Death, Revelry, and "Thysia"

Abstract

Much recent scholarship on "thysia" sees the meaning and function of the rite for the ancient Greeks to stem partly or largely from the beliefs and emotions surrounding the slaughter of the victim. Scholars have proposed that the Greeks experienced fear and awe when they killed animals for food, and that the source of these feelings was a perception of the slaughter of liverstock as akin to murder. This paper considers evidence for the ancient Greek experience of the rite of "thysia", with the ultimate aim of shedding light on current theories of sacrifice. My source is the extensive system of imagery of "thysia" in Attic vase-painting. I view this imagery not as a series of illustrations of the way "thysia" was performed but rather as a map of the way it was conceptualized. Analyzed in this way, the iconography of "thysia" yields information on the degree to which "thysia" was identified with slaughter, and on the emotions inspired by the rite. The visual terms of definition of "thysia" in this repertory are not slaughter and burnt offerings but rather edible animals and the preparation of meat in the context of feasts and festivals. The semantic range of this imagery is the basis for conclusions about the emotional connotations of "thysia". The depiction of slaughter and of unwilling victims may be associated with the iconography of revelry and appears in some scenes to be the focus of humor. Most significant are the employment of "thysia" in the depiction of victory and the development of several important scene types of "thysia" as subsets of the iconography of Dionysian symposion and kōmos. In these contexts, the imagery of "thysia" appears as a visual metaphor denoting joy and celebration.

Apollo's Sacrifice: The Limits of a Metaphor in Greek Tragedy

“…The general rule that gods don't sacrifice may seem obvious. Svenbro 1989 provides bibliography, and there are critical overviews in Bremmer 1994, 40-43;and Peirce 1993 gods,41 but when the notion is elaborated, problems immediately arise, such as how to account for the meagerness of their portion, its conveyance to them, or indeed their interest in it.42 Serious poetry approaches only the last of these issues directly, and usually in only one way, by stating or implying that the gods desire sacrifice as a form of honor.43 The corollary is that they may demand sacrifices as compensation for offenses to their honor. My aim in surveying this terrain is to test the strength of the rule and thus advance the understanding of Orestes by discovering, if possible, what was at stake in terms of pious feeling.…”

“…The Greeks were reluctant to develop the image of their gods receiving human sacrifice in any detail, a fact often reflected in the narrative motif of the gods' refusal to eat. Durand 1986, Peirce 1993, van Straten 1995, and Himmelmann 1997 These are the subject of dissertations by E. Simon (Simon 1953, entitled Opfernde 47 The usual explanation as cult aetiology is developed in Burkert 1984(cf.…”

Gender, Class and Ideology: The Social Function of Virgin Sacrifice in Euripides'Children of Herakles

“…This violence, then, must be kept at a distance to prevent it from contaminating or insinuating its way into the ritual practice." The dissimulation of violence was not, however, always dominant (or the only meaning) in representations of ritual practice: see Bonnechere 1999, Peirce 1993. The establishment of "human order" in the structuralist approach finds further expression in sacrificial rituals that mark transitions.…”

The social context of food preparation and consumption in greek households of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.

“…It is very likely that a fragment in the Acropolis by the same painter (MP4) was part of precisely such an iconographic scheme, possibly on a pelike.455 The Cuisine of Sacrifice;Berthiaume 1982;Durand and Schnapp 1989;Peirce 1993; Van Straten 1995 does not expressly state this, but he includes most of the images of meat preparation in his catalogue of scenes of thysia.…”