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University of Groningen the Sacrifice of Pregnant Animals Bremmer, Jan N View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of Groningen University of Groningen The Sacrifice of Pregnant Animals Bremmer, Jan N. Published in: Greek Sacrificial Ritual: Olympian and Chthonian IMPORTANT NOTE: You are advised to consult the publisher's version (publisher's PDF) if you wish to cite from it. Please check the document version below. Document Version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Publication date: 2005 Link to publication in University of Groningen/UMCG research database Citation for published version (APA): Bremmer, J. N. (2005). The Sacrifice of Pregnant Animals. In B. Alroth, & R. Hägg (Eds.), Greek Sacrificial Ritual: Olympian and Chthonian (pp. 155-165). Gothenburg: Paul Astroms Forlag. Copyright Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Take-down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Downloaded from the University of Groningen/UMCG research database (Pure): http://www.rug.nl/research/portal. For technical reasons the number of authors shown on this cover page is limited to 10 maximum. Download date: 12-11-2019 THE SACRIFICE OF PREGNANT ANIMALS by JAN N. BREMMER There has recently been renewed interest in Olympian sacrifice and its chthonian counterparts, 1 but much less attention has been paid to its more unusual variants. 2 One of these is the sacrifice of pregnant victims. In his Geschichte Martin Nilsson collected most of the then available evidence and interpreted it symbolically as a sacrifice associated with fertility goddesses. 3 It would be about forty years before such sacrifices again received attention. In his study of Northern Ionian cults, Fritz Graf mentions them in passing and judges them to be negative; Van Straten leaves the question open in his iconographical analysis of Greek sacrifice, and Stella Georgoudi, who is the only scholar to dedicate a special article to the phenomenon, albeit considering only a small selection of the goddesses who receive such sacrifices, returns to the fertility interpretation, but now combines the fertility of nature and people. 4 Given these differences in opinion, the only partial presentation of the material, and the absence of any comparative evidence, there is room for a new investigation. I will therefore attempt to collect, order and analyse the individual pieces of evidence in order to determine where, when, what type of and to whom pregnant victims were sacrificed. Given the dearth of proper analyses, this attempt can only be a preliminary one, the more so since we have to leave out of account the Roman, Umbrian and Indian parallels, which I hope to 1 I use the following abbreviations: LSAM = F. Sokolowski, Lois sacrées de l’Asie Mineure (Paris, 1955 ). LSS = idem, Lois sacrées des cités grecques. Supplément (Paris, 1962). LSCG = idem, Lois sacrées des cités grecques (Paris, 1969). 2 Olympian: F.T. van Straten, Hierà kalá (Leiden, 1995); Bremmer, ‘Modi di communicazione con il divino: la preghiera, la divinizazione e il sacrificio nella civiltá greca’, in S. Settis (ed.), I Greci I (Turin, 1996) 239-83. Chthonic: S. Scullion, ‘Olympian and Chthonian’, Class. Ant . 13 (1994) 75- 119; R. Schlesier, Kulte, Mythen und Gelehrte (Frankfurt/M, 1994) 21-32. Note also various studies in R. Hägg (ed.), Ancient Greek cult practice from the archaeological evidence (Athens, 1999). 3 M.P. Nilsson, Geschichte der griechischen Religion I (München, 1967 3) 151-2; similarly, R. Parker, ‘Sacrifice, Greek’, in S. Hornblower and A. Spawforth (eds.), The Oxford Classical Dictionary (Oxford, 1996 3) 1344-5: ‘...fertile Earth a pregnant sow’; Scullion, ‘Olympian and Chthonian’, 86. 4 F. Graf, Nordionische Kulte (Rome, 1985) 27; Van Straten, Hierà kalá , 26, 77; S. Georgoudi, ‘Divinità greche e vittime animali: Demetra, Kore, Hera e il sacrificio di femmine gravide’, in S. Castignone and G. Lanata (eds.), Filosofi e animali nel mondo antico (Genova, 1994) 171-86. 1 discuss at a future occasion. Sacrifices of pregnant animals are not that uncommon in our sources. They are attested for the Greek continent, several islands, and Miletus. There seems to be a clear cluster in Athens, but this is due to the Athenian dominance in our sources, rather than being an indication for the phenomenon’s origin. In fact, the oldest testimony comes from Miletus and predates 500 BC, whereas the latest examples are attested by Pausanias – barely a millennium later. Although the rule that goddesses receive female victims and gods male ones is only a late antique construct, as the archaeological evidence has demonstrated, 5 it certainly fits this case in which the victims are always ewes and sows, with the special case of a cow for Marathonian Ge, and the recipients always goddesses. 6 The recipients are the Eumenides, Ge, Rhea, Demeter, Daeira, Theban Pelarge, Hera Antheia, Artemis, Athena Skiras and Athena Polias, and, finally, unknown recipients in the months Pyanopsion ( LSS 20 A 28) and Gameli- on ( LSS 20 A 43) at Marathon. 7 This is not a homogeneous group of divinities. Some could reasonably be called chthonic, such as the Eumenides, but this is hardly the case with Hera or Athena. Does this perhaps mean that we have here a sacrifice with varying meanings, depen- ding on the context? It seems methodologically best to begin with those cults for which we have more mythical or ritual data, and from there proceed to cults for which we have less information. We will start, therefore, with the Eumenides. Pausanias relates that every year the Sicyonians celebrate a one-day festival in which they sacrifice a ‘pregnant ewe, bring libations of honey and water or milk and use flowers instead of wreaths’. He adds, very usefully, that they carry out similar sacrifices to the Moirai, but that these take place outside of the temple ‘in the open air’ (Paus. 2.11.4). The similarity in sacrifice is not surprising, since Eumenides and Moirai are genealogically, conceptually and ritually connected: both have connections with the 5 Bremmer, ‘Modi di communicazione’, 253. 6 The only exception is a third-century Koan inscription ( LSCG 154.B.37ff), which prescribes remedies in the event that an animal sold for sacrificial use as pregnant turns out not to be and which refers to ‘gods and goddesses to whom pregnant victims (are sacrificed)’. As Scullion, ‘Olympian and Chthonian’, 86, observes, the expression is ‘merely a stereotyped legal phrase’. 7 S. Scullion, ZPE 121 (1998) 121-2, suggests as recipient ‘Rhea, Mother of the gods’, but this is less likely, cf. S. Lambert, ‘The Sacrificial Calendar of the Marathonian Tetrapolis: a revised text’ , ZPE 130 (2000) 43-70 at 54, who also has re-edited the text. 2 important turning points of life: birth, maturity and death, 8 and both cults belong typically to the concerns of women, as appears from an often neglected fragment of Euripides’ Melanippe Desmotis .9 The ritual kinship of the Eumenides and Moirai is manifested by the shared negative signs in their sacrifices. Libations of honey, water and/or milk are in clear opposition to the normal libation of wine, as has recently been noted more than once, and so is the use of flowers instead of wreaths. 10 Moreover, the Athenians sacrificed to the Eumenides at night in silence, 11 and the Derveni Papyrus (col. VI) stipulates that they should receive wineless libations and sacrificial cakes, 12 another combination pointing to ‘abnormality’. These negative signs align well with the fact that the Eumenides are often portrayed in literature and art in lurid colours; on votive reliefs they are invariably pictured with snakes in their hands. 13 The ritual indications clearly point in the direction of a negatively valued context and hardly into the direction of a positive sacrifice. Unfortunately, Pausanias does not tell us - and nor does anybody else - what happened to the fetus of the sacrificed animal. It is very unlikely that it was eaten, but how it was disposed of we simply do not know. It may well be that this element has significantly contributed to the ‘negative’ connotation of the ritual. The same indications, albeit with a different divine character, can be found in the ritual connected with Ge, who with the epithet ‘ en pagôi ’ received a pregnant ewe in Erchia in the month Boedromion ( LSCG 18 E.16-21), and, with the epithet eg gyais , a pregnant cow in the Marathonian Tetrapolis in the month Poseideon ( LSCG 20 B 9). We have no 8 As is stressed by A. Henrichs, ‘Namenlosigkeit und Euphemismus: Zur Ambivalenz der chthonischen Mächte im attischen Drama’, in H. Hoffman and A. Harder (eds.), Fragmenta dramatica (Göttingen, 1991) 161-201 at 175 n. 28; for the complicated relationships between Eumenides, Erinyes and Semnai Theai see most recently S.I. Johnston, Restless Dead (Berkeley, Los Angeles, london, 1999) 279-87. Moirai: Graf, Nordionische Kulte , 29-30; add now SEG 42.535 (Moirai Patrouai). 9 Eur. Mel.Desm . fr. 494, quoted from the new edition by J. Diggle, Tragicorum Graecorum fragmenta selecta (Oxford, 1998). 10 Libations: A. Henrichs, ‘The "Sobriety" of Oedipus: Sophocles OC 100 Misunderstood’, HSCP 87 (1983) 87-100; Graf, Nordionische Kulte , 26-29; M. Jameson et al ., A lex sacra from Selinous (Durham NC, 1993) 72. Flowers: Graf, ibidem , 27f. 11 Aesch. Eum . 108-9; Apollod. FGrH 244 F101; Schol. Soph. OC . 489. 12 A. Henrichs, ‘The Eumenides and Wineless Libations in the Derveni Papyrus’, Atti del XVII congresso internazionale di papirologia II (Naples, 1984) 255-68.
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