Abstract
An inscription from Selinunte, Sicily, published in 1993, has brought the figure of the Tritopatores or Tritopatreis back to the forefront of research. Strictly speaking, the term designates the " third fathers ", the " fathers of the third generation ". Their name is a way of evoking the continuity of a lineage, or even a community. The Tritopatores of Selinunte are described in turn as " impurs ", with a sacrifice " as to the heroes ", and " pur ", with a sacrifice of theoxenia type, in a manipulation of the animal that corresponds to a sacrifice " as to the gods ".
Are we dealing with a single group of ancestors, whose status would be altered by the sacrifice, as the first editors of the inscription had assumed, or are we dealing with two distinct groups, each receiving the sacrifice that suits them ? If we don't follow the first editors, who consider that the sacrifice to the Tritopatores " impure " transforms them into Tritopatores " pure ", then they are right to see only one and the same group, whose epiclesis Miaroi and Katharoi refer to different facets of these entities.
The superhuman world of the Greeks is populated by figures as numerous as they are complex, whose status is not fixed according to a rigid categorization where the boundaries would be clear and perfectly watertight between gods, heroes and mortal humans. The plasticity of polytheism can also be seen in the fluidity and porosity of the boundaries sanctioned by sacrificial rituals. As for the relationship between the general and the particular, the case of the Tritopatores attests to the ambivalence of these figures wherever they are honored, while at the same time showing that each community appropriates this shared background in its own way.
