Note 12 — PART I CHAPTER I ΒELIEFS ABOUT THE SOUL AND CULT OF SOULS IN THE HOMERIC POEMS

The sacrificial character of the proceedings at the rogus of Patroklos has again been called in question by v. Fritze, de libatione veterum Graecorum, 71 f. (1893). He admits this interpretation of the pouring of the blood on the pyre, but explains the other circumstances differently. It would be quite easy to disprove in this fashion the sacrificial character of every ὁλοκαύτωμα for χθόνιοι whether Heroes or the dead. It is true that the bodies of sheep and cattle, horses and dogs, thus completely consumed by fire, are not a “food-offering”, but they are a sacrifice for all that, and belong to the class of expiatory offerings in which the flesh is not offered for the food of the daimon but the lives of the victims are sacrificed to him. That Achilles slays the Trojan prisoners at the rogus κταμένοιο χολωθείς (Ψ 23) does not destroy the sacrificial character of this offering intended to appease the wrath (felt also by Achilles) of the dead man.—The whole procedure gives a picture of primitive sacrificial ritual in honour of the dead and differs in no particular from the ritual of sacrifice to the θεοὶ χθόνιοι. This is recognized by Stengel in his Chthonischer und Todtencult (Festschr. Friedländ.), p. 432, who also marks clearly the differences between the two religious ceremonies as they were gradually evolved in the process of time.