Abstract
When it comes to exploring Greek poetic material to study the role of the gods in sacrificial contexts, tragedy is a prime example. Indeed, the association between tragedy and sacrifice is one of the most historiographically charged ever, for at least two reasons. Firstly, the question of the origins of sacrifice, which has haunted ritual research since the mid-nineteenth century, has drawn on Greek tragedy for some of its arguments. Since the Greek word for tragedy means "the song of the goat", the entire genre could be linked to the ritual framework of the killing of an animal. Secondly, the perversion and hijacking of tragic sacrifices by putting humans to death has fuelled the interest - indeed, the fascination - of modern researchers in human sacrifice. If ever there was a perversion of the sacrificial offering, it is this one, which is the subject of this lesson.
The ritual killing of Iphigenia, recalled by the chorus in Aeschylus' Agamemnon, is the most famous example of what we have come to call a human sacrifice. In Euripides' Hecuba, Polyxena is claimed by the shadow of Achilles. These are not the only tragic figures to fit into such a framework, but it must be acknowledged that they are paradigmatic throughout the Greek tradition itself, and in historiography thereafter. The relevance of considering them as "human sacrifices" is analyzed. As for the unnamed young girl put to death in Euripides' Heraclides and Creon's son Menecaeus, who commits suicide in the Phoenicians, their fate is sealed by ancient prophecies that make Persephone and the Earth, respectively, the recipients of their blood to save Athens, in the first case, and Thebes, in the second. The lexicon of these various killings, more or less ritualized depending on the context, is analyzed.
