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 hostio, q. d. ferio, "I strike." Isidore on this word remarks, that the name hostia 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.

Hostia also signified the lesser sorts of sacrifice, and victima the larger. A. Gellius says, that every priest, indifferently, might sacrifice the hostia, 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 hostia: as hostia pura; which were pigs or lambs ten days old; hostia praecidanea, sacrifices offered the day before a solemn feast; hostia bidentes, sacrifices of sheep or other animals of two years old; hostia eximia, a sacrifice of the flower of the flock; hostia succedanea, sacrifices offered after others which had exhibited some ill omen; hostia ambarevales, victims sacrificed after having been solemnly led round the fields at the ambarevalia; hostia amburbiales, victims slain after the amburbiurn; hostia cancares or caviaces, victims sacrificed every fifth year by the college of pontiffs, in which they offered the part of the tail called caviar; hostia prodigiae, sacrifices in which the fire consumed all, and left nothing for the priests; hostia piaculares, expiatory sacrifices; hostia ambegnae or ambiegnae, sacrifices of cows or sheep that had brought forth twins; hostia harurge, victims offered to predict future events from; hostia mediales, black victims offered at noon.