Devotio and human sacrifice in archaic Italy and Rome

The Roman father and son of the same name, P. Decius Mus, became paragon heroes by deliberately giving their lives in battle that Rome might win over a fierce enemy. Both engaged in a special ritual called devotio (from which our word “devotion” derives) to offer themselves to the gods of the Underworld, with whom regular people have very little interaction and to whom they rarely sacrifice. While the Mus family is the most famous for this act, it turns out the willingness to sacrifice oneself for Rome frequently occurs within stories of great patriots, including the story of Horatius Cocles, Mettius Curtius, Atilius Regulus, and even the traitors Coriolanus and Tarpeia. Romans regarded self-sacrifice as a very high, noble endeavor, whereas they loathed and persecuted practitioners of human sacrifice. It is therefore quite amazing to read that the Romans thrice engaged in state-sponsored human sacrifice, a fact they rarely mention and generally forget. The most famous enemy practitioners of human sacrifice were the Druids, whom the Romans massacred on Mona Island on Midsummer Night's Eve, but the Carthaginians, the Germans, the Celts, and the Thracians all infamously practiced human sacrifice. To Romans, the act of human sacrifice falls just short of cannibalism in the spectrum of forbidden practices, and was an accusation occasionally thrown against an enemy to claim they are totally barbaric. On the other hand, Romans recognized their own who committed acts of self-sacrifice for the good of the society, as heroes. There can be no better patriot than he who gives his life to save his country. Often the stories of their heroism have been exaggerated or sanitized. These acts of heroism often turn out to be acts of human sacrifice, supposedly a crime. It turns out that Romans have a strong legacy of practicing human sacrifice that lasts into the historic era, despite their alleged opposition to it. Numerous sources relate one story each. Collecting them all makes it impossible to deny the longevity of human sacrifice in Rome, although most Romans under the emperors were probably unaware of it. The paradox of condemning but still practicing human sacrifice demonstrates the nature of Roman religion, where do ut des plays a crucial role in standard sacrifice as well as in unpleasant acts like human sacrifice. Devotio was an inverted form of sacrifice, precisely because it was an offering to the gods of the Underworld, rather than to Jupiter or the Parcae. Romans may have forsaken devotio, but they continued to practice human sacrifice far longer than most of us have suspected, if one widens the current narrow definition of human sacrifice to include events where a life is taken in order to bring about a better future for the commonwealth, appease the gods, or ensure a Roman victory in battle.

Doctrinal Ritual, Identification, and Social Complexity

The doctrinal mode appears to have first emerged in world history with the advent of farming, helping to establish the first truly large-scale societies, in which identification with group categories became increasingly important, paving the way for new forms of political association. Many of the first states dominated by new doctrinal religions appear to have fostered extreme forms of inequality, epitomized by the deification of rulers and cruel practices, such as human sacrifice. But once societies exceeded a certain threshold in scale and complexity, the empires that seemed best able to flourish were those that adopted more ethical forms of doctrinal religion, mobilizing strong norms enforced as much by peer-to-peer policing as by top-down coercion.

Insurance as an Analogue of the Candidates Selection for Sacrifice in the Context of the Problem of Human Sacrifice Universality

The problem of human sacrifice universality can be formulated as follows: is a human sacrifice a sociocultural universal and, if so, how can this be proved? One possible approach to solving this problem is to show how human sacrifice is realized in modern societies. The main purpose of this research is to substantiate the assumption that there are contemporary analogues of the candidate’s selection for the role of a human sacrifice. If they exist, this will be an additional argument in favor of the opinion that human sacrifice is universal. The elements of human sacrifice can be spread out in time and space, and also be implemented in a different order than in traditional rituals. The hypothesis was that the selection of candidates for the role of victims in such distributed sacrifice is implemented by life and health insurance. As a research method we used the analysis of possible statistical relationships between mortality and life expectancy of people, on the one hand, and the availability of different types of life and health insurance policies, on the other. Since the mortality rate among the military in active service is higher than among civilians, compulsory life and health insurance for military personnel can be viewed as an analogue of the selection of victims. In the case of civilian victims, the availability of voluntary life and health insurance policies for people is positively correlated with life expectancy, which is presumably associated with better medical care in cases of illness or accident. Voluntary insurance can be viewed as an analogue of negative selection: those not insured have a higher chance of becoming a victim.

Ludira – Setya – Tresna: Potret Fenomenologi dalam Studi Kasus Lagon Dharma Kasetyan

Descriptively formulated three objectives in this article consisted of: (1) Portrait of the ludira fragment in the lyrics of the Dharma Kasetyan song, (2) Portrait of the setya fragment in the Dharma Kasetyan song, and (3) The portrait of the Tresna fragment in the Dharma Kasetyan song. A qualitative descriptive research method was used with the data collection techniques for the document studies in the form of compositions of poetry and recordings of performances on the youtube page. The collected data was then dissected using a phenomenological approach that focuses on portraits of Ludira, Setya and Tresna. Based on the data findings and discussion, three conclusions can be drawn. First, the whole fragment contains about dharma (good behavior performed by humans) and loyalty (setya); Second, it is an act of human sacrifice that pours out everything until it bleeds (ludira); and Third, consciously to suffer for love (tresna). The story of loyalty and dharma in life is not only a love story between two lovebirds, a man and a woman, but also the loyalty and love of parents for their children, as well as how loyal they are in keeping their promises. Keywords: dharma kasetyan, phenomenology, ludira, setya, tresna Abstrak: Secara deskriptif dirumuskan tiga hal yang dijadikan tujuan dalam artikel ini terdiri dari: (1) Potret fragmen ludira pada syair lagu Dharma Kasetyan, (2) Potret fragmen setya pada syair lagu Dharma Kasetyan, dan (3) Potret fragmen tresna pada syair lagu Dharma Kasetyan. Metode penelitian deskriptif kualitatif digunakan dengan teknik pengumpulan data studi dokumen berupa komposisi syair dan rekaman pementasan di laman youtube. Data terkumpul selanjutnya dibedah dengan pendekatan fenomenologi yang difokuskan pada potret ludira, setya dan tresna. Berdasarkan temuan data dan pembahasan dapat disimpulkan tiga rumusan. Pertama, keseluruhan fragmennya berisi mengenai dharma (perilaku baik yang dilakukan oleh manusia) dan kesetiaan (setya); Kedua, merupakan tindakan pengorbanan manusia yang mencurahkan segalanya sampai berdarah-darah (ludira); dan Ketiga, dengan sadar untuk menderita karena cinta (tresna). Kisah kesetiaan dan dharma dalam kehidupan tidak hanya cerita cinta antara dua sejoli lelaki dan perempuan, namun juga kesetiaan dan cinta orang tua terhadap anaknya, juga bagaimana kesetiaan dalam memegang teguh pada janji. Kata kunci: dharma kasetyan, fenomenologi, ludira, setya, tresna.

The Ballad „Meșterul Manole”: an Archetypal Interpretation

In this article, the interpretation of the ballad „Meșterul Manole” found expression in an archetypal perspective, in correlation with the message of ideas, the legendary-historical significance and the sources of mythical inspiration. A symbol of the aspiration for the perfection of a work of art, the ballad is a masterpiece of universal inspiration, where the motive of human sacrifice in the service of a social, aesthetic, spiritual ideal becomes the essence of our millennial spirituality, is the artistic synthesis of a sacred space of values their fundamentals. One of the distinctive features of the ballad is the opening to new areas of mythical transcendence, orientation to some original images, with an ancient mythological substratum, prone to successive changes, to reveal new dimensions in the aesthetic perception of the world, in the context of serious meditations on life. and death, fulfillment, and sacrifice, about the perpetuation of the human spirit through creation.

Brigands and Cruel Kings

Most of Heracles’ parerga involve not mythological monsters but murderous humans or demigods famous for torturing and murdering travelers unfortunate enough to pass through their territories. Many of these antagonists, such as Cacus, Antaeus, and Cycnus, displayed their victims’ skulls as trophies. Such stories may echo headhunting rituals evidenced by archaeological finds from the Mesolithic through the early Iron Age. Heracles’ victories over these bloodthirsty characters, like his victories over monstrous beasts, may thus not only represent the abstract triumph of “civilized” values but also possibly reflect specific practices of early Mediterranean societies—including skull-taking in battle and human sacrifice related to crop fertility—replaced by more “humane” customs as Hellenic culture developed. These stories, with their extreme concerns about territory and boundaries, may also reflect the xenophobia evident between Greeks and foreigners as Greece expanded her colonial presence in the Mediterranean and beyond.