Sacrifice

Use in the book

The Athenian embassy claims religious superiority by quantity, excellence and expense. It opposes its own lavish sacrifices to the Spartans’ allegedly maimed victims. This is an advocate’s comparison inside a reported complaint, not an independently established inventory of both cities’ worship. Ammon’s reply refuses the proposed scale of assessment by preferring Spartan auspicious speech.

The Trojan scene sharpens that refusal: even perfect hecatombs cannot secure divine acceptance where the worshippers are hated by the gods. The adjective perfect may be read as answering the Athenian criticism of maimed Spartan victims. The association is pointed but remains a reading of the juxtaposition; the text does not pause to explain it.

Socrates supplies the positive criterion at 149e–150b. The gods attend to whether the soul is holy and just, whereas both a city and an individual may continue paying for grand ceremonies despite many wrong actions. This subordinates the rite to the condition of its agent. It does not declare animal sacrifice inherently unacceptable or ordinary worship pointless.

The closing action makes the distinction concrete. Alcibiades puts off his own sacrifice and says that the gods will receive wreaths and customary things when he is ready. Postponement is safer than risking another unexamined approach. The intended rite is deferred for education; it is not replaced with a newly instituted permanent cult of Socrates.

Places to read

1. 148e–149a2The Athenians advertise their sacrifices and criticise Spartan victims.
2. 149cThe gods reject expensive sacrifices with ill-omened requests.
3. 149d–150aTrojans and corrupt donors show why ritual completeness and expenditure are insufficient.
4. 150c–151b2Alcibiades defers the particular sacrifice he was about to offer.

Translation in this edition

The edition notes the imperfect attestation of the five Iliadic lines quoted at 149d–149e: only line 549 stands at this place in the Homeric manuscripts, though the last quoted line recurs elsewhere. The comparison of perfect and maimed victims must preserve that textual caution. The source does not name the god or sanctuary of Alcibiades’ errand.

Use in the book

The companion begins with a severe contrast: for “us,” sacrificing human beings is not law but unholy; Carthaginians sacrifice them as holy and lawful for themselves, some even sacrificing their own sons to Cronus (315b–c). The phrase “as perhaps you too have heard” marks the report as received knowledge. The lexicon should attribute it to the speaker rather than turn it into a freshly verified account of every Carthaginian community or period.

The next examples change the geography without changing the argumentative function. The people in Lycaea and Athamas' descendants perform striking sacrifices though they are Greeks. The companion's wording does not repeat the explicit human object in this second clause, but the continuation and the edition's notes identify the allusion to human sacrifice. A quotation should preserve that distinction between what is stated in the clause and what its context supplies.

The contrast is meant to show that disagreement is not exhausted by Greek versus non-Greek identity. The subsequent Athenian burial examples show that it is not exhausted by geography either. Holy and lawful are paired in the Carthaginian description because the companion's objection concerns rules actually recognized as legitimate by practitioners. He is not arguing that every sacrifice is truly just merely because someone approves it.

Socrates does not answer by determining whether those sacrifices are holy. Carthage and Lycaea reappear as places where greater weights are regarded as heavier (316a). Their return is pointed: they are admitted into a common world of correct judgment despite their different rituals. Yet establishing agreement about weight does not itself settle the classification of a sacrificial act. The reader should not invent a missing case-by-case refutation.

Religion later enters from the other side: Socrates warns against wronging divine human beings by speech and presents Minos' laws as grounded in Zeus' education. The dialogue thus neither treats religious claims as automatically authoritative nor dismisses them collectively as mere superstition. Their force depends on judgments of truth and goodness that are themselves being examined.

Places to read

1. 315bἀνθρώπους θύειν ἀλλ’ ἀνόσιον — Human sacrifice is described as unholy for the speakers' community
2. 315b–cΚαρχηδόνιοι δὲ θύουσιν ὡς ὅσιον ὂν καὶ νόμιμον αὐτοῖς — The companion's contrary report about Carthaginians
3. 315cτοὺς αὑτῶν ὑεῖς τῷ Κρόνῳ — Their own sons and the god named as recipient
4. 315cοἱ ἐν τῇ Λυκαίᾳ οὗτοι; οἱ τοῦ Ἀθάμαντος ἔκγονοι — The two Greek examples
5. 315cοἵας θυσίας θύουσιν Ἕλληνες ὄντες — The emphatic appeal to sacrifices performed by Greeks
6. 316aκαὶ ἐν Καρχηδόνι καὶ ἐν Λυκαίᾳ — The locations return in the question about weight

Translation in this edition

Lycaea is treated as the region of Mount Lycaeus in Arcadia, not as the name of a festival. The supplied notes identify the Athamas allusion with Herodotus 7.197 and give ancient parallels for the other reports. These are the edition's contextual references, not claims of a new collation or independent archaeological verification. “Holy” and “unholy” keep hosios distinct from the later vocabulary of sacred persons and impiety.

Athamas — Ἀθάμας (Athamas)

Ἀθάμας (Athamas)

Athamas. The ancestor whose descendants supply a second Greek sacrificial example. Attested: Ἀθάμαντος (315c). Sacrifice, holiness, and the cited communities.

Carthaginians — Καρχηδόνιος (Karchēdonios)

Καρχηδόνιος (Karchēdonios)

Carthaginians. The people used in the companion's first contrasting sacrificial example. Attested: Καρχηδόνιοι (315b). Sacrifice, holiness, and the cited communities.

Cronus — Κρόνος (Kronos)

Κρόνος (Kronos)

Cronus. The god named in the companion's Greek account as recipient of the Carthaginian sacrifice. Attested: Κρόνῳ (315c). Sacrifice, holiness, and the cited communities.

Descendants — ἔκγονος (ekgonos)

ἔκγονος (ekgonos)

Descendants. The descendants of Athamas, not Athamas himself, are named as practitioners. Attested: ἔκγονοι (315c). Sacrifice, holiness, and the cited communities.

Holy — ὅσιος (hosios)

ὅσιος (hosios)

Holy. The contrary evaluation attributed to Carthaginian practitioners, not an endorsement by the lexicon. Attested: ὅσιον (315b). Sacrifice, holiness, and the cited communities.

Have heard — ἀκούειν (akouein)

ἀκούειν (akouein)

Have heard. The companion marks his report of Carthaginian sacrifice as something Socrates may also have heard. Attested: ἀκήκοας (315c). Sacrifice, holiness, and the cited communities.

Lawful — νόμιμος (nomimos) · νόμιμον (315c).

νόμιμος (nomimos)

Lawful. What the companion says Carthaginians consider their sacrifice to be for themselves. Attested: νόμιμον (315c). Sacrifice, holiness, and the cited communities.

Lycaea — Λυκαία (Lykaia)

Λυκαία (Lykaia)

Lycaea. The district of Mount Lycaeus in the edition's explanation, used as a Greek sacrificial example rather than the name of a festival. Attested: Λυκαίᾳ (315c). Sacrifice, holiness, and the cited communities.

Sacrifice — θύειν (thyein)

θύειν (thyein)

Sacrifice. In the first example the explicit object is human beings, considered unholy by the speakers' community. Attested: θύειν (315b). Sacrifice, holiness, and the cited communities.

Sacrifices — θυσία (thysia)

θυσία (thysia)

Sacrifices. The striking rites performed by the Greek groups in the companion's next example. Attested: θυσίας (315c). Sacrifice, holiness, and the cited communities.

Sons — υἱός (huios)

υἱός (huios)

Sons. The victims described as some Carthaginians' own sons; the form is the source's form of the word for son. Attested: ὑεῖς (315c). Sacrifice, holiness, and the cited communities.

Unholy — ἀνόσιος (anosios)

ἀνόσιος (anosios)

Unholy. The Athenian evaluation of sacrificing human beings in the companion's report. Attested: ἀνόσιον (315b). Sacrifice, holiness, and the cited communities.

And even their own sons (contextual phrase)

315c: καὶ ταῦτα ἔνιοι αὐτῶν καὶ τοὺς αὑτῶν ὑεῖς. The combination heightens the example: some, what is more, even sacrifice their own sons. The reflexive αὑτῶν fixes whose sons are meant. The clause belongs to the companion's report of Carthaginian practice, introduced with an appeal to what Socrates may have heard. It must not be generalized into a claim that every Carthaginian did so. See Sacrifice and holiness.

Use in the book

The civic analogy lists sacrifices to gods beside rites for heroes and libations for the dead. These different activities coexist under one lawful authority, illustrating how a community’s diverse actions can form an order. Sacrifice is one distinct item in that coordinated religious life.

Places to read

1. I.1.36bSacrifices participate in the city’s varied but ordered activities.
2. I.9.17.2Sacrifices are conveyed through divine-human mediation.

Translation in this edition

“Sacrifice” is appropriate without supplying an unmentioned victim or procedure.

Use in the book

The explicit definition accumulates deprivation, renunciation, abandonment and destitution, then compares the pagan’s ox and the Christian’s refusal of a desired woman. A separate maxim extends sacrifice to parts of independence, mind and reason owed to society. The later religious definition names giving God what pleases us, is dear to us and is loved. These are distinct objects of attachment; their threefold repetition measures what is surrendered.

Places to read

1. I, p. 147, entry 9, ¶1Sacrifice is defined through cost and renunciation.
2. I, p. 323, entry 1, ¶1Society is said to require portions of independence and reason.
3. II, p. 766, entry 14, ¶1Religious sacrifice gives up what one values.

Translation in this edition

The English translation preserves the repeated sacrifice verb and the difference between pleasure, dearness and love. “Fortune” in the ox example concerns possessions rather than luck. The social note’s damaged day is not inferred, and no complete theory of obedience is added to its demand.

Use in the book

Traherne moves among Christ’s sacrifice, the scriptural sacrifices that prefigure it, and the responsive offerings of the faithful. These are connected but not interchangeable. Christ’s person gives his offering a significance that no created being can supply; the reader’s living sacrifice is an answer to that love.

The Psalms teach why praise and contrition can surpass animal offerings. A groan or a thanksgiving proceeds from a conscious, affectionate soul and bears the reality of friendship. Charity toward Christ’s poor members similarly becomes an offering to him. The argument is not that material life is worthless, but that its highest purpose is realized in free and rightly directed personal acts.

Places to read

1. II.37Christ’s offering is made in time through the eternal Spirit.
2. III.81The psalmic rejection of merely material offering introduces thanksgiving.
3. III.83Christ and the contrite heart are distinguished from their sacrificial figures.
4. I.81Care for Christ’s members is described as sacrifice.
5. I.91The speaker asks that the soul become a living sacrifice.
6. II.33The priestly appointment supplies part of the argument for the Son’s honoured and voluntary sacrifice.

In this edition

Types and figures in III.83 describes the preparatory status of earlier sacrifices in Traherne’s Christian reading. It is his interpretive claim, not a neutral description of every sacrificial tradition.

The order of Melchisedec

II.33 brings Christ’s priesthood into the account of his willing sacrifice. The quoted appointment to the order of Melchisedec comes through Hebrews 5:4–6, as the edition explains. The older biblical figure is the king of Salem and priest who blesses Abraham; Traherne’s immediate purpose is the divine calling and honour of the Son’s office. Calling and consent cooperate in the argument: the dignity is bestowed, while the suffering is freely undertaken.

Use in the book

B1282 supplies a positive model of propitiation under Cypris. Its worshippers offer pious images, painted figures, perfumed substances, myrrh, frankincense, and honey. The altar remains free of bulls' slaughter-blood. The point is not a rejection of all relations with divine powers: the queen is still honoured and propitiated. The rejected act is tearing out life and eating limbs, which the poem calls a grave defilement.

B137 makes sacrificial killing a catastrophe of recognition. The father raises and slaughters a beloved son whose form has changed, praying as he does so. The ritual setting gives the killing an appearance of religious propriety while the concealed kinship makes its true character horrifying. The passage then reverses family positions, extending the charge beyond one exceptional father.

Read together, the fragments distinguish a worship that sustains a nonviolent relation to life from a ritual that masks violence. They do not preserve a complete sacrificial manual or show that every community followed the poet's prescription. They also leave historical questions about practice open. What survives is a forceful poetic contrast with specified materials and acts.

Places to read

1. B 128.4–102The poem names fragrant offerings as sacrifices while condemning bloody consumption.
2. B 137.1–6A father slaughters his transformed son with a prayer; the family roles then reverse.
3. B 136The appeal to stop slaughter explains it as mutual devouring.

Translation in this edition

“Sacrifices of unmixed myrrh” is an important lexical counterexample to equating sacrifice with animal killing. B136–1372 depend here on quotations transmitted through Sextus, whose setting is not a full surviving Empedoclean ritual handbook.

Use in the book

The earliest striking occurrence belongs to René’s travels: a monument indicates a place made famous by a sacrifice (p. 150). Chateaubriand’s note places it near Whitehall. The anonymous editor identifies the intended event as Charles I’s execution and corrects the statue’s identification. Within the story, what matters is the contrast between a catastrophe and labourers’ indifference to its memorial. Sacrifice here exposes the vulnerability of public memory, rather than describing an act of monastic devotion.

At the profession, René first wants to disrupt the sacrifice and even imagines killing himself in the church (p. 177). That imagined intrusion would turn another person’s consecration into the spectacle of his own anguish. The ceremony defeats this intention through beauty, sacred authority, and Amélie’s reproachful courage. Flowers, torches, perfumes, and the comparison with burning incense give her offering a richly sensuous form (pp. 178–1792). The scene does not simply oppose religion to sensation; it recruits sensation in the redirection of feeling.

The word continues to name both the Mass and the costly act by which Amélie separates herself from worldly attachment. René learns that it is consummated only after he is carried out unconscious. He is thus not an uninterrupted eyewitness of its completion. In her later letter Amélie herself says the very excess of the completed sacrifice helps restore peace (p. 185). The change of speaker is decisive: an event he experiences as deprivation becomes, in her account, a difficult act with consoling effects.

The final description of her as a victim of zeal and charity renews sacrificial language through practical care. She dies while nursing companions with a contagious illness, not at the profession and not by a narrated act of self-destruction. That distinction prevents a flattening equation between vows, symbolic death, and actual death. The work joins renunciation to the preservation of other lives. Its sacrifice is compelling precisely because devotion remains costly and embodied, while the narrative allows different participants to understand that cost differently.

Places to read

1. p. 150un lieu fameux par un sacrifice — The word first carries a political and commemorative force.
2. p. 178qui devoient rendre l'holocauste agréable — Perfumes and flowers frame the offering in liturgical imagery.
3. p. 181le sacrifice étoit consommé — René learns of completion after recovering consciousness.
4. p. 185L'excès même du sacrifice — Amélie interprets the cost from within her new life.
5. p. 188morte victime de son zèle et de sa charité — Sacrificial vocabulary culminates in nursing the sick.

Translation in this edition

The translation keeps “sacrifice” across its different applications and glosses holocauste in the old sense. The historical correction concerning Whitehall is the edition’s editorial note, not a correction made by René or by the lexicon through new research.