BMCR 2009.03.06, Francesca Prescendi, De/crire et comprendre le sacrifice

Francesca Prescendi, De/crire et comprendre le sacrifice. Les
re/flexions des Romains sur leur propre religion a\ partir de la
litte/rature antiquaire. Potsdamer Altertumswissenschaftliche Beitraege
(PAwB), 19.  Stuttgart:  Franz Steiner Verlag, 2007.  Pp. 284.  ISBN
978-3-515-08888-6.  EUR 59.00 (pb).

Reviewed by Christopher Smith, University of St Andrews
([email protected])
Word count:  1234 words
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This is a useful and intelligent addition to the growing literature on
ancient sacrifice, characterised predominantly by a careful attention
to the ancient sources.  Prescendi makes clear from the outset that the
object of her study is not to produce a single account of the true
significance of sacrifice in the Roman world, but to take account of a
multiplicity of interpretations, with a particular emphasis on the
antiquarian literature.  This is the strength of the volume; if it has
a flaw, it is that the concept of antiquarian literature is
insufficiently explored and the mechanism whereby the Romans produced a
multiplicity of views is not fully developed at a methodological level.

The introduction is short and makes reference to some modern
literature, but it is not a full account of the current state of the
question.  Prescendi follows mainly Scheid's approaches to sacrifice,
and she is surely correct that we need to develop a nuanced and
source-based interpretation of this crucial aspect of Roman religious
life.  However, if the basis for this exercise is a concept of a
technical literature developed by antiquarians, then we need to
investigate more carefully than here the way that this literature
developed and the extent to which it is truly a technical literature.
Prescendi comments that many of the authors of the list of relevant
works (p16) are jurists, but that concept itself deserves to be opened
up; why are jurists interested in sacrifice, and are they indeed
writing as jurists or as priests themselves?  Moreover, given the fact
that there is such lability in the interpretation of sacrifice, to what
extent are these definitive accounts which produced accurate versions
of what a sacrifice was like?

Prescendi works with an interpretation of sacrifice as an act of
communication between men and gods, and argues that even the etymology
of the key terms moves us away from a concept of sacrifice as
essentially an act of destruction.  This communicative model might lead
one into a rather more articulated version of the grammar of ancient
religion.  What are the rules of this particular communication?
Towards the end Prescendi develops some interesting comments about the
power relations within this relationship, but this is under-represented
in the theoretical section.

The first main part of the book is a description of a model sacrifice.
This is a sound and helpful account, well-researched and presented, but
it does leave one with a question of what the nature of this model is,
especially since it is inevitably drawn from sources across a broad
chronological sweep, and although Prescendi is alive to the biases
which later sources introduce, as well as the problem of conflation of
Greek and Roman concepts, the presentation to an extent suggests that
there was a uniform and clear mechanism for sacrifice, which is on the
other hand excluded by consideration of the extended account of
sacrifice presented at the end of the chapter from Dionysius of
Halicarnassus (7.72).  One characteristic of anthropological
observations of ancient sacrifice is that there is a substantial gap
between the participants' belief in the stability of rituals, and the
observed variation in the actual rites.  We should perhaps assume that
the reality was more chaotic and less fixed, for even the concern with
the due performance of a ritual, exemplified by accounts of occasions
where things went wrong, needs to be read against the variety of
interpretation.  What opportunity was there for varying interpretations
to impact upon performance?

The second part of the book takes a more thematic approach to the
constituent elements of the sacrifice, especially on the actions
preceding the sacrifice, the consecration, and the contrasts between
the objects of sacrifice.  One theme which runs effectively through the
whole of the section, which concludes with an extended digression on
the exta, is the role of the sacrifice in bringing the Roman people
together and giving them a sense of identity.  Prescendi does not
consider what role sacrifice has in the spread of empire, and this
allows again a sense that there is a stable concept of sacrifice,
something which discussion of the wider imperial context might have
usefully problematised.  There are also problems with the introduction
of mythical discourses into the interpretative framework, as for
instance with the use of the myths of Orion's birth or Philemon and
Baucis to answer the question of whether the gods should be thought to
concretely enjoy the offerings made to them.  The underlying assumption
would be that there is no necessary difference between what Ovid says
about sacrifice and what a grammarian says, that there is a unified
discourse, and that might be questioned, particularly at the level of
the conception of the gods.  Did the Romans always hold a conception of
the gods as mythological actors when they sacrificed?  The answer is
surely not, at least in regard to deities which do not have an
effective mythological existence, but maybe more generally.  This is a
problem for the communicative model because the nature of the deity to
whom one was communicating is perhaps open to debate, and certainly
capable of being influenced over time -- Apollo would be a good example
of a deity whose significance varied.  The effective illustration that
all the accounts of the exta in fact in one way or another indicate the
importance and supremacy of the gods is therefore helpful, since it
provides for Prescendi's account a point of security.  Another area
which might have helped would have been consideration of artistic
representations of sacrifice, which also to a degree provide conformity
and order.

The last part of the book considers the sacrifice in the context of the
death of the victim, and raises issues about the relationship between
animal sacrifice and the Roman view on human sacrifice.  This is an
awkward transition, and illustrates the problems presented by the
sources; at what point did the Romans develop some kind of argument
that animal sacrifice was a kind of substitution for human sacrifice?
Prescendi believes that the key period was the later second and early
first century BC, and adduces the unusual sacrifice of Greek and Gauls,
the senatus consultum of 97 BC banning human sacrifice, the ban on
sacrifice amongst the Bletonesioi (interpreted, as Cichorius did, as an
event in Spain in the mid-90s BC) and the more or less contemporary
account by Manilius of the sacrifice of the Argei as a substitute for
human sacrifice.  (The Manilius referred to is a modern construct, put
together from the fragment mani at Festus p450L, and Pliny's reference
to the first person who wrote about the phoenix (NH 10.4) in the 90s
BC.)  Not all of this account will be persuasive, but here, and in the
subsequent accounts of episodes such as the sacrifice of prisoners
after Perugia or the interment of the Vestals, Prescendi proves a
careful reader, and alive to the distortions of contemporary normative
discourses in times of social or military stress.

In conclusion this is a careful, well-written and useful book, which
perhaps assumes a little too much on the methodological level, and
could be more adventurous in the development of its main ideas.
Prescendi is to my mind absolutely correct to see the ancients as
anthropologists of their own religion, but that might have led to a
more venturesome account of the contingent and unstable nature of Roman
ritual, which is hinted at, rather than developed, here.