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