Blood sacrifice, the ritual slaughter of animals, has been basic to religion through history, so that it survives in spiritualized form even in Christianity. How did this violent phenomenon achieve the status of the sacred? This question is examined in Walter Burkert's famous study.

Translator's Preface
Preface to the English Edition
List of Illustrations
Introduction

I. Sacrifice, Hunting, and Funerary Rituals
II. Werewolves around the Tripod Kettle
III. Dissolution and New Year's Festival
IV. Anthesteria
V. Eleusis

Abbreviations and Bibliography
Index

"Burkert as the advantage of an incomparable knowledge of the sacrificial practices of the ancient Greeks and indeed of the entire ancient world. Boldness of theory and consummate learning are united in him as in few others. . . .Homo Necans is a very important book."—Times Literary Supplement

"Burkert is the most penetratingly original, learned, and productive of the living experts on Greek religion. . . . [Homo Necans is], an exceptional intellectual experience. No one else in the field has the same power of opening unimagined vistas into the remote past."—Journal of Hellenistic Studies

"A milestone, not only in the field of classics but in the wider field of the history of religion. . . . It will find a place alongside the works of Jane Ellen Harrison, Sir James George Frazer, Claude Levi-Strauss, and van Gennep."—Wendy Flaherty, Divinity School, University of Chicago

"This book is a professional classic, an absolute must for any serious student of Greek religion."—Albert Henrichs, Harvard University

1992 Ingersoll Prize in the Richard M. Weaver Award for Scholarly Letters category, The Rockford Institute