Monday, April 24, 2017

Poem LXXII: Sacrifice Memo

Know that there were several types
of sacrifice (thusia)
practiced by the Greeks
facts concerning which, who knows,
may pertain to you.
Very many are the permutations
so I shall mention only a few

1. thusia with or without hiera (vegetables and cakes)—meat and blood eaten, and any unburnt hiera

2. thusia with trapeza—everything eaten: meat, blood, vegetable offerings

3. thusia with trapezomata—deposition of raw meat for divinity: everything eaten

4. haimakourai—offerings of blood made to the dead

5. sphagai—the victim’s throat is cut, blood drained into sphageion; alternately blood is poured onto 
altar, or, if the rite is piacular, over the worshippers; nothing is eaten

6. protoma, i.e.,‘front part cut off’—leaving you with the head and face of a decapitated animal, or, Ps. Plu. Fluv. 21.4, of a boar with human head

7. enateuein—to have the ninth part removed for a sacrifice

8. holocaust—blood and meat destroyed, nothing is eaten


9. leukopareïdodiamésis—cutting the white throat of your daughter over a fire at Aulis; nothing is 
eaten, everybody dies










with apologies to Gunnel Ekroth





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