Comment on Enjoy the parties, lament the human sacrifice

• lath@piefed.social ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacrifice_in_ancient_Roman_religion

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  • sem@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I combed through the article and found this small section,

    Human sacrifice

    Human sacrifice in ancient Rome was rare but documented. After the Roman defeat at Cannae two Gauls and two Greeks were buried under the Forum Boarium, in a stone chamber “which had on a previous occasion [228 BC] also been polluted by human victims, a practice most repulsive to Roman feelings”.[^[119]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacrifice_in_ancient_Roman_religion#cite_note-120) Livy avoids the word “sacrifice” in connection with this bloodless human life-offering; Plutarch does not. The rite was apparently repeated in 113 BC, preparatory to an invasion of Gaul. Its religious dimensions and purpose remain uncertain.[^[120]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacrifice_in_ancient_Roman_religion#cite_note-121)

    In the early stages of the First Punic War (264 BC) the first known Roman gladiatorial munus was held, described as a funeral blood-rite to the *manes of a Roman military aristocrat.[^[121]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacrifice_in_ancient_Roman_religion#cite_note-122) The gladiator *munus* was never explicitly acknowledged as a human sacrifice, probably because death was not its inevitable outcome or purpose. Even so, the gladiators swore their lives to the gods, and the combat was dedicated as an offering to the Di Manes* or the revered souls of deceased human beings. The event was therefore a sacrificium in the strict sense of the term, and Christian writers later condemned it as human sacrifice.[^[122]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacrifice_in_ancient_Roman_religion#cite_note-123)

    The small woolen dolls called Maniae, hung on the Compitalia shrines, were thought a symbolic replacement for child-sacrifice to Mania, as Mother of the Lares. The Junii took credit for its abolition by their ancestor L. Junius Brutus, traditionally Rome’s Republican founder and first consul.[^[123]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacrifice_in_ancient_Roman_religion#cite_note-124) Political or military executions were sometimes conducted in such a way that they evoked human sacrifice, whether deliberately or in the perception of witnesses; Marcus Marius Gratidianus was a gruesome example.

    Officially, human sacrifice was obnoxious “to the laws of gods and men”. The practice was a mark of the barbarians and thus associated with Rome’s traditional enemies such as the Carthaginians and Gauls. Rome banned it on several occasions under extreme penalty. A law passed in 81 BC characterized human sacrifice as murder committed for magical purposes. Pliny the Elder saw the ending of human sacrifice conducted by the druids as a positive consequence of the conquest of Gaul and Britain. Despite an empire-wide ban under Hadrian, human sacrifice may have continued covertly in North Africa and elsewhere.[^[124]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacrifice_in_ancient_Roman_religion#cite_note-FOOTNOTEBeardNorthPrice1998233%E2%80%93234,_385-125)

    That last source is ++Beard, Mary++; North, John; Price, S. (1998), Religions of Rome, vol. I, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-31682-8

    So far what you’ve presented here is that the ancient Romans believed that barbarians in Gaul, Britain,and Carthage practiced human sacrifice, but you have not presented any historical evidence of it actually happening.

    I’m no historian and i don’t feel like putting work into researching this, but your Wikipedia article doesn’t appear to be a slam dunk.

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  • CyberEgg@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    The article you provide states that the religious dimensions of the given example are unknown.

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    • lath@piefed.social ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      You’re just here looking to argue. Have fun with that.

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      • sem@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        Not so fast. A solitary example of it happening once in Roman times and people writing about how they didn’t like it seems to show the opposite – it didn’t happen as a rule, with the Romans at least. Compare this to the Aztecs.

        The gladiators certainly resulted in human death and if you wanted to count it as that, I’d certainly agree. Although it is interesting that the Romans didn’t consider it sacrifice, and it differs in character from directly sacrificing someone.

        I am more curious about Pliny the Elder being sure that the pagans in Gaul and Britain practicing human sacrifice. Was that real, or invented? How about Carthage?

        What about Greece? Is that where we get the trope of virgins sacrificed to a volcano (or the Oracle?) I don’t know the history.

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