According to classic mythology, the _Cyclops_ were giant cannibals, each
of whom had a single eye, conveniently placed in the centre of his
forehead. As the account of these Cyclops is so suggestive, let the
story concerning them be told with some variations from the history as
given by Lamb. Ulysses, after the destruction of Troy by the Grecians,
coasted with his fleet along unknown shores, until the land where these
Cyclops dwelt was reached. He immediately went on shore with a chosen
party of twelve, by whom the land was peopled. The first sign of
habitation to which they came was a giant’s cave rudely fashioned, but
of a size, however, which betokened the vast proportions of its owner.
The pillars which supported it were huge oaks, and all about showed
marks of strength. Ulysses, having entered, admired the savage
contrivances of the place, and while thus occupied, a deafened noise
like the falling of a house was heard. It proved to be the owner of the
cave, Polyphemus, the largest and most savage of the Cyclops, who had
been abroad all day in the mountains, and as he reached home he threw
down a pile of fire-wood, which occasioned the startling crash. The
Grecians, at sight of the uncouth monster, who looked more like a
mountain crag than a man, hid themselves in the remote parts of the
cave, and after he had passed in, he blocked up the entrance with a rock
so large that twenty oxen could not draw it. Having kindled a fire,
throwing his great eye around the cave, by the glimmering light he
discerned at last some of Ulysses’ men. “Ho! guests, what are you?
Merchants, or wandering thieves?” he bellowed out. Only Ulysses summoned
resolution to answer that they came neither for plunder nor traffic, but
were Grecians who had lost their way in returning from Troy, which
famous city under Agamemnon, they had sacked and laid level with the
ground. They now prostrated themselves humbly before his feet, whom they
acknowledged to be mightier than they, and besought him that he would
bestow upon them the rights of hospitality. Jove was the avenger of
wrongs done to strangers, and would fiercely resent any injury they
might suffer. “Fool!” said the Cyclop, “to come so far to preach to me
the fear of the gods. We Cyclops care not for your Jove; we are stronger
than he, and dare bid him to open battle.” He then snatched two of the
shivering wretches nearest him, dashed out their brains against the
earth, and after tearing in pieces their limbs, devoured them, still
warm and trembling, as would a lion, lapping up also their blood.
Alexander Pope, in his translation of Odyssey, thus gives Ulysses’
description of his trials:
“He answered with his deed: his bloody hand
Snatch’d two, unhappy! of my martial band;
And dashed like dogs against the stony floor:
The pavement swims with brains and mingled gore.
Torn limb from limb, he spreads his horrid feast,
And fierce devours it like a mountain beast;
He sucks the marrow, and the blood he drains,
Nor entrails, flesh, nor solid bone remains.
We see the death from which we cannot move,
And humbled groan beneath the hand of Jove.
His ample maw with human carnage till’d,
A milky deluge next the giant swill’d;
Then stretch’d in length o er half the cavern’d rock,
Lay senseless, and supine, amidst the flock.”
Having now made an end of his supper, he took a great draught of goat’s
milk, and sank into a deep sleep. Ulysses at once drew his sword, and
half resolved to thrust it into the sleeping monster; but desisted when
he remembered that only Polyphemus could remove the massive stone which
guarded the entrance. The night was passed in great fear.
When daylight appeared the Cyclop awoke, and kindling a fire, made his
breakfast on another brace of Greeks; then pushing aside the huge rock,
and rolling it to its place again, he stalked toward the mountains.
Toward evening he returned, smacked his lips and enjoyed another
Phrygian stew. Supper over, Ulysses offered him strong wine, which the
brute took and drank. He liked it so well that he told Ulysses he would
show him the kindness to eat him last of all his friends. Having thus
expressed his thankfulness, he sank into a dead slumber, and then
Ulysses gave proof how far manly wisdom excels brutish force.
He chose a stake from among the wood which the Cyclop had piled up for
firing, in length and thickness like a mast, which he sharpened and
hardened in the fire, and then with the assistance of his men, thrust
the sharp red hot end into the eye of the drunken cannibal. The scalded
blood gushed out, the eyeball smoked, and the strings of the eye cracked
as the burning rafter broke in it; the eye fairly hissed as hot iron
hisses when plunged into water. The giant waking, roared with the pain
so loudly that the sound seemed like heavy thunder-claps. He plucked the
burning stake from his eye, and hurled the wood madly about the cave.
Blind and groaning with pain, he groped through the darkness to find the
doorway, from which when found he removed the stone, and sat in the
threshold to prevent Ulysses and the survivors of his band from going
out. They managed, however, to elude his vigilance, and returned to
their ships, where their companions, with tears in their eyes, received
them as men escaped from death. Quickly they spread their sails, plied
their oars, and moved away from that dreadful spot. The Cyclop hearing
the noise pushed to the water’s brink, plucked a fragment of rock, and
threw it with blind fury at the ships. It narrowly escaped lighting upon
the bark in which Ulysses sat. Ulysses cried out to the Cyclop: “Cyclop,
thou shouldst not have so much abused thy monstrous strength, as to
devour thy guests. If any ask who imposed on thee that unsightly blemish
in thine eye, say it was Ulysses, son of Laertes, the King of Ithaca.”
Then crowding sail, they glided rapidly before the wind, and soon came
to Lamos, a port of the _Læstrygonians_.
“Six days and nights a doubtful course we steer,
The next proud Lamos’ stately towers appear,
And Læstrygonia’s gates arise distinct in air.
Within a long recess a bay there lies,
Edged round with cliffs high pointing to the skies;
The jutting shores that swell on either side
Contract its mouth, and break the rushing tide.
Our eager sailors seize the fair retreat,
And bound within the port their crowded fleet:
For here retired the sinking billows sleep,
And smiling calmness silver’d o er the deep.
I only in the bay refused to moor,
And fix’d, without, my haisers to the shore.
From thence we climb’d a point, whose airy brow
Commands the prospect of the plains below:
Two with our herald thither we command.
With speed to learn what men possess’d the land.
They went, and kept the wheel’s smooth-beated road
Which to the city drew the mountain wood;
When lo! they met, beside a crystal spring,
The daughter of Antiphates the king;
The damsel they approach, and ask’d what race
The people were? who monarch of the place?
With joy the maid the unwary strangers heard,
And show’d them where the royal dome appear’d.
They went; but as they entering saw the queen
Of size enormous, and terrific mien
Swift at her call her husband scour’d away
To wreck his hunger on the destined prey;
One for his food the raging glutton slew,
But two rush’d out, and to the navy flew.
Balk’d of his prey, the yelling monster flies,
And fills the city with his hideous cries:
A ghastly band of giants hear the roar,
And, pouring down the mountains, crowd the shore.
Fragments they rend from off the craggy brow
And dash the ruins on the ships below:
The crackling vessels burst; hoarse groans arise,
And mingled horrors echo to the skies;
The men like fish, they struck upon the flood.
And crammed their filthy throats with human food.”
Following the old classic story a little further, Ulysses and his
followers pass onward to the abode of the _Sirens_, where Pope has
brought together their experience in the following rhyme:
“Unblest the man, whom music wins to stay
Nigh the cursed shore, and listen to the lay.
No more that wretch shall view the joys of life,
His blooming offspring, or his beaut’ous wife!
In verdant meads they sport; and wide around
Lie human bones that whiten all the ground:
The ground polluted floats with human gore,
And human carnage taints the dreadful shore.
Fly swift the dangerous coast; let every ear
Be stopped against the song! ’tis death to hear!
Firm to the mast with chains thyself be bound,
Nor trust thy virtue to the enchanting sound.”
Continuing his journey, Ulysses and his men reach the whirlpools in
which _Scylla_ and _Charybdis_ lurked, and their experience here is thus
given in the Odyssey:
“Now, through the rocks, appall’d with deep dismay,
We bend our course, and stem the desperate way;
Dire Scylla there a scene of horror forms,
And here Charybdis fills the deep with storms.
The rock re-bellows with a thundering sound;
Deep, wondrous deep, below appears the ground.
Struck with despair, with trembling hearts we view’d
The yawning dungeon, and the tumbling flood;
When lo! fierce Scylla stoop’d to seize her prey,
Stretch’d her dire jaws and swept six men away,
Chiefs of renown! loud echoing shrieks arise:
I turn, and view them quivering in the skies;
They call, and aid with outstretch’d arms implore:
In vain they call! those arms are stretched no more.
In the wide dungeon she devours her food,
And the flesh trembles while she churns the blood.”
It would appear that even the old cynic philosopher _Diogenes_ was
somewhat given, theoretically at least, to anthropophagy, for we read of
him as saying that the flesh of man was good, and might as well be an
article of food as the flesh of any of the lower animals. Whether this
remarkable sage ever put his theory to the test is not known, for no
such confession appears among his precepts or teachings.
Referring now to accounts far less legendary, it is safe to admit that
beyond all successful dispute man’s earliest home was in Asia. History
plainly points to this land as the cradle of the human family. In
looking over this vast continent, among the earliest people who
practiced cannibalism were the Chinese. Their mode of preparing a human
body previous to eating the same was as repulsive as any of the peoples
who never rose to the dignity of an organized government. Having
previously boiled the parts designed to be consumed, especially the
heart, they made soup of the same and partook of it with no little
relish. This was called by them drinking the heart’s blood of the enemy,
and favored perhaps as much of bravado as a desire to satisfy appetite.
In _Shanghai_, during the Taeping siege, Wilson describes an English
merchant, who met his native servant carrying the heart of a rebel, and
on enquiring the disposition which he proposed to make of it, replied
“that he was taking it home to eat for the purpose of making him brave.”
The _Battaks_ or _Battas_, a race of people at Batta, in the north of
Sumatra, and an offshoot of the Malay stock, are cannibals. They are
heathen, very superstitious, and in courage surpass all the other tribes
of Sumatra. Anthropophagy, it is said, still exists among them; nor has
the distant Dutch government on the west coast as yet succeeded in
eradicating the great moral blemish ascribed to these natives. Marsden
describes them as being so fond of their aged kinsfolk, that they seldom
lose a chance to _eat_ them.
Rev. Henry Lyman was one of the first missionaries sent to the East
Indian Archipelago, by the American Board of Foreign Missions, in 1834.
As he was departing for his field of labor, a friend humorously ventured
to express the hope that he would not “_disagree_ with those savages.”
Whether he did or not, can never be told, as this martyr was eaten by
the natives soon after his arrival at Sumatra.
Another authority fully as reliable, Mr. Anderson, relates that these
Battaks not only eat their dead victims, but begin their consumption
before they have been deprived of life; and the causes that provoke this
disposition are midnight robbery, treacherous attacks, and
intermarriage.
Junghuhn declares that warlike ferocity prompted these people to eat
their enemies; he also describes them as regarding human flesh a great
delicacy. In fact, they devoured not only war-captives, but even
criminals, slaves, and their aged relations. They speak a peculiar
language, have an original alphabet or character, and write on pieces of
bamboo. They commence at the bottom of the page, write from right to
left, and make books of the inner bark of a species of palm.
Herodotus in the course of his history describes some of the funeral
feasts in _Central Asia_. It would appear that at the time of which he
was speaking the people there ate the bodies of the deceased, and the
skulls were set in gold and carefully preserved. This act was
interpreted as a sacred rite, and religious ceremonies were connected
with it in honor of the dead.
The _Thibetans_, who belong ethnographically, to the Mongolian race, had
the like custom of regaling themselves upon their defunct ancestors; and
Rubruquis adds that they used also skulls as cups from which they drank.
With these people tradition reaches back to the first century before
Christ, at which time the country was divided into numerous small
kingdoms. In the first century after Christ, fifty-three of these
kingdoms became tributary to the dragon throne of China; a prince of
India united the others on the Yarlung River into one state, and Thibet
became a Chinese province.
The _Paramahausans_ of Hindostan, says Bucke, ate the putrid bodies
which they found floating down the Ganges, and that they esteemed the
brain the most exquisite of all food; many of them have been seen near
Benares, repellant as is the language, feasting upon dead bodies.
Solinus relates that the _Derbices_ so far forgot their filial relation
that, having slain their fathers ate them, and regarded the act in the
light of a solemn duty. When a certain monarch of India enquired of the
Greeks what reward would induce them to follow such an unnatural
example, replied, “No recompense under heaven.” The bare suggestion was
not only an impiety, but it fairly sickened them to think of consuming
those to whom they were indebted for life. Later, when the Indian king
was advised by the more humane Greek to cinerate their dead, he in turn
rebelled against such an unholy suggestion.
The religious doctrine that the soul outlives the body, continuing in
ghostly shape to visit the living, and retaining a certain connection
with the mortal remains it once inhabited, has evidently led many to
propitiate an honored and dreaded spirit by respectful disposal of the
corpse. Taking this combination of causes into consideration, it is
readily understood why aversion to cannibalism as a rule must have been
established at a very early period, and it is well to consider what
causes have from time to time led to its adoption. The principal of
these have been the pressure of famine, the fury of hatred, and
sometimes even a morbid kindness, with certain motives of magic and
religion; to which must be added the strong tendency to cannibalism,
when once started in any of these ways, to develop a confirmed appetite
which subsequently is indulged for its own sake.
Pass we now to Europe and other countries where the same customs have
existed as were practiced by the peoples named.
The records of shipwrecks and sieges prove that famine will sometimes
overcome the horrors of cannibalism among men of the higher nations.
During the great famine which smote the city of Moscow with such
severity, it was estimated that no less than half a million of human
beings died from hunger. Along the most public of the streets as well as
in the narrow lanes-where lived the poor, multitudes fell down dying
with no friendly person near them, and others too much exhausted to take
the few crumbs proffered. Children sold their aged parents for such food
as they could purchase, and as in many prolonged sieges parents were
compelled to partake of their own children after famine had wrought in
them its dreadful work.
Josephus records the fact that during the siege of Jerusalem, women
snatched the bread out of the mouths of their husbands, and in every
house where there appeared any semblance of food, a battle ensued and
the dearest friends fought with one another to secure the scanty
provisions. An instance is recorded where two women are described as
agreeing to eat their two sons, during the famine in Lamoine.
At the siege of Antioch during the crusades in 1097, a famine, says
Bucke, existed in the Christian camp, and human flesh was eagerly
devoured. At the siege of Marra the crusaders ate bodies taken from the
graves of their adversaries, and the historian (Albert) who records the
fact, expresses surprise that they should prefer the flesh of dogs to
that of Saracens.
In comparatively modern times during the reign of Shah Husseyn in 1716,
Ispahan in Persia was besieged by Mahmud, Chief of the Afghans, when the
besieged having consumed their horses, mules, camels, the leaves and
bark of trees, and even cloth and leather, finished—so great was the
famine—with not only eating their neighbors and fellow citizens, but
their own offspring. It has been alleged that more human beings were
devoured when this investment took place, than ever was known in any
previous struggle.