Conclusion

One widespread, contemporary Western notion of sacrifice is consistent with, even if it has not contributed to, the increasing influence of vegetarian­ism and veganism. According to this notion, a sacrificial victim should be a willing victim, someone dying for a cause - a patriot or a person of special convictions.^[992] An animal does not possess the qualities or faculties that this sort of victim should have.

From this contemporary notion of animal sacrifice let us return to the ancient one and compare them. For the ancients, animals were unwilling victims who might resist their fate. Rather than lacking certain qualities and faculties, animals possessed many cardinal human traits, especially a sense of right and wrong. They deserved some measure of justice and could commit some kinds of injustice. The Greeks and the Romans, however, did not agree about this measure of justice. Empedocles and the Pythagoreans wanted more justice for animals, and other schools of philosophy wanted less. The generality of worshippers wanted much less.

Neither the critics nor the supporters of animal sacrifice judged this religious ritual by any standard of animal rights. Among the critics, Porphyry comes closest to a notion of rights. He says that animals have reasoning powers, just as the Epicureans did, and he went beyond the Epicureans, and even beyond the Stoics, in asserting that animals and people closely resemble one another.^[993] This kinship between animals and people might lead to giving animals the rights given to human beings, but here another difficulty emerges: Porphyry has no notion of human rights. Modern scholars argue whether any of the ancient philosophers believed in human rights, but scholars agree that Porphyry did not, and that Theophrastus, from whom Porphyry is often borrowing, did not.⁴⁷

In closing, it should be noted how the rise of Christianity affected not only animal sacrifice but attitudes towards animals. In pagan religion, animals were often victims but they were also divine familiars. Gods could be theriomorphic, and animals' bodies could be tokens of the gods' will. Christianity put an end to all of this. A figurative lamb replaced the actual lambs of sacrifice. In short, animals lost their intermittent sacred aura. Amid all the changes in the status and treatment of animals in recent years, this ancient trait bestowed on animals does not seem to have re-emerged. Although all species may be created equal, it seems that none are especially close to god. Whether animals have experienced this change as a loss is an unanswerable question.