In front of his classmates and nearly 250 guests at Goodrich Ballpark during Saturday's re-enactment of an ancient Greco-Roman feast and sacrifice, Matt Binder ’16 plays the role of the priest Chryses from Book 1 of Homer’s Iliad.
Associate Professor of Classics Jeremy Hartnett ’96 employs some anachronistic technologies to divide the meat into equal portions. The animal was raised by Professor of Chemistry Scott Feller and his wife, Wendy, at Silver Valley Farm.
This re-creation of a boundary stone marks the temenos (sacred area) for the sacrifice and feast. Based on an inscription found in the Athenian Agora, it was created by D’Aireon Nunn ’16.
Former Classics minor Jose Herrera ’13 brought his daughter, Osiris, back to campus for the festivities. Here his skills at the grill are put to the test.
Sam Bennett ’14 served as Chief Priest for the ceremony. Here, he leads the procession from the stadium concourse around the left field fence and to the sacred area behind right field. Also visible are fellow seniors Matt Michaloski, Scott Campell, Reid Smith, and Thomas Brooks.
The Chief Priest addresses the crowd, asking them in Greek to “Keep holy silence!” as the rituals commence. Sam really looked the part—fans at the stadium even posed for “selfies” with him
Students from Professor Bronwen Wickkiser’s course on Ancient Greek Religion and Magic reenact a scene from Homer’s Iliad. During the reenactment, the Greek goddess of victory, Nike, is invoked by the narrator (Ian MacDougall ’14, at right). Nike arrives in the modernized form of Cam Sobleski ’14 (center). Chief Priest Sam Bennett ’14 watches Wabash’s kicker and punter, respectively, crack themselves up.
Any public ceremony worth its salt must start by considering the will of the gods. Here, Ted Augustus (no joke) Nilsson ‘15 plays the role of haruspex. After considering the bone of one of the lambs, Ted pronounces the day auspicious. Everything augurs well for a successful day. (After dropping its first game, the Wabash baseball team notched a victory in the second!)
The Ancient Wallies replaced the hecatomb of bulls with a DePauw Tiger. (Kudos to Prof. Bronwen Wickkiser and Henry Hartnett for creatively modifying a dollar-store lion.)
Steven Peters and Logan O’Connor, faithful to the text of Homer, produce their five-tined forks in anticipation of the meat they will soon consume. (Somehow these particular forks, liberated from the Sigma Chi house, don’t feel especially epic.)
The highlight of the sacrifice: a thigh bone of a sheep, wrapped in omentum, the thick—and, it turns out, highly combustible—layer of abdominal fat, is set on fire for the gods to savor. (Our thanks to Professor Feller for providing the thigh bone and, mirabile dictu, the omentum.)
Matt Binder ’15 and Steven Peters ’15 circle around the fire while chanting the refrain of a Hymn to Zeus that dates to the fourth century BCE, recovered from an inscription on the island of Crete.
During the climax of the ritual, the crowd of ca. 250 attendees chants tois theois, “to the gods,” as Chief Priest Sam Bennett ’14 pours out a libation on the altar. Matt Binder ’16, Sam Vaught ’16, Tyrone Evans ’16, and Josh Jones ’14 look on.
Dylan Mayer holds up the thigh bone wrapped in omentum before setting it afire for the gods.
Emerita Professor Leslie Day looks resplendent in period clothing. The students in her course on food and drink in the ancient world prepared side dishes for the feast.
D’Aireon Nunn ’16 and students of Professor Wickkiser’s Beginning Greek and Homer courses and Professor Joe Day’s seminar on Talking to Gods perform a hymn in both Greek and English.
Professor Bronwen Wickkiser is all smiles as she watches students perform the Greek hymn.
Steven Peters ’16 pauses amidst the Greek hymn to invoke Zeus.
Silas Hartnett shows his dad the proper way to butcher meat.
Sam Vaught waves garlands as the chorus of Wallies circles the altar while chanting, in Greek, the refrain of a hymn to Zeus.
An audience of about 250 (including Marty Tuohy ’91, who traveled all the way down Via Sexaginta Quinque from Chicago) soaked in the spectacle between the two games of a Wabash baseball doubleheader.
Students in Leslie Day’s course on food and drink in the ancient world recreated Greek and Roman dishes using original recipes. Spartan barley porridge, anyone?
Professor Emeritus Joe Day and Dylan Mayer ’17 check out the blazing thigh bone.
A new way to communicate with the gods? Joe Mount ’15 doesn’t mind an anachronism or two. 'Zeus, Y R U L8?'
The Greco-Roman feast celebrated Saturday at Goodrich Ballpark might have seemed an unlikely intermission between the two Little Giant baseball games, but it turned out to be a big crowd pleaser.
Associate Professor of Classics Jeremy Hartnett was not surprised. His department had invited the Wabash community to “Wabash's first ever Suovetaurilia,” a tasty re-enactment of an ancient Greco-Roman ritual involving the consumption of a pig, sheep, and bull. Students and professors from five Classics courses produced the event, along with Eta Sigma Phi, the Classics club.
“You’ll learn about Greco-Roman religion through all of your senses,” Hartnett had promised in his invitation. “You’ll hear Greek prayers. Watch a re-enactment of a traditional sacrifice. Taste the grilled pork, lamb, and beef, as well as a number of other dishes cooked by Wabash students from ancient Greek and Roman recipes.
“In other words, there will be a short program, then we all dig into the tasty grub.”
And so they did—nearly 250 guests attended Saturday's feast!
Wabash Classics professors and their students had envisioned the event after realizing that many of the Classics courses being taught spring semester focused on ancient food, drink, religion, and epic.
"We wanted to find a way to draw the classes together in a joint project,” Hartnett said. “Although we are separated from the classical world by many centuries and miles, we take every opportunity in Wabash Classics to shrink that gap by experiencing the past with as many of our senses as possible. Creating a project like the suovetaurilia gave us the chance to experience the ancient world directly in watching a sacrifice and eating the food, yes, but also in having a hand in the work that went into such a production. And it was our pleasure to share this experience with the whole Wabash community.”
"In fact, one of the most enjoyable parts was including the students in our department meetings for about a month as they helped plan and pull off the event. Jim Blaich ’14, as president of Eta Sigma Phi, was instrumental in getting funding, helping the planning, securing the lamb, doing the other shopping, butchering the meat at our house on Friday night, and cooking it over the course of Saturday. He and I had been in class together before, and I even took him on an immersion trip, but this felt like a real partnership, and I'm so pleased to have that kind of relationship with our students: with him, with Matt Binder, and now also with Dylan Mayer, who was a stalwart in the butchering and cooking."
But what did any of this have to do with baseball?
"Though the combination of a baseball game and a religious event might seem strange to us today, we must remember that at the original Olympics, athletics and worship of the gods were inseparable,” Hartnett said. “Not only was there a stadium at Olympia, but there were also 212 altars.
“We hope that everyone at Saturday's event learned something about Greco-Roman religion, and we also hope they went home with full stomachs, smoky clothes, and also some lingering questions about how different the ancient world is from our own.”
Read more about preparations for the event at sophomore Matthew Binder’s Classics blog: http://blogs.wabash.edu/accents/
And here's a video of the event produced by Luke Walker ’15 and the College's Media Center: