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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]
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 ...
In ancient Roman religion, the Fordicidia was a festival of fertility, held on the Ides of April (April 15), that pertained to farming and animal husbandry.It involved the sacrifice of a pregnant cow to Tellus, the ancient Roman goddess of the Earth, in proximity to the festival of Ceres on April 19.
The sacra publica were undertaken pro populo, i.e., collectively, (1) by the curia, pagi, or vici, into which the community was divided, whence such sacrifices were called sacra popularia; or (2) by the individual gentes and societies, i.e., the sodalitas, to which the superintendence of a particular cult had been committed by the State; or (3) by the magistrates and priests of the Roman State.
After the sacrifice, a banquet was held; in state cults, the images of honoured deities took pride of place on banqueting couches and by means of the sacrificial fire consumed their proper portion (exta, the innards). Rome's officials and priests reclined in order of precedence alongside and ate the meat; lesser citizens may have had to provide ...
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 Roman deities most widely known today are those the Romans identified with Greek counterparts, integrating Greek myths, iconography, and sometimes religious practices into Roman culture, including Latin literature, Roman art, and religious life as it was experienced throughout the Roman Empire. Many of the Romans' own gods remain obscure ...
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]