Achaean Religious Practices: Sacrifice and Renunciation

Sacrifice and Renunciation

A number of examples may be used to derive the general form of Homeric sacrifice in absence of professional priests: the ceremonial cleansing, the use of barley and prayer before the gift. The detail of cutting out thigh-pieces, covering them with fat, and then making them deceptively attractive by laying pieces of meat on the top, looks much like an attempt to avoid sacrificial waste and to deceive the gods, a device very common throughout the history of the world.

Forks were used as cult-implements; they may have been a specialty of religious invention and therefore under religious taboo; they (forks) were apparently not met with ordinary occupations of life.

The sentiments of the sacrificer were not solely those of awe and renunciation. Cutting off the animal's hair from the head is, with burning of thigh-pieces, symbolic of the sacrifice of the whole animal; the Homeric Greeks had learned to save the best of the victim for themselves. To this sacrifice the honored god came; she/he was present in the midst, albeit unseen. Sacrifices were sometimes concluded by the casting of the victims tongue into the fire and by libation.

The ceremony of sacrifice was a rather simple one and variations were mostly in detail or degree. A case is mentioned where a swine is slain for a meal and the slayer did not forget the immortals and he had a “right mind.” He cut hairs for the swine’s head, cast them into the fire and prayed, then killed the animal, cut small pieces of flesh from its limbs (through “the rich fat”), sprinkled the pieces with barley meal, and cast them into the fire. He divided the meat: two for himself, and his guest, and one for the nymphs and Hermes. Afterwards came more sacrifice of meat and libations.

Impartiality

It was important to be impartial in sacrifices. Oeneus omitted Artemis when he made offerings to the rest of the gods, and she sent a wild boar to lay waste his rich orchards and vineyards; in hunting this boar troubles were compounded and arose from the anger of the offended goddess, which led to a destructive war. All of this was based on the consequence of neglect, due to forgetfulness or carelessness or an ephemeral third thing -- It all culminated in a great error in judgement.

It is noticeable that only exceptionally do women appear at sacrifices. It was therefore exceptional to find women in Ilion discharging the public function of prayer to Athena.

Divine Acts of Vengeance and Ajax the Lesser

"Whether or not the accusation that Ajax raped Cassandra was true, Athena still had cause to be indignant, as Ajax had dragged a supplicant from her temple. According to the Bibliotheca, no one was aware that Ajax had raped Cassandra until Calchas, the Greek seer, warned the Greeks that Athena was furious at the treatment of her priestess and she would destroy the Greek ships if they didn't kill him immediately. Despite this, Ajax managed to hide in the altar of an unnamed deity where the Greeks, fearing divine retribution should they kill him and destroy the altar, allowed him to live. When the Greeks left without killing Ajax, despite their sacrifices Athena became so angry that she persuaded Zeus to send a storm that sank many of their ships.

When Ajax finally left Troy during the Returns from Troy, Athena hit his ship with a thunderbolt, but Ajax still survived with some of his men, managing to cling onto a rock. He boasted that even the gods could not kill him and Poseidon, upon hearing this, split the rock with his trident, causing Ajax to eventually drown. Thetis buried him when the corpse washed up on Myconos. Other versions depict a different death for Ajax, showing him dying when on his voyage home. In these versions, when Ajax came to the Capharean Rocks on the coast of Euboea, his ship was wrecked in a fierce storm, he himself was lifted up in a whirlwind and impaled with a flash of rapid fire from Athena in his chest, and his body thrust upon sharp rocks, which afterwards were called the rocks of Ajax." [...]