hecatomb

noun

1. (Ancient-Rome, historical)A great public sacrifice to the gods, originally of a hundred oxen; also, a great number of animals reserved for such a sacrifice.

   “O be propitious, powerfull God of Arts, / I sheathe my weapons, and doe breake my darts, / Be then appeas'd, I'le offer to thy shrine, / An Heccatombe, of many spotted kine.”

   “[B]oth the muſes and the graces are his hard Miſtriſſes, though he daily Invocate them, though he ſacrifize Hecatombs, they ſtil look a ſquint, […]”

   “But haſte, conſult vve quick ſome prophet here / […] that vve may learn / By vvhat crime vve have thus incenſed Apollo, / VVhat broken vovv, vvhat hecatomb unpaid / He charges on us, and if ſoothed vvith ſteam / Of lambs and goats unblemiſh'd, he may yet / Be vvon to ſpare us, and avert the plague.”

   “[I]n th' olden time / Some sacrifices ask'd a single victim, / Great expiations had a hecatomb.”

   “[I]t is conceivable that if we were ancients some of us might be offering grateful hecatombs by mistake, and proving our honesty in a ruinously expensive manner.”

2. (broadly, historical)A great public sacrifice in other religions; also, a great number of animals or people reserved for such a sacrifice.

   “The tutelary deity of the Aztecs was the god of war. The great object of their military expeditions was, to gather hecatombs of captives for his altars. The soldier, who fell in battle, was transported at once to the region of ineffable bliss in the bright mansions of the Sun.”

3. (figuratively, literary, poetic)A great number of animals, people, or things that are sacrificed or destroyed; any great sacrifice; also (generally), a large amount.

   “O hecatombe! O catastrophe! / From Mydas pompe to Irus beggery!”

   “[R]egard this Earth / Made multitudinous with thy slaves, whom thou / Requitest for knee-worship, prayer, and praise, / And toil, and hecatombs of broken hearts, / With fear and self-contempt and barren hope.”

   “There our orb revolved.— / Now stain'd with blood and now with sunbeams gay, / Here heap'd with hecatombs and there with fruits / Of joyous harvest.—”

   “The tender word and Christian encouragement of an invalid, pitiful patience with his fears and the removal of them, are better than hecatombs of gushing theories, stereotyped borrowed speeches, and the doling of arguments, which are but so many parodies on legitimate Christian Science, aflame with divine Love.”

   “In [Robert] Conquest's opinion, the visceral reaction to Nazism entails a verdict that it was morally worse than Stalinism, even if its eventual hecatomb was a less colossal one.”

verb

1. (transitive)To provide (someone or something) with a hecatomb.