Animal Sacrifice and Euergetism in the Roman Empire

AbstractThis chapter examines how the role of animal sacrifice as an efficient instrument for structuring sociopolitical hierarchies acquired new force in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, becoming integrated into the socioeconomic system of euergetism. In this system, wealthy community members bestowed benefits on fellow citizens in exchange for public honors and superior civic status. In the cities of the Greek east, inscriptions reveal how local benefactors, as magistrates and priests, used their own resources to fund the civic festivals over which they presided, including the animal sacrifices central to them. Their economic and social prominence as sponsors of these events took on concrete form in their ritual prominence as those who presided over the sacrifice and distribution of meat. In the cities of the Latin west, the relationship between animal sacrifice and euergetism was more indirect but still apparent: people who presided over public animal sacrifices as magistrates and priests held their positions by virtue of their wealth. Animal sacrifice was tightly integrated into the euergetic system, which was integral to the sociopolitical organization of the Graeco-Roman city. Given the central role of the city in imperial administration, public animal sacrifice contributed to the smooth functioning of the Roman Empire.