Equality and Privilege

Was sacrificial meat distributed equally or hierarchically in ancient Greece? Some have resolved the question diachronically: Archaic Greece had a more democratic sacrificial distribution that democratic classical Athens.

Gunnel Ekroth concludes that the two systems lived side-by-side. Choice pieces were given to dignitaries and priests, but the bulk of the meat was divided up equally among the participants.

Yet the equality shouldn’t be exaggerated in a way that obscures “the intricate possibilities of this ritual to establish and mark the hierarchies, status and privilege among the persons who received meat. Just as equal meat distribution was used to express the unity of the group, it also made clear who could be excluded: women, metics, slaves or children were hardly entitled to meat portions to the same extent as adult, free men.” Meat distribution is “not as equal and straightforward as it may seem at first sight.”

Ekroth suggests that we envision concentric circles: “Those outside the circles will have no access at all to the meat. In the outer circle are those receiving the equal portions of meat, next come those near the altar who also taste the grilled splanchna, then the recipients of choice portions – priests, priestesses and other religious or secular functionaries. In the centre is the god and the closer one gets to the god, the more meat will be given.” Greece too had its system of “graded holiness.”

(Ekroth, “Meat, Man and God. On the Division of the Animal Victim at Greek Sacrifices,” in A. Matthaiou and I. Polinskaya, eds., MIKROS IERPOMEMON: Meletes eis Mnemen Michael H. Jameson [Athens, 2008] 259-90, quote above at 283-4)_