Animal sacrifice is the ritual killing and offering of one or more animals, usually as part of a religious ritual or to appease or maintain favour with a deity. Animal sacrifices were common throughout Europe and the Ancient Near East until the spread of Christianity in Late Antiquity, and continue in some cultures or religions today. Human sacrifice, where it existed, was always much rarer.
Sacrifice of a pig in ancient Greece (tondo from an Attic red-figure cup, 510–500 BCE, by the Epidromos Painter, collections of the Louvre)
One of the altars at the Monte d'Accoddi in Sardinia, where animal sacrifice may have occurred.
A bull is led to the altar of Athena, whose image is at right. Vase, c. 545 BCE.
Sacrifice of a lamb on a Pitsa Panel, Corinth, 540–530 BCE
In ancient Roman religion, the Fordicidia was a festival of fertility, held on the Ides of April, that pertained to farming and animal husbandry. It involved the sacrifice of a pregnant cow to Tellus, the ancient Roman goddess of the Earth, in proximity to the festival of Ceres (Cerealia) on April 19.
Virgo Vestalis Maxima, the high priestess of Vesta