Lucian’s On Sacrifice
Satire is a complicated genre; and it is extremely hard to write effectively. Often satirical works today fail to get their message across by being too offensive and/or angry, the jokes and jabs simply do not land as intended. Which is why it is so amazing when you are able to read a good satire, one that is equal parts funny and insightful. It is especially amazing when you can read a satire from 2000 years ago, and still understand who and what the writer is satirizing. In Lucian’s essay On Sacrifice, he successfully satirizes the religious institutions around him by using his knowledge of religious mythology, and religious authorities to point out the ridiculous nature of the sacrifices he sees in his daily life.
It would help us understand his writing by first learning a bit of where Lucian is coming from, an important aspect to remember when reading Lucian’s work is that he is writing from the perspective of someone on the outskirts of the Roman empire during a time in which it is beginning to fracture. He is also writing in Attic Greek not Latin. Attic is often associated with famous philosophers, and neither Greek nor Latin was likely to be his first language. He was also writing from the perspective of an outsider who was deeply entrenched in both Greek and Roman culture, even more interestingly an outsider who appears to be highly educated in the topics he was writing about. He is obviously exceedingly educated in rhetoric, philosophy, and mythology. He often criticizes philosophers especially cynics, displaying a deep understanding of their beliefs and how they fail to follow them. He seems to have a deep dislike for superstitious beliefs of any kind as well as organized religion. He became quite famous in his life, and was well regarded as a writer and rhetorician. We are lucky that a great number and variety of his writings are available to us today, with many essays and stories being translated extensively.
In this essay, many of Lucian’s thoughts bleed through. This essay in particular is about the superstitious nature of sacrifices, he weaves quite the persuasive argument throughout the text while remaining remarkable light-hearted. The main arguments, and the ones which take over the majority of the essay are rather simple: why would the gods require anything from the people worshiping them? and why would a being as powerful as a god or goddess truly care or be disappointed by mortals so beneath them? Lucian uses myth to help argue his point. He talks about many miraculous and impossible things the gods have done like Hera birthing Hephaestus without Zeus, and Cronus swallowing his children. He talks about the many times the gods have raged against people for a forgotten sacrifice, or had their anger cooled in Athena’s case by the slaughtering of a few oxen. By using these examples, he is able to appeal to a great number of people. These stories and others like them about the flighty and sometimes cruel natures of the gods were well known. He makes his point by pointing out the inconsistencies through the stories that would have been common knowledge. In this way, he frames the gods as changeable and unreliable.
Lucian also has a great deal to say about the role of priests in religious sacrifices. While he does earlier in the essay make fun of the people who believe that sacrifices can help them, he takes much more time to point out the hypocritical role the priests play during sacrifices of both humans and animals. He asks why people who have ‘unclean hands’ are prevented from entering a temple when most of the time priests are elbow deep in blood and gore. Does their position as a priest in a temple really make their hands cleaner? He talks about taking animals from far more worthy pursuits like ploughing or farming, and then slaughtering them for use during a sacrifice that is uncertain to work. He makes these religious authority figures look ridiculous quite easily this way. Lucian is a genius at making people look silly by using their own rules against them.
