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The suovetaurilia was an ancient Roman sacrifice where in which a pig, sheep, and a bull were sacrificed. The suovetaurilia or suovitaurilia was one of the most sacred and traditional rites of Roman religion: the sacrifice of a pig (sus), a sheep (ovis) and a bull (taurus) to the deity Mars to bless and purify land . [1] [2] [3]
In ancient Roman religion, the devotio was an extreme form of votum in which a Roman general vowed to sacrifice his own life in battle along with the enemy to chthonic gods in exchange for a victory. The most extended description of the ritual is given by the Augustan historian Livy, regarding the self-sacrifice of Decius Mus. [1]
216 BC: Second known case of human sacrifice in Ancient Rome: a pair of Vestal Virgins, Gauls, and Greeks were buried alive at Forum Boarium following defeat at Cannae. [10] 114 BC: Last human sacrifice occurred in Roman Republic: pair of Gauls and Greeks were buried alive at Forum Boarium. [10] 97 BC: Roman senate outlawed human sacrifice. [10]
Human sacrifice is the act of killing one or more humans as part of a ritual, which is usually intended to please or appease gods, a human ruler, public or jurisdictional demands for justice by capital punishment, an authoritative/priestly figure, spirits of dead ancestors or as a retainer sacrifice, wherein a monarch's servants are killed in order for them to continue to serve their master in ...
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". [56]
The best-known and most vivid description, though of the quite different taurobolium as it was revived in aristocratic pagan circles, is the notorious one that has coloured early scholarship, which was provided in an anti-pagan poem by the late 4th-century Christian Prudentius in Peristephanon: [9] the priest of the Great Mother, clad in a silk toga worn in the Gabinian cincture, with golden ...
Most animal sacrifice in the public religion of ancient Rome resulted in a communal meal and thus involved domestic animals whose flesh was a normal part of the Roman diet; [7] the dog occurs as a victim most often in magic and private rites for Hecate and other chthonic deities, [8] but was offered publicly at the Lupercalia [9] and two other ...
The presence of the victimarius shows the importance of slaves in Roman religion and in the social hierarchy of the Roman world. [2] [3] The victimarius was commonly depicted as a shirtless figure, leading the animal—typically a bull, pig, or goat—to the altar in preparation for the sacrifice. [2]