) animal, often holding or standing on the entrails, or dipping the hands in the blood — the remains were not consumed but disposed of;¹⁵ in addition (7) animals were employed for various purification ceremonies

, e.g. at Athens, where a pig was slain and then dragged around the Pnyx, and in Boeotia, where the people were purified by passing between the halves of a severed dog.¹⁶ It should also be noted that in 'Olympian' and military sacrifices the sla...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• 1 Sacrifice and ritual killing: terminology and types
• 2 Archaeological evidence
• 3 Funerary ritual killing in Greek literature and history
• 4 Human sacrifice in Greek myth, cult, and history
• 5 The pharmakos and related rites
• 6 Strangers in a strange land: the Locrian maiden tribute
• 7 Conclusion
• Appendix A Cut marks and mass burials
• Appendix B Pylos tablet Tn 316
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index locorum
• Subject index