The sacrificial rituals of Greek hero cults in the Archaic to the early ...

The problem and previous research 15
who was called upon to come and participate in the meal. 8 The food on
the table was of the kind that could be eaten by humans, consisting mainly
of bloodless o�ferings, such as cakes, bread, fruit and vegetables, but could
also include cooked portions of the meat or the edible intestines, splanchna,
of a sacrificed animal.
However, most previous work in this field has noted that there were
also hero-cults which did not follow the scheme of rituals outlined above. 9
At these sacrifices, the hero received his share of the animal victim burnt
on an altar, while the rest of the meat was eaten by the worshippers at a
festive meal. The terminology used for these sacrifices was thyein and thysia
for the rituals and bomos for the altar, i.e., the same terminology as for the
sacrifices to the gods. The occurrence of sacrifices of this kind has been
considered as being unusual in hero-cults and has often been explained as
the result of later deviations from the sacrificial norm, as influences from the
cult of the gods or as depending on terminological mistakes by the ancient
sources. 10 It has also been suggested that thysia sacrifices, including dining,
were used only when the hero had not died a proper death or when he was
to be considered more of a god than a hero. 11 In 1944, Arthur Darby Nock
showed that the number of cases of thysia sacrifices in hero-cults was far from
insignificant and suggested that the choice of ritual depended on the purpose
and atmosphere when the sacrifice took place, as well as the disposition
and aspect imputed to the recipients, rather than their identity or supposed
habitat. 12 Later works, touching upon hero-cults or upon Greek sacrificial
ritual, often state in passing that thysia sacrifices with dining were more
common in hero-cults than was thought previously, but holocaustic sacrifices
and blood rituals not followed by dining, as well as o�ferings of meals, are still
regarded as the major rituals used in hero-cults. 13 At present, the standard
8 Rohde 1925, 116; Nilsson 1967, 187.
9 Deneken 1886–90, 2506; Foucart 1918, 94–100; Pfister 1909–12, 478–489; Stengel 1920,
141–142; Méautis 1940, 16; Meuli 1946, 195–197; Rudhardt 1958, 264; Brelich 1958, 16–19;
Nilsson 1967, 186.
10 Foucart 1918, 101–106; Pfister 1909–12, 478–479; Rohde 1925, 140, n. 15; Meuli 1946, 197;
Nilsson 1967, 186–187.
11 Stengel 1920, 141–142; Pfister 1909–12, 480–489.
12 Nock 1944, reprinted in Essays on religion, 575–602. Some of the evidence was collected
and already discussed by Ada Thomsen in 1909 (Thomsen 1909).
13 For example, Habicht 1970, 203–204; van Straten 1974, 174; Slater 1989, 487–490; Kearns
1989, 3–4; Kearns 1992, 67–68; Seaford 1994, 114; Scullion 1994, 115; Bruit Zaidman & Schmitt
Pantel 1992, 37 and 179; van Straten 1995, 157–159. Sacrifices to heroes have, in general, received
little attention in the recent work dealing with Greek sacrifices. There is, for example, no study
dealing with hero-cults in any of the three comprehensive collections on Greek ritual, La cuisine
du sacrifice en pays grec (1979, translated into English as The cuisine of sacrifice among the