Agamemnon[23], beguiled by Zeus in a dream, is about to go forth to battle. Zeus intends to play him false, but all the same he accepts the sacrifice. It is a clear instance of _do ut des_. The first act is of prayer and the scattering of barley grains; the victim, a bull, is present but not yet slain: ‘They gathered round the bull and straight the barley grain did take, And ’mid them Agamemnon stood and prayed, and thus he spake: O Zeus most great, most glorious, Thou who dwellest in the sky And storm-black cloud, oh grant the dark of evening come not nigh At sunset ere I blast the house of Priam to black ash, And burn his doorways with fierce fire, and with my sword-blade gash His doublet upon Hector’s breast, his comrades many a one Grant that they bite the dust of earth ere yet the day be done.’ Next follows the slaying and elaborate carving of the bull for the banquet of gods and men: ‘When they had scattered barley grain and thus their prayer had made, The bull’s head backward drew they, and slew him, and they flayed His body and cut slices from the thighs, and these in fat They wrapped and made a double fold, and gobbets raw thereat They laid and these they burnt straightway with leafless billets dry And held the spitted vitals Hephaistos’ flame anigh— The thighs they burnt; the spitted vitals next they taste, anon The rest they slice and heedfully they roast till all is done— When they had rested from their task and all the banquet dight, They feasted, in their hearts no stint of feasting and delight.’ Dr Leaf[24] observes on the passage: ‘The significance of the various acts of the sacrifice evidently refers to a supposed invitation to the gods to take part in a banquet. Barley meal is scattered on the victim’s head that the gods may share in the fruits of the earth as well as in the meat. Slices from the thigh as the best part are wrapped in fat to make them burn and thus ascend in sweet savour to heaven. The sacrificers after roasting the vitals taste them as a symbolical sign that they are actually eating with the gods. When this religious act has been done, the rest of the victim is consumed as a merely human meal.’ Nothing could be simpler, clearer. There is no mystic communion, no eating of the body of the god incarnate in the victim, no awful taboo upon what has been offered to, made over to, the gods, no holocaust. Homer knows of victims slain to revive by their blood the ghosts of those below, knows of victims on which oaths have been taken and which are utterly consumed and abolished, but the normal service of the Olympians is a _meal shared_. The god is Ouranios, so his share is burnt, and the object of the burning is manifestly sublimation not destruction.