In the first chapter the broad distinction was established between
sacrifice to the Olympians of the upper air—sacrifice which involved
communion with the worshipper, and sacrifice to chthonic powers which
forbade this communion—in which the sacrifice was wholly made over to the
object of sacrifice. The first, the Olympian sacrifice, is expressed by
two terms, θύειν and ἱερεύειν; the second, if the sacrifice is burnt, by
ὁλοκαυτεῖν, and as will presently be seen by σφάζειν, also more generally
by the term ἐναγίζειν.
As regards the Olympian terms, it is only necessary to say definitely
what has already been implied, that θύειν strictly is applicable only
to the portion of the sacrifice that was actually burnt with a view
to sublimation, that it might reach the gods in the upper air; whilst
ἱερεύειν applies rather to the portion unburnt, which was sacred indeed,
as its name implies, to the gods, but was actually eaten in communion by
the worshipper. With the growing prevalence of burnt sacrifice and the
increasing popularity of the Olympians and their service, the word θύειν
came to cover the whole field of sacrifice, and in late and careless
writers is used for any form of sacrifice burnt or unburnt without any
consciousness of its primary meaning.
The term ἱερεύειν is strictly used only of the sacrifice of an animal;
ἱερεῖον is the animal victim. Among the Homeric Greeks sacrifice and
the flesh feast that followed were so intimately connected that the
one almost implied the other; the ἱερεῖον, the animal victim, was the
material for the κρεοδαισία, the flesh feast. So prominent in the
Homeric mind was the element of feasting the worshipper that the feast
is sometimes the only stated object. Thus Odysseus[126] gives command to
Telemachus and his thralls:
‘Now get you to my well-built house, the best of all the swine
Take you and quickly _sacrifice_ that straightway we may dine.’
Here the object is the meal, though incidentally sacrifice to the gods
is implied. It is not that on the occasion of sacrifice to the gods man
solemnly communicates, but that when man would eat his fill of flesh food
he piously remembers the gods and burns a little of it that it may reach
them and incline their hearts to beneficence.
In the Homeric sacrifice there is communion, but not of any mystical
kind; there is no question of partaking of the life and body of the god,
only of dining with him. Mystical communion existed in Greece, but, as
will be later seen, it was part of the worship of a god quite other than
these Homeric Olympians, the god Dionysos.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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