Cannibalism, Vegetarianism, and the Community of Sacrifice: Rediscovering Euripides’ Cretans and the Beginnings of Political Philosophy
2017; University of Chicago Press; Volume: 112; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1086/694569
ISSN1546-072X
Autores Tópico(s)Families in Therapy and Culture
ResumoPrevious articleNext article FreeCannibalism, Vegetarianism, and the Community of Sacrifice: Rediscovering Euripides’ Cretans and the Beginnings of Political PhilosophyJohan TralauJohan TralauUppsala University Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreOnly shards remain of Euripides’ tragedy Cretans. Yet the fragments that we do have reveal a drama that is intriguingly packed with logical and argumentative peculiarities. Previous scholarship on this tragedy has, as we will see, been unable to account for these incongruencies. I will suggest a novel interpretation, namely, that Euripides elucidates a normative principle that is fundamental to his polity, and that the self-contradictions and tensions serve to present this principle in a curious yet systematic manner.Moreover, I will argue that this discovery yields general insights about the role of logical thinking in Greek tragedy and in the early development of political thought. We will see that all these argumentative peculiarities have to do with food and sacrifice. My contention is that one needs to address these strange passages with an eye to the role of sacrifice, eating, and meat in the moral and religious universe of the Greek city—and that in light of a certain interpretation of sacrifice as a political institution, the strangenesses in Euripides’ tragedy will appear remarkably reasonable. In making sense of a tragedy that seems to exclude any search for rationality and philosophical argument, I wish to make two contributions. First, given the interpretation suggested below, we will be able to understand a series of logical and argumentative improprieties that have haunted Euripides studies and, by extension, to understand Euripides, his political thought, and the polis itself in new and better ways. Second, I wish to show, in a very empirical way, that the view according to which Greek tragedy belongs to a “pre-logical” cosmology—a road meandering through Nietzsche and Lévy-Bruhl to contemporary scholarship—is neither fecund nor true. What is at stake here is, then, no mere detail in Euripides, but the very adventure of rationality and interpretation pertaining to the classical world. The famously illogical Cretans would appear to be the least likely case of systematic political thought and normative principles. Yet out of what appear to be merely logical and argumentative errors, an astonishingly systematic complex of ideas will emerge.The argument will unfold as follows. After briefly discussing the myth, the reconstructed drama, and some definitions, I begin the analysis by discussing argumentative peculiarities in the first choral song, pertinent to raw meat, vegetarianism, and cattle-herding. In the second step of the interpretation, I discuss another fragment, a debate that displays a puzzling analogy between cannibalism and omission of sacrifice. In the third part of the paper, I present an interpretation of Greek sacrifice, mainly deriving from the work of Marcel Detienne, that lets us discover sacrifice as a fundamental politico-theological institution; moreover, in accordance with the ethos of this institution all the argumentative improprieties actually make perfect sense. In the fourth part I discuss possible objections, and in the fifth part I suggest that my interpretation can account for what may be a different version of the myth. Finally, I argue that my interpretation should make us skeptical of the notion of Greek tragedy as being rooted in some sort of “pre-logical” cosmology; instead it should make us more sensitive to the possibility of reading Greek tragedy as a philosophical, argumentative, and rationalistic work of art.First we will need to say something about the myth and the reconstructed drama. In the most common version of the myth, Europa is abducted by Zeus in the shape of a bull. The god brings her to Crete, and after Zeus’ standard sexual transformation procedure she gives birth to Minos. Europa then marries the Cretan king, Asterios. Following the death of his stepfather Asterios, Minos and his brothers dispute the succession. Minos says that the gods have granted him kingship and that a magnificent bull will emerge from the sea to prove that this is the case. He then prays to Poseidon, who promptly sends a bull. Yet contrary to his promise to the god, Minos does not sacrifice the animal to Poseidon but keeps it. Infuriated, the god makes Minos’ wife, Pasiphae, desire the beast. She makes the inventor Daidalos her accomplice and the latter builds a wooden cow. The queen slips into the cow, the bull arrives, and the two beget a monstrous child called Asterios, the Minotaur.1 Thus the myth.In what is left of Euripides’ play, a chorus of Cretan priests address Minos and present themselves, someone (possibly a nurse) informs someone else (possibly Minos) of the birth and nature of the Minotaur; later, Pasiphae and Minos argue about who is responsible for the monstrous birth, and Minos commands that she be locked up forever. At some—late—point in the play, Daidalos’ son Ikaros sings a song. The play may have ended with a deus ex machina intervening, but we do not know. For our purposes, it is not necessary to solve the intricate questions about the structure of the drama and the attribution of verses to the different characters, for neither the authenticity nor the attribution of the pertinent passages has been questioned.Before beginning, I will need to clarify a few key terms briefly. In the following, “principle” and “normative principle” will refer to a fundamental norm from which more specific rules, prescriptions, and prohibitions can be derived. I will speak of “inconsistencies” whenever a statement (for instance, a principle) or action is logically incompatible with another statement or action, that is, in the case of a logical contradiction. I will use “incongruity” about a lower degree of argumentative impropriety. Tensions between phenomena in the text are, in this lexicon, for instance, cases of incongruity when a metaphor appears to be inappropriate in a certain context, or when two ideas are connected in the text that do not appear to be related, or when there is a transition between two ideas that appears to be too abrupt or inexplicable, that is, where we expect the ideas to be related but can find no such relation. Moreover, I will refer to both incongruities and inconsistencies as “argumentative aberrations,” “improprieties,” and “peculiarities.” It could be objected that these standards of argumentation were possibly not acknowledged as such by, or even known to, the Greeks at this point. I will deal with this objection continually and attempt to show that it does not damage my argument.What is of interest here is a chain of riddles that will be unravelled—and, in their own curious way, indeed solved—as we identify the normative principle that is at play in this tragedy.Vegetarianism and Raw MeatThe chorus begins by addressing Minos (Cretans 472 Kannicht):Φοινικογενοῦς παῖ τῆς Τυρίας τέκνον Εὐρώπηςκαὶ τοῦ μεγάλου Ζηνός, ἀνάσσωνΚρήτης ἑκατομπτολιέθρου·ἥκω ζαθέους ναοὺς προλιπών,οὓς αὐθιγενὴς στεγανοὺς παρέχειτμηθεῖσα δόκους Χαλύβῳ πελέκεικαὶ ταυροδέτῳ κόλλῃ κραθεῖ-σ᾽ ἀτρεκεῖς ἁρμοὺς κυπάρισσος.ἁγνὸν δὲ βίον τείνομεν, ἐξ οὗΔιὸς Ἰδαίου μύστης γενόμηνκαὶ νυκτιπόλου Ζαγρέως βούτηςτὰς ὠμοφάγους δαῖτας τελέσαςΜητρί τ’ ὀρείᾳ δᾷδας ἀνασχὼν†καὶ Κουρήτωνβάκχος ἐκλήθην ὁσιωθείς.πάλλευκα δ’ ἔχων εἵματα φεύγωγένεσίν τε βροτῶν καὶ νεκροθήκαςοὐ χριμπτόμενος τήν τ’ ἐμψύχωνβρῶσιν ἐδεστῶν πεφύλαγμαι.2Son of Phenician-born Tyrian Europa and of great Zeus, you who rule over hundred-citied Crete, I have come here from a most divine temple, the roof of which is supplied by native cypress wood blended with bull-bound glue into precisely fitted beams cut with Chalybean axe. I lead a sacred life ever since I became an initiate of Zeus Idaios and the herdsman of night-wandering Zagreus, completing his raw-eating feasts and holding torches high for the Mother of the mountain, I was consecrated and named a celebrant of the Kouretes. I wear all-white clothing and avoid the generation of mortals, I do not go near burial-grounds, and I guard myself against the eating of living foods.The priests of Zeus thus say that they lead a “pure” or “sacred life” (ἁγνὸν δὲ βίον). We note—though at this juncture only in passing—that they have left a temple where the beams of the roof are fitted together with bull glue (ταυροδέτῳ κόλλῃ); this could seem significant in a play about the genesis of the bull-man monster, the Minotaur. We will return to the glue shortly. But the most obvious way to understand ἁγνὸν δὲ βίον would be to identify it with the last four lines quoted. The priests wear “all-white clothing,” they avoid either sexual intercourse or the places where women give birth, and they do not eat meat (τήν τ’ ἐμψύχων / βρῶσιν ἐδεστῶν). This would all appear very pure in a certain perspective—that of vegetarianism, or perhaps more precisely, of the subversive vegetarians adhering to the supposed doctrine of Orpheus.3At the same time, however, the members of the chorus say that they are the servitors of Zagreus, τὰς ὠμοφάγους δαῖτας τελέσας (“completing his raw-eating feasts”). This is a bewildering line. Commentators have discussed to what extent this correlation between Zeus, Zagreus (and if the latter can in fact be equated to Dionysos, as is often supposed), and the mother of the mountain—Rhea—could make sense, or if it is some bizarre kind of syncretism.4 Martin P. Nilsson argued that they were a “mixture of all kinds of mystic cults,” and that it is “hopeless, to try to discern what of it is Orphic.”5 While possible historical incompatibility between the cults is important for our understanding of the fragment, we will focus on another and potentially much more damaging tension. This tension has to do with raw meat. The priests’ ritual consumption of raw flesh is, in the Greek context, disconcerting. Civilized people cook their meat; the uncivilized, and beasts, eat it raw.6And then, the overwhelming question: How could these celebrations involving the eating of raw meat be consistent with the vegetarianism that the chorus claims to observe just a few lines later? One cannot be a vegetarian and eat raw flesh at the same time. This claim on the part of the chorus would appear to be an eruption of absurdity. Yet it is but the first instance in a series of seemingly irrational argumentative incongruities.How can we make sense of this contradiction? In a recent edition, Christopher Collard and Martin Cropp argue that “[t]he apparent contradiction between flesh-eating and vegetarianism shows reality subordinated to the poetic.”7 Likewise, Robert Turcan suggests that the Euripidean inconsistency is due to “confusionnisme poétique.”8 Poetic, then. But this claim would appear to create a new problem, while not solving the one that is already there. Why is the contradiction more poetic? And what would be the meaning of the inconsistency qua poetic?Adele-Teresa Cozzoli, on the other hand, claims that the priests’ feasting on raw meat and their vegetarianism are chronologically distinct, in the sense of different phases of the initiation in the cult—“queste celebrazioni sono ricordate dai coreuti come compiute non nel loro ruolo attuale di profeti del dio, bensì ancora in qualità d’iniziandi.”9 This would be a neat way of doing away with the inconsistency of eating raw meat and being a vegetarian: the celebrants begin with the former, then do the latter. The claim is not new. Wilamowitz made sense of the passage by saying that Euripides invented three different phases of initiation, yet added that they probably had no historical counterpart outside the poet’s imagination, but were a strange conglomeration constructed for the purpose of ridiculing Orphic mysticism.10 Maurice Croiset made a similar claim about the conjunction being a Euripidean invention, and others have followed this track.11 Cozzoli differs from the earlier interpretations in claiming that Euripides did not make up this mixture, but alluded to a preexistent set of beliefs and practices that would not have struck the Greeks as incompatible or absurd. Cozzoli is thus innovative in collecting evidence purportedly corroborating the claim that omophagia was a rite de passage on the road to Orphic vegetarianism.Unfortunately, there is no reason to suppose that this is what the chorus are saying. Cozzoli argues that such an abyss between initiands and the initiate would be quite normal in ritual contexts. But since the wording of the choral song does not unequivocally state such a distinction we would need some other kind of evidence that would make it plausible—possibly from contemporaneous or earlier cults prescribing eating of raw meat for initiands and subsequent vegetarianism for the initiate. In another commentary, however, Collard, Cropp, and Lee have already argued that this conjunction of the two phenomena is inconsistent, that they are “brought together artificially, and are nowhere attested for any one cult or sect.”12 And the counterevidence adduced by Cozzoli is not convincing. She points out that Plutarch mentions ritual feasting on raw flesh as well as fasting. But Plutarch says nothing about any cult that would prescribe principled vegetarianism as well as omophagia—and fasting followed by feasting would appear to be standard religious procedure and quite distinct from the problem at hand.13 Moreover, Cozzoli cites Diogenes Laertios’ observations (7.13) about the Pythagoreans abstaining from eating meat; yet this does not prove anything about any supposed conjunction of vegetarianism and raw meat-eating.More recently, however, Ana Isabel Jiménez San Cristóbal has argued—tentatively so—that there may have been an Orphic initiation ritual that included sacrifice. On the basis of two texts, the Cretans and a damaged Hellenistic papyrus from Gurob, Jiménez makes the claim that the devouring of meat could have been part of the initiation. As a single document by an arguably eccentric poet, the Cretans is slender evidence, particularly since a number of Euripides scholars have suggested that the description serves to stultify the cult.14 Most importantly, the argument can obviously not be used in the context of the Cretans fragment without being self-defeatingly circular. Moreover, the problem with the papyrus is that, according to Jiménez’ own interpretation, it mentions fire and hence cooked sacrificial meat. In short, there is no trace of omophagia in the latter text, so it is questionable if it can in fact be used to buttress the view that Orphism implied vegetarianism as well as ritual eating of raw meat.15 The single instance of supposed omophagia is to be found in Euripides, and it remains, precisely, single. We must concur with an historian of Orphism, then, who says that Euripides’ bringing together of omophagia and vegetarianism mingles “hardly compatible ritual elements.”16Other recent commentators, such as François Jouan and Herman van Looy, have passed the issue of inconsistency in silence, discussing the compatibility between Zeus cult and Dionysian rites yet avoiding the logical problem of vegetarianism versus omophagia.17We are left, then, with an enigma. Euripides has handed a logical inconsistency to us, and earlier scholars have not managed to solve it. It could be objected that the conception of a logical inconsistency had not been developed or discovered at this point.18 It is true that the discovery of the distinction between different kinds of necessities—physical, moral, logical— was a gradual accomplishment. If we follow G. E. R. Lloyd, however, “beginning with Parmenides, perhaps, these terms [pertaining to necessity] acquire a new use in the context of logic.”19 Even if we opt for a very early dating of the Cretans, say, in the 450s, the drama must be later than Parmenides.20 Someone could again object that, Parmenides or not, the cosmology of Greek tragedy was not yet familiar with the idea that a self-contradictory statement must be wrong.21 But this is not true, for the mother of all normative arguments in tragedy, Aischylos’ Oresteia, conspicuously employs such claims with astonishing precision, demonstrating inconsistency in different arguments with regard to the compatibility of principles and other normative claims, as well as the concomitant insight that an inconsistent argument cannot be valid.22 In short, the conception of logical necessities and inconsistencies was no stranger to the universe inhabited by Euripides, tragedy, and the city, and it is more than likely that the conjunction of vegetarianism and omophagia must be—and must have been—understood as inconsistent.Moreover, when we look more closely at this choral song we will see that the self-contradiction does not seem to have been created at a whim. At the very least, in this brief passage the use of argumentative improprieties seems to be systematic. We learn that the Zeus priests are νυκτιπόλου Ζαγρέως βούτης, “herdsman of night-wandering Zagreus.” For sure, this is a metaphor: Zagreus, be he Dionysus or someone else, does not possess cattle that his followers tend to.23 Yet even as a metaphor, it is in tension with Orphic vegetarianism—vegetarians do not, in general, keep cattle. On the contrary, cattle-herding typically involves slaughter and meat-eating, regardless of whether animals are kept primarily for the purpose of producing work animals, hides, and wool, or for the production of meat or milk.24 On the contrary, cattle-herding involves slaughter and meat-eating. This is, of course, not a logical inconsistency if we understand the wording metaphorically, that is, as non-literal and somehow improper in the first place. But if a good metaphor is, as argued by Aristotle, always constructed from two phenomena that are related in a way that is made visible by the metaphor, then the idea of the Orphic vegetarian as a cattle-herder would appear strange, possibly too strange.25This tension between the image of the priests as cattle-herders and their self-professed vegetarianism would be alleviated if we would choose to follow Cozzoli, who rejects βούτης/βούτας, preferring βροντάς (“thunder,” that is, imitation of thunder by means of drums as part of a ritual)—a minority position, but still possible.26 Yet there is more: the kind of tension that we have detected seems to be systematic.The temple that the chorus speaks of is itself the embodiment, so to speak, of the killing and sacrificing of animals. It is built ταυροδέτῳ κόλλῃ, with “bull-bound glue.” Walter Burkert says that Euripides’ “dichterische Phantasie” has come up with a “mit Stierblut versiegeltes” temple, that is, that bull blood has been sprinkled on the building as part of a ritual.27 But this is an unnecessary conjecture; it is much more reasonable to suppose—as do most commentators—that the cypress beams are considered to be fitted with bull glue.28 There is nothing strange about bull glue in itself.29 Pliny tells us that glue made of bulls’ ears and genitals is the best.30 And Otto Kern argued that Orphic sanctuaries were built in conjunction with cypress groves.31 Moreover, the cypress was connected with Crete in the Greek imaginary.32 Furthermore, the cypress tree evokes death and mourning.33But what is truly remarkable is that the temple itself presupposes the death of animals—in the Greek context, sacrificing the bull, cutting it, offering parts of it to the gods, eating the meat and, as a byproduct, boiling the skin, the genitals, or the ears in order to produce glue. Again, this is not inconsistent in the sense that two propositions are logically incompatible, but the Orphic vegetarianism of the chorus would appear to be incongruent—“sit uneasily”—with their temple being the product of slaughter and the boiling of bovine carcasses.In short, Euripides has evidently constructed a not-so-neat inconsistency. On the one hand, there is vegetarianism; on the other hand, there is the herding of cattle and the use of dead animals’ bodies for architectural and ritual purposes; on the—impossible, monstrous—third hand, there is the disconcerting and uncivilized eating of raw meat. Earlier scholars have not solved this riddle.Sacrifice and CannibalismBaffled yet undaunted, we move on to the other larger fragment, containing the debate between Pasiphae and Minos (472e9–10).νῦν δ᾽—ἐκ θεοῦ γὰρ προσβολῆς ἐμηνάμην—ἀλγῶ μέν, ἔστι δ᾽οὐχ ἑκο[ύσ]ιον κακόν.Now—for I was maddened by the attack of the god—I suffer, but it is not a voluntary bad.In fact, Pasiphae says, someone else is responsible (472e23–24):ταῦρον γὰρ οὐκ ἔσφαξ[ε……ηύ]ξατοἐλθόντα θύσειν φάσμα [πο]ντίω[ι θε]ῶι.for he did not slaughter the bull [that] he promised to sacrifice to the sea-god when it appeared.The latter words may, as David Sansone has recently argued, be addressed to a deity, not to Minos—as an intermezzo, with Minos present.34 In any case, Pasiphae argues that she is not responsible for the monstrous birth and the preceding monstrosities.35 She acted at the instigation of the god, the ultimate reason being the fact that Minos had not sacrificed the bull to Poseidon. What she has done is not ἑκούσιον κακόν, “a voluntary bad.” The fact that Pasiphae evokes the notion of voluntariness is, in its own way, interesting. For the Greek legal systems and morality of the epoch, the question of responsibility for the consequences of one’s actions was a problem—indeed, in Euripides’ time, the orator Antiphon discussed cases pertaining to involuntary harm from opposing views.36 Archaic societies had in general held the view that people are responsible for the consequences of their actions regardless of whether the effects were in fact intended or foreseeable, but already early there are indications, for instance in Solon, that Greek thinkers conceived of this as unjust, and perhaps even thought that people are in fact only responsible for consequences that they intend or should be able to predict.37 The role of the intention in Greek morality is in any case contested—in the sense that this was the case in Greek societies, but also in contemporary scholarship.38 And if one adheres to the view that intention or neglect of foreseeable risk is more or less a prerequisite for responsibility, it would seem that Minos rather than Pasiphae is in fact responsible for the prodigious birth of the Minotaur, since he is the one who wilfully neglected the promise of sacrifice, thus causing the wrath of the god and the monstrous desire of Pasiphae.39 And this is what she says (472e34–35):σύ τοί μ’ἀπόλλυς, σὴ γὰρ ἡ ᾽ξ[αμ]αρτία,ἐκ σοῦ νοσοῦμεν.You ruined me, yours was the error, because of you I ail.Pasiphae’s defense is, says one writer, a “beautiful piece of rhetoric.”40 “[S]ophistic brilliance,” another scholar claims.41 Yet another speaks of the “rigorosa tecnica” of the argument.42 Already Wilamowitz argued that the speech exhibits “die Kraft seiner [Euripides’] sophistischen Dialektik auf seiner Höhe.”43 The issue of responsibility and guilt in the Cretans is interesting in its own right.44 But what is bewildering about the fragment is what comes afterward (472e35–39):πρὸς τάδ᾽ εἴτε ποντίανκτείνειν δοκεῖ σοι, κτε[ῖ]ν᾽· ἐπίστασαι δέ τοιμιαιφόν᾽ ἔργα καὶ σφαγὰς ἀνδροκτόνους·εἴτ᾽ὠμοσίτου τῆς ἐμῆς ἐρᾷς φαγεῖνσαρκός, πάρεστι· μὴ λίπῃς θοινώμενος.Hence, if you decide to kill me by drowning, kill—for you know blood-stained acts and man-killing slaughter—or if you desire to eat my flesh raw, here it is. Do not be in want when you are feasting.Pasiphae taunts her husband, asking him to kill her. The first possible punishment calls for no lengthy explanation. Drowning her in the sea would, in its own way, appear congruent with her crime: the calamitous bull came from the sea, and drowning her could seem to expel the pollution, bringing it back where it came from (a similar consideration is to be found in Euripides’ Helen).45 The other possibility does, however, prima facie sound absurd. Why does Pasiphae say that Minos is well acquainted with the foul killing of men? Moreover, why does she depict him as a would-be cannibal, sarcastically offering him her flesh? Where, then, does the topic of cannibalism come from?The transition to cannibalism is enigmatic. Moreover, if, as argued by previous commentators, Euripides reflects state-of-the-art legal argumentation46—if, indeed, this is “beautiful […] rhetoric”47 typical of Euripidean argumentative “brilliance”48—then Pasiphae’s words would appear to be not only abrupt but inexplicable.Why cannibalism? This is, strictly speaking (and unlike the words about indulging in omophagia and vegetarianism in the first choral song), not a logical inconsistency. But the utterance appears to be incongruent with what precedes it, and such incompatibility, such an apparent interruption of the sequence of ideas, needs to be accounted for. Since most of the play is lost, we do not know if it alludes to some theme that had already been addressed in the drama. Wilamowitz claimed that this must have been the case, yet conceded that the tragedy itself offered no such clues.49 Croiset argued that the perplexing utterance must have something to do with previous “actes de barbarie” perpetrated by Minos.50 But this is not plausible, for we have no indications of such deeds on his part at this juncture in the myth (later, of course, Minos will demand that Athens send young men and women to be killed by the Minotaur, but in the internal chronology of myth, this is all still far away). And no other available mythographic or other evidence could make good sense of Pasiphae’s words either. Cozzoli, who is always eager to iron out any logical or argumentative problems in the Cretans, says that it is an “esplosione d’irrazionalità,” yet adds the psychologizing explanation that in the heat of the argument, Pasiphae has cannibalism represent hatred of other people.51 Another critic says that Pasiphae’s words express “sarcasm.”52 But the question is why the accusation about cannibalism would be appropriate as sarcasm, that is, what it could possibly connect with in the mythological universe of Minos.It could be objected that the Greeks may have been less susceptible to such abrupt transitions or ruptures in a sequence of arguments. We need to be sensitive to that possibility. But the question is if we can find other parallel cases in Greek sources engaging in normative argument. One possibility would be the debate with Kallikles in Plato’s Gorgias, where Socrates suddenly seems to change the topic, from ruling over other people to ruling over one’s self, that is, the dignity of controlling one’s urges and desires.53 This has been considered an abrupt shift, perhaps even as an act of manipulation on Socrates’ part.54 Yet in the Platonic context, perhaps even in that of Greek political ethics in general (or so Socrates seems to want us to think), the connection was possibly considered natural and straightforward: the tyrannical desire to control other people was conceived of as akin to lack of self-control. So what appears to be a rupture in the text would in fact, as it were, be telling: it lets us discover the greater idea behind the dialogue. We may thus arguably expect such a correlation in the Cretans as well. Moreover, it could be noted that earlier scholars have felt the need to account for the abrupt nature of the passage, whether (with Wilamowitz and Croiset) by referring to a lost chain of thought, or (with Cozzoli) by understanding it as an argumentative peculiarity which is due to Pasiphae’s emotions. Common to these previous interpretations is hence the assumption that the seemingly over-rash transition must be explained in terms of a correlation with some other ideas in the thought complex of the Cretans. I will argue that one can account for this rupture in the sequence of arguments in a different, and better, way.The first thing to note, at this time, is that cannibalism is a disconcerting theme, and that it should be understood through the lens of sacrifice. Pasiphae’s wording—σφαγάς—suggests this. And human sacrifice was, in the Greek imaginary as well as in many other places, often thought of as being connected with cannibalism and vice versa. In Plato and others we find references to the ritual killing, cooking, and eating of children in Arcadia, in the context of the myth of Lykaon—sometimes, intriguingly, the philosopher speaks of it as a contemporary institution, while in other places he seems to be hesitant about the actual existence of this man-eating ritual.55 Some scholars argue that there may in fact have been some truth in the account of actually existing human sacrifice and concomitant cannibalism in Arcadia.56 In any case, let us note that cannibalism evokes sacrifice, and that in Pasiphae’s speech, the idea that she conjures up must be considered to be troubling.We have thus far found one logical inconsistency regarding vegetarianism and omophagia, two argumentative incongruencies pertaining to the herding and killing of cattle as well as the use of carcasses for architectural purposes, and one remarkable incongruency regarding cannibalism. We note that these problems—the Orphics and their consumption of steak tartare, the sacrifice omitted by Minos, the instrumentalization of animals, and the riddling accusation regarding cannibalism—are all to do with food, eating, and sacrifice. How do we make sense of these argumentative peculiarities? One answer could be that we should not. We could say that the monstrous desire underlying the drama is an “anomalie […] impropre à toute généralisation,” and that we should understand the logical perversions of this tragedy in the same
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