defeat despite fair signs. The defeated survivors were left to explain to themselves why things went wrong, as are all participants in systems of prediction, and like other such systems this one appears to have remained unshaken, at least through the fourth century BC, notwith-standing what must have been a high percentage of failures.5
More meanings were certainly embedded in the ritual acts accompanying warfare than were articulated in the limited viewpoints of our various sources. As always in the study of classical life, we are to some extent the prisoners of our evidence. Some modern attempts to go beyond the explicit motives reported in ancient literature have been sweeping and striking. Thus, the armed force has been described as a consecrated band,6 and the entire process from the decision for war through victory in battle has been compared to the chain of ritual actions in the performance of a single sacrifice.7 In hesitating to embrace such bold formulations I would note that neither the nature of the evidence nor the analysis that has been made of it is sufficiently unambiguous that we can dispense with a study of details, and unfortunately even that must be partial. For instance, by limiting ourselves to what happened before the battle we omit the celebrations after the battle, which have been interpreted as a reintegration of the community, comparable to a sacrificial feast.
A point that has often been made is that the propitiation of the gods in addition to the seeking of omens of the outcome, is implicit in all the ritual (e.g. Lonis 1979:109; Pritchett, War 3. 87–8). So the society embarking on war ensures its good relations with the city's gods and conforms to their wishes, moving forward only when the sacrificial signs permit. Normal sacrificial ritual predominates: as mentioned, the Spartan army's herd was mainly sheep, the most common victim for routine sacrifice (Paus. 9–13.4), and the Spartan kings received their usual perquisites of skins and chines of animals while on campaign (Hdt. 6.56).
Our prose sources, whether faithful or selective, pedestrian or imaginative, largely offer the social view of the rites of warfare; they show the relationship of the community and the army, as a community, to its gods. The darker forces that hover over the battlefield, the terror of death and the pain the fighters must confront, are out of sight. From poetry, however, we can see that they were an integral part of the conception of war. In the archaic Shield of Heracles there is a description of men fighting to defend a walled town:
these…were engaged in battle: and behind them the dusky
Fates (Keres), gnashing their white fangs, lowering, grim, bloody, and unapproachable, struggled for those who were falling, for they all were longing to drink dark blood. So soon as they caught a man overthrown or falling newly wounded, one of them would clasp her great claws about him, and his soul would go down to Hades and chilly Tartarus. And when they had satisfied their souls with human blood, they would cast that one behind them, and rush back again into the tumult and the fray.
([Hes.] Scut. 248–57)8
It is to the embodiment of fear, Phobos, that Theseus is said to have sacrificed before engaging the Amazons in battle (Plut. Thes. 27.3). So too, we are told, did Alexander before engaging Darius, as well as performing certain sacred rites not to be spoken of (Plut. Alex. 31.3).
One of the ways in which we may hope to penetrate behind the screen presented by the prose sources is through the images and metaphors of poetry and through myths and fictionalized history that serve as etiologies and analogies to the rites. We need also to consider the evidence of artistic representation of ritual in which the selection and emphasis throw certain elements into relief. But our first and constant task is to pay heed to the vocabulary of Greek ritual, distinguishing its categories and observing apparent overlaps and contradictions. Differences of language and deviations in practice may correspond to genuine ambiguities and gradations in the meanings of the rites and may not be solely the result of fossilized survivals, later misunderstandings, or mere carelessness.
RITUAL DISTINCTIONS
Modern scholarship sees a major division in Greek ritual between the terms hiera and sphagia. The distinction, though it may not be as sharp as is sometimes claimed, is central to the discussion of military ritual. Hiera, in a sacrificial context, is used in both a broader sense, 'rites,' and in certain more restricted meanings, especially for parts of the sacrificial victim that are burnt on the altar or examined for signs, and for the signs that emerge from examination. The broader sense, 'rites,' covers a variety of practices including sphagia. The noun sphagia (usually used in this plural form) is cognate with the verb sphazein (or sphattein), 'to pierce the throat.' 9 This action, described by this verb, is the way almost all sacrificial victims are killed. From sphagia is formed another verb, sphagiazesthai, 'to perform sphagia.'
All the words from this root, it has been well said, make one think of blood.10 Sphagia, like hiera, may denote either rites (in this case of more specialized character) or the signs obtained from the rites.
Schematiclly the relationship may be shown as follow:
Sphagia and related words,with their focus on bloodletting, seem to be contrasted with normal sacrifice, commonly referred to by the most general verb for sacrifice, thuein (or thuesthai, in the middle voics) and implicit in the more particuler meanings of hiera. In the course of a normal sacrifice signs are taken, sacrifice parts are burnt on an altar and the flesh of the victim is available for human consumption.
For sphagia, however, a sacrificial fire is irrelevant, and therefore no alter is needed. Furthermore the flesh of the victim is not eaten by men. The concentration of the language of sphagia on the act of killing and the blood that spurts out from under the blade is in contrast with the subordination—not absence—of these aspect in normal sacrifice. (the act of killimg there too can be referred to as sphazein.)
Sphagia is used in a number of situations such as well as oath-taking, some type of purification, certain rites for the dead or for heroes and the assuging of winds (e.g., Xen. An. 4.5.4), as well as the crossing of rivers by an army and the final rits in front of the battle-lines. In all or most of these there appears to be an absence of the normal give-andtake between men aand gods, while there is instead heightened tension among men, concentration on a single purpose and an awareness of the presence of disruptive, anti-social forces. These rites have been characterized as 'heilige Handlungen,'which may be freely rendered as 'powerful actions.'11
The terminology of both types of sarifice is found in the ritual of warfare. Following the Spartan examples, on which we are best informed, the pattern can be outlined as follows:
at home, before departure: normal
at borders: normal
at rivers, at the sea: sphagia
camp-ground sacrifice: normal
battle-line sacrifice: sphagia
RITES OF CROSSING
The crossing of borders and the crossing of rivers and the sea would seem to be similar actions. The term diabateria is used for the border-crossing rites, and cognate words (the verb diabainein, 'to cross,' etc.), though not the term itself, are used for crossing rivers and the sea.12 But while the border rites are consistently spoken of as the object of the verbs thuein or thuesthai, that is as normal sacrifice (e.g. Hell. 3.5.7, 4.7.2, 5.4.47 etc.), and in one case Zeus and Athena are specified as the gods to whom the sacrifices are directed (Xen. Rep. Lac. 13.3), the crossing of rivers or the sea required favorable signs derived from sphagia, at least according to our earlier sources (Aesch. Sept. 377–9, Hdt. 6.76 and Xen. An. 4.3.17). By contrast, in Arrian's account of three crossings by Alexander the Great, the language is that of normal sacrifice, although Arrian, or rather his sources, knew of sphagia performed for Poseidon at sea (1.11.6) and when a fleet was about to sail (6.19.5), neither of which, however, are said to have produced signs.
The borders of a polis territory clearly constituted an important division between two kinds of space and were in some sense sacred. One may compare the expulsion of the homicide and polluted objects beyond the state's boundaries.13 But borders wer
e not usually thought of as having their own tutelary spirits. The Athenian ephebes took as witnesses to their oath various named gods who were followed by 'the borders (horoi) of the fatherland, the wheat, the barley, the vines, the olive trees, the fig trees.'14 Though included among the theoi they are not personalized. Instead we hear of major gods, Apollo and Zeus, with the epithet horios, 'of the borders.'15 While elsewhere simple ceremonies may have sufficed for appeasement of local forces, for the Spartans the regular transit of the army over the borders had resulted in normal sacrifice to verify the continued approval of two central figures of the polity, Zeus and Athena (cf. Plut. Lyc. 6.1), of whom Zeus at least had already received sacrifice from the king at home (Xen. Rep. Lac. 13.2–3).
In contrast to the shadowy conception of the borders as supernatural forces, river gods were widespread in Greece. Although there is only a single instance of a deity being named in connection with the crossing rites (the Spartan king Kleomenes supposes the river Erasinos protects the Argives when the sphagia are not favorable, Hdt. 6.76), well-delineated figures needed to be acknowledged when a crossing was made. Rivers and the sea had their distinctive mode of recognition. On the island of Mykonos, in an annual sacrifice for the river Acheloios, the throats of eight lambs were pierced (s[phat]tet[ai]) so that the blood would flow into the river while three other victims, a full-grown sheep and two lambs, were killed for him at an altar (Dittenberger SIG3 1024, lines 36–7). The same conspicuous use of blood is indicated for the sacrifice performed before crossing water (cf. Xen. An, 4.3.17 and, in an ostensibly Persian rite, Hdt. 7.113–14, the Magi slaughtering white horses at the river Strymon). In normal sacrifice the blood spurted over the altar or was caught in a vessel (e.g., Od. 3.444), but language and art did not call attention to this part of the procedure. Sphagia at rivers or the sea focused on the killing and the flowing of blood, liquid into liquid (at least when Greek rivers were true to their element and not dry gullies). Through this action signs of divine response were obtained that permitted or prevented the army's crossing.
Herodotus in his description of the sacrifice at the river Strymon speaks of the Magi as pharmakeusantes, 'having performed magical rites' (7.113–14), which seems to be a characterization of a foreign practice; such language never appears in descriptions of Greek versions of the rite. For an army making a potentially dangerous crossing in foreign territory neither the use of an altar for the burning of parts nor the meal that followed would usually have been feasible. But there was nothing about the nature of the god that prevented normal sacrifice as shown by the prescriptions on Mykonos, mentioned above, where the flow of blood into the river is combined with sacrifice at an altar and, presumably, consumption of the meat.16 Normal sacrifice and sphagia were used for divination and unfavorable signs stopped the progress of an expedition. Herodotus, in both passages cited above, uses the term for signs obtained by normal sacrifice (kallierein). Xenophon, more precisely, speaks of the sphagia as being kala. The sphagia at rivers were, in effect, a more limited and concentrated version of normal sacrifice, dictated by the circumstances, the aims, and the nature of the supernatural force addressed.17
BATTLE-LINE SACRIFICE
After a routine of normal sacrifices on the march or in the camp ground, though these may have been compressed because of the circumstances (e.g. with the meal following the sacrifice omitted or postponed), came the final rite before the two armies clash, the 'battle-line sacrifice' consistently described in terms of sphagia. It might be performed when time was very short. Once, we are told, the enemy was 600 ft (182 m) away (Xen. Hell. 4.2.20), another time in sight, some two miles (3.2 km) distant (Xen. Hell. 6.5.8). The most circumstantial account is the only one in Thucydides, in his description of the first battle at Syracuse (415 BC):
Nicias having thus exhorted his men led them at once to the charge…. On this occasion [the Syracusans] were compelled to make a hasty defence, for they never imagined the Athenians would begin the attack. Nevertheless they took up their arms and immediately went forward to meet them. For a while the throwers of stones, and slingers, and archers skirmished in front of the two armies, driving one another before them after the manner of light-armed troops. The soothsayers [manteis] brought out the customary victims [sphagia…ta nomizomena], and the trumpets sounded and called the infantry to the charge. The two armies advanced.
(Thuc. 6.69.1–2)18
What was done in this short time, at an arbitrary location and in a charged atmosphere? A victim, of course, was killed and most of our references clearly state that signs were taken (e.g. Hdt. 6.112.1, before the charge at Marathon). In two cases, at least, the passage in Thucydides just cited and Xenophon Anabasis 6.5.7–8, the sacrificers are the seers, the manteis, whose only function was the interpretation of signs. This needs to be stressed because there has been a tendency to play down the divinatory function of the battle-line sphagia.19 The taking of signs does not exhaust the meaning of the sacrifice but in the Classical Period at least we cannot suppose it was ever absent. Hesitation on this point has arisen, no doubt, from the difficulty in seeing what could be done about bad signs as the enemy bore down upon the front line. One is inclined to suppose that the signs were essentially confirmatory of what had already been decided by human judgment and the earlier hiera of camp-ground sacrifice, and were therefore simple and rarely known to fail.
How were the signs obtained? For the more leisurely hiera of normal sacrifice the victim was cut open, some innards—primarily the liver and the splanchna (kidneys, gall bladder, urinary bladder, perhaps the heart) were inspected for their appearance, and certain parts were put on the fire, where their behaviour and that of the fire itself were observed.20 No prose source indicates unmistakably the method used before the battle-line and a single poetic passage is fraught with problems. Conceivably an expert mantis might be able to extricate very rapidly the essential parts from the victim without concerning himself with the butchery of the rest of the animal. In any case, it is generally agreed that no altar was constructed and no fire was lit. (The apparent exceptions, as we shall see, illustrate the difficulty of distinguishing the sphagia from the more normal sacrifices preceding them.) Instead, it is supposed that the way the animal fell and the way the blood flowed were the essential indications that were looked for. With the fall of the animals, we may compare Aeschylus Suppliants 450, 'omens must fall' (dei…pesein khresteria) and Polybius (22.4a) on the practice of all foreigners who, before going to war and risking danger, sacrifice (sphagiazonta) a horse and learn from its fall what is going to happen. These parallels are not compelling and the representations of this moment in art show the victim firmly held between the legs of the sacrificer (see Figure 1 (p. 218) and the accompanying discussion).
More probable is the observation of the flow of the blood. The very words used, invariably, sphagia and sphagiazomai, evoke blood. Euripides speaks of sphagia as 'streams of blood-loving earth' (Suppl. 174, reading ges philaimatou roai) and the Keres of the Pseudo-Hesiodic Shield of Heracles and Ares in the Iliad (22.267) drink blood, not of sacrificial victims, to be sure, but of fallen warriors. In effect, the sphagia narrow down to a single action and an observation—the killing of the victim with a stab into the neck and the observing of the flow of blood that results.
CAMP-GROUND AND BATTLE-LINE SACRIFICE
There is considerable functional equivalence between the battle-line sphagia and the normal sacrifices that came before them and were intended to find out whether the movement towards an engagement with the enemy should proceed. The dividing line between them may not always have been sharp. The linking of the two rites is clearest in the words of Xenophon. Just before the Battle of Cunaxa the Persian
prince Cyrus announces to Xenophon, and asks that he pass on to the Greek troops, that both the hiera and the sphagia are good (An. 1.8.15). The distinction and the connection of the two become clear from the events of a single day described fully later in the Anabasis. Xenophon arises early and sacrifices
for departure; the hiera are favorable with the first victim. On the completion of the rites, the seer Arexion observes a 'lucky eagle' (aieton aision) and bids Xenophon to lead on (6.5.2). Later that day the enemy is seen some two miles away. The seer performs sphagia and the sphagia are good with the first victim (6.5.8). Finally, when the troops hesitate to cross a gully, a dangerous maneuver for an army in line of march with the enemy nearby, Xenophon exhorts his men, concluding with the words: 'Men, the hiera are good for us, the birds are lucky and the sphagia are excellent. Let us go against those men. Now that they have had a good look at us, they must no longer enjoy their dining nor camp wherever they like' (6.5.21). The army then crosses the gully and engages the enemy successfully. All three prognostic items—hiera, the eagle and the sphagia—combine to strengthen the morale of the army and lead it to its engagement with the enemy.
Another example from Xenophon shows the close connection. On the previous day the hiera had proved unfavorable to leaving the camp. Through lack of victims they had had to buy and kill a cart ox (An. 6.4.22). Despite the lack of propitious signs one of the commanders, Neon, offered to lead a group of volunteers on a foraging expedition (6.4.23–4). Conceivably he and the 2,000 or so men who joined him thought that such an informal venture might be exempt from the need for good signs. His band was attacked and badly mauled by troops of the native people. When word reached Xenophon in camp, 'since the hiera had not proved favorable on that day, he took a cart ox, performed sphagia and rushed to help with all the soldiers under thirty years of age' (6.4.25). Note that the performance of sphagia here is explained by the failure of previous hiera. For him they had essentially the same function. Possibly, had the earlier sacrifice been successful he would not have paused for the sphagia. But, as his account of the sphagia the following day shows (success came with the first victim), the sphagia could not be counted on to succeed with every victim. One is left to speculate on what Xenophon would have done had the sphagia of the cart ox failed, and one may even wonder what the signs did in fact show—he does not tell us but leaves us to assume they were favorable.
Hoplites: The Classical Greek Battle Experience Page 29
