ABSTRACT
The Greek author Herodotus, writing in the fifth century BC, was one of the earliest chroniclers of man-eating. ‘Beyond the desert the androphagi dwell’, he wrote. ‘The androphagi have the most savage customs of all men: they pay no regard to justice, nor make use of any established law. They are nomads and wear a dress like a Scythian […] and of these nations, are the only people that eat human flesh’. 1 Their willingness to consume human beings was the trait that most characterised the world's most ‘savage’ inhabitants. The essence of the man-eater lay in his or her name: anthropo, meaning human, and pophagy, feeding on or consumption. 2 Invoked in philosophical treatises, travel narratives, epic poetry, and political works by Aristotle, Pliny, and Juvenal, man-eating described those who lived on the margins of civil, and therefore political, societies. 3
