Celia E. Schultz (University of Michigan)
The paper builds on the argument of Schultz 2016 that the modern understanding of the Roman ritual of devotio as a form of self-sacrifice (e.g., Yerkes 1952, Versnel 1976, Gustafsson 2015, van Henten 2018) clashes with actual Roman ritual taxonomy. That article made the case that devotio and sacrificium (the particularly Roman instantiation of sacrifice) were two very distinct entities in the Roman ritual repertoire on the basis of the starkly different Roman attitudes toward each ritual and the fact that no ancient source claims any relationship between them. This presentation goes one step further by asserting that the logics of those two rituals are also opposite to one another.
Devotio, in its most famous form, was performed in the heat of battle when defeat seemed imminent. Under the supervision of a priest, a Roman commander uttered a prayer that committed him and the enemy army to the gods of the underworld in exchange for the safety of Rome and her soldiers. He then plunged into the thick of battle, where he met his death (Liv. 8.9.1-14). Livy reports that in some cases a rank-and-file soldier could be devoted instead of his commander. He also reports that if the devotus somehow survived the battle, there was a procedure to expiate his failure to accomplish his goal: a statue seven feet tall had to be buried in the ground and the man himself could no longer perform rituals on behalf of the state (8.10.11-14).
No Roman source explicitly connects devotio to sacrificium, and the Romans talk about the rituals in starkly different terms. Devotio is noble. Those who perform it are held up as exempla of virtue (e.g., Plin., Nat. 22.9). In contrast, when sacrificium is performed on human victims, the Romans are quick to identify it as something cruel and barbaric that other people do (Rives 1995, Schultz 2010 and 2012), even though it was recognized as part of their own religious tradition (Liv. 22.57.6; Plut., RQ 83).
The two rituals operate in different ways; they are ritualizations of two different forms of exchange. Devotio is closer to a bilateral economic exchange, in which items of equal value are exchanged and there is an approximate parity in the status of the two parties involved. In devotio, lives are given in place of lives, as is made explicit in the prayer reported by Livy and by other sources. Furthermore, while the devotus does not achieve the status of the gods, he does become something greater than a mere mortal (e.g. Liv. 8.9.10 and 8.10.12). In contrast, the Romans are explicitly critical of people who see sacrificium as an exchange of items of equal value (e.g. Caes., BGall. 6.16). A proper Roman sacrificium operates as a reciprocal exchange that reinforces the grossly unequal status of mortals and gods in numerous ways (Parker 1998, Ullucci 2012; Scheid 2005, 2007, 2011, 2012).