Role Of Sacrifice In The Iliad

Sacrifice is a completely foreign concept in this day and age, but in the eras of the Greeks and Romans, sacrifice, and the ritual that went along with it, was a common event that happened countless times throughout the years and in the epic, The Iliad , the author, Homer glorifies and displays this process. The rituals and sacrifices performed throughout The Iliad explicitly reveal Homer’s ideals of religion, morality, and the culture of the ancient peoples. The rituals of animal sacrifice are completely imperative because the humans are at the disposal and will of the gods and without an expression of respect, death and torture are inevitable. Homer uses extreme detail when explaining different scenes of sacrifice to affirm the importance the rituals possess not just in the poem, but in the characters’ lives. Interestingly, the animals

The violence of the sacrifices was real and had a specific purpose. There seems to be a direct tie between religion and sacrifice in some aspects of the poem, but in others, there seems to be no correlation. So in reality, there are two purposes for animal sacrifice, better relationship with the gods and an outlet for aggression. For the poor animals being sacrificed, this isn't a good thing but for the men it is good. It provides a way to feel connected to something greater than what they are experiencing. Homer include animal sacrifices to represent what’s happening on the battlefield, but in a much smaller scale. Men are dying left and right for the glory of the poem’s Hero’s and for the glory of the gods. Similarly, animals are being sacrificed for the glory of the men and the preservation of the good relations between the gods and