A Companion Roman Religion - Spiritual Minds

of public relief monuments. In private dedications the subject matter appears fre-

quently, often constituting their only relief decoration. These depictions do without

an altar, or persons carrying out or helping in the sacrifice; ritual is reduced to the

sacrificial gift itself, without any sequences or performers clarifying which aspects of

the proceedings are considered as significant. Obviously, representing the victim alone

must imply the gift being handed over to the deity within the framework of a cor-

rectly performed ritual. Thus, even in their radical reduction, the images stress the

regular and, above all, appropriate character of the deity’s veneration. The adorned

animal functions as a symbol for this veneration’s continuity; since it is through

the monument itself that the dedicator declares his constant readiness to sacrifice.

Moreover, these representations presuppose a univocal relationship between deity and

victim: as has already become clear, the choice of animals to be used in sacrifice is

far from arbitrary, but subject to rules narrowly defining correct cult. It is only this

strict interdependency between deity and victim that allows for sacrificial imagery

being reduced to the depiction of the mere animal. As in the case of the simple altar

scene, it is hard to establish the actual frequency with which the ritual alluded to is

to be repeated. In any case, a high rate of repetition seems necessary to make the

visual reduction of the ritual possible.

174 Katja Moede

Figure 12.4 Suovetauriliasacrifice on the Anaglypha Traiani(Rome) (photo: Alinari
Archives, Florence).