| Title: | Cannibalism |
| Original Title: | Anthropophagie |
| Volume and Page: | Vol. 1 (1751), p. 498 |
| Author: | Edme-François Mallet (biography) |
| Translator: | Nathan D. Brown [Furman University] |
| Subject terms: |
Ancient history
Modern history
|
| Original Version (ARTFL): | Link |
| Rights/Permissions: |
This text is protected by copyright and may be linked to without seeking permission. Please see http://quod.lib.umich.edu/d/did/terms.html for information on reproduction. |
| URL: | http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0004.091 |
| Citation (MLA): | Mallet, Edme-François. "Cannibalism." The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. Translated by Nathan D. Brown. Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2021. Web. [fill in today's date in the form 18 Apr. 2009 and remove square brackets]. <http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0004.091>. Trans. of "Anthropophagie," Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, vol. 1. Paris, 1751. |
| Citation (Chicago): | Mallet, Edme-François. "Cannibalism." The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. Translated by Nathan D. Brown. Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2021. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0004.091 (accessed [fill in today's date in the form April 18, 2009 and remove square brackets]). Originally published as "Anthropophagie," Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, 1:498 (Paris, 1751). |
Cannibalism. This is the act or practice of eating human flesh. See Cannibals.
Several Authors trace the origin of this barbaric practice to the flood; they claim that giants were the first cannibals . Pliny speaks of the Scythians and the Sauromates, Solinus of the Ethiopians, and Juvenal of the Egyptians, as people accustomed to this horrible meal. See Pliny, Natural History , Bk. IV chap. xii, Bk. VI chap. xvii, xxx, Bk.VII, chap. ii; Solinus Polihystor , chap. xxxiii. We read in Livy that Hannibal had his soldiers eat human flesh to make them more ferocious. It is said that the practice of living off of human flesh still continues in some of the southern parts of Africa, and in the savage parts of America.
It seems to me that cannibalism has not been the vice of a country or a nation, but of an age. Before men were softened by the birth of the arts, and civilized through the imposition of laws, it appears that most peoples ate human flesh. It is said the Orpheus was the first to make men feel the inhumanity of this practice, and that he succeeded in abolishing it. This is what made the Poets imagine that he had the art of stripping tigers and lions of their natural ferociousness.
Sylvestres homines sacer, interpresque deorum
Coedibus et foedo victu detterruit Orpheus,
Dictus ab hoc lenire tigres rabidosque leones.
Horce [1]
Several Doctors have ridiculously imagined having discovered the principle of cannibalism in an acrid melancholic humor which, lodged in the ventricle membranes, produces by the irritation that it causes, this horrible voracity that they assert they have observed in several sick people; they use these observations to support their opinion. One Author has put forward the question of whether cannibalism is contrary to or compatible with nature.
1. “Orpheus, the priest and interpreter of the gods, deterred the savage race of men from slaughters and inhuman diet; hence said to tame tigers and furious lions” (Horace, Ars Poetica , line 391-3).