Eski Yunan'da Kurban

From the Hellenistic period onwards, says Nilsson, individualism

replaced patriotism:62 religion was a personal, not a civic, matter,63

since Greek cities were lost in the wider context of the Hellenistic

kingdoms and the Roman Empire.64 The educated turned to phil-

osophy, and the great mass of people to superstition, mysteries, and

foreign cults. From the Greek cults, only those of Asklepios and

Hecate retained great popularity. p 22

‘...a fire-bearer went round the altars, probably to burn incense (any other sacrifice is

hardly thinkable).’74 Nilsson bases his argument on this mutilated

inscription in order to restore the sequence of a ritual not based on

animal sacriWce. This ritual ‘impressed people and seemed to them to

be a more appropriate veneration of the gods than animal sacriWce

which took place but rarely and at irregular intervals’.75 So, in

Nilsson’s view, Greeks showed an increasing lack of interest in animal

sacriWce, because they began to realize that this practice was inappro-

priate to worship, and favoured other cultic forms instead. p 24.

Among modern scholars, only R. Lane Fox has challenged Nilsson’s

view on the decline of animal sacrificial cult.78 He has insisted on the

fact that bloodless cult was not a new way of worship, starting in the

Hellenistic period. He has correctly advocated the view in favour of

which this book argues, namely that whenever animal sacriWce was

not oVered, this was due more to Wnancial reasons than to moral

hesitation. Unfortunately, his point is not accompanied by references

proving it: ‘The bloodless alternative to sacrifice owed something to

ease and economy, but nothing to growing scruples about shedding

animals’ blood. When pagans could pay for it, they did, and the

scruples of a few philosophers made no impact.” p 24-5.

Animal Sacrifice in Ancient Greek

Religion, Judaism,

and Christianity,100 bc–ad 200

MARIA-ZOE PETROPOULOU

OUP 2008