‘Supra fines moris humani’
Writing ancient cannibalism
The decision to devote part of one’s time to a study of ancient cannibalism can be
justified by the prominence and importance of this motif in the Greco-Roman
imagination, and by writing about it in a calm, scholarly manner so as to avoid any
hint of prurience or sensationalism. Greek myth contains many stories of cannibalistic
acts, involving characters like Thyestes and Tereus; other sources show that at
different times the ancients attributed cannibalism to barbarian tribes, political
subversives, Christians and tyrants, and we must therefore conclude that this is indeed
a serious subject of inquiry. Let me reassure you, however, that the Greeks and
Romans were never so degenerate as actually to indulge in this repulsive practice,
except perhaps in conditions of extreme hardship, such as among the population of a
besieged city. The savage, atavistic societies of Minoan Crete and Carthage may have
been a different matter; happily ignorant of the shackles which ‘civilisation’ places on
the natural instincts of the human animal, they maintained the habits of our primate
cousins, sanctifying the consumption of man-meat as the highest expression of power
over inferiors.
How should we talk about cannibalism?1 What are the implications of a
particular choice of style and approach?
An examination of the rhetoric of our
sources, above all their explicit and implicit positioning with respect to their subject
material, offers a new perspective on the use and abuse of the idea of cannibalism in
antiquity.
Modern accounts of ancient cannibalism, inspired by anthropological
studies of the meanings and functions of dietary prohibitions, have tended to
1
concentrate on the content of writings about the subject, not on the way in which that
material is presented.2 Moreover, they have rarely been self-conscious about their
own choice of rhetoric. The fact that for the rest of this paper I shall revert to the
more usual style of an academic article does not mean that I consider this to be a
neutral, unproblematic way of discussing a subject like cannibalism.
I
Let us begin with what is certainly the most common and ostensibly the most ‘natural’
approach to the subject: horror, disgust, fear, loathing, repudiation. Many ancient
writers are concerned to establish a clear distinction between themselves (and their
audience) and the practice of cannibalism. Occasionally, expressions of outrage are
offered as a response to the extreme circumstances in which people were obliged to
taste human flesh, during sieges or famines. More frequently, they are directed
against those who have dared to commit such a crime. To eat a human being is an act
of superhuman arrogance, defying both human and divine laws; or it is an act of
subhuman, bestial savagery; or, most commonly, it is both at once. The archetypal
cannibal is of course Polyphemus the Cyclops, who lacks all the elements of civilised
existence, flouts the laws of hospitality and devours human flesh like a mountain
lion.3 Cannibals are dangerous creatures, both in themselves and on account of the
divine wrath which they invite upon themselves for their impiety — with the risk of
‘collateral damage’ to the rest of society. The only sensible response is to take drastic
action to deal with this threat.
2
Of course, actual cannibalism was rare, if not entirely unknown, in classical
antiquity.
It may perhaps have occurred during severe famines or long sieges,
although mention of it in historical accounts may be no more than a rhetorical device
for emphasising the severity of the hardships endured there.4 Genuine expressions of
horror and outrage at actual cannibalistic acts are therefore somewhat thin on the
ground; far more common is the spurious outrage found in the accusations of
cannibalism levelled against certain groups and individuals. The logic behind such
accusations is clear. Cannibals stand outside society and in opposition to it; to accuse
someone of cannibalism is to emphasise the threat that they pose — not just to an
individual or a group but to society as a whole — and to mark them off as separate,
alien, inhuman. The abominable, impious nature of their activities justifies any action
that may be taken against them. It is little wonder, then, that so many different groups
and individuals portrayed as socially deviant are accused, among other things, of
consuming human flesh.
Tyrannical rulers who set themselves above the laws are often associated with
cannibalism; this transgression epitomises their attitude to the people they rule and to
human morality in general.5 Even if they do not indulge in it themselves, they force
others to eat human flesh (often that of their own children), and bring disaster on their
kingdoms as a result. Revolutionaries and subversives reveal their true intentions
through acts of cannibalism; Catiline is portrayed as a slave to his appetite, which
leads him both to plot against the state and to drink human blood.6 Foreign tribes who
indulge in the practice are shown to be inferior, less civilised, closer to beasts — and
fit to be conquered. The Carthaginians and the Gauls are accused of practising human
sacrifice, and Caesar ‘reports’ the speech of Critognatus at Alesia (which, he says,
3
‘deserves to be recorded for its unparalleled cruelty and wickedness’), in which it is
proposed that the besieged Gauls should eat those too old or too young to fight.7
The most famous victims of such accusations were the early Christians.8
Works of Christian apologetic devote considerable energy to elaborating and then
refuting the accusations of cannibalism, and also atheism and incest, brought against
them by pagan writers. The clearest summary of the charges is presented by the pagan
character in Minucius Felix’s dialogue Octavius, and is supposedly based on the
arguments of the second-century writer Fronto. The Christians, it is said, glory in
crimes: they call one another brother and sister so that their everyday debaucheries
become incestuous; at their banquets a dog knocks over the lamps so that they can
couple promiscuously in the darkness; their initiation ceremonies culminate in the
sacrifice of an infant: ‘Thirstily — horror! — they lick up its blood; eagerly they divide
its limbs. By this victim they are pledged together; with their consciousness of
wickedness they are covenanted to mutual silence’.9
It would be naive to imagine that the pagans were misled by an overly literal
understanding of Christian ritual — Jesus as the child whose body and blood are
consumed at the eucharist — or confused the Christians with Gnostic sects (though the
Christians themselves sometimes argued this).10 Rather, the accusation, delivered in
tones of pious horror, emphasises that the Christians are enemies of civilised society:
‘Assuredly this confederacy ought to be rooted out and execrated’.11
They are
presented as inhuman and bestial; Tertullian notes that Christians are ‘said to be the
“third race” of men. What, a dog-faced race? Or Sciapodes? Or some subterranean
Antipodes?’12 They are impious — ‘They despise the temples as charnel houses, they
reject the gods, they laugh at sacred things’ — and subversive: ‘a herd of a profane
conspiracy, leagued together by nightly meetings, and solemn fasts, and unhuman
4
meats’.13 Such behaviour will call down the anger of the gods upon the whole of
society; the apologists feel obliged to point out that Christians are not in fact the cause
of earthquakes and other disasters.14
The Christian apologists accept the moral weight of the accusations: ‘If these
are true, spare no class; proceed against our crimes; destroy us utterly with our wives
and children, if anyone behaves like a beast’.15 Naturally they deny the charges —
there is no evidence, the practice is incompatible with Christian teaching on murder
and on the resurrection, and the idea is simply incredible — and then seek to reclaim
the moral high ground by turning the accusations against the accusers: ‘I will show
that in part openly, in part secretly, practices prevail among you which have led you
perhaps to credit similar things among us’.16 Eusebius records the ‘devilish rites,
loathsome tricks and unholy sacrifices’ of several Roman emperors who were noted
persecutors of the faithful.17 Tertullian lists human sacrifices in Africa and Gaul, the
practices of the Scythians and the followers of Catiline, the rites of Bellona and the
practice of drinking the blood of executed criminals as a cure for epilepsy.18 History
and ethnography are also combed for examples of incest and other depravities among
the pagans.19 Indeed, we might imagine that Christian writers devote so much time to
discussing accusations of cannibalism not because the accusations were themselves a
serious threat but because it gave them an excellent opportunity to denounce the
immorality and impiety, and now also the hypocrisy, of their pagan opponents.
Of course, while accusations of cannibalism were inherently implausible when
levelled against Christians — as Tertullian argues, ‘Why then can others do it, if you
cannot? why cannot you, if others can? . . . If you cannot do it, you ought not to
believe it of others’ — the Church found no difficulty in using almost identical
slanders against its own deviant groups.20 Thus Epiphanius describes the practices of
5
the Phibionites: ‘They take out this unborn child and in a mortar pound it with a pestle
and into this mix honey and pepper and certain other spices and myrrh, in order that it
may not nauseate them, and then they come together, all this company of swine and
dogs, and each communicates with a finger from the bruised child.’21 The passage is
notable for the way in which the heretics are characterised as animals and for the
explicit link between cannibalism and sexual deviancy (the group consume sperm and
menstrual blood — itself a form of cannibalism — and seek to avoid conception at all
costs). In other respects it offers only the slightest variation on the well-worn theme;
just another attempt to mark out deviants as a threat to society and an abomination in
the sight of God, just as Jews were to be accused of human sacrifice in the Middle
Ages and massacred as a result.22
The effort which Christian apologists invested in countering the stories of
cannibalism might still suggest that they were once taken seriously (and the Christians
interrogated by Pliny in Bithynia took pains to emphasise that they ate only ordinary
food).23 Such accusations were only remotely credible when the practices of the
accused — Christians, heretics, tyrants, revolutionaries, distant barbarian tribes — were
secretive or unknown. Nevertheless, the power inherent in the idea of cannibalism
was too useful to be abandoned just because the accusation would be inherently
implausible.
Instead, outrage could be levelled against practices which were
presented as being in some sense morally equivalent to cannibalism. Danaus offers
such an argument in Aeschylus’ Suppliant Women: ‘Can bird eat flesh of bird and yet
be pure? And can a man mate with a woman against her and her father’s will, and yet
be pure?’24 As one cannot help but condemn cannibalism utterly, so (it is hoped) an
association with cannibalism will put other matters equally beyond reach of argument.
6
The most obvious example of this ‘co-opting’ of the rhetorical force of
cannibalism is found in ancient (and modern) arguments about the morality of meateating and animal sacrifice. Cannibalism is eating human flesh: if the definition of
‘human’ is somehow extended to include other kinds of animal, meat-eating becomes
cannibalism and should be shunned by all — meat is murder. ‘When you take the
flesh of slaughtered cattle in your mouths, know and realise that you are devouring
you own fellow-labourers.’25
Domestic animals are anthropomorphised; Plutarch
suggests that to eat them is a breach of the laws of hospitality, since humans have
made companions of the animals and shared food with them (‘Sea animals, on the
other hand, are a species entirely alien and remote from us’).26 Far from being a mark
of piety, animal sacrifice is a horrific crime, in which the gods are compelled to
participate; the rituals that are supposed to bind people together are in reality utterly
inimical to civilised society. The mark of true bestiality and savagery is not the
consumption of human flesh but the consumption of any meat at all: ‘The horse, the
sheep and cattle live on grass; but those whose nature is savage and untamed,
Armenian tigers, raging lions, bears and wolves, all these delight in bloody food’.27
Christian polemicists extend the scope of their outrage to encompass abortion,
infant exposure and deaths in the arena as well as animal sacrifice. ‘Blush for your
vile ways before the Christians, who have not even the blood of animals at their meals
of simple and natural food; who abstain from things strangled and that die a natural
death, for no other reason than that they may not contract pollution.’28 Eusebius offers
the story of the martyr Attalus, who, ‘when he was put in the iron chair and was being
burnt and the reek was rising from his body, called out to the spectators in Latin:
“Look! eating men is what you are doing: we neither eat men not indulge in any
malpractices.”’29
Athenagoras applies the accusation to all manner of vice in
7
denouncing his opponents: ‘Adulterers and corrupters of boys, they insult eunuchs and
those once married. They even live like fish. For they gulp down whatever comes
their way. The stronger chase the weaker. That means they outrage human flesh’.30
It is assumed throughout such writings that the only possible reaction to an act
of cannibalism is one of horror and repudiation; to associate a group of people or a
practice with cannibalism immediately sets them outside human society and in
opposition to it. The accusers meanwhile establish their own moral authority by
distancing themselves from such behaviour: they are pious, god-fearing, law-abiding,
concerned citizens who are naturally outraged and horrified by this threat to
civilisation. Cannibalism is the means by which norms are established, outsiders and
insiders identified and certain insiders marked as being really outsiders. It is clearly
an extremely useful label.
II
The vehement condemnation of cannibalistic and pseudo-cannibalistic practices
precludes — and is meant to preclude — any attempt at understanding. However, this
is by no means the only way in which cannibalism is discussed in antiquity. Some
sources dispense with horror and outrage and treat the subject in the calmest, most
rational manner possible.
For Herodotus, cannibalism is just another barbarian
custom to be recorded, just another subject for learned enquiry. He presents the
‘facts’ about the mortuary practices of Indian tribes or the bloodthirsty habits of the
Scythians in careful detail without any overt condemnation, let alone expressions of
awe-struck horror.31 Indeed, at times he seems to be expounding almost a form of
8
moral relativism, a reluctance to condemn alien customs, as exemplified in his story
about Darius:
When he was king of Persia, he summoned the Greeks who happened to be present at
his court, and asked them what they would take to eat the dead bodies of their
fathers. They replied that they would not do it for any money in the world. Later, in
the presence of the Greeks . . . he asked some Indians of the tribe called Callatiae,
who do in fact eat their parents’ dead bodies, what they would take to burn them.
They uttered a cry of horror and forbade him to mention such a dreadful thing. One
can see by this what custom can do, and Pindar, in my opinion, was right when he
called it ‘king of all’.32
Cannibalism in these accounts is a mark of the exotic, and emphasises the
extent to which barbarian tribes are less civilised and closer to animals than the
Greeks (compare Herodotus’ description of the sexual mores of other tribes), but there
is little horror or outrage to be found here.33 This may seem surprising, but perhaps
we can suggest an intellectual justification for such an attitude. Clearly there are
significant differences between the practice of eating one’s own dead parents and the
practice of eating strangers who have been captured and killed for that purpose (as
modern anthropologists have classified them, endo- and exo-cannibalism).34 If these
differences are emphasised sufficiently, it becomes possible to argue that the former
practice is not ‘real’ cannibalism and so need not be condemned in the same terms.
What is heinous about ‘real’ cannibalism is, arguably, not so much the
consumption of the flesh of a dead body but the confusion of boundaries arising from
the making of human beings into food. Eating the body of someone who has died
9
naturally may be seen as a less serious transgression (Herodotus waits until much later
in the book before reporting that ‘it is said’ that one tribe of Indians tend to kill their
friends and relations when they fall sick, so that the meat will not spoil).35 Whereas it
is clear that a live human is not and should not become food, a dead body is a much
more ambiguous object; it lacks so many of the characteristics which are taken to
identify humans, such as speech and thought. As Aristotle notes: ‘A body has the
same form of shape [as a living man], but for all that it is not a man’.36 Plutarch, too,
seems to feel that dead bodies blur the distinction between humans and food: ‘The
bodies of the dead, according to Heraclitus, are fitter to be cast out than dung, and all
meat is either a dead body or part of one’.37 If you are not responsible for the killing,
consumption of the body may be seen as less unacceptable (or even as a justifiable act,
in the case of a survival situation).38
Moreover, the Indians did not eat human as part of their everyday food, which
would be truly heinous, but only as part of a funeral ritual. Even avowedly maneating tribes may draw this distinction between their practices and those of the ‘true’
cannibals who eat human flesh as if it were ordinary meat.39 It may be considered
better that Indians have some nomoi, a certain measure of civilisation, and show
respect to their dead (as the Greeks do, simply in a different way), rather than being
completely lawless and savage.
This sort of cannibalism can be understood as
analogous to Greek practices, and thus loses some of its horror; it is no longer entirely
unknown.
The Greek audience can feel confirmed in their superiority to such
barbarians; but at the same time their own customs have been defamiliarised, shown
to be in some sense analogous to cannibalism, and their universal validity has been
called into question.
10
The scholar’s acceptance of cannibalistic practices as one more example of the
infinite variety of nomoi, and his failure to display horror or overt condemnation, also
serve to reinforce his own authority.
Herodotus claims a position of superior
knowledge of the customs of both Greeks and barbarians; he is the detached observer,
able to rise above the prejudice and ethnocentrism of his countrymen. The calm,
unsensational tone with which he is able to discuss cannibalism emphasises his ability
to take an objective view, even if this might shock his audience. It also proclaims his
mastery of the subject, as he is able to neutralise the innate horror of cannibalism and
make it into a mere object of curiosity for his audience. The unknown is seized,
domesticated and incorporated into the discourse. He does not need to condemn it; he
can control it instead.
Whatever the intellectual justification, surely the main reason for including
stories of savage customs is to excite the audience’s imagination with a frisson of the
unknown and transgressive. However, writers may seek to absolve themselves of all
responsibility for their readers’ reactions.
They are not treating the subject in a
sensational manner, it is simply a consequence of the nature of the material. They
may even add a further disclaimer by refusing to vouch for the credibility of their
sources. Thus Strabo on Ireland:
They are more savage than the Britons, since they are man-eaters as well as heavy
eaters, and since, further, they count it an honourable thing, when their fathers die, to
devour them, and openly to have intercourse, not only with the other women, but also
with their mothers and sisters; but I am saying this only with the understanding that I
have no trustworthy witnesses for it.40
11
Elsewhere he quotes Ephorus to argue that not all Scythians are cannibals: ‘Now the
other writers, he says, talk only about their savagery, because they know that the
terrible and marvellous are startling’.41 Ephorus and Strabo, on the other hand, are
properly objective scholars, reporting the whole story as far as they know it with no
intention at all of giving their audience a cheap thrill.
This tone of scientific detachment can also be found in some of the discussions
of the morality of animal sacrifice. Ovid, as we have seen, condemns meat-eating in
the most emotive terms by equating it with cannibalism. In contrast, Porphyry, while
tending to agree that plough-animals should not be eaten, adopts the very different
style of abstract philosophical reasoning.42 At one point in his discussion he ponders
whether cannibalism is an inevitable consequence of human sacrifice, without
bothering to condemn either practice; perhaps the condemnation can be taken as read,
but its absence emphasises that Porphyry is above such concerns.
Athenaeus,
meanwhile, offers a satirical, or at any rate light-hearted, version of the myth of primal
vegetarianism beloved of the anti-sacrifice lobby:
From a bestial and lawless life that art [of cookery] has freed us: from disgusting
cannibalism she has led us to discipline . . . At a time when cannibalism and all sorts
of evil existed, a man arose who was no simpleton, the first to sacrifice a victim and
roast the meat. And since the meat was nicer than human flesh, they no longer
chewed one another, but sacrificed and roasted sheep . . . Wherefore, because of the
delights I am telling you of now, everyone kept aloof from eating a man’s corpse any
longer. All consented to live with one another, a populace came together, cities
became civilised, and all through this art of cooking.43
12
These writers share the perception that cannibalism is incompatible with civilised
society, but they do not treat it as a present threat. It is to be found only in the distant
past or in barbarian countries, and in either case it can be controlled, analysed and
comprehended by those who are experienced in reason.
Such is the power of those who possess knowledge and wisdom that they can
refer to cannibalism casually in the course of an argument about something
completely different. Perhaps drawing on the traditional association between tyrants
and cannibalism in Greek myth, Plato introduces the subject into his discussion of the
nature of tyranny:
How does the popular leader start to turn into a tyrant? Isn’t it, clearly, when he
starts doing what we hear about in the story about the shrine of Zeus Lykaios in
Arcadia? The man who tastes a single piece of human flesh, mixed in with the rest
of the sacrifice, is fated to become a wolf . . . The same thing happens with the
demagogue. The mob will do anything he tells them, and the temptation to shed a
brother’s blood becomes too strong.44
Seneca touches upon cannibalism several times in the course of his
dissertation upon anger; sometimes as an example of the dire consequences of anger,
as in the story of Cambyses in the desert, and sometimes as an example of an action
which may provoke this emotion.45 The story of Harpagus and Astyages, originally
found in Herodotus, serves both functions, showing ‘how great evil there is in anger
when it wields the complete power of supremely powerful men, and how great control
it can impose upon itself when restrained by the stronger influence of fear’.46 Seneca
13
coolly dissects the emotions of the father forced to eat the flesh of his son, and
concludes:
I do not say that a father must not condemn an act of his king, I do not say that he
should not seek to give so atrocious a monster the punishment he deserves, but for
the moment I am drawing this conclusion — that it is possible for a man to conceal
the anger that arises even from a monstrous outrage.
According to Seneca’s principles, the truly wise man will respond to cannibalism not
with anger or outrage but with philosophical detachment.
Seneca’s account
emphasises his own superiority to the characters he describes, and probably also to his
audience; he has full control over his own emotions, he remains untainted by such
horrors, and can, if all else fails, easily escape them:
To him who has a monster that gorges fathers with the flesh of their children, I would
say: ‘Madman, why do you moan? Why do you wait for some enemy to avenge you
by the destruction of your nation, or for a mighty king to fly to your rescue from
afar? In whatever direction you may turn your head, there lies the means to end your
woes. See you that precipice? Down that is the way to liberty. See you that sea, that
river, that well? There sits liberty at the bottom . . .’47
Seneca and Plato both assume that their audience will react with horror to any
talk of cannibalism, thus reinforcing their characterisation of anger and tyranny
respectively as evils. However, their own responses are quite different. Knowledge
and reason allow them to view the subject with detachment and to make use of it in
14
their discourses, partly as a useful illustration and partly to establish their own
ascendancy over their readers.
Like the ethnographers, they might try to deny
responsibility — these were well-known stories, not something that they had made up
— but their sober, academic discussions of cannibalism are in their way quite as
manipulative as the accusations levelled against Christians or Jews.
III
The ‘natural’ reaction to cannibalism is to emphasise distance and separation; anyone
who disregards social norms to such an extent must be a monster, either subhuman or
superhuman. To talk about cannibalism without pious ejaculations of horror and
disgust is in these terms itself a transgression, an implicit denial of the validity of
social norms in the face of reason and knowledge. We may note the elder Pliny’s
efforts to disassociate himself from his subject matter in describing cannibalistic
remedies, and to distance himself from other discussions of this material:
The blood too of gladiators is drunk by epileptics as though it were a draught of life,
though we shudder with horror when in the same arena we look at even the beasts
doing the same thing . . . Others seek to secure the leg-marrow and the brain of
infants. Not a few among the Greeks have even spoken of the flavour of each organ
and limb, going into all details, not even excluding nail parings; just as though it
could be thought health for a man to become a beast, and to deserve disease as a
punishment in the very remedies he adopts.48
15
Pliny is disturbed by accounts of cannibalistic practices that seem to go beyond
a proper ‘scientific’ interest to become unhealthily involved in the subject. This is of
course the third possible approach to writing about cannibalism. Far from treating it
as something alien, to be held at a safe distance or utterly repudiated, some writers
choose to collapse the carefully-maintained separation between cannibalism and
civilisation. For example, there is the philosopher Diogenes’ ostentatious rejection of
social norms:
He saw no impropriety either in stealing anything from a temple or in eating the flesh
of any animal; nor even anything impious in touching human flesh, this, he said,
being clear from the custom of some foreign tribes. Moreover, according to right
reason, as he put it, all elements are contained in all things and pervade everything;
since not only is meat a constituent of bread, but bread of vegetables; and all other
bodies also, by means of certain invisible passages and particles, find their way in
and unite with all substances in the form of vapour. This he makes plain in the
Thyestes, if the tragedies really are his and not the work of his friend Philiscus of
Aegina or of Pasiphon the son of Lucian . . .49
It seems entirely plausible that Diogenes should be suspected of having written
a version of the Thyestes, for ostentatious complacency about the depiction of
cannibalism was most commonly to be found in the field of literature. Writers
indulged in such acts for the sake of the power it gave them over the emotions of their
audience. Their descriptions are predicated on the assumption that readers or viewers
will respond to a depiction of cannibalism with horror, fear and loathing, and to this
end they draw upon the long tradition of writing about cannibals already discussed. In
16
some cases, this is purely for the sake of effect; the emotions are aroused to heighten
drama and suspense, as when Achilles Tatius eviscerates his heroine and serves her up
as a sacrificial meal in the course of his account of the adventures of Leucippe and
Cleitophon.50
Then he took a sword and, plunging it in about the region of the heart, drew it down
to the lower part of the belly, opening up her belly; the bowels gushed out, and these
they drew forth in their hands and placed upon the altar; and when they were roasted,
the whole body of them cut them up into small pieces, divided them into shares and
ate them. The soldiers and the general who were looking on cried out as each stage
of the deed was done and averted their eyes from the sight.
I sat gazing in
consternation, rooted to the spot by the horror of the spectacle . . .51
In contrast to the ethnographers, who report on strange and savage customs
from a safe distance, the novelist carries his audience with him into barbarian lands to
witness such deeds at close hand. The cannibalistic act, usually conducted in secret
under cover of darkness, is here performed in plain view, where every gruesome detail
can be observed and relayed to the audience. Other viewers of the scene — the
soldiers and the general — can avert their eyes and utter some protest against the
horror, but the reader is forced to watch the whole grisly spectacle in impotent silence.
The only escape from participation in the act as a mute witness is to stop reading
altogether; such scenes play on the tension between the wish to protest and the need to
resolve suspense, to find out what happens next (in this case, the revelation that it has
all been a conjuring trick and Leucippe is unharmed).52
17
The cannibals of Greek novels are barbarian savages, clearly outside the
bounds of civilisation and full humanity.53 The impact of the scene is based on the
fact that readers too are taken out of their familiar surroundings and placed in a savage
land where their own customs no longer hold sway. An alternative approach is offered
by Ovid in his retelling of the myth of Tereus, Procne and Philomela in
Metamorphoses VI.54 The setting is again foreign, and the villain of the piece is not
only a barbarian Thracian, ruled by his animal lusts (and compared to a wolf or a
hawk), but also a tyrant, with no respect for the taboo on incest or any other law.55
However, the author of the final horror, the chef who prepares the original Thracian
feast, the one who actually makes human flesh into food, is a Greek woman; she too is
compared to an animal, and she too rejects the ties of kinship by choosing to kill her
son to revenge herself on her husband.56 Tereus’ cannibalism is here a punishment,
not a crime, and that raises questions about whether Procne’s revenge is excessively
savage: social order surely cannot be restored under the slogan ‘scelus est pietas’.57
Supposedly clear distinctions between barbarism and civilisation, pious and impious
behaviour, are blurred. We are made witnesses of a series of crimes not merely to
heighten dramatic tension but to raise complex questions of morality.
There is a similar move from a barbarian setting to an examination of the
moral problems of a civilised society in Juvenal’s fifteenth satire, which depicts the
bloody end to a fight between rival villages in Egypt:
One of them, panic-stricken, pressed on a little too fast, tripped, fell and was
captured. The victorious rabble tore him to pieces, so many that this single corpse
sufficed for all. They wolfed him down bones and all, not bothering even to spitroast or make a stew of his carcass . . . Those who brought themselves to devour this
18
corpse, if truth be known, never ate any meat with greater relish. In judging a crime
of such magnitude, don’t suppose that only the first man enjoyed the taste of his
mouthful. After the body was consumed, the last in line scraped the ground with
their fingers to get a lick of the blood.58
In discussing this episode, which is unequivocally labelled a crime, Juvenal is initially
concerned to establish a clear distance between himself (and his audience) and the
perpetrators. They are savage and bestial, unable to control their appetites for revenge
or for food, lacking any moral sense: ‘No penalty can you devise for a people in
whose minds rage and hunger are equal and alike’.59 They are, moreover, tainted by
their nationality; the Egyptians are noted for their worship of monsters (and this feud
stems from religious hatred), their strange dietary laws (‘It is forbidden there to slay
the young of the goat; but it is lawful to feed on the flesh of man’) and their excessive
luxuriousness (a vice linked to inability to control one’s appetite).60 They are the
dregs of humanity: ‘No dread Cimbrians or Britons, no savage Scythians or monstrous
Agathyrsians, ever raged so furiously as this unwarlike and worthless rabble’.61
So far, so familiar: Juvenal identifies and condemns a threat. However, the
threat to his readers is neither the cannibals themselves (who are, as he notes,
‘unwarlike and worthless’), nor the possibility of divine wrath. The threat is rather
what cannibalism represents: the decay of the qualities of compassion and reason that
had once separated humans from animals and permitted the development of
communal life. Now, he notes, ‘there is more amity among serpents than men’.62 The
critique is subtly widened to encompass his own society; the failure to acknowledge
shared humanity which results in such acts of barbarous savagery is seen equally
19
clearly in the propensity of ‘civilised’ society for war. The moral point is made by
collapsing the distinction between ‘cannibals’ and ‘ordinary men’; we are all savages.
Cannibalism comes still closer to home in the final fragments of Petronius’
Satyricon, into the familiar world of the Roman empire. Eumolpus publishes a will in
which he requires his legatees to cut up his body and eat it in public:
The enormous reputation of his money blinded the eyes and hearts of the poor fools.
Gorgias was ready to carry out the terms . . . [Eumolpus speaks, possibly ironically:]
“I am not afraid of your stomach turning. You will get it under control if you
promise to repay it for one unpleasant hour with heaps of good things. Just shut your
eyes and dream you are eating up a solid million instead of human flesh. Besides, we
shall find some kind of sauce which will change the taste.”63
Cannibalism is not so unthinkable after all, if there is a suitable inducement on offer;
such is the all-consuming greed of contemporary society. Not even incest would have
served to make Petronius’ satirical point so well.
IV
I have so far focused on the ways in which different authors make use of cannibalism
to play upon the emotions of their audience, adopting different attitudes to the subject
depending on the effect they seek to produce. I have mentioned only in passing the
desire of the audience to be played upon; the existence of an appetite for such
emotional experiences. Readers may perhaps have been shocked when Petronius
introduced this alien element into the familiar world of first-century Rome; but we can
20
hardly imagine that the audience at a performance of Thyestes would have been
astonished to be confronted with scenes of butchery and cannibalism. The story was
popular with dramatists; Sophocles, Euripides, Ennius, Accius, Varius, Seneca and
others all wrote versions (Sophocles wrote both an Atreus and a Thyestes), and
Aristotle quotes Thyestes as an example of the model tragic hero, someone who
suffers terrible disasters through some flaw in their character.64 The nature of that
flaw doubtless varied according to the playwright’s intention — in the one surviving
example, that of Seneca, Thyestes’ weakness is an ability to resist the temptation of
power — but the terrible disasters were traditional: the Thyestean feast, where he
unwittingly eats his own sons.
The Thyestes may be about many different things: civil war, tyranny, revenge,
control. It is a depiction of butchery and cannibalism, in which violence is presented
in an aesthetically pleasing form. It is easy to find parallels for this, not only in
literature but also in some of the elaborately staged executions and combats of the
Roman arena; clearly there was an appetite for such gory spectacles, which tragedy
might also serve to fill.65 However, Seneca’s play seems determined to subvert or at
least problematise the process whereby cannibalism is served up as entertainment. In
the Prologue, the ghost of Tantalus is summoned by a Fury from the realms of the
dead (where he is being punished for, among other things, his own role in an act of
cannibalism) to set the drama in motion. Tantalus, however, refuses to play his part,
at first trying to flee from the realms of the living and then declaring his intention to
warn his descendants; anything is better than to assist in the re-enactment of his
crime.66 Although he is eventually compelled to do so by the Fury, the message of the
prologue is that it would be better if the play did not continue — but that would hardly
satisfy the audience.67
21
Proceeding with the drama, Seneca draws heavily on dramatic irony. The
spectators have full knowledge of what is to come (if they were not already familiar
with the myth, at the beginning of the play the Fury outlines the future course of
events), and so they can only feel frustration at the woeful innocence of the chorus
(who produce lengthy odes to celebrate the reconciliation of Thyestes and Atreus), of
Thyestes and of his son.68 They are then offered a surfeit of horror, with two separate
descriptions of the slaughter of Thyestes’ sons, one from the messenger and another
from Atreus himself. The scene in which Thyestes finally realises what, or rather
whom, he has been eating is drawn out almost to the point of bathos. It seems to
invite laughter as much as pity; and, if this is deliberate, it is another way in which
Seneca’s tragedy foregrounds the problems innate in the representation of violence
and the audience’s appetite for and reactions to such representations.69
It has been argued that the bloody performances in the arena allowed the
Romans to establish their dominance over the chaos of crime, death and nature.70 In
contrast, Seneca depicts the impotence of civilisation in the face of such threats. Any
attempt to keep cannibalism at a distance is abandoned. The horror derives not from
an external source, a barbarian or a mythical monster, but from the violence latent in
human nature. Civilisation and reason are powerless to resist such violence; note the
feeble attempt of the attendant to dissuade his master through rational argument,
which culminates instead in his craven collaboration in the crime.71 Despite the signs
of nature’s revulsion, as the heavenly bodies flee from the sky, and despite the pious
hopes of Thyestes’ son earlier in the play (‘respiciet deus bene cogitata’, 489-90),
there is no sense of imminent divine retribution. The crime remains unpunished; there
is no moral order in the universe. The artistic depiction of butchery and cannibalism
22
hammers home Seneca’s bleak vision of human nature — a point which is reinforced
by the fact that there is an audience for such a play.
V
How should one talk about cannibalism? I have outlined three possible strategies
which a writer might pursue, three positions in relation to the subject which may be
established through explicit statements of intent and/or a particular choice of tone and
vocabulary. It scarcely needs saying that the choice of strategy is determined above all
by the reaction which the writer hopes to produce in the audience. The author’s intent
may be rabble-rousing, entertainment or self-aggrandisement; to reassure readers and
reassert society’s norms as eternal and universal, or (as in some of the most interesting
texts) to unsettle such moral certainties and hold them up for examination.72 What we
do not find is a purely neutral, objective account; cannibalism is not a subject which is
discussed for its own sake, or introduced without some ulterior motive.
1
[Acknowledgements]
2
E.g. Burkert 1983; Detienne 1981; McGowan 1994; Rives 1995. General discussions of
cannibalism in different societies can be found in Fiddes 1991: 121-31; Sanday 1986; Visser
1991: 4-17; Warner 1994: 65-79. An introduction to recent studies of dietary rules can be
found in Garnsey 1999, esp. 82-99.
3
Homer, Odyssey 9.216-566: abuse of hospitality 269-74, defies gods 275-6, compared to a
lion 292-3. See generally Vidal-Naquet 1981, esp. 85-7.
4
Famines: Garnsey 1988: 28-9 n. 16.
5
E.g. Herodotus 1.119, 3.25; cf. 3.80-2 on the tyrannical character; Detienne 1981: 220. Cf.
Plato, Rep. 571d, 573c-d; Euripides, Hec. 1070-9; Athenaeus, Deip. 12.541c-e.
23
6
Sallust, Cat. 22; Plutarch, Cic. 10.3.1; Dio 37.30.4.
7
Caesar, Bell. Gall. 7.72.
8
Benko 1984: 54-78; McGowan 1994.
9
Minucius Felix, Octavius 9.6-7.
10
Cf. Benko 1984: 60-3.
11
Oct. 9.2.
12
Tertullian, Ad Nat. 8.
13
Oct. 8.5, 8.4.
14
Tertullian, Ad Nat. 9.
15
Athenagoras, Legatio pro Christianis 3.
16
Tertullian, Apologeticus 9.
17
Hist. Ecc. 7.10, 8.14.
18
Apol. 9.
19
E.g. Athenagoras, Leg. 32; Tertullian, Ad Nat. 16.
20
Tertullian, Apol. 8.
21
Panarion 26.4-5; quoted in Benko 1984: 66-7.
22
Cohn-Sherbok 1992: 51-63.
23
Pliny, Ep. 10.96.
24
Supp. 226ff.
25
Ovid, Met. 15.141-2.
26
Moralia 669-671.
27
Ovid, Met. 15.83-90, 96-110, 123-9; cf. Vergil, Georg. 2.537.
28
Tertullian, Apol. 9.
29
Hist. Ecc. 5.1.52.
30
Leg. 34.
31
E.g. 3.99-100, 4.26.
24
32
3.38.
33
Rhetoric of barbarism: Hartog 1988; Cartledge 1993: 36-62.
34
Sanday 1986: 7.
35
3.99-100.
36
Part. An. 640b34-6; cf. 641a4-6, 18-21.
37
Moralia 669.
38
Cf. Simpson 1984, esp. 122, on cases associated with shipwrecks, and above all on the
need for survivors to avoid being suspected of murder while admitting cannibalism.
39
Importance of ritual in New Guinea cannibalism: Poole 1983; cf. Visser 1991: 11 on the
Aztecs.
40
4.5.4.
41
7.3.9.
42
De Abstinentia 2.53.3, 2.56.10, 2.28, 2.31.
43
Deip. 14.660e-661c.
44
Rep. 565d-e; cf. 571d.
45
De Ira 3.20, 3.13-14.
46
3.15.
47
3.15.4.
48
HN 28.4-5.
49
Diogenes Laertius, Life of Diogenes 73.
50
There is an obvious parallel here with depictions of cannibalism in many modern horror
films; cf. the discussions in Britton et al. 1979.
51
Achilles Tatius 3.15. The fragments of Lollianus’ novel Phoenicica include a less detailed
description of the sacrifice of a young boy by bandits; in Stephens & Winkler 1995.
52
This Scheintod and similar authorial techniques are discussed by Bartsch 1989: 127, 128-9.
25
53
Achilles Tatius 3.9.3: ‘Terrifying savage men, all tall, dark-coloured (yet not absolutely
black like an Indian, but more like a bastard Ethiopian) with shaven heads, small feet and
gross bodies: all spoke in barbarian speech.’
54
Met. 6.424-674.
55
barbarus, 515; invicta libido, 458-60; wolf, hawk, 527-30; incestuous fantasies, 481-2, and
of course his actions speak for themselves, 519-62.
56
Compared to a tigress, 636-7.
57
635: scelus est pietas in coniuge Terei. Note also the ‘cruel joy’ which the sisters have in
seeing themselves revenged: 653, 658-60.
58
Juvenal 15.77-92; discussed in Highet 1954: 149-53.
59
15.129-31.
60
1-13.
61
124-6.
62
131-60.
63
Sat. 141.2-5.
64
Aristotle, Poetics 1452b-1453a; Burkert 1983: 104.
65
See generally Barton 1993.
66
Seneca, Thyestes 68-73, 90-5.
67
The prologue is discussed in more detail by Schiesaro 1994: 198-9.
68
Thyestes 336-68, 429-90, 546-61 — though in this last speech, the memory of civil war is
enough to make the chorus uneasy, just as the messenger arrives to announce the murder of
Thyestes’ sons.
69
Laughter seems to be a common reaction to this sort of material, if my own experiences in
presenting this paper are anything to go by. Perhaps this is a defensive reaction; perhaps we
have indeed been desensitised to violence by media overload; or perhaps the material itself
has been rendered less disturbing by the passage of time and, not least, by my own
26
presentation of it. It is not my intention to amuse — ideally, I think I would like you to feel
slightly nauseous and uneasy — but I am much less adept than Seneca in dealing with this
reaction once provoked.
70
Wiedemann 1992: 179.
71
Thyestes, 204-335.
72
Cf. the classic modern example of cannibalism in literature, Swift 1729.
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