Worship & Sacrifice
Religion in Everyday Life
For the ancient Greeks and Romans, religion was not a Sunday activity or a private matter — it was woven into every aspect of daily life. Before eating, a Greek might pour a few drops of wine on the ground as a libation to the gods. Before a sea voyage, a Roman would sacrifice at a temple. When something important happened — a birth, a victory in battle, a safe return — the pious response was to honour the deity responsible. The gods were understood as active presences whose goodwill had to be maintained through regular acts of piety.
Prayer and Votive Offerings
Prayer in the ancient world had a distinctive physical dimension. Greek worshippers typically stood upright, raised their arms with palms facing upward towards the sky when addressing the Olympians, or turned them downward towards the earth when addressing gods of the underworld. Roman worshippers often covered their heads with a fold of their toga — the capite velato gesture — during prayer and sacrifice, symbolising reverence and the blocking out of bad omens.
Alongside prayer, worshippers made votive offerings. These ranged from small terracotta figurines and clay models of the body part healed (a foot, a hand, an eye) to expensive bronze tripods and silver vessels. Sanctuaries across the Greek world were filled with accumulated offerings, creating a visible record of the community’s gratitude. At the Sanctuary of Asclepius at Epidaurus, for example, stone tablets described miraculous cures, and model limbs were left in thanksgiving. The practice reflects the reciprocal logic of ancient religion: the worshipper gave something in exchange for the god’s favour.
Votive offerings could include terracotta figurines, model body parts, bronze vessels, weapons, jewellery or painted tablets. They expressed reciprocity — the worshipper’s side of the exchange with the deity. A promise to dedicate an offering was a votum in Latin; Roman temples accumulated wealth through the objects left by grateful worshippers.
Animal Sacrifice: The Central Act of Worship
Animal sacrifice was the most important and elaborate form of worship in both Greek and Roman culture. The logic was the same as with votive offerings — giving the most valuable thing possible to the gods — but sacrifice was a public, communal event that could involve hundreds of people and was closely tied to civic festivals.
In a Greek sacrifice, the animal had to be perfect and unblemished: a bull, ox, cow, sheep, goat or pig, depending on the deity and the occasion. The animal was led in procession to the altar, adorned with garlands and gilded horns for a major sacrifice. Water was sprinkled on its head, and barley grains were scattered — the animal shaking its head was interpreted as a sign of willingness. The sacrificer (who might be a priest, a magistrate, or even a general before battle) then struck the animal with an axe or stunned it before cutting its throat over the altar.
The blood was collected and poured over the altar — the altar received the god’s share. The internal organs, especially the liver and lungs, were inspected for omens (see the next lesson on divination). The thighbones were wrapped in fat and burned on the altar fire, producing the smoke that the gods were believed to find pleasing. The rest of the meat was roasted and eaten by the worshippers, making sacrifice simultaneously a religious act, a communal feast, and one of the few occasions on which ordinary Greeks ate meat.
Roman sacrifice followed a broadly similar pattern but with distinctive features. The sacrificing magistrate covered his head (capite velato) and was accompanied by specialists: a haruspex to examine the entrails, and musicians playing flutes to drown out any bad omens heard during the rite. The animals most commonly sacrificed in public Roman ritual were the bull, sheep and pig together — a ceremony known as the suovetaurilia, used for major occasions such as the purification of the army.
A critical difference: the Romans demanded absolute ritual correctness. If a priest made a mistake, a further sacrifice could be needed to make amends. A piaculum was an expiatory sacrifice, and Roman procedures were highly formalised.
The four main stages of a Greek animal sacrifice: (1) Procession — the animal led adorned to the altar; (2) Preparation — water and barley scattered, the animal’s “consent” obtained; (3) Killing — the animal killed at the altar, blood poured over it; (4) Division — thighbones and fat burned for the gods; meat roasted and shared by the community.
Household Worship
Public sacrifice and temple ritual were not the only forms of worship. Both Greeks and Romans maintained religious practice in the home. Greek households kept a small hearth sacred to Hestia, and daily libations were poured to household gods at meals. Roman households maintained a small shrine called a lararium, where statuettes of the Lares (household guardian spirits) and the Penates (gods of the storeroom) were kept. The head of the household, the paterfamilias, conducted daily rituals at this shrine, including burning incense and offering food. This domestic piety was considered just as important as participation in public cult.
A key concept underpinning all ancient worship is the Latin phrase do ut des — “I give so that you may give.” The relationship between worshipper and deity was conceived as a reciprocal transaction: you honoured the god with prayer, sacrifice and offerings, and in return the god was expected to provide protection, good harvests, victory or health. This is very different from modern conceptions of prayer as purely spiritual or non-transactional. The gods of Greece and Rome were not morally perfect beings who demanded good behaviour from their worshippers — they wanted the correct rituals performed correctly, and regularly.