Cult Ritual Killings in Ancient Rome

 September 27, 2020  Russ Winter  Articles by Russ Winter, Culture, Hidden History,
International News, Winter Watch Articles  0

Ancient Roman writers claimed that human sacrifices were made during Rome's early history. After the Romans
were defeated at the Battle of Cannae in 216 B.C., a battle that allowed an army from Carthage to temporarily
occupy a large part of Italy, the Romans resorted to human sacrifice. 'A Gaulish man and a Gaulish woman and a
Greek man and a Greek woman were buried alive under the Forum Boarium,' wrote the Roman writer Titus Livius
(died A.D. 17) in his book 'History of Rome' (translation by Canon Roberts). PHOTO/TEXT:
LiveScience.com/Shutterstock

This is Part III of our three-part series on human sacrifice and extreme debauchery in the ancient
world. See Part I: “Rome’s Own Version of an ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ Cult: Bacchanalia Runs
Amok“; and Part II: “Scholars Finally Confirm Ancient Carthage was Involved in Child
Sacrifice.”

A s with Carthage, there is a distortion of history when it comes to Rome. This society
was very much into the sacrifice of animals. They tried to pin human sacrifice on
foes, such as the Druids and Gauls.

Pliny the Elder (23–78 C.E.) writes, “A decree forbidding human sacrifices was passed by
the senate [in 97 BCE]; from which period the celebration of these horrid rites ceased in
public, and, for some time, altogether.”

However, more privately, the well-being of the state of Rome depended upon discipline
and the performance of cult rituals.

The Romans believed that in order to maintain the favored status of the gods, they
needed to perform ritual killings. Sacrificial murder was a violation of established Roman
law, but ritual killing offered a loophole, such as if it was prescribed by the gods or
involved the killing of foreigners and slaves, who were not Roman citizens.

Celia Schultz, professor of Classical Studies at the University of Michigan, notes

a distinction the Romans made between sacrifice and ritual killing. They sacrificed people
in a way that tried to encompass a large range of gods and goddesses to get the optimal
outcome. The Romans strove to please all of their gods in order to avoid paying for a
snub with a particularly harsh winter or general bad luck.

If the killing was kept away from Roman citizens, or if the victim was killed according to the
edicts of the gods, then the Romans were “technically” not engaging in the otherwise
barbaric practice of human sacrifice.

Prior to abolition, there was a series of live burials of Gauls and Greeks, in the BCE years
of 228, 216 and 114. Live burials occurred in the Forum Boarium. The ritual nature was
not real clear, and the primary purpose may have been terror.

Rome’s Forum Boarium is home to the Temple of Hercules and Temple of Vesta. PHOTO: Rome.net

Later as criminals and slaves were used, as gladiators and foils of gladiators in a religious
context they were sacrificed to the Manes on behalf of the deceased. The Etruscans were
credited by the Romans for introducing gladiatorial contests to Rome. These were
actually executions that incorporated a ritual sacrificial agenda.

IMAGE: ItalianTribune.com

The Romans also seemed to combine eugenics with what is called “prodigy.” These are
supernatural signs of the gods being displeased, according to many documents. Wanting
to mend their tainted relationship with the gods, the Romans would search for unnatural
phenomena that would be the reason for the gods’ anger.

The ancient historian Livy (59 BCE–17 CE) mentioned a series of prodigies that occurred in
Rome. The events started with rocks falling from the sky, lightning striking a temple, a
river of blood, a wolf attack in the city, and culminates with a deformed infant being born
in Rome around 207 BCE.

Livy wrote, “There had been born a child as large as a four-year-old … it was uncertain
whether male or female. Soothsayers summoned from Etruria said it was a terrible and
loathsome portent; it must be removed from Roman territory, far from contact with
earth, and drowned in the sea.”

In fact, most deformed infants were placed in boxes and thrown into the sea as means of
an offering. Sending them out to sea was a way to purify their land, removing the offenses
from the earth entirely. They were sent to their deaths in a way that removed them from
Rome, casting them away from the land. These children were not supposed to exist.
Hermaphrodites in particular were targeted. Unlike Carthage, the Romans appeared to
have no interest in sacrifice of healthy children.

The Romans did not partake in but allowed ritual killing in a grove dedicated to the
Goddess Diana some 20 miles outside Rome. Diana was the goddess of slaves. This ritual
involved slaves fighting to the death, indicating ritual killing through combat, either to
become protector or to maintain the status quo. This ritual was known as Rex
Nemorensis. The survivor of the duel would become Rex (king) of the grove or the new
leader of the slave community. Strabo, in his work “Geography,” called this ceremony
“Scythic.”

According to ancient sources, the classical hero Orestes came to Nemi and established a cult of
Diana here. His priest was known as the Rex Nemorensis, a runaway slave who could succeed his
predecessor only by killing him in a duel, after having grabbed a branch of mistletoe from an oak
tree in the grove preceding the sanctuary. TEXT/PHOTO: ItalianGems.wordpress.com

The idea here was passage to a new king, or rebirth as the old Rex, would be slain by the
next Rex. The funeral took place with the body on an altar; and afterward, the new Rex
would take the bones and ashes of the old Rex down into a cave to send to the
underworld. There was also a symbolic marriage between the Goddess Diana and the
Rex.

This is the notion of the sacred king. Sir James George Frazer identified — or invented —
the concept of the sacred king in his study “The Golden Bough“(1890–1915), the title of
which refers to the myth of the Rex Nemorensis. Frazer gives numerous examples, and
was an inspiration for the myth and ritual school (aka ritual from myth).

The king might also be designated to suffer and atone for his people, meaning that the
sacral king could be the pre-ordained victim in a human sacrifice, either killed at the end
of his term in the position, or sacrificed in a time of crisis. Modern-day nothing-to-see-
here, move-along pajama scholars poo poo this thinking as well. Maybe they are right this
time, as sacrifice, divine or otherwise, seems starkly missing among those that rule. But
that doesn’t mean the ancients didn’t accept the myth.

The Vestal Virgins worshiped the Goddess Vesta. Vesta was the goddess that provided
fire and her importance to the Romans required the Vestal Virgins to maintain a temple
at the center of the city. Vesta’s fire was kept lit to honor and please the goddess, so she
would provide fire for the people. This position of responsibility required Vestal Virgins to
stay true to their name and be chaste and unmarried for 30 years, offering sacrifices and
performing rituals under the law of the House of Vesta.

Image result for vestal virgins

Painting of Vestal Virgins, the keepers of the flame, in the Temple of Vesta, Rome

There were severe punishments for Vestal Virgins who dishonored their vows. If deemed
unchaste, she would be interred in an underground cell; but because the Romans did not
allow burials within the city, the Vestal Virgins were given water and bread. This interment
shows that the Romans attempted to avoid what they considered human sacrifice,
because they gave the Virgins rations to live for a short time; but with the interment, they
passed the buck into the hands of Vesta. When the Vestal Virgins violated their vows to
Vesta, the Romans had to act to keep Rome in Vesta’s favor.

Human sacrifice remained a powerful religious force

in Roman Empire long after its actual practice had
been legally abandoned. As a mythic motif, the
practice is found in the mystery religions that
 entered Rome from the East. The mortal Hercules,
dying on a burning wheel, became immortal to enter
Olympus. Osiris, or Serapis, as a mortal king dies and
Roman Cult of Mithras is resurrected to become the divine judge of the
dead. In the myths of Attis, Tammuz, and Adonis, with
Mithras, Proserpina and others, the theme of death and resurrection into the divine
became the central feature of the mysteries. Jesus Christ was totally in line with the long-
standing sacrificial death and resurrection mythical concept.

The dark ceremonies of most of these mystery

religious societies mimed death and resurrection.
This was done in the most extravagant manner. In
some ceremonies, candidates were buried or
encased in a sarcophagus. Alternatively, the
candidates were symbolically drowned or
decapitated.

In imitation of the Orphic myth of Dionysus

Zagreus, a rite was held in which the heart of a
victim, supposedly a human child, was roasted
and distributed among the participants to be
eaten. Sparagmos is to “tear, rend, pull to pieces”,
or mangling, usually in a Dionysian context. The image at right is wall painting from
the House of the Vettii, Pompeii. Nothing to see here, move along?

In the Dionysus and Isis mysteries, the initiation was sometimes

accomplished by a “sacred marriage,” or a sacral copulation.
Dionysiac, or Bacchic, societies flourished in the whole empire.
Supposedly, these secret rites consisted of a bloodless sacrifice
and mimicking death — but that is really an open question. Logic
would suggest otherwise. This was an era when life was cheap, and
some people were slaves and expendable. Who would enforce
against an organized and ruthless secret cult?
Roman god Saturn
From Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2.37: “After Dionysos had
demonstrated to the Thebans that he was a god, he went to Argos
where again he drove the women mad when the people did not pay him honour, and up
in the mountains the women fed on the flesh of the babies suckling at their breasts.”

Here is another example of Bacchic-Dionysiac fun and games.

The mystery secret societies did not differentiate between religious associations and
private or political clubs. They were one in the same, and they demonstrated a certain
ruthlessness. Whoever would abandon the common political cause would be denounced
by his former friends for having committed a crime against religion, and many witnesses
against him would be at hand.

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