Cannibals. From ανθρωπος, man, and φαγω, to eat.

Cannibals are peoples who live on human flesh. See Cannibalism.

The Cyclops, the Lestrygons, and Scylla are treated by Homer as cannibals or eaters of men . This poet also says that the feminine monsters, Circe and the Sirens, attracted men by the image of pleasure and destroyed them. These parts of his works, as well as a great number of others, are based on the customs of times before his own. On several occasions Orpheus paints the same picture of these same centuries. It was during these times , he says, that men devoured one another like savage beasts, and that they stuffed themselves with their own flesh .

One notices, a long time after these centuries, among the most civilized nations, vestiges of this barbarity, to which it is probable that the origin of human sacrifices must be related. See Sacrifice.

The pagans accused the first Christians of cannibalism ; they permitted, it was said, the crime of Oedipus, and they renewed the scene of Thyestes. It seems, by the works of Tatian, by the eighth chapter of the apology for the Christians of Tertullian, and by the fourth book of the Providence of Salvian, that it was the secret celebration of our mysteries that gave rise to these calumnies. They killed, the pagans added, a child, and they ate its flesh; accusations that were based only on vague notions of the Eucharist and the communion which they had drawn from the words of poorly instructed people. See Eucharist, Communion, Altar, etc.