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Devotio
Roman generals vow / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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In ancient Roman religion, the devotio was an extreme form of votum in which a Roman general vowed to sacrifice his own life in battle along with the enemy to chthonic gods in exchange for a victory. The most extended description of the ritual is given by the Augustan historian Livy, regarding the self-sacrifice of Decius Mus.[1] The English word "devotion" derives from the Latin.
Devotio may be a form of consecratio, a ritual by means of which something was consecrated to the gods.[2] The devotio has sometimes been interpreted in light of human sacrifice in ancient Rome,[3] and Walter Burkert saw it as a form of scapegoat or pharmakos ritual.[4] By the 1st century BC, devotio could mean more generally "any prayer or ritual that consigned some person or thing to the gods of the underworld for destruction."[5]