Animal sacrifice in the Roman Empire (31 BCE-395 CE): power, communication, and cultural transformation
For over a thousand years, the practice of animal sacrifice held a central place in ancient Graeco-Roman culture as a means of both demonstrating piety to the gods and structuring social relationships. As Christianity took root in Rome in the third century CE, the cultural role of this practice chan...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Image |
| Language: | English |
| Subito Delivery Service: | Order now. |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| WorldCat: | WorldCat |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
New York, NY
Oxford University Press
[2024]
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| In: | Year: 2024 |
| Series/Journal: | Oxford scholarship online
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| Further subjects: | B
Religion & beliefs
B Animal sacrifice (Rome) B Religion B Meat Religious aspects (Rome) History B Meat animals Religious aspects (Rome) History B Animal sacrifice (Rome) History B Rome Religion |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Parallel Edition: | Non-electronic
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| Summary: | For over a thousand years, the practice of animal sacrifice held a central place in ancient Graeco-Roman culture as a means of both demonstrating piety to the gods and structuring social relationships. As Christianity took root in Rome in the third century CE, the cultural role of this practice changed dramatically. J.B. Rives explores the shifting socio-economic, political, and cultural significance of animal sacrifice in this crucial period of change. Drawing on literary, epigraphic, archaeological, art historical, philosophical, and scriptural evidence, this volume provides a comprehensive and detailed study of the central role of animal sacrifice in the ancient Mediterranean world and traces the changes in its social function and cultural significance during the period when that world became Christianized. "This book explores the changing socio-economic, political, and cultural significance of animal sacrifice in the Roman imperial period. Although animal sacrifice was only one of a wide range of offerings to the gods, it was distinctive in being more costly than many others and in generating a valuable consumer good, high-quality meat. As a result, it functioned to reinforce social structures that enabled the smooth operation of the Roman empire: the socio-economic hierarchies of Graeco-Roman cities, the normative Graeco-Roman culture that bound together urban elites, and the ideological role of the Roman emperor (Part I). At the same time as the practice of animal sacrifice performed these ideological functions, there were also, from an early date, various discourses about animal sacrifice that relocated its meaning from the social to the conceptual sphere, discourses that a range of free-lance experts, from Graeco-Roman philosophers to early Christian leaders, deployed as a means of establishing their own social power (Part II). These two aspects of animal sacrifice, as practice and as discourse, intersected both with each other and with larger economic and political developments in ways that, starting in the mid-3rd century CE, led to its becoming the object of both imperial and ecclesiastical policy. Over the course of the 4th century CE, animal sacrifice was displaced from its central role in the structuring of the empire, redefined as a marker of 'paganism', and eventually prohibited altogether (Part III)"-- |
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| Item Description: | Also issued in print: 2024. - Includes bibliographical references and index. - Description based on online resource and publisher information; title from PDF title page (viewed on February 1, 2024) |
| Physical Description: | 1 online resource (xv, 400 pages), illustrations |
| ISBN: | 0197648940 |
| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197648919.001.0001 |