Note 35.1 — Chapter II · THE PREHISTORIC PERIOD

Chthonian worship.—The important distinction which is well attested of the later ages between the ‘chthonian’ and the ‘Olympian’ ritual—to use these two conventional terms for convenience—may already have been in vogue in the earliest period of the polytheism. In the first type of sacrifice, where the offering was made to the nether divinities, the victim’s head was held down above a hole in the ground—a βόθρος—and the blood from the severed throat was shed into it. In the second, where the upper powers, whose region was the air or the sky, were the recipients, the victim was held up erect off the ground, his face lifted towards the sky, and in this attitude his throat was cut. Homer shows himself aware of this form of sacrifice; and that the other, the chthonian, was also in vogue in his time is to be inferred from his account of the ritual performed by Odysseus in honour of the shades, where he mentions the βόθρος, the sacrifice of black sheep, with their heads turned downwards towards the lower world, and the triple libation of honey, wine and water.35.1 For the ritual of the dead in the Greek religious tradition was closely modelled on the service of the nether divinities. The triple libation is known to have been part of Minoan-Cretan cult, as the altar table found in the cave of Mount Dikte attests.35.2 And a shrine with a βόθρος in the middle of the cella has been found at Priniá in Crete, consecrated to a chthonian goddess, of which the foundation is ascribed to the ninth century.35.3