Sacrificial Use
After the performance of an animal sacrifice, a designated portion of the entrails (exta) was placed either in an olla and boiled, or in oldest times on a spit and roasted, as part of the "cuisine" of sacrifice. The exta were the victim's liver, gall, lungs, and the membrane covering the intestines, with the heart added after 275 BC. The olla was one of the characteristic implements of sacrifice, and appears in reliefs as such, particularly in the Gallic provinces. The vessel is mentioned, for instance, in Livy's account of a sign (prodigium) that manifested divine displeasure: the official presiding over the sacrifice himself poured the cooking liquid out of the olla in order to inspect the remaining entrails, which were intact except for the mysteriously liquified liver.
Read more about this topic: Olla (Roman Pot)
Famous quotes containing the word sacrificial:
“Men, forever tempted to lift the veil of the future—with the aid of computers or horoscopes or the intestines of sacrificial animals—have a worse record to show in these “sciences” than in almost any scientific endeavor.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“In every philosophical school, three thinkers succeed one another in the following way: the first produces out of himself the sap and seed, the second draws it out into threads and spins a synthetic web, and the third waits in this web for the sacrificial victims that are caught in it—and tries to live off philosophy.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)