In Ancient Greece pagans used mainly human sucrifices to show their respect. Since Ancient Greeks valued human life greatly it was considered a big sucrifice. When it came to human sucrifices they usually picked a king's daughter or wife. Moreover in ancient Greece they used to sucrifice animals for smaller requests.
Neo- paganism
Neo pagans usually worship their Gods and Godesses by sucrifising something that has great value to them or is expensive in general. However I would reccomend to burn something in your ritual that has great value to you and simply pray it could be anything as soon as it's not alive.
For Zeus you should also use incence (I would reccomend basil and laurel) and always keep something metal in your altar.
In general however Greek Gods appreciate sucrificies.
Moreover if you pray in Greek or ancient Greek it will also be apreciated.
Fox, where is the evidence that the ancient Greeks ever sacrificed humans? As for Zeus, females should be a bit careful of this Top God! He was a randy old God who liked to fornicate with human women! Bit of a Lad was old Zeus!
There are plenty of evidence and historical documents as well... You can look it up on google if you want. Unfortunately I don't have an example on my mind at the momment apart from the myth of Iphegenia but there are many refferences on human sucrifices in historical and artistic documents. In Greece where I am from this is very well known.
I will mail you a link that might help.
However I don't know if there are actual evidence apart from documents and mythology I simply replied this way since pagan practice is based on ancient mythology.
I refered to a myth (arising from the word mythos which means legend in Greek) since Zeus and Greek Gods in general are also part of mythology and there isn't evidence that they really existed either. So it is pretty rational when someone needs advice for something that belongs to mythology to advise them according to mythology. And according to mythology Ancient Greeks performed human sucrificies. But since you need historical evidence I will try to find a book in english to reccomend.
I hope that approach will help there are better books in Greek but very few of them are translated since for ancient Greek studies and archaeology speaking Greek is usually required.
