Human Sacrifice and its Denial
That one must construct an argument in defence of the thesis that the Greeks did at some stage of their history and prehistory commit human sacrifice is nothing short of extraordinary. Nowadays, it is possible to read whole putative ‘histories’ of Greek prehistory that do not mention the topic once; that these ‘histories’ are based primarily, if not exclusively, on archaeological (material) evidence is another aspect of this fashion. If indeed the Greeks and Romans in their prehistory did practise human sacrifice, and came in their historical period to abandon it, then this transformation belongs first and foremost to the dark ages of their history and becomes for us the single most important “fact” about those ages, essential to be considered in any explanation as to why they were dark. Works that ignore the issue run the risk of being fabrications. It is a fabrication to omit, as much as it is to invent.
The fundamental principle of archaeology is that a material datum existing in the present has a history that can be inferred from the datum itself: by digging through the layers, one is literally digging through the past. But the digging happens in the present. The same principle applies to material evidences of oral tradition; the fact that the tradition is oral and comprises data that is classified as “legendary” or “mythological” does not remove its status as evidence. It, too, must be accounted for. Thus, with the oral evidence, as with the finds of archaeological digs, each datum must be examined and evaluated case-by-case. The origin of this or that aspect of the oral evidence should be attributed to a time and place.
In the sense of absolute knowledge we cannot really know history. It is always possible to deny any thesis concerning the past. Did Napoleon really enter Moscow on 14 September 1812? All conclusions about the past are a form of probabilistic reasoning. We make sense of the past based upon critical evaluation of the evidence. On this basis, my thesis is that the evidence overwhelmingly supports the conclusion that the ancient Greeks committed human sacrifice at some time, and once accepted, is powerfully explanatory.
Plutarch (c.46—c.120 CE) states that the ancient Spartans practised a form of human sacrifice by exposing new-born babies. In this, he is our only source; therefore, the counter-argument goes, since he is our only source, he could be wrong, therefore, he is wrong, and the Spartans never did this. The shades between possible, probable and certain have been constantly abused by all commentators in defence of their own positions.
I do not think that Plutarch claims to have witnessed child-exposure himself, but he did claim to have witnessed the ritual ‘flagellation’ of Spartan boys at the altar of Artemis Orthia. (It was a tourist entertainment in his days.) He provides accounts in both Ancient Customs of the Spartans and in his Life of Lycurgus, writing in the latter, “for I myself have seen several of the youths endure whipping to death at the foot of the altar of Diana surnamed Orthia.” Hence, the thesis of denial goes: Plutarch had defective eyesight, and did not witness what he saw, and was mistaken, both about this and about infant exposure, even though he says he was a visitor to Sparta. The account of the flagellation is eye-witness testimony of human sacrifice. Boys are whipped to death at a religious festival devoted to an instance of the Goddess, Artemis Orthia = “murder” of a human victim in a religious context = ritual human sacrifice. It is also an instance of a transmuted ritual. Like the tracing back to ancient languages of which we have no instance, by peeling back the layers we infer that at some time in the past more explicit human sacrifice did take place at Sparta, and that the drawing of blood was a ritual instituted by way of reformation of that primitive rite. Hence, we see into the Dark Age, and discern its most fundamental fact: the reformation of Greek religion.
Pausanias’s Description of Greece (written 2nd century CE) is the best, though by no means only, source we have for the oral tradition that stretches into the Dark Age. Pausanias is just another person who, according to the antithesis, was unable to see what he could see. To call the references in his work to human sacrifice numerous would be an understatement. The most famous of all concerns the sacrifice of a child by Lykaon and to the contemporary practices taking place at the altar of Zeus at Mount Lycaon. He implies that he was an eye-witness. Extracts from the two relevant passages are as follows.
The fundamental principle of archaeology is that a material datum existing in the present has a history that can be inferred from the datum itself: by digging through the layers, one is literally digging through the past. But the digging happens in the present. The same principle applies to material evidences of oral tradition; the fact that the tradition is oral and comprises data that is classified as “legendary” or “mythological” does not remove its status as evidence. It, too, must be accounted for. Thus, with the oral evidence, as with the finds of archaeological digs, each datum must be examined and evaluated case-by-case. The origin of this or that aspect of the oral evidence should be attributed to a time and place.
In the sense of absolute knowledge we cannot really know history. It is always possible to deny any thesis concerning the past. Did Napoleon really enter Moscow on 14 September 1812? All conclusions about the past are a form of probabilistic reasoning. We make sense of the past based upon critical evaluation of the evidence. On this basis, my thesis is that the evidence overwhelmingly supports the conclusion that the ancient Greeks committed human sacrifice at some time, and once accepted, is powerfully explanatory.
Plutarch (c.46—c.120 CE) states that the ancient Spartans practised a form of human sacrifice by exposing new-born babies. In this, he is our only source; therefore, the counter-argument goes, since he is our only source, he could be wrong, therefore, he is wrong, and the Spartans never did this. The shades between possible, probable and certain have been constantly abused by all commentators in defence of their own positions.
I do not think that Plutarch claims to have witnessed child-exposure himself, but he did claim to have witnessed the ritual ‘flagellation’ of Spartan boys at the altar of Artemis Orthia. (It was a tourist entertainment in his days.) He provides accounts in both Ancient Customs of the Spartans and in his Life of Lycurgus, writing in the latter, “for I myself have seen several of the youths endure whipping to death at the foot of the altar of Diana surnamed Orthia.” Hence, the thesis of denial goes: Plutarch had defective eyesight, and did not witness what he saw, and was mistaken, both about this and about infant exposure, even though he says he was a visitor to Sparta. The account of the flagellation is eye-witness testimony of human sacrifice. Boys are whipped to death at a religious festival devoted to an instance of the Goddess, Artemis Orthia = “murder” of a human victim in a religious context = ritual human sacrifice. It is also an instance of a transmuted ritual. Like the tracing back to ancient languages of which we have no instance, by peeling back the layers we infer that at some time in the past more explicit human sacrifice did take place at Sparta, and that the drawing of blood was a ritual instituted by way of reformation of that primitive rite. Hence, we see into the Dark Age, and discern its most fundamental fact: the reformation of Greek religion.
Pausanias’s Description of Greece (written 2nd century CE) is the best, though by no means only, source we have for the oral tradition that stretches into the Dark Age. Pausanias is just another person who, according to the antithesis, was unable to see what he could see. To call the references in his work to human sacrifice numerous would be an understatement. The most famous of all concerns the sacrifice of a child by Lykaon and to the contemporary practices taking place at the altar of Zeus at Mount Lycaon. He implies that he was an eye-witness. Extracts from the two relevant passages are as follows.
But I believe Kekrops king of Athens and Lykaon were contemporaries, though they were not equally gifted with religious wisdom. Kekrops first named Zeus the Supreme, and decided to offer him no slaughtered sacrifices but to incinerate on the altar those local honey-cakes the Athenians today call oatmeals, but Lykaon brought a human child to the altar of Lykaian Zeus, slaughtered it and poured its blood on the altar, and they say at that sacrifice he was suddenly turned into a wolf. And I believe this legend, which has been told in Arkadia from ancient times and has likelihood on its side. (Arcadia, 8.3.4.)
At this altar [of Lykaian Zeus] they offer a secret sacrifice to Lykaian Zeus. I could see no pleasure in pursuing inquiries about this sacrifice; let it be as it is and as it was from the beginning. (Arcadia, 8.38.7.) |
The second of these implies that Pausanias was present. (There is a reference also by Plato to the practice contemporaneous with his times, when Socrates says, “… the story which is told concerning the temples of Zeus Lycaeus in Arcadia … That he who tasted the human flesh which had been cut up with the other sacrifices must of necessity become a wolf.” Republic, 8, 565 D-E.) Pausanias did believe that a child sacrifice had taken place in ancient times, and he goes on to affirm that he believes human sacrifice might still be happening in his own times. It is the common conviction of the ancient world that at some time in the past human sacrifice was practiced. Pausanias exemplifies the normative reaction of educated Greeks and Romans to that perceived belief—which is disgust.
Theseus and the Minotaur. Attic vase, C5 The Minotaur is evidently a man, and his identification with a bull is an allusion to his original character as sacrificial king-victim. The second millennium had already substituted the concept of ritual killing in a duel for the slaughter over an altar. But the Dark Age witnessed many atavisms.
Artemis and Acteaon. Image from an Attic mixing bowl. C.470 by the Pan Painter. Explicit renderings of the sacrifice of a man became taboo. Here the rendering of the death of Actaeon is laconic, elegant, and poetic; the Pan Painter deflects awareness of the terrible savagery implicit in the myth of Actaeon, destroyed at the instance of the Goddess Artemis, torn asunder by his own hunting dogs. Representations of male victims were permissible only in the context of actions of gods, whose exploits could be looked upon as divine, expressive of transcendent mysticism. Similar elegiac treatment was given to depictions of the myth of Apollo who flays Marsyas: icons illustrating this scene focus on the musical contest, not the sacrifice.
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That human sacrifice took place is the cornerstone of the interpretation of J.G. Frazer in The Golden Bough (1890) and formed the backbone of that school of thinking to which Jane Ellen Harrison and Robert Graves are also connected. From the Interwar period onwards, a reaction to this “Cambridge school of ritual” set in. One of the later proponents of this hostile reaction was Burkert, whose Greek Religion persistently denies it. His thesis is that only animal sacrifice ever took place. Dennis Hughes outlines Burkert’s counter to the evidence provided by Pausanias and Plato (among others) concerning the Mount Lykaon ceremony: it was all stage-managed by the event organisers, who thereby attracted greater profits. “Burkert notes that the inwards of humans and animals would hardly be distinguishable and that those who partook of the communal meal were other than the priests who had prepared it. The power of suggestion, fostered by tradition, would work on the imagination just as well as the reality. Thus in Burkert’s view the participants will have believed in earnest that the sacrificial meal contained a portion of human flesh, and this belief will have contributed to the efficacy of the initiation rite.” (Dennis D. Hughes, Human Sacrifice in Ancient Greece, p.105.) This counter-argument exemplifies all the abuse of logic that is going on in the antithesis – the clumsy moves from possible to probable to certain. It is just barely possible that it was a hoax organised by unscrupulous priests to hoodwink initiates, willing to eat human flesh, into thinking they had eaten human flesh, when in fact the scrupulous priests took great pains to make sure that they did not. From that bare possibility it follows that it is certain that human sacrifice never took place in ancient Greece. And if it is not certain, then what is the point of denying it?
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In the context of this denial of the evidence provided for the Mount Lykaon ritual, Hughes also cites the lack of archaeological evidence: no human bones have been discovered on that mountain, therefore, he infers, no human sacrifice took place. This point exemplifies all the reasons why we should not begin with archaeology in this matter. The fact that archaeologists have not found human bones (or, to be exact, are reported to have said they have not) does not prove there never were any. They are looking in the wrong place, or the evidence has been removed. (Where are the remains of the 450,000 Mycenaeans who died after the Bronze Age Collapse?) Archaeological evidence sometimes appears to be conclusive: the sites in Crete of Mount Juktas, the sanctuary of Fournou Korifi and the “North House” of Knossos, appear prima facie to be unambiguous discoveries of the practice of human sacrifice. The discoveries at Knossos revealed a mass of children’s bones that had been cut-up, which suggested to the excavators that the children were victims of cannibalism. But Hughes states that these might be secondary burials. This is true, they might be, and any number of other explanations for how those bones got there could be proposed. It is not archaeology that proves or disproves that human sacrifice took place in Greece; it is Greek tradition that does that. Then, in the context of that tradition, archaeology confirms it, or, if one does wish to cavil, at least, raises no objections.
Most burials in the Late Bronze Age in Mycenaean Greece were secondary burials following excarnation—the practice of removing the flesh and organs of the dead before burial, leaving only the bones—also called “defleshing”. It is obvious, then, that material evidence of this nature cannot pronounce on cause of death, and hence is utterly incapable of giving an answer to the question of human sacrifice. Excarnation and “secondary burial” are consistent even with cannibalism, and Herodotus reports customs among “barbarian” nations where people who are about to die are sacrificed and eaten. (For example, Histories, 3.99 describing the customs of the Indian tribe of Padaei.
During the Interwar epoch the myth of the Indo-European heritage was raised. It was not that human sacrifice was denied, merely that the Greeks (and Romans) never practised it—because they were inheritors of the Indo-European tradition, of “light”, of the “father”. In other words, this reaction is tainted with a backward projection of patriarchy and its “virtues”. It can be deeply distressing to think that one’s ancestors did that sort of thing, and no culture was more upset by that thought than the pan-Hellenistic culture of the Greeks and Romans; they shied away from the topic and refused to understand their own religion. But what this Interwar theology does is sever the Graeco-Roman tradition from the mainstream of Western evolution; it casts the burden of “guilt” for the practice of human sacrifice upon the Mediterranean peoples, the Phoenicians, Canaanites and Carthaginians primarily, and glancingly at the Babylonians and other peoples of the Near East. Thus Greek = Roman = Indo-European = Good and Phoenician = Canaanite = Mediterranean = Bad. And this tradition was willing to countenance that the Greeks and Romans owed their heritage to an unsoiled patriarchy, while the Mediterranean culture was a dirty work of the Goddess. This dichotomy is utterly false, and demonstrably so. The existence of an Indo-European origin for the peoples that spoke the languages derived from that root is firmly established; that any of these peoples refrained from participating in the Mediterranean culture is not. I have written above on the indecisive nature of archaeological evidence with respect to human sacrifice in ancient Greece, but would one call the evidence of the Celtic bog-bodies indecisive? Since the Celts are an Indo-European people, it is a myth (in the sense of lying fable) to suggest that Indo-Europeans could not and did not do what everyone did.
It seems likely that the first people to give up the practice of human sacrifice were the Egyptians. But, if they did so, it was upon an insecure theological foundation. To begin at the beginning, the Egyptians of the first dynasty (c.3200—c.2910) did practice human sacrifice, and in this matter, archaeology has again deigned to pronounce a firm conviction. The death of all the pharaohs of the first dynasty were accompanied by what are called “retainer sacrifices”. They count 338 people strangled in order to accompany King Djer into the Other World. Then, it seems, the Egyptians gave it up.
They came up with a sophisticated metaphysics that allowed them to substitute clay models for real people. They came to believe that a statue could be inhabited by a “soul”—which they called “ka”—and that by the incantation of mantras clay models of people could be brought to life within the tomb. Therefore, it was no longer necessary to kill people to provide companions for the king. Furthermore, even the mere mention of servants in magic inscriptions carved into the walls of the tombs in the Book of the Dead would suffice to bring retainers to “life” within the tomb. It was a brilliant idea, but one that suffered not only from the defect that we have discovered—that it does not work—but also from an inner inconsistency, namely, that no substitute suffices, when there is a real crisis.
The cognitive structure of the ancients, the very mode of their thinking about reality, is also something revealed by the oral tradition, evidenced too in the written record as far back as it goes. The Egyptians, and all peoples of the world, were primitive materialists. The primitive materialism of the ancients lent support to the practice of sacrifice, because it supported another belief structure that is dubbed spiritual materialism. This is most exemplified in the bargaining religion of the Romans, by whose time it had been honed into a system. The Romans worked on the principle that they could buy the favour of the gods: such-and-such a sacrifice (sacra) would reap so-much reward (signa). It was the foundation of their military success, if not in reality, on which we cannot comment, but because it was the ground of their superior morale in battle; in other words, they believed it, so it worked for them. But this system, which they inherited from the ancient world, and which was under constant threat of breaking up under the ideological pressure of the new way of thinking introduced in Ionia, was the underlying system of the Egyptians, the archaic Greeks, and the whole ancient world. Prior to the inception of Ionian thought, the ancients believed that the gods demanded sacrifices, and it is this belief that convinces the modern observer that they must also have provided the gods with human victims, as well as animal ones. We also have a theoretical and theological justification of this logic in a late work. It appears in a discussion reported by Porphyry, which is extraordinary as Porphyry was a Neo-Platonist vegetarian, who would not hurt a fly. Porphyry had asked Iamblichus to explain the Egyptian doctrine of sacrifice, and Iamblichus responded by sending him a treatise on the topic said to be written by one Abammon, an Egyptian priest.
Most burials in the Late Bronze Age in Mycenaean Greece were secondary burials following excarnation—the practice of removing the flesh and organs of the dead before burial, leaving only the bones—also called “defleshing”. It is obvious, then, that material evidence of this nature cannot pronounce on cause of death, and hence is utterly incapable of giving an answer to the question of human sacrifice. Excarnation and “secondary burial” are consistent even with cannibalism, and Herodotus reports customs among “barbarian” nations where people who are about to die are sacrificed and eaten. (For example, Histories, 3.99 describing the customs of the Indian tribe of Padaei.
During the Interwar epoch the myth of the Indo-European heritage was raised. It was not that human sacrifice was denied, merely that the Greeks (and Romans) never practised it—because they were inheritors of the Indo-European tradition, of “light”, of the “father”. In other words, this reaction is tainted with a backward projection of patriarchy and its “virtues”. It can be deeply distressing to think that one’s ancestors did that sort of thing, and no culture was more upset by that thought than the pan-Hellenistic culture of the Greeks and Romans; they shied away from the topic and refused to understand their own religion. But what this Interwar theology does is sever the Graeco-Roman tradition from the mainstream of Western evolution; it casts the burden of “guilt” for the practice of human sacrifice upon the Mediterranean peoples, the Phoenicians, Canaanites and Carthaginians primarily, and glancingly at the Babylonians and other peoples of the Near East. Thus Greek = Roman = Indo-European = Good and Phoenician = Canaanite = Mediterranean = Bad. And this tradition was willing to countenance that the Greeks and Romans owed their heritage to an unsoiled patriarchy, while the Mediterranean culture was a dirty work of the Goddess. This dichotomy is utterly false, and demonstrably so. The existence of an Indo-European origin for the peoples that spoke the languages derived from that root is firmly established; that any of these peoples refrained from participating in the Mediterranean culture is not. I have written above on the indecisive nature of archaeological evidence with respect to human sacrifice in ancient Greece, but would one call the evidence of the Celtic bog-bodies indecisive? Since the Celts are an Indo-European people, it is a myth (in the sense of lying fable) to suggest that Indo-Europeans could not and did not do what everyone did.
It seems likely that the first people to give up the practice of human sacrifice were the Egyptians. But, if they did so, it was upon an insecure theological foundation. To begin at the beginning, the Egyptians of the first dynasty (c.3200—c.2910) did practice human sacrifice, and in this matter, archaeology has again deigned to pronounce a firm conviction. The death of all the pharaohs of the first dynasty were accompanied by what are called “retainer sacrifices”. They count 338 people strangled in order to accompany King Djer into the Other World. Then, it seems, the Egyptians gave it up.
They came up with a sophisticated metaphysics that allowed them to substitute clay models for real people. They came to believe that a statue could be inhabited by a “soul”—which they called “ka”—and that by the incantation of mantras clay models of people could be brought to life within the tomb. Therefore, it was no longer necessary to kill people to provide companions for the king. Furthermore, even the mere mention of servants in magic inscriptions carved into the walls of the tombs in the Book of the Dead would suffice to bring retainers to “life” within the tomb. It was a brilliant idea, but one that suffered not only from the defect that we have discovered—that it does not work—but also from an inner inconsistency, namely, that no substitute suffices, when there is a real crisis.
The cognitive structure of the ancients, the very mode of their thinking about reality, is also something revealed by the oral tradition, evidenced too in the written record as far back as it goes. The Egyptians, and all peoples of the world, were primitive materialists. The primitive materialism of the ancients lent support to the practice of sacrifice, because it supported another belief structure that is dubbed spiritual materialism. This is most exemplified in the bargaining religion of the Romans, by whose time it had been honed into a system. The Romans worked on the principle that they could buy the favour of the gods: such-and-such a sacrifice (sacra) would reap so-much reward (signa). It was the foundation of their military success, if not in reality, on which we cannot comment, but because it was the ground of their superior morale in battle; in other words, they believed it, so it worked for them. But this system, which they inherited from the ancient world, and which was under constant threat of breaking up under the ideological pressure of the new way of thinking introduced in Ionia, was the underlying system of the Egyptians, the archaic Greeks, and the whole ancient world. Prior to the inception of Ionian thought, the ancients believed that the gods demanded sacrifices, and it is this belief that convinces the modern observer that they must also have provided the gods with human victims, as well as animal ones. We also have a theoretical and theological justification of this logic in a late work. It appears in a discussion reported by Porphyry, which is extraordinary as Porphyry was a Neo-Platonist vegetarian, who would not hurt a fly. Porphyry had asked Iamblichus to explain the Egyptian doctrine of sacrifice, and Iamblichus responded by sending him a treatise on the topic said to be written by one Abammon, an Egyptian priest.
THE KIND OF SACRIFICES MOST PROPER
Of such a character are some of the animals of Egypt, and in the same manner, the human being everywhere is sacred. Some of the consecrated victims, however, make the familiar relationship more conspicuous, so far as they affect the analysis in respect to the kindred and more sacred origin of the primitive elements with the Superior (divine) causes. This being accomplished, the benefits which are imparted from it are more perfect. (Iamblichus, Theurgia, The Egyptian Mysteries, trans. Alexander Wilder.) |
What this says is (a) sacrifices work; (b) human sacrifices work better than animal ones, for they are more “sacred” and “more perfect”. It is the cognitive structure of primitive materialism and its accompanying spiritual materialism that makes sense of the following extract from Diodorus.
Poseidon … became angry with Laomedon the king of Troy in connection with the building of its walls, according to the mythological story, and sent forth from the sea a monster to ravage the land. By this monster those who made their living by the seashore and the farmers who tilled the land contiguous to the sea were being surprised and carried off. Furthermore, a pestilence fell upon the people and a total destruction of their crops, so that all the inhabitants were at their wits’ end because of the magnitude of what had befallen them. Consequently the common crowd gathered together into an assembly, and sought deliverance from their misfortunes, and the king, it is said, dispatched a mission to Apollo to inquire of the god regarding what had befallen them. When the oracle, then, became known, which told that the cause was the anger of Poseidon and that only then would it cease when the Trojans should of their free will select by lot one of their children and deliver him to the monster for his food, although all the children submitted to the lot, it fell upon the king’s daughter Hesioine. Consequently Laomedon was constrained by necessity to deliver the maiden and to leave her, bound in chains, upon the shore. (Library, IV. 42. 2 – 3, trans, Oldfather, p.475.)
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According to other versions of the myth, the quarrel is about payment for the construction of the walls of Troy, though here the idea of payment is not explicit. In the above, the term translated as “king” is not anax but basileus, meaning “country lord” in Mycenaean Greek; this “king” has refused to “pay” Poseidon for the construction of the cyclopean (Pelasgian) walls. In Mycenaean Greece the fortifications of Athens, Mycenae, Tiryns, Thebes and Gla went up during the period c.1350—c.1250. In classical Greek, Laomedon = “ruler of the people”; do we have here an allusion to the political structure evident at Pylos in the Linear B tablets, where in addition to the “king” (wanax), who is closely linked to Poseidon, we have a lawagetas, usually translated as “leader of the people”? In this “myth” Laomedon is associated with “the people”, but not all the people. The people are divided between those who follow Laomedon and those who follow Poseidon. The party represented by Poseidon did the building of the wall (in the myth) and/or had some objection to it, and are demanding compensation from Laomedon, but this has been refused. The obvious question is: what was the “payment” that Laomedon refused to give? Poseidon organises a civil disturbance by means of an invasion from the sea, that is, I suggest, the damns are broken and there is a flood, and the fertile coastal plains are ravaged; supporters of Laomedon are killed. The archaeology of the region near Orchomenos is instructive: around 1300 the inland swamp of Lake Copias was drained, and a series of fortifications were built to defend the resultant fertile plain, including the cyclopean walls of the huge citadel of Gla. But c.1200, Gla was abandoned and the lake was flooded. Mythology tells us that Heracles on behalf of the Thebans was the responsible leader, and celebrates the act of destruction as heroism. The result for Orchomenos, as in the myth of Laomedon, was famine and pestilence. In most variants of the myth of Laomedon, it is famine that is primarily implicated, but it is notable that in Greek mythology pestilence is the work of Apollo. Some versions of the myth say that Laomedon offended both Poseidon and Apollo, and both took their revenge. In the version provided above, a crop disease following a flood is implicated. The people then called a popular assembly, and agreed to submit to the arbitration of an oracle, here associated with Apollo and Delphi. (Prior to c.800 the oracle at Delphi was devoted to the Goddess, Ge, the Earth. In other versions of the myth the oracle is of Zeus Ammon.) The oracle, consonant with primitive materialism, indicates that if payment by Laomedon is not forthcoming, then he may substitute a child sacrifice. This sacrifice was to be a male child, and from his own house, but he attempts to cast the lot upon the whole population; in the end, he compromises by giving up one of his daughters. I suggest we infer that the original payment was his own life and that he refused—it could hardly be a demand less than the substitute, which is a child sacrifice. Also, the idea of “payment” is a backward projection even for the Greeks—money had not been invented by this time. It is this pattern in which human sacrifice is demanded by the gods in propitiation for some offence that is overwhelmingly manifest in all Greek mythology.
It is a speculation to assert that religious conflict is involved among the causes of the Bronze Age Collapse (c.1200) in Greece. Nevertheless, we see here a pattern: some kind of refusal on the part of a leader—here basileus not anax—to “pay Poseidon”, followed by a civil disturbance, followed by famine and pestilence, followed by further civil disturbance and the institution of a plebiscite (assembly), followed by an offspring sacrifice, and this as a preliminary to yet further religious conflicts and transformations, represented by the rescue of the maiden. This underlying structure, or parts of it, is repeated everywhere in Greek mythology and tradition.
Ionian consciousness makes both human and animal sacrifices spurious, because in that cognitive structure the deity is (a) separated from the world, and (b) becomes an expression of the concept of the infinite. Hence, god becomes omnipotent and omniscient, and has no need of sacrifices. This does not determine the gender of god, but the rising patriarchy coupled this notion to their high storm and weather god and made Zeus Almighty out of him. Homer, with his conception of Zeus as the divine arbiter among the gods, governed by inscrutable principles of justice, and capable of overpowering all the other gods alone, represents a stage in the evolution of this concept. Since Homer antedates the appearance of Ionian consciousness, we see that Greek consciousness had entered by his time a period of proto-Ionian consciousness. We sense that the urge to dispense with the practice of human sacrifice was instrumental in the formation of Ionian consciousness. However, primitive materialism was not overthrown all at once, as if Thales merely had to pronounce, “All things are from water and all things are resolved into water,” to settle the question for everyone. Paganism did not collapse immediately, nor did belief in sacrifice: the bargaining aspect was enshrined in the religion of the Romans. By the first century CE, most of the Roman elite (Varro, Cicero et al.) were non-believers in their own pagan religion, regarding it as a state religion designed for the masses, perhaps even deliberately so. But since animal sacrifice continued to be the mainstay of religious practice in the classical and Hellenistic periods, then we also expect to see instances of human sacrifice, albeit rare, within the historical record. And that is what we do see.
According to Pliny the Elder in 97 BCE, “a decree forbidding human sacrifices was passed by the senate; from which period the celebration of these horrid rites ceased in public, and, for some time, altogether.” (Natural History, 30.3.) This sentence has been much debated because of its implications: (a) that there were both public and private human sacrifices prior to 97 BCE; (b) that private celebrations continued even after that date; (c) that public celebrations of human sacrifice were resumed. Regarding the latter point, Pliny (23—79 CE) could be alluding to the many horrors of the Roman civil wars, and there are accusations against both Julius Caesar and Augustus that they committed human sacrifice, though the verdict upon them is still out. But Pliny confirms the impression given above when he writes, “Our own age even has seen a man and a woman buried alive in the Ox Market, Greeks by birth, or else natives of some other country with which we were at war at the time.” (Pliny, Natural History, 28.3.11 – 12.)
It is a speculation to assert that religious conflict is involved among the causes of the Bronze Age Collapse (c.1200) in Greece. Nevertheless, we see here a pattern: some kind of refusal on the part of a leader—here basileus not anax—to “pay Poseidon”, followed by a civil disturbance, followed by famine and pestilence, followed by further civil disturbance and the institution of a plebiscite (assembly), followed by an offspring sacrifice, and this as a preliminary to yet further religious conflicts and transformations, represented by the rescue of the maiden. This underlying structure, or parts of it, is repeated everywhere in Greek mythology and tradition.
Ionian consciousness makes both human and animal sacrifices spurious, because in that cognitive structure the deity is (a) separated from the world, and (b) becomes an expression of the concept of the infinite. Hence, god becomes omnipotent and omniscient, and has no need of sacrifices. This does not determine the gender of god, but the rising patriarchy coupled this notion to their high storm and weather god and made Zeus Almighty out of him. Homer, with his conception of Zeus as the divine arbiter among the gods, governed by inscrutable principles of justice, and capable of overpowering all the other gods alone, represents a stage in the evolution of this concept. Since Homer antedates the appearance of Ionian consciousness, we see that Greek consciousness had entered by his time a period of proto-Ionian consciousness. We sense that the urge to dispense with the practice of human sacrifice was instrumental in the formation of Ionian consciousness. However, primitive materialism was not overthrown all at once, as if Thales merely had to pronounce, “All things are from water and all things are resolved into water,” to settle the question for everyone. Paganism did not collapse immediately, nor did belief in sacrifice: the bargaining aspect was enshrined in the religion of the Romans. By the first century CE, most of the Roman elite (Varro, Cicero et al.) were non-believers in their own pagan religion, regarding it as a state religion designed for the masses, perhaps even deliberately so. But since animal sacrifice continued to be the mainstay of religious practice in the classical and Hellenistic periods, then we also expect to see instances of human sacrifice, albeit rare, within the historical record. And that is what we do see.
According to Pliny the Elder in 97 BCE, “a decree forbidding human sacrifices was passed by the senate; from which period the celebration of these horrid rites ceased in public, and, for some time, altogether.” (Natural History, 30.3.) This sentence has been much debated because of its implications: (a) that there were both public and private human sacrifices prior to 97 BCE; (b) that private celebrations continued even after that date; (c) that public celebrations of human sacrifice were resumed. Regarding the latter point, Pliny (23—79 CE) could be alluding to the many horrors of the Roman civil wars, and there are accusations against both Julius Caesar and Augustus that they committed human sacrifice, though the verdict upon them is still out. But Pliny confirms the impression given above when he writes, “Our own age even has seen a man and a woman buried alive in the Ox Market, Greeks by birth, or else natives of some other country with which we were at war at the time.” (Pliny, Natural History, 28.3.11 – 12.)
The Sacrifice of Polyxena. Illustration based on icon on a black-figured amphora by the Timiades Painter. In the British Museum. Made in Athens. 570—550. Explicit representations of the sacrifice of men were taboo by the time figurative art was reintroduced in archaic times. The prevalent culture of misogyny in a period of rising patriarchy expressed itself in depictions of extreme violence towards women. The misogyny is rooted in the cultural memory of a time when the Goddess demanded the life of a male-consort for the sake of fertile crops.
That there were public human sacrifices in the Roman past is well attested in Roman letters. In 228 BCE in the face of an invasion of the Insubres and other Gallic tribes there was a panic at Rome. According to Plutarch two men and two women, a pair of Gauls and a pair of Greeks, were buried alive in the forum boarium. Livy reports that in 216 the same rite was reverted to when four people were buried alive. Livy was embarrassed, as many of the Roman elite were, by the practice of human sacrifice and biased towards not reporting such events; but the history of the Second Punic War and the terror it produced in Rome as recounted by Livy suggests that there were many more sacrifices, a multitude, details of which he did suppress. The elder Pliny and Plutarch may be taken for two of the most honest men who ever lived, excelled in this respect only by Socrates and Euripides. We have already seen that Socrates, as reported by Plato, another honest man, referenced the ritual of Lycaon, and Euripides made human sacrifice the perpetual theme of all his work. So, it is a question of whom to believe: the Interwar commentators, or Livy, Pliny, Plutarch, Plato, Pausanias, Socrates and Euripides. I place my faith in the Romans and Greeks, who after all were Roman and Greek.
The mention here of the Punic Wars is an opportunity to discuss the Carthaginians. If there was ever a peoples renown throughout time for the practice of human sacrifice, then these are they. The explicit descriptions of their activities are many, but among them is his one from Diodorus Siculus.
The mention here of the Punic Wars is an opportunity to discuss the Carthaginians. If there was ever a peoples renown throughout time for the practice of human sacrifice, then these are they. The explicit descriptions of their activities are many, but among them is his one from Diodorus Siculus.
They [the Carthaginians] also alleged that Cronus had turned against them inasmuch as in former times they had been accustomed to sacrifice to this god the noblest of their sons, but more recently, secretly buying and nurturing children, they had sent these to the sacrifice; and when an investigation was made, some of these who had been sacrificed were discovered to have been supposititious.
When they had given thought to these things and saw their enemy encamped before the walls, they were filled with superstitious dread, for they believed that they had neglected the honours of the gods that had been established by their fathers. In their zeal to make amends for their omission, they selected two hundred of the noblest children and sacrificed them publicly; and others who were under suspicion sacrificed themselves voluntarily, in number not less than three hundred. There was in their city a bronze image of Cronos, extending its hands, palms up and sloping toward the ground, so that each of the children when placed thereon rolled down and fell into a sort of gaping pit filled with fire. (Library, 20.14.) |
There are many other references to similar Carthaginian practices in Roman literature. The reader may also find the stories relating to the brazen bull of Phalaris, tyrant of Akragas in Sicily, instructive.
The Interwar tradition had the tendency to draw a distinction as been good = Indo-European and bad = “Mediterranean”. Nowadays, it is common to raise doubts as to whether even the Carthaginians ever practised human sacrifice. Given that archaeologist Lawrence Stager uncovered in his excavations during the 1970s 20,000 urns at Carthage containing the ashes of infants, this “sceptical” response is extraordinary—yet Stager himself has withdrawn his original conclusions which were in favour of child sacrifice. It has been suggested that the whole idea was Roman propaganda to justify Roman “aggression”—and it is true that history recounts that the Romans provoked the Third Punic War, and the Carthaginians did everything to avoid it. What weighs against this backward projection of Mediterranean “neo-purity” is that the practice was entirely an expression of the ancient system of cognition—what I have called primitive materialism and its associated spiritual materialism and in later times bargaining religion. In the extract of Diodorus quoted above we see the Carthaginians seeking to bargain with god. Furthermore, the very authors who report that the Carthaginians did these things also report that the Romans and Greeks did it too, and for the same reasons. The Romans and Greeks did practice human sacrifice, but they also strove to give it up.
Although the Romans outlawed human sacrifice, as the above data shows, there is every reason to suppose that (a) the Romans continued the practice of human sacrifice right into the historical period; (b) even after they outlawed it, they practised it. We have here evidence of another thesis: under the influence of their Etruscan heritage, Rome remained a developed matriarchy until very late, even as late as the period of the Second Punic War; it is this that accounts for the strange “Roman anomaly” that they appear to have no mythology. This is because, under a late patriarchal revolution, the Romans deliberately wiped it out. They replaced their mythology with a state religion and a false legendary history that has been so successful in hoodwinking themselves and all subsequent ages that the fact that it is largely a fabrication has still not been fully digested. (It was Mommsen who first suggested it was a fabrication.) Notwithstanding the patriarchy they instituted, the Romans preserved many aspects of their Etruscan heritage, which included the custom of human sacrifice and its derivative habit of cruelty, in the form of gladiatorial contests and the use of crucifixion (immolation) as a punishment. Thus, the Romans, Etruscans and Carthaginians belonged largely to one and the same culture. It was their political conflicts that brought them into ideological variance.
It was only when Rome came into contact with Greek culture that they began to adopt the Greek attitude to things. It was the Greeks and not the Romans who decided to give up human sacrifice. But in rural and remote areas, such as Arcadia, the custom could continue; Greek culture was not uniform, and the tribal areas thought differently from the areas of polis and were more “conservative” in religion. Furthermore, when a custom has persisted for millennia under apparent divine sanction it remains as an underlying substratum to the culture—that is, Western civilisation is built over the previous epoch in which human sacrifice was normative. Under great pressure, Greeks could also revert to practices that they had theoretically come to regard as savage. We call this atavism.
One attested case in the historical record for the Greeks is the sacrifice of three prisoners of war, sons of Sandauce, the sister of Xerxes, at some point prior, during or after the naval battle of Salamis in 480. Our primary sources for this story are Plutarch’s Life of Themistocles and Life of Aristides; Plutarch references it again in his Life of Pelopidas; there is also background material in Herodotus’s Histories. Herodotus does not mention the sacrifice, and Plutarch obtained his information from a history composed by Phanias of Eresus (active c.332). The point, then, is that the account that derives from Phanias is not eye-witness testimony and could have arisen out of bias against Themistocles or Athens or both.
On a balance of probabilities, I accept the account of Phanias as historical, for it fits the psychology and norms of the times, as the following developed sequence of events shall make clear. Firstly, when the Persian emperor Darius sent ambassadors to Greece to demand submission, these men were thrown into the pit at both Athens and Sparta. The Spartans are clearly reported as looking upon this “murder” as a sacrifice, as I shall illustrate below. A culture of mutual cruelty had already been long established in relations between the two sides—both sides were prepared to bathe themselves in blood, to go beyond the point of no return in their conflict, and that as an aspect of their morale, for a struggle is more effective if it is desperate. In an earlier naval engagement at the Artemisium after the Persians captured a Greek ship, according to Herodotus, the Persians immediately sacrificed one of the Greek sailors, a man named as Leon. (Histories, 8.180.) The Persian prisoners that Themistocles is alleged to have sacrificed were taken by Aristides “the Just” by a surprise attack on the island of Psyttaleia. “Among these were three sons of the king’s sister, Sandauce, whom he immediately sent to Themistocles, and it is said that at the command of Euphrantides the prophet they were sacrificed to Dionysus the Eater of Flesh in obedience to some oracle.” (Aristides, 9.) The god in question is sometimes translated as Dionysus Carnivorous (Greek, Omestes). In the life of Themistocles Plutarch names his source and expresses his confidence in it: “… this is what Phanias the Lesbian says, and he was a philosopher, and well acquainted with historical literature.” I should agree that the material alone amounts to a case of “not proven”. We could also look upon it as an atrocity, exceptional but not normative. However, that it is normative is what makes it believable.
To illustrate this, we have the work of Euripides: the situation that Themistocles is said to find himself in as described by Plutarch, is the theme of the work of Euripides; he makes his conviction that Greeks in ancient times did practice human sacrifice abundantly clear. In his dramas a leader—Agamemnon on two separate occasions (Iphigenia at Aulis, Hecuba), Creon (Phoenician Women), Demophoon (Children of Heracles)—is presented with a demand initiated by a prophet or oracle for a sacrifice from among his own family, which he cannot resist because the mob demand it. (Creon attempts to resist it, but his son voluntarily sacrifices himself.) Euripides in his dramas is commenting upon the contemporary events of the Peloponnesian War of which he is a witness—he always opposed the Athenian mob desire for atrocities. That atrocities were committed by the Athenians and the Spartans during the Peloponnesian War is not in question; but the contextualisation of these events by Euripides in his plays indicates that he thought they were more than atrocities by possessing a religious dimension, being at the behest of priests and oracles.
For example, as previously indicated, Herodotus reports that at Sparta, following the “murder” of the envoys from Darius, a curse fell upon them, which Herodotus refers to as the “anger of Talthybius”—Talthybius being in myth the herald of Agamemnon. This phrase puts us into the context of an “angry spirit” one of the “angry dead” who need appeasement. Since the killing of the envoys of Darius resulted in a curse, that killing was also a sacred event, not a “mere murder”. In this matter, we are plunged into the milieu of the thought patterns of primitive materialism: cause and effect are the same as oath-breaking and curse, or as curse and blight for which the remedy is sacrifice. Hence, to remedy the curse, the Spartans called for volunteers to sacrifice themselves “in atonement for Darius’ messengers who had been killed in Sparta.” (Histories, 7.134.) It demonstrates a belief in the efficacy of human sacrifice. (See also Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, 2.67 which confirms this part.)
Herodotus gives us other examples of Greeks within the historical period committing human sacrifice. There are the contemporaneous sacrifices to Phrixus he describes (Histories, 7.197), which are believable because the logic is once again the logic of curse and remedy by sacrifice. He reports that Greeks and Carians served as mercenaries in the armies of Egyptian Psammenitus (Psamtik II) when Cambyses invaded. Prior to the battle of Pelusiam (525), Phanes of Halicarnassus, originally serving with the Egyptians, had defected to the Persian side.
The Interwar tradition had the tendency to draw a distinction as been good = Indo-European and bad = “Mediterranean”. Nowadays, it is common to raise doubts as to whether even the Carthaginians ever practised human sacrifice. Given that archaeologist Lawrence Stager uncovered in his excavations during the 1970s 20,000 urns at Carthage containing the ashes of infants, this “sceptical” response is extraordinary—yet Stager himself has withdrawn his original conclusions which were in favour of child sacrifice. It has been suggested that the whole idea was Roman propaganda to justify Roman “aggression”—and it is true that history recounts that the Romans provoked the Third Punic War, and the Carthaginians did everything to avoid it. What weighs against this backward projection of Mediterranean “neo-purity” is that the practice was entirely an expression of the ancient system of cognition—what I have called primitive materialism and its associated spiritual materialism and in later times bargaining religion. In the extract of Diodorus quoted above we see the Carthaginians seeking to bargain with god. Furthermore, the very authors who report that the Carthaginians did these things also report that the Romans and Greeks did it too, and for the same reasons. The Romans and Greeks did practice human sacrifice, but they also strove to give it up.
Although the Romans outlawed human sacrifice, as the above data shows, there is every reason to suppose that (a) the Romans continued the practice of human sacrifice right into the historical period; (b) even after they outlawed it, they practised it. We have here evidence of another thesis: under the influence of their Etruscan heritage, Rome remained a developed matriarchy until very late, even as late as the period of the Second Punic War; it is this that accounts for the strange “Roman anomaly” that they appear to have no mythology. This is because, under a late patriarchal revolution, the Romans deliberately wiped it out. They replaced their mythology with a state religion and a false legendary history that has been so successful in hoodwinking themselves and all subsequent ages that the fact that it is largely a fabrication has still not been fully digested. (It was Mommsen who first suggested it was a fabrication.) Notwithstanding the patriarchy they instituted, the Romans preserved many aspects of their Etruscan heritage, which included the custom of human sacrifice and its derivative habit of cruelty, in the form of gladiatorial contests and the use of crucifixion (immolation) as a punishment. Thus, the Romans, Etruscans and Carthaginians belonged largely to one and the same culture. It was their political conflicts that brought them into ideological variance.
It was only when Rome came into contact with Greek culture that they began to adopt the Greek attitude to things. It was the Greeks and not the Romans who decided to give up human sacrifice. But in rural and remote areas, such as Arcadia, the custom could continue; Greek culture was not uniform, and the tribal areas thought differently from the areas of polis and were more “conservative” in religion. Furthermore, when a custom has persisted for millennia under apparent divine sanction it remains as an underlying substratum to the culture—that is, Western civilisation is built over the previous epoch in which human sacrifice was normative. Under great pressure, Greeks could also revert to practices that they had theoretically come to regard as savage. We call this atavism.
One attested case in the historical record for the Greeks is the sacrifice of three prisoners of war, sons of Sandauce, the sister of Xerxes, at some point prior, during or after the naval battle of Salamis in 480. Our primary sources for this story are Plutarch’s Life of Themistocles and Life of Aristides; Plutarch references it again in his Life of Pelopidas; there is also background material in Herodotus’s Histories. Herodotus does not mention the sacrifice, and Plutarch obtained his information from a history composed by Phanias of Eresus (active c.332). The point, then, is that the account that derives from Phanias is not eye-witness testimony and could have arisen out of bias against Themistocles or Athens or both.
On a balance of probabilities, I accept the account of Phanias as historical, for it fits the psychology and norms of the times, as the following developed sequence of events shall make clear. Firstly, when the Persian emperor Darius sent ambassadors to Greece to demand submission, these men were thrown into the pit at both Athens and Sparta. The Spartans are clearly reported as looking upon this “murder” as a sacrifice, as I shall illustrate below. A culture of mutual cruelty had already been long established in relations between the two sides—both sides were prepared to bathe themselves in blood, to go beyond the point of no return in their conflict, and that as an aspect of their morale, for a struggle is more effective if it is desperate. In an earlier naval engagement at the Artemisium after the Persians captured a Greek ship, according to Herodotus, the Persians immediately sacrificed one of the Greek sailors, a man named as Leon. (Histories, 8.180.) The Persian prisoners that Themistocles is alleged to have sacrificed were taken by Aristides “the Just” by a surprise attack on the island of Psyttaleia. “Among these were three sons of the king’s sister, Sandauce, whom he immediately sent to Themistocles, and it is said that at the command of Euphrantides the prophet they were sacrificed to Dionysus the Eater of Flesh in obedience to some oracle.” (Aristides, 9.) The god in question is sometimes translated as Dionysus Carnivorous (Greek, Omestes). In the life of Themistocles Plutarch names his source and expresses his confidence in it: “… this is what Phanias the Lesbian says, and he was a philosopher, and well acquainted with historical literature.” I should agree that the material alone amounts to a case of “not proven”. We could also look upon it as an atrocity, exceptional but not normative. However, that it is normative is what makes it believable.
To illustrate this, we have the work of Euripides: the situation that Themistocles is said to find himself in as described by Plutarch, is the theme of the work of Euripides; he makes his conviction that Greeks in ancient times did practice human sacrifice abundantly clear. In his dramas a leader—Agamemnon on two separate occasions (Iphigenia at Aulis, Hecuba), Creon (Phoenician Women), Demophoon (Children of Heracles)—is presented with a demand initiated by a prophet or oracle for a sacrifice from among his own family, which he cannot resist because the mob demand it. (Creon attempts to resist it, but his son voluntarily sacrifices himself.) Euripides in his dramas is commenting upon the contemporary events of the Peloponnesian War of which he is a witness—he always opposed the Athenian mob desire for atrocities. That atrocities were committed by the Athenians and the Spartans during the Peloponnesian War is not in question; but the contextualisation of these events by Euripides in his plays indicates that he thought they were more than atrocities by possessing a religious dimension, being at the behest of priests and oracles.
For example, as previously indicated, Herodotus reports that at Sparta, following the “murder” of the envoys from Darius, a curse fell upon them, which Herodotus refers to as the “anger of Talthybius”—Talthybius being in myth the herald of Agamemnon. This phrase puts us into the context of an “angry spirit” one of the “angry dead” who need appeasement. Since the killing of the envoys of Darius resulted in a curse, that killing was also a sacred event, not a “mere murder”. In this matter, we are plunged into the milieu of the thought patterns of primitive materialism: cause and effect are the same as oath-breaking and curse, or as curse and blight for which the remedy is sacrifice. Hence, to remedy the curse, the Spartans called for volunteers to sacrifice themselves “in atonement for Darius’ messengers who had been killed in Sparta.” (Histories, 7.134.) It demonstrates a belief in the efficacy of human sacrifice. (See also Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, 2.67 which confirms this part.)
Herodotus gives us other examples of Greeks within the historical period committing human sacrifice. There are the contemporaneous sacrifices to Phrixus he describes (Histories, 7.197), which are believable because the logic is once again the logic of curse and remedy by sacrifice. He reports that Greeks and Carians served as mercenaries in the armies of Egyptian Psammenitus (Psamtik II) when Cambyses invaded. Prior to the battle of Pelusiam (525), Phanes of Halicarnassus, originally serving with the Egyptians, had defected to the Persian side.
… the Greek and Carian mercenaries … seized [the sons of Phanes] … and brought them in the camp, where they made sure their father could see them; then, placing a bowl in the open ground between the two armies, they led the boys up to it one by one, and cut their throats over it. Not one was spared, and when the last was dead, they poured wine and water onto the blood in the bowl, and every man in the mercenary force drank. (Histories, 3.11.)
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One’s reaction to this story will be based on what distinction one draws between atrocity and ritual murder; one notes the signs of ritual in these actions.
By his own admission, Herodotus is what we would call an “ethnographer” rather than a “historian”; he writes, “My business is to record what people say, but I am by no means bound to believe it—and that may be taken to apply to this book as a whole.” (7.153.) He leaves the business of evaluation of sources to us; but we may at least infer that whatever he wrote down had at least been said by someone. It may, perhaps, be more important that through Herodotus we glimpse into the nature of ancient beliefs.
A second point about Herodotus is his grand theme: the distinction between barbarian—“non-Greek”—and Greek, which is akin to the distinction made in Homer between those who do not respect divine law and those who do. Writing also in the context of the atrocities of the Peloponnesian War, it is possible to see in Herodotus signs of an ethical mission—to remind his Athenian audience of what it is that makes them not barbarians. This moral purpose would not be far from that of Euripides. Hence, Herodotus is all the time reporting what Greeks believed about other nations. The litany of barbaric practices of non-Greeks is extensive—cannibalism among the Scythians—child sacrifices by the Persians—use of crucifixion (immolation) by all nations (Greeks excepted)—sacrifices by burial. Every one of the instances of a barbaric practice attributed by the Greeks to another nation was in fact a custom of their own; a case of projecting away truths too painful for self-recognition. Herodotus does imply disgust with barbaric practices, but he also reports the events in a matter of fact tone—the same tone that we find in Pliny, and every commentator, including Strabo, who can interject the following into his geography.
By his own admission, Herodotus is what we would call an “ethnographer” rather than a “historian”; he writes, “My business is to record what people say, but I am by no means bound to believe it—and that may be taken to apply to this book as a whole.” (7.153.) He leaves the business of evaluation of sources to us; but we may at least infer that whatever he wrote down had at least been said by someone. It may, perhaps, be more important that through Herodotus we glimpse into the nature of ancient beliefs.
A second point about Herodotus is his grand theme: the distinction between barbarian—“non-Greek”—and Greek, which is akin to the distinction made in Homer between those who do not respect divine law and those who do. Writing also in the context of the atrocities of the Peloponnesian War, it is possible to see in Herodotus signs of an ethical mission—to remind his Athenian audience of what it is that makes them not barbarians. This moral purpose would not be far from that of Euripides. Hence, Herodotus is all the time reporting what Greeks believed about other nations. The litany of barbaric practices of non-Greeks is extensive—cannibalism among the Scythians—child sacrifices by the Persians—use of crucifixion (immolation) by all nations (Greeks excepted)—sacrifices by burial. Every one of the instances of a barbaric practice attributed by the Greeks to another nation was in fact a custom of their own; a case of projecting away truths too painful for self-recognition. Herodotus does imply disgust with barbaric practices, but he also reports the events in a matter of fact tone—the same tone that we find in Pliny, and every commentator, including Strabo, who can interject the following into his geography.
It was an ancestral custom among the Leucadians, every year at the sacrifice performed in honour of Apollo, for some criminal to be flung from this rocky look-out for the sake of averting evil, wings and birds of all kinds being fastened to him, since by their fluttering they could lighten the leap, and also for a number of men, stationed all round below the rock in small fishing-boats, to take the victim in, and, when he had been taken on board, to do all in their power to get him safely outside their borders. The author of the Alcamaeonis [an unknown author] says that Icarius, the father of Penelope, had two sons… (Geography 10.2.9.)
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I include part of the last sentence to illustrate how Strabo can glide from an account of a ritual killing to comments on poetry.
Behind the scenes, the Histories of Herodotus contain intimations of other barbaric practices committed by Greeks, of which Herodotus does not approve, and is not willing to elaborate upon. The impression is that the reported cases of sacrifice are just the tip of the iceberg, what the commentators themselves could not overlook (as in Livy and the Battle of Cannae). Stories in Herodotus about Periander, tyrant of Corinth (3.48, 5.94), the murder of the survivor of the Athenian attempt on Aegina (5.87), the actions of Cleomenes king of Sparta (6.76 ff), the Aeginetan sacrilege (6.91), the Lemnian rape story (7.138) and Athenian sacrifice to Boreas (7.197) are sufficiently ambiguous and/or cruel to imply more than what was permitted to reach the page. The Greek commentators were embarrassed by Greek barbarity (a contradiction since barbarian = “non-Greek”), and only the exceptional among them—Euripides pre-eminently—had the moral strength to look frankly at it.
But what are we talking about? Human sacrifice, to be sure—but what exactly counts as human sacrifice? It is customary among the proponents of the anti-thesis of denial to attempt a definition of “human sacrifice” that is so narrow as to preclude almost all instances: “human sacrifices form a subset of ‘ritual killings of humans’, but not all ritual killings are properly called ‘human sacrifices’.” (Hughes, Human Sacrifice in Ancient Greece , p 1.) This is no mere cavilling, for if we step back a little, then we see that all the instances of ritual killings of humans that we have hitherto cited from the historical record do not in some sense count as sacrifices—nor are they the subject of Frazer’s The Golden Bough, which is concerned with the customs of more primitive peoples. If we were discussing all cases of ritual killings of humans, then we could hardly dispute as a fact that such killings took place. Every act of immolation (crucifixion), every excessively barbaric “punishment”, every gladiatorial contest is an instance of ritual killing. Therefore, we must understand that by the time of historical period, and its written records, the practice of human sacrifice = ritual killing of humans in the context of religion had itself undergone an evolution. We infer that in the pre-historic past “sacrifice” was conducted for other purposes than the ones for which “sacrifice” was conducted in the historic period. In our quest for incontrovertible written evidence, we have slipped inadvertently into discussing a late stage of the phenomenon, one in which sacrifice was transmuted into acts of cruelty performed within a bargaining religion—what we call “utilitarian” logic. Paradoxically, that may be viewed as a debasement of an original impulse perceived as “sacred” to meet an original “divine” need. Hence, we need to begin the story all over again, and tell the history of Greek religion and its Dark Age Reformation through its monumental oral tradition—Greek mythology.
Behind the scenes, the Histories of Herodotus contain intimations of other barbaric practices committed by Greeks, of which Herodotus does not approve, and is not willing to elaborate upon. The impression is that the reported cases of sacrifice are just the tip of the iceberg, what the commentators themselves could not overlook (as in Livy and the Battle of Cannae). Stories in Herodotus about Periander, tyrant of Corinth (3.48, 5.94), the murder of the survivor of the Athenian attempt on Aegina (5.87), the actions of Cleomenes king of Sparta (6.76 ff), the Aeginetan sacrilege (6.91), the Lemnian rape story (7.138) and Athenian sacrifice to Boreas (7.197) are sufficiently ambiguous and/or cruel to imply more than what was permitted to reach the page. The Greek commentators were embarrassed by Greek barbarity (a contradiction since barbarian = “non-Greek”), and only the exceptional among them—Euripides pre-eminently—had the moral strength to look frankly at it.
But what are we talking about? Human sacrifice, to be sure—but what exactly counts as human sacrifice? It is customary among the proponents of the anti-thesis of denial to attempt a definition of “human sacrifice” that is so narrow as to preclude almost all instances: “human sacrifices form a subset of ‘ritual killings of humans’, but not all ritual killings are properly called ‘human sacrifices’.” (Hughes, Human Sacrifice in Ancient Greece , p 1.) This is no mere cavilling, for if we step back a little, then we see that all the instances of ritual killings of humans that we have hitherto cited from the historical record do not in some sense count as sacrifices—nor are they the subject of Frazer’s The Golden Bough, which is concerned with the customs of more primitive peoples. If we were discussing all cases of ritual killings of humans, then we could hardly dispute as a fact that such killings took place. Every act of immolation (crucifixion), every excessively barbaric “punishment”, every gladiatorial contest is an instance of ritual killing. Therefore, we must understand that by the time of historical period, and its written records, the practice of human sacrifice = ritual killing of humans in the context of religion had itself undergone an evolution. We infer that in the pre-historic past “sacrifice” was conducted for other purposes than the ones for which “sacrifice” was conducted in the historic period. In our quest for incontrovertible written evidence, we have slipped inadvertently into discussing a late stage of the phenomenon, one in which sacrifice was transmuted into acts of cruelty performed within a bargaining religion—what we call “utilitarian” logic. Paradoxically, that may be viewed as a debasement of an original impulse perceived as “sacred” to meet an original “divine” need. Hence, we need to begin the story all over again, and tell the history of Greek religion and its Dark Age Reformation through its monumental oral tradition—Greek mythology.
Image to the left. Medea kills her son. Illustration derived from an amphora from Cumae, c.330. The myth of Medea abounds with instances of child-sacrifice. In a later aetiological wrapper, Medea kills her children in revenge for being abandoned by Jason. Euripides, in his play Medea, was able to transform the myth into an insightful investigation of the plight of subjugated womankind.