Animal sacrifice in Roman Asia minor and its depictions

How Do We Explain the Quiet Demise of Graeco-Roman Religion? An Essay

“…The distinction has been called into question (Friesen 1993: 146-152;Gradel 2002: 28-29), but the first type were much rarer and iconographical representations of sacrifices to a ruler are virtually absent from Asia Minor.40 In the Latin West, sacrifices were more often directed to deceased emperors or to the emperor's genius or numen than to the living emperor. Despite these regional differences, the emperor's central position helped to universalize Roman rule, but at the same time the representations left enough leeway for his subjects to practice and interpret the sacrifices in various ways (Rives 2019c), the more so as they lacked a fixed interpretation for the worshipers (Schörner 2019).…”