Sacrifice. The most important, and central, cult ritual among the Greeks was sacrifice, in which an animal (bull, goat, sheep, pig, even fish or dog) was killed at the altar of a deity. This action was carried out by a group of people, none of whom had to be an official priest or priestess. The animal, often consecrated to a deity from birth so that it was never subject to routine labors, was walked up to the altar along with the group performing the sacrifice. Some officiants carried sacrificial implements, such as water, grain, and a knife. Ideally, the animal would progress to the altar of its own accord.
Once the group reached the altar, the sacrificial implements were taken out.
A prayer was offered to the deity. A piece of fur was cut from the sacrificial animal's head, symbolizing that it was no longer inviolate, but formally consecrated to die. Grain was sprinkled on the altar, and one of the officiants poured water onto the head of the animal. This caused the animal to nod its head, indicating its "assent" to die for the deity. If the animal did not agree to the sacrifice, it was thought to be a very bad sign. Depending on the type of animal being sacrificed, the sacrifice could proceed in different ways. For a large animal such as a cow, the sacrificer struck the animal's spine with an axe. Once the creature was unconscious, its throat was cut, allowing the blood to spurt onto the altar, the ultimate aim of the sacrifice. The women standing around the altar gave a ritualistic scream (the "ololyge").
Depending on the type of sacrifice, the next steps could vary. Normally, the animal was dismembered. Edible portions were cooked at the sanctuary, either roasted on spits or boiled; inedible portions (bones, especially) were burned on the altar so that the receiving deity might enjoy their scent and savor. On rare occasions, the animal(s) might be burned entirely; this was called a holocaust (holos = entire; kaio = to burn). But it was far more common for the sacrificers to eat the animal, burning only designated parts to the deity.
The fact that the receiving deity did not get the edible parts of the animal was not lost on either the ancient Greeks or modern scholars. The earliest explanation for this appears in the Theogony (ll. 536-556), where, at the Feast of Mekong, the Titan Prometheus tries to trick Zeus to get humans a better food portion from slaughtered animals. His logic is that humans need food to live, whereas the ever-living gods will not eat a dead animal, merely enjoying the scent of the "bar-b-que" (Theogony, ll. 536-556):
At Mekong. There [Prometheus] went forth intending at heart to apportion out a great ox, deceiving the mind of Zeus.
For before the others he set down the flesh and innards rich with fat on a hide, having hidden them with an ox stomach.
But before Zeus he set down the white bones of an ox well-arranged by crafty art and hidden by shining fat.
Then indeed the father of men and gods said to him:
"Son of lapetos, most renowned of all kings,
Egads! How unfairly you have divided the portions."
Crafty-minded Prometheus replied to him, smiling gently, not forgetting his devious trick:
"Most honorable Zeus, greatest of the eternal deities, take of them whichever one your heart bids in your chest.
In his two hands [Zeus] lifted the white fat.
Anger came to his heart, seizing his mind, when he saw the white ox bones in the clever deception. And from that time the race of men on earth burn white bones to the immortals on smoking altars.
Later scholars, such as Burkert (1985, 1987) and Vernant (1991), have devised alternate theories concerning the origins of the sacrificial ritual. They argue that sacrifice was a means of reestablishing the role of humans as intermediaries between gods and animals, and, perhaps more importantly, expiating the guilt incurred with killing a living creature. All animals must kill in order to eat and thrive. Although no one gets worked up over the death of, say, a carrot, there is usually an aspect of guilt involved in killing an animal. Most religions have a sanctioned means of expiating this guilt. In the Judeo-Christian ideology, it was stated in Genesis that God gave humans dominion over the animals, suggesting that so long as humans took care of animals, they could kill them at need, guilt-free. In some Eskimo cultures, the bladders of slain animals must be preserved. Then, in a ritual, the bladders are released back into the sea, freeing the animals' souls so they can return to life. For the Greeks, killing an animal could only be fully justified by killing it for a deity. Thus, the sacrifice was done in honor of a god/dess, who was inevitably beyond reproach, and humans just happened to get a meal out of it as well.
Sacrifice as expiation of guilt comes across most clearly in an Athenian ritual known as the Bouphonia (literally "Ox Murder"). According to the myth recorded in the work De Abstinentia by the Neoplatonic philosopher Porphyry, a resident of Attica (but not an Athenian citizen) was once on the Acropolis when he saw an ox eating grain cakes set on Zeus's altar. Horrified at the ox's impiety, he picked up an axe and killed it. Then, horrified at his own impiety of killing an animal in sacred space, he buried the ox and banished himself to Crete. Later, a famine struck Athens. When the people sent to Delphi for help in fixing the problem, the Pythia bid them find the murderer, "resurrect" the ox, and have the entire community partake of the animal's flesh. The man was brought from Crete and made an Athenian citizen, as required by the deity. The ox-skin was sewn together and stuffed with hay. Another ox was killed like the first one, and all the Athenians partook of its flesh.
A trial was then held, but since the original murderer had now been made a citizen, his guilt was distributed onto the whole city, thinning it out. So, every year in honor of Zeus, the Bouphonia was celebrated. A work ox was brought to the Acropolis, where he ate grain at the altar. A man whacked the ox with an axe, tossed the axe behind him, and ran. The ox was flayed and the skin filled with hay. This stuffed ox was set before a wagon, like a regular work ox, thereby "resurrected." The rest of the skinned body was dismembered and eaten in typical sacrificial style. Then: "Assembling a trial for murder, they summon all who had participated in the deed to defend themselves. The water fetchers charged that the ax-sharpeners were more to blame than they. The sharpeners said the same about the ax-administrator, and this one of the throat-cutter, and this one of the knife that, being without a voice, was condemned for murder" (Vernant 1991, 302).
Not all sacrifices involved killing an animal. At the altar of Aphrodite on Paphos, only incense was burned to the goddess. At liminal points in life, often involving initiation or coming-of-age rituals, Greek boys and girls offered locks of their hair to Apollo and Artemis. "Tables" of grain or bread were offered to heroes and heroines, as per the epigraphic records.
Libations. In contrast to burning an animal up to the gods, libations involved pouring liquids down to deities, heroes, or the dead. The Greeks recognized two types of pouring rituals—the sponde and the choes. The sponde was specifically a libation to the deities, often accompanying sacrifices or drinking parties (see chapter 6). As with sacrifice, the sponde was intended to please the deity and make him/her welcome. One especially important act solemnized by the sponde was the creation of treaties and the formation of alliances. The Greeks had no specific word for the ending of hostilities (of which they had many); a sponde marked the formal end of a war. Likewise, it could be used to formalize an alliance or union, and the word spouse in English derives from this ancient Greek ritual. The choes, by contrast, was dedicated either to the dead or to specifically chthonic deities. Heroes and heroines also received choes in their cults (Burkert 1985, 70-73).
The liquid(s) used for both types of libation depended on the circumstances at hand and the cult being followed. Wine was the most common liquid used, especially when accompanying sacrifice or in the context of the symposion (where everyone was drinking wine anyway). Regular "civic" rituals were also generally accompanied by wine libations. When the Athenian navy was departing for its ill-fated Sicilian Expedition, Thucydides recounts that wine libations were offered into the sea (6.32.1): "Silence was signaled by the trumpeter, and prayers were offered before putting out to sea, not each ship individually, but all together, led by a herald. And the wine bowls being mixed throughout the whole army, the sailors and leaders made libation with gold and silver cups. And the rest of the crowd joined them in prayer, both those of the citizens on land and anyone else present well-minded to them. And having sung the Paian and completed the libations, they set out."
Some deities' cults, however, specifically avoided wine, such as the Eu-menides ("Kindly Ones," a euphemism for the Furies, demon-like avengers of crimes against blood kin). As narrated in Sophocles's Oedipus at Kolonos, these dread goddesses received libations of water and honey, offered by one pure of heart, in total silence. The "thirsty" dead, likewise, received libations of water and oil rather than wine. In Aeschylus's Libation Bearers, Elektra brings a choes libation to her murdered father's grave. Here she pours out an offering of oil, calling out prayers to her father, the underworld gods, and Hermes, while her attendants recite hymns and deck out the grave with floral garlands.
Pompe. The pompe was a ritual procession or parade, usually enacted as a precursor to a ritual act, such as sacrifice or an initiation ritual. The pompe was actually an important aspect of a rite, as it distinguished those taking part in the ritual from those who were not. Furthermore, to partake fully in a ritual, a participant had to get to the event in a ritualized fashion. This might not seem like a problem if one was merely going down the street to perform a sacrifice, but many processions were much longer. The pompe that began the Eleusinian Mysteries, for example, was some 22 kilometers long, leading from Athens to Eleusis, which the initiates had to walk overnight. There was no option for taking a carriage and "meeting them there."
The pompe was a highly structured event, with strict regulations as to who was to take part, where they were to walk, and what they were to carry. One of our most detailed descriptions comes from a second-century b. c.e. inscription from Magnesia in Turkey:
The Crown-Bearer in office together with the male priest and the female priest of Artemis Leukophryene shall ever after lead the procession in the month of Artemi-sion on the twelfth day, and sacrifice the designated bull; that in the procession shall also be the council of elders the priests, the magistrates (both elected and appointed by lot), the ephebes, the youths, the boys, the victors in the Leukophyrene games, and the victors in the other crown-bearing games. The Crown-Bearer in leading the procession shall carry xoana of all twelve gods attired as beautifully as possible, and shall erect a round structure in the agora by the altar of the twelve gods, and shall lay out three couches of the finest quality, and shall also provide music, a shawm-player, a pan-pipe-player, and a lyre player. (Translation by S. Price 1999, 175, used with kind permission)
Along with the required personnel, as the inscription above indicates, ritual tools were also brought along in the pompe—the sacrificial animals, weapons used to dispatch them, barley meal and wine, and butchering equipment. Depending on the nature of the ritual, specialty items might also be brought, as in the Athenian Panathenaic Festival, in which Athena's new peplos was carried in the parade. In many rituals, statues of the deities were carried. In very rare instances, the "clergy" sought alms from the community through which they passed, a practice associated with the cult of Cybele in Turkey (Burkert 1985, 102).
Agon. The Greeks were an exceptionally competitive society, and athletic and artistic competitions served ritual functions for them. Both types of competition seem to have had an origin in funerary rituals. As early as the eighth century b. c.e., Hesiod won a tripod for his poetic compositions at the funeral games of Amphidamas. Likewise, our earliest description of full-scale athletic events comes from Book 23 of the Iliad—the funeral games in honor of Patro-cles. Even the Panhellenic games, such as the Olympics, had a funerary element. Although the Olympic and Nemean Games were dedicated to Zeus, the Isthmian to Poseidon, and the Delphic to Apollo, their etiological myths recalled famous deaths. Pelops killed his father-in-law at Olympia; the infant-hero Meliqertes (probably derived from the Phoenician god Melqart) died after jumping from a cliff with his mother Ino-Leukothea and washed up at Isthmia.
Many competitions featured both athletic and artistic events, but others focused on one or the other. All over the Archaic Greek world, poets like the Homeridai recited original hymns to the deities in such competitions. In Athens starting in the sixth century b. c.e., two great civic celebrations—the Greater Dionysia and the Lenaia—were occasions when playwrights and producers competed to produce the best dramas in honor of Dionysos. By contrast, the Panathenaic Festival featured both musical and athletic competitions.
Here, rhapsodes (performing poets) competed to perform the best recitations of Homer, and runners raced for prizes of amphorae filled with precious Athenian olive oil.
The truly great competitions, though, were the four Panhellenic games: Olympic, Nemean, Isthmian, and Delphic. The Olympic Games were the earliest, dating to 776 b. c.e.; a common means of reckoning time in ancient Greece was to specify in which Olympiad an event took place. Technically, anyone was welcomed to compete, and a truce was declared throughout the Greek world a month before the festivals began so that competitors would have free access to the games. Competitions included poetry and song, foot - and chariotracing, boxing, wrestling, and the pankration, which was a no-holds-barred fighting event at which competition got so vicious that, at one of the Olympics, the victory went to a man who had actually died in the ring. The competitions were mostly sex-segregated. The main events at the Olympics were for men; women had separate competitions at the Olympic Heraia (see above, in the section about Hera). However, in the chariot races, victory went to whoever raised the horses, and in the early fourth century b. c.e., the Spartan princess Cynisca won the four-horse chariot competition.
To win at the games brought great social status, to both the individual and his/her polis (much like the Olympics today). Honor was the main prize. Victors at the Panhellenic games got leafy circlets to wear on their heads (laurel for the Delphic Games, celery for the Nemean, for example), poetry composed in their honor by such illuminati as Pindar, and the right to dedicate pictures or statues of themselves at the sanctuary. In some poleis, such as Athens, victors got free dinner for life at the city hall.
World History
