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

232 The use and meaning of the rituals in a wider perspective
were discovered in three tombs. 87 The bones are identified as sheep, pig
and ox, and are in two cases mixed with the human bones and pottery,
suggesting them to belong to the rituals executed in connection with the
burial. The assumption that meat o�ferings were prestigious and unusual
gifts reserved for only a minority of the dead is further supported by the fact
that the three tombs with this kind of o�ferings in the Morgantina cemetery
were located together.
In all, though it has been assumed that animal sacrifice used to be
performed to the ordinary dead, there is, even in the Archaic period, very
little evidence for such practices. 88 Neither the written nor the archaeological
evidence indicates that animal sacrifice and dining by the mourners at the
tombs of the ordinary dead was a regular practice in the Archaic and the
Classical periods. Holocaustic sacrifices of animals were not a part of the cult
of the dead, but portions of meat, either raw or cooked, were occasionally
given to the dead and burnt on the pyre, even though this practice also
seems to have decreased in time. 89
The reasons for destroying the o�ferings to the dead, whatever they
consisted of, can be linked to the practices at the burial, at which some
gifts were deposited in the grave, while others were burnt together with the
corpse on the pyre. More specifically, the destruction has been considered
as being a necessity, since the dead could not profit from the o�ferings unless
they had been burnt. The ghost of Melissa, the dead wife of Periander, for
example, explicitly asked for her clothes to be burned so that she would be
87 Lyons 1996, 122–124 and 221–223 (T 50, T 51 and T 52).
88 To clarify matters, the practices during the Geometric period have to be studied, which
is, of course, outside the scope of this study; see Hägg 1983, 192–193; Antonaccio 1995, 249,
who interpret the animal bones found in connection with Geometric graves as the remains of
meals rather than animal sacrifices. For the rare cases of food o�ferings shown on LG vases with
funerary scenes, see Boardman 1966, 2; Himmelmann 1997, 15–16, n. 11.
89 On food o�ferings to the dead, see further below, pp. 278–280. In the late Hellenistic
and Roman periods, animal sacrifice seems to have been performed in the cult of some dead,
but none of the instances found in the epitaphs cited by Lattimore (1962, 126–127) is earlier
than the 1st century BC. In the private cult foundations, beginning in the 3rd century BC,
animal sacrifice, followed by dining, played an important role, for example, the foundation
of Diomedon, Kos, c. 300–250 BC (LS 177 = Laum 1914, vol. 2, no. 45; Sherwin-White 1977,
210–213); the foundation of Epikteta, Thera, 210–195 BC (LS 135 = IG XII:3 330 = Laum 1914,
vol. 2, no. 43); the foundation of Kritolaos, Aigale, Amorgos, late 2nd century BC (LSS 61
= IG XII:7 515 = Laum 1914, vol. 2, no. 50); the foundation of Poseidonios, Halikarnassos,
3rd–2nd century BC (Laum 1914, vol. 2, no. 117); cf. Kamps 1937, 145–179. The rituals in these
cults were rather modelled on the hero-cults of the preceding and contemporary periods than
on the cult of the dead, since the aim of the foundations was to separate these deceased from
the ordinary dead. Furthermore, these practices cannot be said to be typical of funerary cult in
general, since the purpose of the cult foundations was to separate these particular, important
deceased from the mass of the ordinary dead.