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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 ...
The suovetaurilia was an ancient Roman sacrifice where in which a pig, sheep, and a bull were sacrificed. There were two kinds: [4] suovetaurilia lactentia ("suckling suovetaurilia") of a male pig, a lamb and a calf, for purifying private fields; suovetaurilia maiora ("greater suovtaurilia") of a boar, a ram and a bull, for public ceremonies. [5]
The Bacchanalia were Roman festivals of Bacchus, the Greco-Roman god of wine, freedom, intoxication and ecstasy. They were based on the Greek Dionysia and the Dionysian Mysteries, and probably arrived in Rome c. 200 BC via the Greek colonies in southern Italy, and from Etruria, Rome's northern neighbour.
Crowns became essential parts of the regalia of the Roman emperors during the Roman imperial period. [21] The laurel wreaths of a triumphator were often worn by imperial portraits, as were radiate crowns. [21] According to Pliny the Elder, the Arval Brethren, an ancient Roman priesthood, were accustomed to wear a wreath of grain sheaves. [22]
The Roman concept is directly derived from Etruscan religion, as one of the three branches of the disciplina Etrusca. The Latin terms haruspex and haruspicina are from an archaic word, hīra = "entrails, intestines" (cognate with hernia = "protruding viscera" and hira = "empty gut"; PIE *ǵʰer- ) and from the root spec- = "to watch, observe".
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]
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]