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It'll be helpful for us now to take a
quick half step back and think a little

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bit about ritual.
We made some commentaries in the beginning

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opening lecture talking about how
important the establishment of rituals in

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honor of the gods are in these Homeric
hymns, and we're going to see that in many

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of them, ritual activity is actually built
into the mythic narrative.

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Well, in the broader scheme of things,
rituals and myths are intimately

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connected, and we're going to find this
focus on the Homeric hymns gives us a

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chance to draw up these connections and
look at how these two areas are quite

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interestingly and mutually illuminating of
each other.

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One quick note on term, terminology before
we get started we're going to use the word

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cult in this class to mean just ritual
activity at all.

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So, any time we talk about.
Human beings worshiping divinities, we're

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gonna use the word, cult, for the activity
that they're engaged in.

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Ritual for us is going to be labeled as,
cult.

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Now this is not a value, judgment, term.
The term in English, cult, sometimes has,

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a very specific kind of definition of a
splinter, nonstandard group that may do,

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be doing something out of the ordinary.
That's not at all how we use it when

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scholars refer to ancient, ritual
activity.

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We'll talk about cult in honor of Athena,
or cult in honor of Dionysus, or whatever

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it happens to be.
It's a standard term in our field.

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Now you're neutral.
That label's ritual activity.

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Any rites performed in honor of a god.
We don't know a lot about specific

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religious rituals across the board in
antiquity.

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There's not a lot of information about how
specific rituals worked.

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We do have some windows in to one or the
other of these what we'll be reading with

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Homeric hymns to the meter gives us a
close up look at Eleusinian mysteries.

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It's one of the cultic practices details
we know something about, but for the most

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part we don't know a lot of details about
any individual religious cult.

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There are, we know some things about them
in general.

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They are very important in each city.
The cities themselves have a civic

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component to their religious activity.
To worship the god or goddess that is the

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patron of the city is also an expression
of civic collectiveness and being

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together,
Having a sense of identity as a Spartan or

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an Athenian, or whatever it might happen
to be.

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There is also a linkage between the
calendration.

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So the months of the year such as they
unfold according to the normal cycle of

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seasons, and religious festivals and
activities.

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So the calendration, the time, our, our
understanding of time in our city is

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linked to our practice of religious cult.
These festivals can be in honor of, of

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will be in honor of a god.
They could be in special locations,

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sometimes in the civic center, sometimes
far away.

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A long's day walk maybe even two to three
days walk and be cast outside of the

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normal environs of the city giving us an
open space in which we can engage in

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something that's a little bit out of the
ordinary for our normal civic life.

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Ritual activities, there are many that are
common in antiquity.

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There is the act of purification.
So in order to get engaged in an activity

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before we engage in ritual action we've
got to clean ourselves.

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That could mean in a river, in any piece
of water any body of water.

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An ablution that helps wash away whatever
impurities might be on us.

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We may then put on special clothing that's
a certain kind of clean and not normally

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used in everyday life kind of clothing.
We have processions as indicated here in

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our wonderful, frieze, from located
currently in the British museum.

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We have processions, where we'll have a
dedication.

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A long march of us, all together walking
up to a temple or an altar and some

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dedication given to the god.
There will be fasting that's involved at

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different points in the ritual calendar.
There might be fasting that leads into

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ritual activity.
Fasting during ritual activity or after.

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There are certain kinds of foods that we
may associate with these ritual actions.

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There will be some kind of special drink
or food that we only eat during certain

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times, that are connected, with our, with
our ritual action.

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One focus that generally shows up in
ancient cult is the practice of sacrifice.

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You can see our poor bull here behind me
getting some nasty treatment from the

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human beings that are surrounding him.
Yes indeed the ancient Greeks did practice

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live sacrifice.
They would take animals.

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The larger the mammal the, the better.
And put the an-, give the animal a special

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kind of preparation, making it go through
a certain kind of purification.

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There may be particular kinds of
decoration that are attached to the

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animal.
The animal is then led to an altar and

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ritually slaughtered,
Where it's cut open, it is killed in honor

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of the divinity.
At that point you and I then would carve

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up the meat and share it out and have a
chance of having a large protein rich

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dinner in honor of a god. we would give a
god a certain kind of sacrifice we've

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already discovered from Hesia's theogony,
that we know what that is, thigh bones

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wrapped in fat.
That's what apparently the gods want.

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You and I get to keep the good stuff for
ourselves.

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We can eat the meat and the entrails and
all the rich food from the, from the

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animal ourselves.
Cows are the sort of best of the kind of

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sacrifice a person could give.
Bulls, oxen, the largest ones larger ones

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the better.
But there are other things that are

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sacrificed, that are appropriate
sacrifices to the gods,

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Including things like sheep or goats.
Pigs also.

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Piglets are there.
They're very cheap.

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So is poultry.
You can sacrifice that to a god.

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Typically it's not the case that the
ancients would have sacrificed fish.

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They didn't really do that.
Other kinds of birds they didn't really

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do, either.
If it is a bird it would be something like

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poultry.
The things that a god likes to eat, map on

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pretty closely to things you and I like to
eat.

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At the end of this ceremony comes the
consumption.

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There could also be a non animal,
non-animal sacrifices.

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We could sacrifice grains, first fruits.
We pour out ablutions to the gods, pouring

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out wine, water, milk whatever it might
be.

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In the sacrifice it's a curious kind of
custom to imagine that the gods want us to

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kill animals.
That's strange.

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It's not idiosyncratic to the Greeks.
It's actually common all around the

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ancient Mediterranean and in other parts
of the Old World as well.

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There are generally different kinds of
customary explanations for why this

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activity is engaged in.
As anthropologists in contemporary world

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have looked back on the rituals some
suggestions have been made as to why this

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thing might be done, why is it that we as,
as Greeks engage in the killing of a live

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animal, why does our god want us to do
this?

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There's a clear.
Indication here that there's a demand by

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the god that such a thing be done.
And there's been a suggestion among

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contemporary scholars that one thing
that's happening, is that human beings are

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transferring, whatever guilt they might
feel at killing a live animal and

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consuming its flesh, they're transferring
that guilt onto the gods.

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The gods made us do it, we have to kill
this thing.

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Now, now that we've killed it and given
the bones and the fat to the god, all this

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leftover meat, well, we might as well eat
that too.

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There's a possibility here that there's a
kind of blood guilt that humans feel at

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killing and eating animals and so we
enlist the gods to help us explain why it

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is we do it.
The.

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Thematics of the sacrifice are pretty
clear, we're killing an animal and that

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killing of the animal reinforces its
mortality may also remind us of our own,

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and sets all of us, humans an animals and
the rest of us that are destined to live

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these terrestrial lives, in strong
contrast to those Olympian divinities that

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live forever and ever.
So the death of a sacrifice confirms by

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contrast the deathlessness of the gods to
whom we sacrifice.

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Then also at the end of the sacrifice, we
have mentioned this in two earlier classes

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in fact when we talked about Hesiod and
Homer,

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You and I get a chance to share some yummy
kind of meat.

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So we get a chance to dig into some really
extraordinary foodstuffs.

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Those, you and I who are living on
grape-based diets, we ancient Greeks.

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Also, wine is an important part of the
sacrifice, or, or of the, of the ritual.

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There may be some pouring out, poured out.
On the alter we'll see some wine that gets

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poured out as a libation, but we'll also
have wine that's consumed.

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In the Rites of Dionet, Dionysus, this
wine is consumed to utter excess, to the

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point where a person is drunken in, in an,
in an almost violent way, extreme and

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completely out of their mind.
This was part of what the ritual as all

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about, as depicted here, on a lovely
amphora.

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We see that, that kind of thing is going
to happen.

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It's typical in.
All ancient ritual that wine is a part of

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it, excessive drunken, drunkenness is
actually a, perfectly acceptable in

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ancient religious context excesive
drunkenness, such as we see in Dionysiac

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cults though, is idiosyncratic to Dionysus
We'll also see this examples as we see

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here of, of we, we have an example of the
pouring out of libations out on top of an

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altar.
Such a thing is going to happen.

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As the wine becomes a part of the
sacrifice too.

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Now we're going to see grand events that
happen, round festivals.

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There'll be theatrical performances built
into religious festivals such as what

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happened here at our lovely theater of
Dionysus.

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There are also going to be games built
into religious sacrifices, songs, contests

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of all kinds.
It's likely, but we're not absolutely sure

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of this context, but it's likely that it
is within these festival and religious

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contexts that the hymns would have been
originally performed.

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So when we have a long weekend festival in
honor of Athena, and there are games and

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feasts and festivals, sacrifices,
drinking, all in her honor, we would have

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a closing off ceremony where there would
be some or at least some moment during the

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ceremony where there would be some singing
in honor of a god or goddess, and a hymn

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would have been a very appropriate form
for that to be.

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Now see, we're not 100% certain of that
context, but it seems to stand to reason

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that this ritual activity is going to be
built into not just the thematics of the

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stories that we see, but also into the.
Modes by which they were performed and

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heard by the ancient audiences.