Editing Animal sacrifice (section)

==Ancient Greece==
[[File:Sacrifice to Athena, Amphora from Vulci, 550-540 BC, Berlin F 1686, 141662.jpg|thumb|left|A bull is led to the altar of [[Athena]], whose image is at right. Vase, {{Circa|545 BCE}}.]]
Worship in [[ancient Greek religion]] typically consisted of sacrificing domestic animals at the altar with hymn and prayer. The altar was outside any temple building, and might not be associated with a temple at all. The animal, which should be perfect of its kind, is decorated with garlands and the like, and led in procession to the altar, a girl with a basket on her head containing the concealed knife leading the way. After various rituals the animal is slaughtered over the altar, as it falls all the women present "must cry out in high, shrill tones". Its blood is collected and poured over the altar. It is butchered on the spot and various internal organs, bones and other inedible parts burnt as the deity's portion of the offering, while the meat is removed to be prepared for the participants to eat; the leading figures tasting it on the spot. The temple usually kept the skin, to sell to tanners. The fact that the humans got more use from the sacrifice than the deity had not escaped the Greeks, and is often the subject of humour in [[Greek comedy]].{{sfn|Burkert|1985|loc=2:1:1}}{{sfn|Burkert|1985|loc=2:1:2}}<ref>For more exotic local forms of sacrifice, see the [[Laphria (festival)]], [[Xanthika]], and [[Lykaia]].  The advantageous division of the animal was supposed to go back to [[Prometheus]]'s trick on [[Zeus]]</ref>

The animals used are, in order of preference, bull or ox, cow, sheep (the most common), goat, pig (with piglet the cheapest mammal), and poultry (but rarely other birds or fish).{{sfn|Burkert|1985|loc=2:1:1}}<ref>To some extent, different animals were thought appropriate for different deities, from bulls for Zeus and Poseidon to doves for Aphrodite. {{Harvnb|Burkert|1985|loc=2:1:4}}</ref> Horses and asses are seen on some [[Pottery of ancient Greece#Geometric style|vases in the Geometric style]] ({{BCE|900–750}}), but are very rarely mentioned in literature; they were relatively late introductions to Greece, and it has been suggested that Greek preferences in this matter go very far back. The Greeks liked to believe that the animal was glad to be sacrificed, and interpreted various behaviours as showing this. [[Divination]] by examining parts of the sacrificed animal was much less important than in Roman or [[Etruscan religion]], or Near Eastern religions, but [[Greek divination|was practiced]], especially of the liver, and as part of the cult of Apollo. Generally, the Greeks put more faith in observing the behaviour of birds.<ref>Struck, P.T. (2014). "Animals and Divination", In Campbell, G.L. (Ed.), ''The Oxford Handbook of Animals in Classical Thought and Life'', 2014, Oxford University Press. {{doi|10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199589425.013.019}}, [https://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1186&context=classics_papers online]</ref> For a smaller and simpler offering, a grain of [[incense]] could be thrown on the sacred fire,{{sfn|Burkert|1985|loc=2:1:2}} and outside the cities farmers made simple sacrificial gifts of plant produce as the "first fruits" were harvested.{{sfn|Burkert|1985|loc=2:1:4}} Although the grand form of sacrifice called the [[hecatomb]] (meaning 100 bulls) might in practice only involve a dozen or so, at large festivals the number of cattle sacrificed could run into the hundreds, and the numbers feasting on them well into the thousands. The enormous [[Hellenistic]] structures of the [[Altar of Hieron]] and [[Pergamon Altar]] were built for such occasions.
[[File:Greekreligion-animalsacrifice-corinth-6C-BCE.jpg|thumb|Sacrifice of a lamb on [[Pitsa panels|a Pitsa Panel]], [[Corinth]], {{BCE|540–530}}]]

The evidence of the existence of such practices is clear in some ancient Greek literature, especially in [[Homer]]'s epics. Throughout the poems, the use of the ritual is apparent at banquets where meat is served, in times of danger or before some important endeavor to gain the favor of the gods. For example, in Homer's ''[[Odyssey]]'' [[Eumaeus]] sacrifices a pig with prayer for his unrecognizable master Odysseus. However, in Homer's ''[[Iliad]]'', which partly reflects very early Greek civilization, not every banquet of the princes begins with a sacrifice.<ref>Sarah Hitch, ''King of Sacrifice: Ritual and Royal Authority in the Iliad'', [https://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/6164.1-defining-homeric-sacrifice online at] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210125114458/https://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/6164.1-defining-homeric-sacrifice |date=2021-01-25 }} Harvard University's Center for Hellenic Studies</ref>

These sacrificial practices, described in these pre-Homeric eras, share commonalities to the 8th century forms of sacrificial rituals. Furthermore, throughout the poem, special banquets are held whenever gods indicated their presence by some sign or success in war. Before setting out for Troy, this type of animal sacrifice is offered. Odysseus offers Zeus a sacrificial ram in vain. The occasions of sacrifice in Homer's epic poems may shed some light onto the view of the gods as members of society, rather than as external entities, indicating social ties. Sacrificial rituals played a major role in forming the relationship between humans and the divine.<ref>{{cite book|first = Karl|last = Meuli|title = Griechische Opferbräuche|date = 1946|publisher = Schwabe}}</ref>

It has been suggested that the [[Chthonic]] deities, distinguished from Olympic deities by typically being offered the holocaust mode of sacrifice, where the offering is wholly burnt, may be remnants of the native [[Pre-Greek substrate|Pre-Hellenic]] religion and that many of the [[Twelve Olympians|Olympian]] deities may come from the Proto-Greeks who overran the southern part of the [[Balkans|Balkan Peninsula]] in the late third millennium BCE.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Chadwick|first1=John|title=The Mycenaean World|date=1976|publisher=Cambridge University Press|location=New York|isbn=978-0-521-29037-1|page=[https://archive.org/details/mycenaeanworld00chad/page/85 85]|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/mycenaeanworld00chad/page/85}}</ref>

In the [[Hellenistic period]] after the death of [[Alexander the Great]] in 323 BCE, [[Hellenistic philosophy|several new philosophical movements]] began to question the ethics of animal sacrifice.{{sfn|Burkert|1972|p=6-7}}