Category Archives: eating human flesh

Arabians: Pseudo-Nilus on barbarian bandits and Saracens in the Sinai desert (early fifth century CE)

Baktrians, Sogdians, and some “completely barbarous” eastern peoples: Strabo (early first century CE)

Barbarian peoples: Caesarius of Nazianzos’ and George the Monk’s collection of extraordinary customs (sixth / ninth centuries CE)

Britons and Iernians (Irish): Julius Caesar, Pytheas, and Strabo on customs including eating human flesh (early first century CE)

Celts: Diodoros on Galatian origins, “savage” customs and invasions of Italy and Greece (mid-first century BCE)

Eastern and northern peoples: Bardaisan of Edessa’s Book of the Laws of Countries, Pseudo-Clementines, and Origen on astrology and peoples (second-third centuries CE)

Egyptian perspectives: Memphites on the goddess Isis and the origins of civilization among Egyptians (first century BCE on)

Egyptians and Canaanites: Wisdom of Solomon on worship of animals and images (first century BCE)

Egyptians, Thracians, Judeans, and Carthaginians: Theophrastos on piety and human sacrifice (fourth century BCE on)

Egyptians: Achilles Tatius and Dio Cassius on man-eating cowherds / bandits (second-third century CE)

Egyptians: Juvenal on “demented Egypt,” animal worship, and the eating of raw human flesh (early second century CE)

Ethiopians: Dalion on paradoxical peoples (mid-third century BCE)

Europeans, Asians, and Greeks: Aristotle on hierarchies, slaves, and environmental determinism (fourth century BCE)

Huns and Alans: Ammianus Marcellinus on “savage” nomadic threats (late fourth century CE)

Iberians: Valerius Maximus, Petronius, Florus, and Appian on brave and/or savage Numantines (first-second centuries CE)

Indians, Ethiopians and others: Pliny the Elder on “unbelievable” peoples (first century CE)

Indians, Taprobanians, and Serians: Pliny the Elder on numerous peoples and customs in India and beyond (first century CE)

Indians: Herodotos on eastern peoples at the ends of the earth (mid-fifth century BCE)

Israelites, Egyptians, Idumeans, Scythians, and others: Origen on ethnic hierarchies and their spiritual equivalents (mid-third century CE)

Judean wisdom: Tatian the Assyrian on the priority of Moses’ “barbarian wisdom” (second century CE)

Mediterranean peoples: Sextus Empiricus engages with ethnographic discourses for philosophical aims (second-third centuries CE)

Persians, Babylonians, and Egyptians: Pseudo-Clementines on Zoroaster and the origins of Magian skill (second-fourth centuries CE)

Persians: Heresy-hunters on Simon Magus and other Magians (second-third centuries CE)

Pontic peoples: Phlyarchos on traits and customs of Thibians and Scythians (early second century BCE)

Romans, Egyptians, Persians, and others: Minucius Felix’s ethnographic defence of the Christian people (early third century CE)

Romans: Livy, Pliny, Plutarch, and Dio on Roman human sacrifice of Gauls and Greeks (late first century BCE on)

Scythians and other Pontic peoples: Herodotos on the “most ignorant peoples of all” (fifth century BCE)

Scythians: Adventures of Andrew and Matthias among the Man-eaters as ethnographic fiction (third-fifth centuries CE)

Serians (Chinese), Ottorokorians and others: Pliny the Elder on the savage silk people (first century CE)

Western peoples beyond the pillars of Herakles (and up): Lucian’s “A True Story” and ethnographic fiction (late second century CE)