Unusual Sacrificial Victims: Fish and Their Value in the Context of Sacrifices

Fish play an interesting role in Greek cults. This kind of animal is not ordinarily used as sacrificial victim. Scholars don’t usually consider fish as Speiseopfer, “offerings of food”, because fish come to the altar, with difficulty, alive. Nevertheless we know of uncommon sacrifices of fish for a restricted number of gods, like Hekate and Poseidon. An offering of δεῖπνα is documented in Kamiros on the island of Rhodes: this offering is usually connected only with Hekate – sometimes in relationship with Hermes – and concerned puppies and fish, which had to be cooked on the altar. We know of sacrifices of fish for Poseidon too, above all tuna fish, as an Attic black-figured Olpe attests: we find on this vase a depiction of all the elements relating to scene of sacrifice with fish. The aim of this paper is to clarify the role of fish in Greek religion and to understand the reasons behind the choice of these sacrificial victims by analyzing literary, iconographic and archeozoology sources.