A great sacrifice of a hundred oxen; any large-scale sacrifice or mass slaughter, especially of many animals or people.
From Greek 'hekatombe': 'hekaton' (hundred) + 'bous' (ox). Originally literal—a hundred oxen sacrificed to gods—but evolved metaphorically to mean any massive destructive event.
The hecatomb reveals how ancient peoples thought about sacrifice: it had to be *massive* to matter to the gods. One cow wouldn't do; you needed one hundred. This thinking appears across religions—bigger sacrifice equals bigger divine attention, a formula humans keep repeating.
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