since time immemorial, the Western idea that there are certain peoples who are prone to consuming other humans and that man-eating is directly related to other “savage” characteristics finds its origin in the ancient Mediterranean world. From these ancient traditions medieval genres like travelogues and bestiaries emerged. Thus by the time that Columbus arrived in the Caribbean, he carried nearly two thousand years of discursive cannibal history with him. Before jumping into an analysis of cannibalism in the late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Caribbean, we must first understand the intellectual tradition inherited by early modern Europeans. Explorers, soldiers, settlers, and priests brought with them evolving traditions about how to interact and engage with difference. They inherited the belief that peoples who inhabit the far reaches of the world and people unlike themselves were often man-eaters. This chapter traces ideas about cannibalism from Ancient Greece to medieval western Europe through a survey of some of the most influential texts.
The Origins of Anthropophagy in the Ancient Mediterranean
In Herodotus’s Histories, he describes several types of man-eating practiced by both Greek and non-Greek peoples, including acts of vengeance cannibalism, starvation cannibalism, and ritualized man-eating. The first of these tales of cannibalism, in book I, is an act of vengeance by a group of Scythian hunters angered by the harsh treatment they received at the hands of Cyaxares, the king of Media, when they returned empty-handed from a hunt. Herodotus writes, “They [the Scythians] felt that this treatment from Cyaxares was unwarranted, and they decided after consideration to chop up one of their young pupils, prepare him for the table in the way they had usually prepared wild animals, and serve him up to Cyaxares.”2
The second story of cannibalism in The Histories also involves vengeance. Astyages, the son of Cyaxeres, had a dream that his daughter Mandane would bring great danger to his kingdom. So, in order to preserve his power, Astyages married her to an inferior nobleman, a Persian named Cambyses. Soon Mandane became pregnant, and Astyages had another dream, which foretold that her offspring would rule in his place. Once the child was born, Astyages called upon a trusted relative named Harpagus and asked him to kill his grandson. Harpagus had no choice but to agree, but he was unable to complete the task himself, so he passed it on to a herdsman named Mitradates. Rather than kill the boy, Mitradates and his wife, who had just given birth to a stillborn child, passed him off as their own and put their deceased child in his place as evidence of the deed. Years later Astyages discovered that his grandson, called Cyrus, was still alive and brought Harpagus before him to answer for his crime. After pretending to be happy with this turn of events, Astyages told Harpagus to invite his own son to greet Cyrus. “However, when Harpagus’ son arrived, Astyages murdered him and dismembered him. He baked some of his flesh, stewed the rest and prepared it all for the table.” After Harpagus had eaten, Astyages asked him if he enjoyed the feast and called the servants to bring in a platter containing the boy’s head, hands, and feet. Rather than recoil in terror or grief, Harpagus told the king that he could do no wrong and returned home with his son’s remains. Years later, at the urging of Harpagus, Cyrus rebelled against his grandfather and ruled in his place, thus fulfilling Astyages’ dream premonition. In another story of cannibalism in the sordid, sad tale of the kingdom of Media, troops under Cyrus’s father, Cambyses, resorted to cannibalism in the face of starvation on an ill-fated attempt to conquer Ethiopia. Cambyses had been warned that this mission was foolhardy, but it took the desperate cannibalistic acts of his soldiers to finally convince him of this.3
While the Scythians are implicated in the revenge cannibalism of book I of The Histories, it is in book IV that they receive greater scrutiny and become the paradigmatic cannibals. Herodotus begins by describing the conquests of the Scythians and Darius’s plan to seek vengeance on them for their acts of aggression against the Medes. He then relates several different versions of the origins of the Scythian people, one of which traces their descent to the offspring of Heracles and Echidna, a snake-human hybrid. Much of book IV is taken up with a detailed description of the people and places in the region of Scythia. But despite the anthropophagous reputation of the Scythians, it is in fact their neighbors that Herodotus accuses of institutionalized cannibalism: “North of this agricultural region there is a vast uninhabited area, and then there are the Cannibals, who have their own distinct way of life and are not Scythian at all.”4
There are other people Herodotus accuses of occasionally committing acts of cannibalism, but the Cannibals are the only group to be defined by these acts. For example, he describes the funerary practices of the Issedones, who prepare a special feast on the occasion of a father’s death made of sacrificial animals and the dead man’s body.5 Herodotus is actually quite careful to distinguish among types of man-eating. He passes only minimal judgment on ritualized cannibalism, like that practiced by the Issedones. Acts of revenge cannibalism similarly are not judged as significantly worse than other acts of revenge, all of which bear severe consequences for those involved and their descendants. In other words, in tales of revenge cannibalism, it is not that a human being is killed and consumed that causes repercussions; more often it is the rashness and pride of the perpetrators that come back to haunt them. Thus Herodotus distinguishes between cannibalism (ritual, starvation, revenge) and Cannibals (people who actively seek to consume human flesh).
Throughout the Histories, Herodotus makes sure to give his reader all available information on a topic even if he does not find his sources very credible. For example, of the different versions of the origins of the Scythians that he relates, he indicates which he finds most reasonable. He is unconvinced by the version preferred by the Scythians themselves, which ties their origins to Heracles and Echidna. That does not mean, however, that Herodotus’s conclusions are always plausible. In his lengthy narrative on the regions surrounding Scythia, he describes a group of people living on the edges of the kingdom: “Far past this rugged region, in the foothills of the mountain range, live people who are said—men and women alike—to be bald from birth; they are also supposed to have snub noses and large chins, to have a distinct language, to dress like Scythians and to live off trees.” Beyond the lands of the bald people, Herodotus reports, he has only the sparest of evidence. He claims that the bald people tell of “goat-footed men living in the mountains, and that on the other side of the mountains there are other people who spend six months of the year asleep,” but he does not trust these reports. In fact in book III he offers a statement similar to that of Montaigne more than a thousand years later: “If one were to order all mankind to choose the best set of rules in the world, each group would, after due consideration, choose its own customs; each group regards its own as being by far the best.”6 Thus much more than most writers who followed him, Herodotus treats the act of cannibalism carefully and with a crude nod to cultural relativism.
Much has been written about the plausibility or implausibility of the existence of Herodotus’s Cannibals, but whether or not he is to be trusted on the topic, other classical writers followed his example and believed that Scythia and other regions on the edges of the “civilized world” were populated by man-eaters.7 Strabo describes the cannibalistic practices of the Celtic inhabitants of the British Isles, who are “more savage” than others in the region, practice incest, and are “man-eaters as well as heavy-eaters.” To shore up this claim, which he admits comes from less than trustworthy sources, he looks to the reputation of the Scythians for support: “And yet, as for the matter of man-eating, that is said to be a custom of the Scythians also and in cases of necessity forced by sieges, the Celti, the Iberians and several other peoples are said to have practiced it.” Thus, it is because the anthropophagy of the Scythians is so notorious that he finds the tales of Irish cannibalism to be somewhat credible. Furthermore, like Herodotus, Strabo maintains that there is a difference between resorting to cannibalism out of necessity and being a Cannibal, although he does seem to criticize acts of starvation cannibalism, as he asserts that only those on the fringes of “civilization” have resorted to it.8
Pliny the Elder echoes these sentiments in book VII of his Natural History. In the opening pages of this section, he discusses the authoritativeness of his work, pointing to men like Herodotus as his trustworthy sources: “We have pointed out that some of the Scythian tribes and in fact a good many, feed on human bodies—a
