Devotio

For the late medieval religious movement, see Devotio Moderna. Not to be confused with Devotion (disambiguation).
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In ancient Roman religion, the devotio was an extreme form of votum in which a Roman general vowed to sacrifice his own life in battle along with the enemy to chthonic gods in exchange for a victory. The most extended description of the ritual is given by the Augustan historian Livy, regarding the self-sacrifice of Decius Mus.[1] The English word "devotion" derives from the Latin.

Devotio may be a form of consecratio, a ritual by means of which something was consecrated to the gods.[2] The devotio has sometimes been interpreted in light of human sacrifice in ancient Rome,[3] and Walter Burkert saw it as a form of scapegoat or pharmakos ritual.[4] By the 1st century BC, devotio could mean more generally "any prayer or ritual that consigned some person or thing to the gods of the underworld for destruction."[5]

  1. ^ Livy 8.9; for a brief introduction and English translation of the passage, see Mary Beard, J.A. North, and S.R.F. Price, Religions of Rome: A Sourcebook (Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 157 online.
  2. ^ Donald G. Kyle, Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome (Routledge, 1998), p. 87 online; Matthew Leigh, Lucan: Spectacle and Engagement (Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 131 online.
  3. ^ Paul Plass, The Game of Death in Ancient Rome: Arena Sport and Political Suicide (Wisconsin University Press, 1995), pp. 226–227 online; Alison Futrell, Blood in the Arena: The Spectacle of Roman Power (University of Texas Press, 1997, 2001 reprint), p. 194 et passim.
  4. ^ Walter Burkert, Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual (University of California Press, 1979), p. 59ff. online.
  5. ^ James B. Rives, "Magic, Religion, and Law: The Case of the Lex Cornelia de sicariis et veneficiis [it]," in Religion and Law in Classical and Christian Rome (Franz Steiner, 2006), pp. 56–57.