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- Newsgroups: alt.mythology
- Path: sparky!uunet!uunet.ca!canrem!dosgate!dosgate![david.meadows@canrem.com]
- From: "david meadows" <david.meadows@canrem.com>
- Subject: involuntary cannibalism
- Message-ID: <1992Nov21.3064.1549@dosgate>
- Reply-To: "david meadows" <david.meadows@canrem.com>
- Organization: Canada Remote Systems
- Distribution: alt
- Date: 21 Nov 92 12:55:31 EST
- Lines: 25
-
- Ben Cushman writes:
-
- BC> I am working on a thesis, and I need a good case of someone
- >unkowingingly eating someone else to illustrate a point. Can anyone think
- >of a good example from mythology-- Greek prefered.
- > I think that Herodotus mentions some such case, but I haven't been
- >able to find it.
-
- This is a piece of cake: The Median king Astyages had
- Harpagus' sons chopped up and made into a stew which was fed to the
- unknowing Harpagus. Harpagus was being punished for not having killed
- the future powerful guy Cyrus. The whole is in the first book of
- Herodotus (the eating part is pp. 90-91 of the Penguin version; the
- tale of Cyrus' miraculous upbringing comes a few pages before that).
- This is a topos of ancient literature (as you will likely find from
- other replies) and if you find a commentary on Herodotus, it will
- likely point you to all the examples you could ever want
-
-
- David Meadows
- ---
- ■ 1st 1.01ß #813 ■ Cogitationis poenam nemo patitur -- Ulpian
- --
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