But as piacular rites are met with even in the Australian societies, it is impossible to assign them so late an origin.
By all these signs, the characteristic traits of the piacular rites are to be recognized.
The continuity between ascetic and piacular rites is even more apparent: both are made up of sufferings, accepted or undergone, to which an analogous efficacy is attributed.
Men have many other occasions for being sorry and lamenting, so we might foresee that even the Australians would know and practise other piacular rites besides mourning.
I Mourning offers us a first and important example of piacular rites.
This interdiction against speaking, which is peculiar to women, though it consists in a simple abstention, has all the appearance of a piacular rite: it is a way of incommoding one's self.
The explanation of piacular rites which we have proposed enables us to reply to this double question.
It is still surprising, it is true, that piacular rites specially destined to expiate sins, seem to be completely lacking.
The rite acquired a piacular and penal character only when its original significance was forgotten and when the new idea which was formed of sacred beings allowed men to attribute another function to it.
Also, fasting may be a piacular rite or an ascetic one, according to the circumstances.
The piacular meaning suggests itself at so many points that it is startling to find that it cannot be borne out by careful examination.
But taking the Levitical system as a whole there seems to underlie it the theory of symbolical, although not piacular substitution.
It would probably be impossible to find any examples of human sacrifices of an expiatory or piacular character, any sacrifices at all, among Australians, or Andamanese, or Fuegians.
The idea of substitution is widespread among all early religions, and is found in honorific as well as piacular rites.
The most curious developments of piacular sacrifice take place in the worship of deities of the totem type.
And in like manner in Egypt thepiacular sacrifice of the cow-goddess Isis-Hathor was a bull, and the sacrifice was accompanied by lamentations as at the funeral of a kinsman.
Thus, Hecate was invoked as a dog, and dogs were her piacular sacrifices.
The Athenians had that deep consciousness of sin and guilt, and of consequent liability to punishment, which confesses the need of expiation by piacular sacrifices.
In the heathen world it reached its highest manifestation in those piacular sacrifices of which Robertson Smith speaks, but which nevertheless were merely an outgrowth of Totemism.
So in the piacular sacrifice when a clearing is made, the unknown deity is addressed in the last words of the prayer thus: "harum rerum ergo macte hoc porco piaculo immolando esto.
The term "piacular sacrifice" (piaculum) had a wide range of meaning, apart from the examples here given.
Long ago I had occasion to note how the old form of piacular sacrifice was used and recorded whenever iron was taken into the grove, or any damage done to the trees by lightning or other accident.
Livy significantly adds that a private soldier might be chosen by the commander to represent him, and that if this man were not killed by the enemy an image seven feet long must be buried in the earth and a piacular sacrifice offered.
The practical Roman mind seems to have invented a kind of sacrificial insurance, by which a piacular sacrifice might be offered beforehand to atone for any omission in the ritual which was to follow.
No doubt there was believed to be efficacy in the exact repetition, as is shown by the directions for piacular sacrifices in case of error of any kind.
Or what a piacular prevarication is it to borrow from any other church which was less reformed, a pattern of policy for this church which was more reformed.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "piacular" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
