Abstract:
If, as the popular saying goes, we are what we eat, then what nature of beast is the Thebaid, an epic that participates in a consumption most extreme – cannibalism? This perverse and perverted consumption is not limited to the single, notorious act of Tydeus, but in fact has a far larger and more ubiquitous role in the poem, defining both its action and composition. The extreme consumption within the epic is difficult to face; indeed despite its frequent mentions throughout the Thebaid, we the audience only get a fleeting glimpse of Tydeus’ actual cannibalism, through the eyes of Minerva even as they look away and seek to escape the gruesome spectacle:
ecce illum effracti perfusum tabe cerebri 760
aspicit et uiuo scelerantem sanguine fauces. (8.760-761)
Behold! She sees him drenched in gore from the cracked
skull and debasing his throat with living blood.
Just as the goddess is repulsed and instinctively turns aside, too late to avoid fully the sight of Tydeus’ anthropophagic appetite, so too have many scholars overlooked the implications of this epic’s abject consumption.
