Thysia

(θυσία). Sacrifices among the ancients formed the chief part of every religious act. According to the kind of sacrifice offered, they were divided into

(1) bloodless offerings and

(2) blood-offerings. The former consisted in firstfruits, viands, and cakes of various shape and make, which were some of them burned and some of them laid on the altars and sacrificial tables, and removed after a time; libations of wine, milk, water with honey or milk, and frankincense, for which in early times native products (wood and the berries of cedars, junipers, bay-trees, etc.) were used. Asiatic spices, such as incense and myrrh, scarcely came into use before the seventh century in Greece or until towards the end of the Republic at Rome.

For blood-offerings cattle, goats, sheep, and swine were used by preference. Other animals were only employed in special cults. Thus horses were offered in certain Greek regions to Poseidon and Helios, and at Rome on the occasion of the October feast to Mars; dogs to Hecaté and Robigus, asses to Priapus, cocks to Asclepius, and geese to Isis. Sheep and cattle, apparently, could be offered to any gods among the Greeks. As regards swine and goats, the regulations varied according to the different regions. Swine were sacrificed especially to Demeter and Dionysus, goats to the last-named divinity and to Apollo and Artemis as well as to Aphrodite, while they were excluded from the service of Athena, and it was only at Sparta that they were presented to Heré. At Epidaurus they might not be sacrificed to Asclepius, though elsewhere this was done without scruple. Part of the spoils of the chase—such as the antlers or fell of the stag, or the head and feet of the boar or the bear—was offered to Artemis Agrotera.

As regards the sex and colour of the victims, the Romans agreed in general with the Greeks in following the rule of sacrificing male creatures to gods, female to goddesses, and those of dark hue to the infernal powers. At Rome, however, there were special regulations respecting the victims appropriate to the different divinities. Thus the appropriate offering for Iupiter was a young steer of a white colour, or at least with a white spot on its forehead; for Mars, in the case of expiatory sacrifices, two bucks or a steer; the latter also for Neptune and Apollo; for Vulcan, a red calf and a boar; for Liber and Mercury, a he-goat; for Iuno, Minerva, and Diana, a heifer; for Iuno, as Lucina, a ewe lamb or (as also for Ceres and the Bona Dea) a sow; for Tellus, a pregnant, and for Proserpina a barren, heifer; and so on.

The regulations as regards the condition of the victims were not the same everywhere in Greece. Still, in general with them, as invariably with the Romans, the rule held good that only beasts which were without blemish, and had not yet been used for labour, should be employed. Similarly, there were definite rules, which were, however, not the same everywhere, concerning the age of the victims. Thus, by Athenian law, lambs could not be offered at all before their first shearing, and sheep only when they had borne lambs. The Romans distinguished victims by their ages as lactantes, sucklings, and maiores, full grown. The sacrifice of sucklings was subject to certain limitations: young pigs had to be five days old, lambs seven, and calves thirty. Animals were reckoned maiores if they were bidentes—i. e. if their upper and lower rows of teeth were complete. There were exact requirements for all cases as regards their sex and condition, and to transgress these was an offence that demanded expiation. If the victims could not be obtained as the regulations required, the pontifical law allowed their place to be taken by a representation in wax or dough, or by a different animal in substitution for the sort required. In many cults different creatures were combined for sacrifice—e. g. a bull, a sheep, and a pig (see Suovetaurilia), or a pig, a buck, and a ram, and the like. In State sacrifices victims were sometimes sacrificed in great numbers; e. g. at the Athenian festival in commemoration of the victory at Marathon 500 goats were slain. (See Hecatombé.) Human sacrifices as a means of expiation were not unknown to the earliest Greek and Roman worship, and continued in certain cases (e. g. at the feast of the Lycaean Zeus and of Iupiter Latiaris) until the imperial period. Where, however, they continued to exist, criminals who were in any case doomed to death were selected, and in many places opportunity was further given them for escape. As a rule, these human sacrifices gave way to symbolical exercises in which the rite either merely suggested the original form, or else for human victims effigies or puppets were substituted. Of the former kind was the symbolical whipping of the Spartan boys at the altar of Artemis Orthia till blood was drawn (see Diamastigosis); of the latter was the casting of puppets made of rushes into the Tiber in May (see Argei), and the use of oscilla. See Pausan. ix. 8, 1; vii. 19, 2; Macrob. i. 7, 34; and Mannhardt, Wald- und Feldkülte, pp. 265 foll.

In general, it was considered that purity in soul and body was an indispensable requirement for a sacrifice that was to be acceptable to a divinity. Accordingly, the celebrant washed at least his hands and feet, and appeared in clean (for the most part, white) robes. One who had incurred bloodguiltiness could not offer sacrifice at all; he who had polluted himself by touching anything unclean, particularly a corpse, needed special purification by fumigation. Precautions were also taken to insure the withdrawal of all persons who might be otherwise unpleasing to the divinity; from many sacrifices women were excluded; from others, men; from many, slaves and freedmen. At Rome, in early times, all plebeians were excluded by the patricians.

The victims were generally decked out with ribbons and wreaths (infulae, vittae), and sometimes the cattle had their horns gilded. If the creature voluntarily followed to the altar or even bowed its head, this was considered as a favourable sign; it was an unfavourable sign if it offered resistance or tried to escape. In that case, with the Romans, the object of the sacrifice was deemed to be frustrated. Among the Greeks those who took part in the sacrifice wore wreaths; a firebrand from the altar was dipped in water, and with the water thus consecrated they sprinkled themselves and the altar. They then strewed the head of the victim with baked barley-grains, and cast some hairs cut from its head into the sacrificial fire. After those present had been called upon to observe a devout silence, and avoid everything that might mar the solemnity of the occasion, the gods were invited, amid the sound of flutes or hymns sung to the lyre and dancing, to accept the sacrifice propitiously. The hands of the worshippers were raised, or extended, or pointed downwards, according as the prayer was made to a god of heaven, of the sea, or of the lower world respectively. The victim was then felled to the ground with a mace or a hatchet, and its throat cut with the sacrificial knife. During this operation the animal's head was held up if the sacrifice belonged to the upper gods, and bowed down if it belonged to those of the lower world or the dead. The blood caught from it was, in the former case, poured round the altar; in the latter, into a ditch. In the case just mentioned the sacrifice was entirely burned (and this was also the rule with animals that were not edible), and the ashes were poured into the ditch. In sacrifices to the gods of the upper world, only certain portions were burned to the gods, such as thigh-bones or chine-bones cut off the victim, some of the entrails, or some pieces of flesh with a layer of fat, rolled round the whole, together with libations of wine and oil, frankincense, and sacrificial cakes. The remainder, after removing the god's portion, as it was called, for the priests engaged in the sacrifice, was either roasted at once for the sacrificial banquet and so consumed, or taken home. Festal sacrifices at the public expense were often combined with a public meal. Sacrifice was made to the gods of the upper air in the morning; to those of the lower world in the evening.

Among the Romans, as among the Greeks, reverent silence prevailed during the sacrificial operations in case a careless word should become an evil omen, and to prevent any disturbance by external surroundings a flute-player played and the offerer of the sacrifice himself veiled his head during the rite. The prayer, formulated by the pontifices, and unintelligible to the priests themselves from its archaic language ( Quint.i. 6Quint., 40), was repeated by the votary after the priest, who read it from a written form, as any deviation from the exact words made the whole sacrifice of no avail. As a rule, the worshipper turned his face to the east, or, if the ceremony took place before the temple, to the image of the divinity, grasping the altar with his hands; and, when the prayer was ended, laid his hands on his lips, and turned himself from left to right (in many cults from right to left), or, again, walked round the altar and then seated himself. Then the victim (victima if a large one, hostia if a small one), selected as being without blemish, was consecrated, the priest sprinkling salted grains of dried and pounded spelt (mola salsa) and pouring wine from a cup upon its head, and also in certain sacrifices cutting some of the hairs off its head, and finally making a stroke with his knife along the back of the creature from its head to its tail. Cattle were killed with the mace, calves with the hammer, small animals with the knife, by the priest's attendants appointed for the purpose, to whom also the dissection of the victims was assigned. If the inspectors of sacrifice (see Haruspex) declared that the entrails (exta), cut out with the knife, were not normal, this was a sign that the offering was not pleasing to the divinity; and if it was a male animal which had been previously slaughtered, a female was now killed. If the entrails again proved unfavourable, the sacrifice was regarded as of no avail. On the other hand, in the case of prodigies, sacrifices were offered until favourable signs appeared. In other sin-offerings there was no inspection of entrails. Sin-offerings were either entirely burned or given to the priests. Otherwise the flesh was eaten by the offerers, and only the entrails, which were roasted on spits, or boiled, were offered up, together with particular portions of the meat, in the proper way, and placed in a dish upon the altar, after being sprinkled with mola salsa and wine. The slaughter of the victim took place in the morning, while the exta were offered at evening, the intervening time being taken up by the process of preparation.