"Xenophon sacrificed on account of an expedition": divination and the 'sphagia' before ancient Greek battles

Abstract

Warfare is a process, perhaps the main means, by which human beings have historically sought to settle their political, historical and cultural differences. In archaic and classical Greece, battle and animal sacrifice were intrinsically bound together. There was no violent conflict between cities without the violence of animal sacrifice. Each armed conflict, involving the slaughter of hoplites and the shedding of human blood, was preceded by a slaughter of animals and the spilling of their blood. It could be argued that animal sacrifice preceded a wide range of human endeavours in ancient Greece, and that warfare was not particularly different in this respect from the other activities for which the ancient Greeks employed sacrifice. However, leaving aside routine sacrificial contexts such as festivals, warfare did in fact provide one of the main if not the premiere occasion for the employment of animal sacrifice in a structured and consistent ritualised manner in Greek religion.