Booty

a fixed proportion of the booty won in war, usually a tithe (dekate), was taken out for the god before the distribution of the spoils began: this tribute is also called akrothinia, the topmost of the pile.

Burkert establishes that booty in Greek religion is never purely secular: a consecrated portion (the tithe or akrothinia) is ritually extracted for the deity prior to any human distribution, binding martial acquisition to sacrificial obligation.

Burkert, Walter, Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical, 1977thesis

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In most cases, each warrior strove to seize his opponent's arms and thus to win his own 'personal' booty. But along with such direct, personal seizure of possessions that increas

Detienne identifies a structural duality in archaic warrior society between the direct personal seizure of booty and a collective redistributive logic centered on the 'middle' of the assembly.

Marcel Detienne, The Masters of Truth in Archaic Greece, 1996thesis

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The right to distribute booty seems to belong nominally to the people but in fact to their leader (2e). There is a similar duality in the distribution of food.

Seaford argues that the distribution of booty mirrors the distribution of sacrificial food: nominally collective, yet in practice controlled by the leader, a duality whose disruption produces epic crisis.

Seaford, Richard, Money and the Early Greek Mind: Homer, Philosophy, Tragedy, 2004thesis

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The distribution of booty, on the other hand... Equal distribution to all and (especially) collective participation (koinonia) are persistently emphasised in numerous later references to the animal sacrifice performed by groups.

Seaford places the distribution of booty in explicit structural parallel with animal sacrifice, both governed by the principle of communal equality (koinonia).

Seaford, Richard, Money and the Early Greek Mind: Homer, Philosophy, Tragedy, 2004supporting

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The Myrmidons exercise the same proprietorial rights over these objects, which have become 'common property' as a result of being set down es meson, as those of a victor over prizes in the athletic games.

Detienne demonstrates that placing gifts or booty 'in the middle' transforms them into common property governed by the same logic as athletic prize distribution.

Marcel Detienne, The Masters of Truth in Archaic Greece, 1996supporting

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The feasting of the suitors is extensive and unruly enough to confound the opposition between distribution in the feast and the distribution of booty.

Seaford reads the suitors' feasting as a pathological collapse of the normative boundary between sacrificial food-distribution and booty-distribution, signaling a crisis of redistributive reciprocity.

Seaford, Richard, Money and the Early Greek Mind: Homer, Philosophy, Tragedy, 2004supporting

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Camillus said that he had vowed a tenth of the booty to Apollo. The booty was, however, all held by the people. Thus there was a religio upon them.

Onians documents the Roman parallel: captured booty creates a binding religious obligation (religio) upon the entire populace until the vowed tithe is formally discharged.

Onians, R B, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988supporting

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aula [n.], aulai [pl.], rarely -on [n.], -e [f.] 'captured shipload, booty' (Samos VI, Locr. Va, Str.), in Att. 'right of seizure of a ship or its cargo, right of distraint'

Beekes traces the Greek lexical field of booty (aula, aulagogeō) from concrete seized cargo to the legal abstraction of a right of seizure, illuminating the semantic transition from military plunder to juridical institution.

Beekes, Robert, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2010supporting

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cattle and sheep can be plundered and tripods and horses can be obtained, whereas the psuchē of a man cannot be plundered or captured to come back again once it were to exchange the barrier of his teeth.

Seaford uses Achilles' rejection of compensatory goods to demarcate the absolute limit of booty's logic: the soul (psuchē) lies outside any economy of plunder or exchange.

Seaford, Richard, Money and the Early Greek Mind: Homer, Philosophy, Tragedy, 2004aside

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