on (a central act of killing, attended with weapons, blood, fire, and shrill cries), in attempts to further appease the gods by sensationalizing each act of sacrifice. The gods derive much pleasure from these festivals in a variety of ways: savoring the aromas that rise up from the sacrificial altars, sharing their coveted ambrosia with the mortals at their tables (Sissa and Marcel 69). Walter Burkert stated that, “Such a sacrifice is performed for a god, and yet the god manifestly receives next to nothing: the good meat serves entirely for the festive feasting of the participants . . .poets recount how the god remembers the sacrifice with pleasure or how he rages dangerously if sacrifices fail to be performed” (Burkert 57)Following the sacrificial acts and festivities, the remainder of the ritual consists of two moments representative of the ultimate purpose of the sacrificial feast: speaking to the god, and appeasing his wrath. Essentially, the “feasting of the sacrificers goes hand in hand with the homage—both poetic and in the form of nourishment—offered to an immortal” (Sissa and Marcel 70). Yet despite the circumstantial results of each festival, rites of sacrifice momentarily established a means of communication, and relations between mortals and gods. The fact that humans must rely solely upon sacrificial rites in order to maintain contact with the gods succeeds in further solidifying the social foundations created by these very rituals. Additional occurrences of animal sacrifice take place in the Dionysiac religion, which is centered on Dionysus—the god of vegetation, consists of the Bacchae (female worshippers of Dionysus), and Satyrs (the male counterparts). In mythology, however, both groups of followers appear slightly more than human. They worship Dionysus through crazed periods of ecstatic dancing, and ravage the raw flesh of a sacrificial animal, a ritual believed to br...
