Ryan Baldwin, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
This paper argues that Herodotus’ unique depictions of cannibalism in his ethnographies indicate that the historian does not stigmatize foreign customs. Instead of “Othering” these groups, Herodotus depicts the nomoi—the laws and customs—of these far-away peoples to encourage his audience to tolerate foreign practices. While scholarship on cannibalism in the modern world has shifted from attempting to prove or disprove the existence of cannibalism to discussing the meanings that come from accusing others of the practice within imperial structures (Watson, 2018), we as scholars of the ancient world have yet to dig deeper into Herodotus’ depictions of cannibalism: What does Herodotus hope to convey by sharing this information, whether or not the statements are historically true? How does he himself view the practice of cannibalism and how does it affect his ethnographies and historical narratives?
I first argue that Herodotus depicts those who practice cannibalism on the “edges of the known world” not as stereotypical “savages”, as other ancient historians and ethnographers do (cf. Str. 4.5.4), but as foreigners with differing customs. Close readings of passages that describe the Massagetae (Hdt. 1.216), Callatiae (3.38), Padaeans (3.99), and Issedones (4.26) show that Herodotus withholds moral judgment by depicting cannibalism as a funerary, ritualistic, convivial, and nutritive practice for nomadic peoples.
This is true even of the Androphagi (Hdt. 4.106), in whose description Arens (1979) finds an origin of the trope of cannibals living at the edges of civilization. They may have “the most savage manner of life” (ἀγριώτατα ἤθεα) and lack knowledge of justice (δίκην) and law (νόμῳ), but Herodotus deploys Homeric language (Od. 10.200) to link them to Polyphemus and the Cyclopes. Recent scholarship (Bakker, 2013) has pointed out the inconsistencies of Odysseus’ story and his unreliability as a narrator. This makes available a sympathetic reading of the Androphagi: Herodotus presents himself as an unreliable narrator as he describes a faraway people he has only heard about only through rumors and hearsay.
To conclude, I will briefly argue that cannibalism is denigrated in Herodotus’ accounts of Cyaxares (1.73), Harpagus (1.119), Phanes (3.11), and Cambyses’ campaign into Egypt (3.25). The historian decries cannibalism in these instances because the action is contrary to their own nomoi and perverts the customs of others: unnamed youths die inglorious, violent deaths and are consumed unknowingly; revenge, rather than ritual or nourishment, is the primary motivator; and constant anxiety about the volatility of family lines pervades these accounts. I will lastly propose Herodotus wrote anti-colonial depictions of cannibalism by showing that the Massagetae, Callatiae, Padaeans, Issedones, and perhaps even the Androphagi all followed their own laws and customs as evidence of the historian’s cultural relativism. By contrast, it is the Medes and Persians—and, by extension, the Greeks, as Herodotus’ allusions suggest—who should be condemned for their uncustomary acts of cannibalism in Books 1 and 3. In this perspective, the “savages” succeed where the “civilized” peoples fail.