The mythic past According to Graeco-Roman Utopian views, animal sacrifice had not always taken place. Theophrastus’ theory about the origin and development of Greek sacrifice was influential. Theophrastus was the leader of the Peripatetic school after Aristotle | 7 GOD IS A MAN-EATER THE ANIMAL SACRIFICE AND ITS CRITICS The mythic past According to Graeco-Roman Utopian views animal sacrifice had not always taken place. Theophrastus theory about the origin and development of Greek sacrifice was influential. Theophrastus was the leader of the Peripatetic school after Aristotle 372-328 BCE but Dirk Obbink stresses that like many pagan philosophers critical of traditional religion Theophrastus gained abiding credibility in later antiquity Obbink 1988 273 . According to Theophrastus culture and sacrifice developed from simple to increasingly complex and diverse forms and at the same time their development was part of a process of degeneration. Following Theophrastus closely Porphyry argued that animal sacrifices were not as ancient as vegetable sacrifices and he urged people to return to these original cultic practices On Abstinence . In accordance with Theophrastus he lists the evolution of sacrifices from offerings of greenstuff leaves and roots via grains to cakes and finally to animals. Like Theophrastus Porphyry describes the sacrifice of animals as originally caused by famine or other misfortune ibid. . Thus offerings of animals did not constitute the original type of sacrifice cf. Pliny Natural History but were the event that ended the Golden Age. In accordance with this view the first offering of an animal was seen as starting a movement downwards. However others saw the first animal sacrifice as a positive development at a time when humans had lived like Athenaeus who in the 190s wrote his long work in fifteen volumes Scholars at Dinner mentions that with the introduction of sacrifice a bestial and lawless life of cannibalism and other evils had been changed to civilization cities and cookery Scholars at Dinner 660e-661c . In this case the animal sacrifice had initiated culture and human progress and above all had distinguished humans from animals. There are also examples
