What Actually Happened at an Ancient Altar? Mostly a Meal

Greek practice, which is the best documented, followed a sequence. The animal was led in procession to the altar, washed and garlanded, and grain was scattered. Water was sprinkled on it so that it shook its head, which was taken as assent. It was killed, the blood directed onto the altar, and the carcass butchered. Particular portions, principally the thigh bones wrapped in fat, were burned on the altar so the smoke rose to the gods. The remaining meat was roasted or boiled and distributed among those present, and most of it was eaten there. The event was therefore a communal meal with a religious frame, and in a society where meat was otherwise scarce it was also the main occasion on which ordinary people ate it.

Each element of the procedure carried meaning and the variations were significant:

• •The animal's apparent assent, which addressed the awkwardness of killing something that had not consented
• •Which deity received the offering, which determined the species, the colour and the time of day
• •Burning bones and fat rather than meat, which a Greek myth explains as a trick played on the gods
• •Distribution of portions, which encoded status within the community precisely
• •Offerings burned entirely, used for underworld deities and for the dead, with nothing eaten
• •Bloodless offerings of grain, cakes and incense, which were far commoner in daily practice

The practice held a community together in several concrete ways. It required contributions, since animals cost money and were provided by cities, by wealthy individuals seeking standing or by associations, which made religious observance a mechanism for redistributing wealth downwards visibly. It assembled everybody in one place on a stated day. It distributed portions according to rules that stated who mattered, which is why disputes about portions appear in the sources and were not trivial. It supplied the meat trade, since surplus from sacrifices reached the market, which is the background to arguments in early Christian communities about whether such meat could be eaten. And it marked every public occasion, with no treaty, assembly, campaign or festival proceeding without one.

The practice declined and the process is documented well enough to describe. Christian writers argued against it on several grounds, holding that a single sacrifice had superseded all others and that the offerings went to demons rather than gods, and the question of whether Christians could eat meat from sacrifices divided early communities and is addressed directly in letters that survive. Imperial legislation from the fourth century restricted and then prohibited public sacrifice, with enforcement uneven and with the practice persisting in rural areas for generations. Jewish sacrifice had already ceased with the destruction of the temple in 70, after which the tradition reorganised around prayer and study, which is among the more consequential religious transformations on record. Comparable practices continue in several living traditions.

Reconstruction draws on several independent sources that constrain each other. Written descriptions appear in epic, drama, historical writing and inscriptions, with sacred laws inscribed on stone specifying which animals, which portions and which fees applied at particular sanctuaries, which is unusually precise evidence. Painted pottery depicts stages of the procedure in detail. And excavation of altars and sanctuary deposits recovers the bones themselves, which can be identified by species, age and sex, and which show cut marks and burning patterns that either match the textual account or do not. That last source has repeatedly corrected the literary picture, showing for instance that the species and ages used varied more than the texts suggest and that the neat account of which bones were burned is only approximately right.

The animal was led in, sprinkled so it appeared to assent, killed, and butchered, with thigh bones and fat burned for the gods and the meat distributed and eaten on the spot. In a society where meat was scarce this was the main occasion for eating it. Excavated bones have repeatedly corrected the literary account of which portions were burned.