In recent decades it has been increasingly recognized that sacrifice was the most central religious act for the Greeks. Yet its analysis has always been rather onesided, since previous generations of scholars had to depend mainly on literary sources, which present a rather idealized and selective picture of what actually went on. In recent decades, however, new sacrificial calendars have been found, Greek vases have been shown to be very informative about sacrificial ideology and practices, and, even more excitingly, biologists have started to analyze the faunal remains of excavated altars. Consequently, we must continuously compare literary descriptions with artistic representations and, where possible, with the archaeological evidence. It is only in this way that we will gain a more realistic picture of the complex of Greek sacrifice.
Step-by-step accounts of Greek sacrifice seldom distinguish between Homeric and post-Homeric evidence, the latter of which is mainly Attic as regards the literary tradition. Yet it is clear that the ritual considerably expanded in the course of the archaic age, when growing urbanization and the concomitant increase in wealth provided the means and leisure for a more generous and more dramatic performance of sacrifice. Not only do we hear more in the fifth and fourth centuries about a special outfit for the sacrificers and a more elaborate ritual around the altar, but the killing of the animal itself was also sometimes dramatized in a most curious manner. As our detailed analysis will show, sacrifice was not an immutable ritual block, handed down unchanged over the centuries, but a living ritual, responding to the needs, possibilities, and intellectual questioning of the ever-changing Greek culture.
These new developments warrant a fresh look at the matter. We will start with a short description of the normative ritual, then study its ideology and practices, analyze the insiders’ views of sacrifice, discuss the views of the most important contemporary students of Greek sacrifice, and conclude our study with some observations on the history and function of Greek sacrifice.
World History
