Smith, William: A smaller dictionary of Greek and Roman antiquities (London, 1871)

SACRIFICIUM.

325

SAECULUM.

for in regard to the former they were in
reality a donation of meat. Hence at Athens
the partiality for such sacrifices rose to the
highest degree. The animals which were
sacrificed were mostly of the domestic kind,
as bulls, cows, sheep, rams, lambs, goats,
pigs, dogs, and horses ; and each god had
his favourite animals which he liked best as
sacrifices. The head of the victim, before it
was killed, was in most cases strewed with
roasted barley meal (ouAoyura or ouAoxutcu)
mixed with salt (mola salsa). The persons
who offered the sacrifice wore generally gar-
lands round their heads, and sometimes also
carried them in their hands, and before they
touched anything belonging to the sacrifice
they washed their hands in water. The
victim itself was likewise adorned with gar-
lands, and its horns were sometimes gilt.
Before the animal was killed, a bunch of
hair was cut from its forehead, and thrown
into the fire as primitiae (icarapYecrSai). In
the heroic ages the princes, as the high
priests of their people, killed the victim ; in
later times this was done by the priests them-
selves. When the sacrifice was to be offered
to the Olympic gods, the head of the animal
was drawn heavenward; when to the gods
of the lower world, to heroes, or to the dead,
it was drawn downwards. While the flesh
was burning upon the altar, wine and in-
cense were thrown upon it, and prayers and
music accompanied the solemnity. The most
common animal sacrifices at Rome were the
suovetaurilia or solitaurilia, consisting of a
pig, a sheep, and an ox. They were per-
formed in all cases of a lustration, and the
victims were carried around the thing to be
lustrated, whether it was a city, a people, or
a piece of land. [Lustratio.] The Greek
trittya (jpnTva), which likewise consisted of
an ox, a sheep, and a pig, was the same sa-
crifice as the Roman suovetaurilia. The
customs observed before and during the
sacrifice of an animal were on the whole the
same as those observed in Greece. But the
victim was in most cases not killed by the
priests who conducted the sacrifice, but by a
person called popa, who struck the animal
with a hammer before the knife was used.
The better parts of the intestines (exta) were
strewed with barley meal, wine, and incense,
and were burnt upon the altar. Those parts
of the animal which were burnt were called
prosccta, prosiciae, or ablct/mina. When a
sacrifice was offered to gods of rivers, or of
the sea, these parts were not burnt, but
thrown into the water. Respecting the use
which the ancients made of sacrifices to learn
the will of the gods, see Haruspex and Divi-
katio.— Unbloody sacrifices. Among these we

may first mention the libations (lihationes,
Aot/3ai or crTTov&ai), Bloody sacrifices were
usually accompanied by libations, as wine
was poured upon them. The wine was
usually poured out in three separate streams.
Libations always accompanied a sacrifice
which was offered in concluding a treaty
with a foreign nation, and that here they
formed a prominent part of the solemnity, is
clear from the fact that the treaty itself was
called criroi'Sat. But libations were also made
independent of any other sacrifice, as in so-
lemn prayers, and on many other occasions
of public and private life, as before drinking
at meals, and the like. Libations usually
consisted of unmixed wine (evo-nov&os, me-
rum), but sometimes also of milk, honey, and
other fluids, either pure or diluted with
water. The libations offered to the Furies
were always without wine. Incense was
likewise an offering which usually accom-
panied bloody sacrifices, but it was also burned
as an offering for itself. A third class of
unbloody sacrifices consisted of fruit and
cakes. The former were mostly offeied to
the gods as primitiae or tithes of the harvest,
and as a sign of gratitude. They were some-
times offered in their natural state, some-
times also adorned or prepared in various
ways. Cakes were peculiar to the worship
of certain deities, as to that of Apollo. They
were either simple cakes of flour, sometimes
also of wax, or they were made in the shape
of some animal, and were then offered as sym-
bolical sacrifices in the place of real animals,
either because they could not easily be pro-
cured, or were too expensive for the sacrificer.

SACRILEGIUM, the crime of stealing things
consecrated to the gods, or things deposited in
a consecrated place. A Lex Julia appears to
have placed the crime of sacrilcgium on an
equality with peculatus. [Peculatus.]

SAECULUM was, according to the calcu-
lation of the Etruscans, which was adopted
by the Romans, a space of time containing
110 lunar years. The return of each saecu-
lum at Rome was announced by the pontiffs,
who also made the necessary intercalations
in such a manner, that at the commence-
ment of a new saeculum the beginning of
the ten months' year, of the twelve months'
year, and of the solar year coincided. But
in these arrangements the greatest caprice
and irregularity appear to have prevailed
at Rome, as may be seen from the unequal
intervals at which the ludi saeculares were
celebrated. [Ludi Saeculares.] This also
accounts for the various ways in which a
saeculum was defined by the ancients ; some
believed that it contained thirty, and others
that it coatained a hundred years : the latter