Rituals
Thysia (Greek Animal Sacrifice)
Also Known As Thusia (Ancient Greek) · Greek Animal Sacrifice (English)
Sacrificial Rituals
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Thysia is the normative animal sacrifice of Greek religion, and it is above all a way of killing an animal, dividing it and eating it in company. A procession brings the beast, garlanded, to an altar in the open air. A basket is carried round the altar with the knife hidden under barley grains, which the participants scatter; water is sprinkled on the animal so that the movement of its head can be read as consent; hair is cut from its forehead and thrown on the fire. The throat is cut, the women present raise a ritual cry, and the blood is caught and poured over the altar. The animal is then butchered on the spot. The thigh bones wrapped in fat, with a few token pieces, are burned for the god; the inner organs are roasted on spits and eaten immediately by the inner circle; the remaining meat is boiled and distributed. Because sacrifice was where most Greeks ate meat at all, a public thysia was also a civic distribution of food, and who received which share was a statement about who belonged.
History & Origin
Hesiod sets the division at Mekone, where Prometheus dressed the bare bones in fat and Zeus chose them, which explains why the gods receive the portion they do
Facts
Disputed
PurposeContested. Read as the preserved structure of a hunting kill that distributes the guilt of taking a life (Meuli, Burkert), as a system of cooking and distribution that fixes the human place between gods and beasts (Vernant, Detienne), or, on Ekroth's critique, as a rite whose sharp line between sacrifice eaten and sacrifice burned entire does not hold up against the evidence of hero cult. 1 Standing as a Comparative CategoryUsed, but its validity as a comparative category is disputed 1 The first position, from Karl Meuli to Walter Burkert, reads the rite as the preserved structure of a hunting kill, with the hidden knife, the staged consent of the animal and the collective scattering of grain distributing the guilt of the killing among the whole company present. The second, associated with Jean-Pierre Vernant and Marcel Detienne, sets guilt aside and reads it as a system of cooking and distribution that fixes the human place between gods who take only smoke and beasts that eat raw flesh, with the division of meat marking the political shape of the community. A third position, argued by Gunnel Ekroth from the evidence of hero cult and already recorded in this atlas's own article on the rite, attacks the handbook opposition between Olympian sacrifice, eaten, and sacrifice to heroes and chthonic powers, burned entire, on the ground that the two shade into each other far more than the two-camp framework allows. Walter Burkert's Greek Religion, cited here, supplies the first position and the described structure of the rite itself. None of the three readings has displaced the others, which is why thysia's standing as a comparative sacrificial category is recorded as debated rather than resolved. Scholarly Standing DetailWalter Burkert's Greek Religion (Harvard University Press, 1985), the standard modern account of thysia, the normative Greek animal sacrifice in which the beast's consent is staged by sprinkling water so its head nods, records that what the rite ultimately means remains one of the field's long running disputes: readings include Burkert's own guilt-centred account tracing sacrifice to hunting anxiety, a communion reading emphasising the shared meal, and a reading treating the killing chiefly as a mechanism for distributing meat and civic standing, three positions still held rather than one having displaced the others. 1 Meaning
Literal MeaningFrom the verb meaning to sacrifice or to burn an offering; the ordinary Greek word for the rite 1Tradition: Ancient Greek Religion Form
Implements and MaterialsA garlanded victim, a covered basket with the knife hidden under barley grains, a water vessel, an open-air altar and spits for the organs 1Tradition: Ancient Greek Religion What Is OfferedCattle, sheep, goats and pigs, with barley grains, water, wine and incense in the accompanying acts 1Tradition: Ancient Greek Religion What Becomes of ItThigh bones wrapped in fat burned for the god; the inner organs roasted and eaten at once by the inner circle; the remaining meat boiled and distributed 1Tradition: Ancient Greek Religion Origins
Place of Origin Historical OriginHesiod's Theogony preserves the myth the Greeks themselves told to explain why the division falls where it does: at Mecone, Prometheus tricked Zeus into choosing the bones wrapped in appealing fat over the meat, and Zeus's choice that day is why the gods thereafter received the bones and fat burned on the altar while the meat itself went to the human diners, an aetiology for the rite's central division rather than a description of how it is performed. 2 Practice
Who Performs ItAll adherents of the tradition 1 FrequencyAs the occasion requires 1 Solitary or CommunalPerformed by a gathered group 3Tradition: Ancient Greek Religion Social Form DetailCommunal. The distribution of the meat was in practice a statement about membership of the community. 3Tradition: Ancient Greek Religion Learn More
The Order of the Rite
The sequence is remarkably stable across a thousand years and a very wide geography, which is why it can be described as a single rite at all. Participants wash and put on clean clothes and garlands. A procession forms and brings the animal, itself garlanded and sometimes with gilded horns, to an altar standing in the open air in front of a temple rather than inside it. A young woman carries a basket at the head of the procession; under the barley grains in it lies the knife, and the concealment is part of the form.
At the altar water is sprinkled, first on the participants and then on the animal, whose flinch or nod is taken as its assent. Barley grains are scattered from the basket by everyone present, so that the whole company has a hand in what follows. Hair is cut from the animal's forehead and thrown into the fire, the first irreversible act. The throat is then cut, upward for the gods of the sky. As the blood runs the women present raise a high ritual cry. The blood is caught in a bowl and poured over the altar, which is what makes the stone an altar rather than a table.
The butchery is public and immediate. The thigh bones are stripped, wrapped in fat and burned on the altar with a few token slivers of meat, wine and incense poured on; this is the god's portion and the smoke is the point of it. The inner organs are spitted and roasted quickly in the altar fire and eaten on the spot by the small group closest to the rite. Everything else is jointed, boiled in cauldrons and distributed, which is the part that takes the rest of the day.
Why the Gods Get the Bones
The division is odd on its face. The gods receive thigh bones, fat and smoke; the human beings receive all the meat. Hesiod supplies an aetiology: at Mekone, where gods and men divided an ox, Prometheus made two portions, hiding the good meat inside the stomach and dressing the bare bones in glistening fat, and Zeus chose the fat. The story explains the practice by making it the residue of a trick, and it also concedes that the Greeks themselves found the arrangement in need of explanation.
Modern accounts fall into camps. One line, running from Karl Meuli to Walter Burkert, reads the rite as the preserved structure of a palaeolithic hunting kill, with the concealed knife, the animal's staged consent and the collective scattering of grain functioning to distribute and defuse the guilt of killing. A second line, associated with Jean-Pierre Vernant and Marcel Detienne, sets the guilt aside and reads the rite as a system of cooking: what the division establishes is the human place between gods who take only smoke and beasts that eat raw flesh, and what the distribution of portions establishes is the political shape of the community. A third position, developed most fully by Gunnel Ekroth, attacks the neat opposition between sacrifice to the Olympians, eaten, and sacrifice to heroes and the powers below, burned entire, and argues from the evidence of hero cult that the two shade into each other far more than the handbooks allow.
None of these is a minority view and none has displaced the others. The atlas records the practice as described and the interpretations as competing, because the interpretations are what the discipline is actually arguing about.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Hestia received the first portion at a Greek sacrifice, which is the sense of the proverb about beginning from Hestia.
Belongs to Tradition
Contrasts With
Greek sacrifice is not an atonement system. Nothing in the standard rite addresses guilt, and the vocabulary of expiation belongs to purification rites that stand outside it.
Two fully documented sacrificial systems that divide the animal on opposite principles: the Greek rite gives the god bones and smoke and the people the meat, the Israelite system reserves the fat and the blood and grades who eats what by class of offering.
Why this is disputed. Greek offerings burned entire were reserved for heroes and powers of the underworld and stood outside the normal rite; in the Israelite system the wholly burned offering is the normal one. Comparative historians of religion read this reversal, ordinary in one system and reserved for the dead in the other, as evidence against treating whole burnt offerings as a single cross-cultural category, though the practices are frequently compared for their shared method regardless.
The closest pair across the two systems: in both, the offering is a shared meal for the people who brought it.
Instances
A hecatomb is an ordinary Greek sacrifice at the largest public scale.
Originated In
Sources
Open Questions (1 open question)
What does the standard Greek sacrifice mean, and does the opposition between Olympian and chthonic sacrifice hold?
Three positions are held simultaneously by serious scholars and none has displaced the others: the rite as the preserved structure of a hunting kill with its attendant guilt, the rite as a system of cooking and distribution that fixes the human place between gods and beasts, and a critique arguing that the tidy opposition between sacrifice eaten and sacrifice burned entire is a modern schematisation the evidence of hero cult does not support.
What would resolve this This is not a question a single find will close. What moves it is the accumulation of excavated faunal assemblages from sanctuary deposits, which record what was actually burned and what was butchered and eaten, tested against the literary schema rather than read through it.
Greek religion, zooarchaeology of sanctuary depositsRobert Parker, Miasma: Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion
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