Herodotus was also the first writer to document the practice of drawing lots during crises, with the person holding the short straw killed and eaten by his starving comrades. According to the historian, during King Cambyses’s expedition to Ethiopia, his men ran out of provisions, and after slaughtering and consuming their pack animals, they were reduced to munching on grass. Herodotus describes how when they came to the desert, “some of them did something dreadful.” They cast lots with one out of ten men killed and eaten by his comrades. After learning of this, Cambyses reportedly abandoned the campaign.
The Father of History also wrote extensively about the Scythians, horse-riding barbarian nomads living in the area north of the Black Sea. According to Herodotus, among their many strange customs, the Scythians enjoyed smoking marijuana and eating their enemies. Additionally, like Ed Gein, the model for the fictional characters Norman Bates and Buffalo Bill (The Silence of the Lambs), Scythian warriors also found some unique uses for human skin and body parts, using severed hands for arrow quivers and carrying around human skins stretched upon frames.
In what may be Herodotus’s most influential cannibal-related story, he recounted the tale of Astyages, the last king of the Median Empire. One night, the king awakens from a particularly bad nightmare in which his daughter Mandane “[made] water so greatly that she filled all his city,” eventually flooding all of Asia. Several years later, as Mandane is carrying her first child, the king has another bad dream. In this one, an enormous vine grows out of “his daughter’s privy parts” until all of previously-urine-soaked Asia falls under its mighty shade. The Magi are asked to interpret and they attempt to put their king at ease by telling him that Mandane will give birth to a son and that the boy will one day destroy Astyages’s empire.
Since there are apparently no pruning shears big enough for this gardening job, Astyages sends his favorite general, Harpagus, to find Mandane and kill her child. Harpagus, however, refuses to spill innocent blood and instead hands the newborn off to a herdsman and his wife—the latter (by coincidence) has just given birth to a stillborn son. Predictably, the quick-thinking general departs with the body of the dead child, which he delivers to the king.
Ten years later, Mandane’s son and his sheep-herding foster dad are granted an audience with King Astyages, who while talking to the boy recognizes the family resemblance. After some quick back-calculations, the king realizes what his formerly favorite general has done. Astyages sends the boy off with servants, then questions the herdsman, who quickly fesses up to the entire ruse. Harpagus is summoned, and seeing the herdsman, he attempts to weasel out of the predicament, admitting that he felt bad about killing the boy. Harpagus then tells the king that he did what anyone in his predicament would have done—he ordered the herdsman to murder the infant.
King Astyages, who may have also been famous for his poker face, then tells Harpagus something along the lines of, “Hey, no problem, I felt bad about asking you to kill my grandson anyway.” The general presumably lets out a huge sigh of relief, but before he can get too relaxed, the King follows up. “Oh, and by the way,” he adds (although, once again, probably not in those exact words), “why don’t you and your son come to dinner tonight so we can all celebrate together?” Relieved, Harpagus returns home and instructs his son to head over to the banquet immediately. The boy responds with the ancient Persian equivalent of “You got it, Dad,” and leaves for the party.
According to Herodotus, this is what happened next:
When Harpagus’s son came to Astyages, the king cut his throat and chopped him limb from limb, and some of him he roasted and some he stewed. . . . When it was dinner hour and the other guests had come, then for those other guests and for Astyages himself there were set tables full of mutton, but, before Harpages, the flesh of his own son, all save for the head and extremities of the hands and feet; these were kept separate, covered up in a basket.
When the meal is done, Astyages asks the general how he liked the feast and although Harpagus initially gives it the big thumbs up, the party ends on a sour note once the king has his general open the basket containing his son’s uneaten body parts.