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Figure 1 Theseus fighting the Amazons (red‐figure Attic krater attributed to Polygnotus, 450–430 BCE, found near Tarentum). Bibliothèque nationale de France, Médailles et Antiques, Luynes.722 – De Ridder.421.

      Reproduced with permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

More recent work has compared Herodotus with the anthropology of Claude Lévi‐Strauss, as presented in Tristes Tropiques (1955). The analogy with the famous PROLOGUE of the Histories is based on four main points. First of all the term HISTORIĒ (a variant of historia in the IONIC DIALECT Herodotus uses) does not refer to either the literary genre nor the discipline of history, but describes the process of field inquiry. Furthermore, this investigation concerns “Man,” anthrōpoi, in the generic sense of humanity in its entirety, overriding the traditional distinction, in cultural terms, between Greeks and barbarians. A third similarity lies in the purpose of the investigation: to save from oblivion the deeds of men. Lastly, the observer should be guided by amazement, by the feeling of “strangeness.” But the analogy between Lévi‐Strauss and Herodotus depends on an even more fundamental point. Herodotus can also be seen in this passage as an ethnologist “working on the inside,” with two ways of seeing: at one moment, and more frequently, observing Greek culture, in the next examining the barbarians. The nature of Herodotus’ concerns, and the strangeness that this gives his work, opened up new avenues for studying the links between ethnology, or anthropology, and history.

      In this context of the development of historical anthropology (Gernet 1981 [1968]), scholars of antiquity defended themselves valiantly, whereas their situation could be considered vulnerable, at least from the inside. Jean‐Pierre Vernant, author of Myth and Thought among the Greeks, first published in 1965, founded in 1986 the journal Mètis, sub‐titled Anthropological Review of the Ancient Greek World. Vernant was not alone. Between 1965 and the end of 1980, with him and around him major studies appeared by Marcel Detienne, Pierre Vidal‐Naquet, Nicole Loraux, François Hartog, François Lissarrague, Françoise Frontisi, and others, alongside collective works such as The Cuisine of Sacrifice among the Greeks (1979). However, in 1989, Vernant published in Mètis a synthesis, “De la psychologie historique à une anthropologie de la Grèce ancienne” (“From historical psychology to an anthropology of Ancient Greece”), in which he expressed a certain concern and again spelt out the basic objectives of an anthropology of Greece. It should essentially be devoted to a study of the categories of space and TIME, the uses of MEMORY, the structures governing the narration of legends, the frameworks of thought underlying political and judicial discourse, medical and philosophical treatises, and to the analysis of the forms of practical intelligence (shrewdness, cunning, craft artefacts, etc.), and of the relationship between acts and individuals.

      Like Lévi‐Strauss, Herodotus “begins by paying homage to the power and the insignificance of the event” (Lévi‐Strauss 1966, 408), before its incidental nature which he expresses on every page. At the same time, he makes every effort to detect “a unity and a consistency behind everything that would not necessarily emerge from a mere description of the facts, simply laid out in a disorganized manner under the gaze of the scholar” (Lévi‐Strauss 1971, 614). Regarding Herodotus as a kind of Lévi‐Strauss casts light on who the Greek historian really was, forged in the Western tradition and accepted as the “FATHER OF HISTORY” despite the fact that he never claimed that title for himself. He was more interested in the diversity of the cultures he encountered, which each raised questions for the Greeks on how they saw themselves.

      SEE ALSO: Black Athena; Ethnicity; Nomads; nomos; Orientalism; Reciprocity; Scholarship on Herodotus, 1945–2018; Scythians; thōmata; Travel

      REFERENCES

      FURTHER READING

ANTHROPOPHAGY

      ANDREW NICHOLS

       University of Florida

      Anthropophagy is the eating of human flesh (cannibalism). A recurring theme in the Histories, cannibalism is often described as a barbaric custom of less civilized tribes who dwell at the edges of the earth. Although Herodotus says the SCYTHIANS are not cannibals (4.18), they do engage in a form of cannibalism by drinking the blood of the first man they kill in battle (4.64), and they fashion drinking cups from their skulls (4.65). The ANDROPHAGI were a lawless tribe of “man‐eaters” who lived north of the Scythians, though who their victims are is never specified (4.18, 106). Tribal cannibalism usually involves the eating of one’s own clansmen. The MASSAGETAE, an Iranian nomadic people from the steppes, would kill their tribesmen who were very old and feast on

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