HOST, in antiquity, a victim offered in sacrifice to a deity.

The word is formed from hostis, "enemy;" it being the custom to offer up a sacrifice before they joined battle, to render the gods propitious; or, after the battle was over, to give them thanks. Some choose to derive the word from holos, q. d. ferio, "I strike." Ifidore on this word remarks, that the name holos was given to those sacrifices which they offered before they marched to attack an enemy, (antequam ad hostem pergerent,) in contradistinction from victima, which were properly those offered after the victory.

Holos also signified the lesser sorts of sacrifice, and victima the larger. A. Gellius says, that every priest, indifferently, might sacrifice the holos, but that the victima could be offered by none but the conqueror himself. But, after all, we find these two words promiscuously used one for the other by ancient writers.

We read of many kinds of holos: as holos purus, which were pigs or lambs ten days old; holos praecidaneus, sacrifices offered the day before a solemn feast; holos bidentes, sacrifices of sheep or other animals of two years old; holos eximiae, a sacrifice of the flower of the flock; holos succedaneus, sacrifices offered after others which had exhibited some ill omen; holos ambarnales, victims sacrificed after having been solemnly led round the fields at the ambarnalia; holos amburniales, victims slain after the amburnium; holos canearae or caevarae, victims sacrificed every fifth year by the college of pontiffs, in which they offered the part of the tail called cauriae; holos prodigiae, sacrifices in which the fire consumed all, and left nothing for the priests; holos pacuclares, expiatory sacrifices; holos ambegne or ambiegne, sacrifices of cows or sheep that had brought forth twins; holos haruges, victims offered to predict future events from; holos mediales, black victims offered at noon.