Anthropophage

Lore & Background

The most famous usage of the Anthropophagi appears in William Shakespeare's Othello: 'And of the Cannibals that each other eat, The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads Do grow beneath their shoulders.' Shakespeare makes another reference to the cannibalist anthropophagus in the Merry Wives of Windsor: 'Go knock and call; hell speak like an Anthropophaginian unto thee: knock, I say.' T.H. White also features the Anthropophagi as Robin Hood's enemies in his novel The Sword in the Stone: 'You know about these Anthropophagi, and how we have lost Matthew, Peter, Walter, Colin and many more.' American novelist Rick Yancey incorporates the myths of the Anthropophagi in his 2010 release The Monstrumologist.

Reader's Guide

The Anthropophagi hold significance as a literary and mythical race of cannibals, most famously invoked by William Shakespeare in Othello and The Merry Wives of Windsor. Their name, derived from Greek, entered English after 1460, and they may have roots in Herodotus's account of the Scythian Androphagi. In popular culture, the anthropophagus is sometimes depicted as a being without a head, with facial features on the torso—a likely misinterpretation of Shakespeare's lines in Othello, where the description of headless men actually refers to a separate race known as the Blemmyes. Ephraim Chambers' Cyclopædia notes that 'Many, some say most, of the Savages are Anthropophagi.' The figure has persisted in modern literature, appearing in T.H. White's The Sword in the Stone and Rick Yancey's The Monstrumologist, reflecting enduring fascination with cannibalistic mythologies. Their legacy lies in their ambiguous identity—sometimes conflated with headless beings—and their role as a symbol of the exotic and terrifying 'other' in Western imagination.

Did You Know?

• The word anthropophage first appears in English after 1460.
• The Anthropophagi might have been inspired by the Scythian tribe of the Androphagi described by Herodotus.
• In popular culture, the anthropophagus is sometimes depicted as headless with facial features on the torso, likely a misinterpretation of Shakespeare's Othello.
• Ephraim Chambers' Cyclopædia states that 'Many, some say most, of the Savages are Anthropophagi.'

Etymology and Ancient Roots

The term "anthropophage" derives from the Greek word anthrōpophagos, literally meaning "human-eater," with the plural form anthropophagi. This word entered the English lexicon sometime after 1460, marking its transition from classical scholarship into broader literary usage. The mythical cannibal race it describes may trace its inspiration to the Androphagi, a Scythian tribe documented by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus of Halicarnassus. By the early modern period, the concept had become deeply embedded in European perceptions of non-European peoples. Ephraim Chambers, in his Cyclopædia, noted that many—some claimed most—of what he termed "Savages" were considered Anthropophagi, reflecting the era's tendency to project cannibalism onto unfamiliar cultures. This conflation of a specific Greek mythological concept with a sweeping generalization about entire populations reveals how the term carried both literary and ideological weight in early modern English thought.

Shakespeare's Cannibal Chorus

William Shakespeare gave the Anthropophagi their most enduring literary home. In Othello, the character Iago paints a vivid catalogue of monstrous peoples, naming the Cannibals who devour one another, the Anthropophagi, and men whose heads grow beneath their shoulders. This single passage cemented the term in the English imagination for centuries. Shakespeare returned to the concept in The Merry Wives of Windsor, where a character threatens to speak "like an Anthropophaginian" to another—a playful, almost comic invocation of the cannibal race as a figure of terrifying eloquence. Across both plays, the anthropophagus functions less as a fully realized character and more as a shorthand for otherness, savagery, and the boundaries of civilized discourse. By embedding the term in dialogue rather than exposition, Shakespeare made the mythical cannibal a living, spoken presence in English theater, ensuring that the Greek-derived word would echo through every subsequent literary and cultural reference for generations to come.

The Blemmyes Confusion

A persistent and widespread misreading of Shakespeare's Othello has shaped how the anthropophagus appears in popular culture. In the famous passage, the Anthropophagi are immediately followed by "men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders." Many readers and artists over the centuries assumed this description applied to the cannibals themselves, producing a visual tradition of headless beings with faces painted on their torsos. In reality, that line refers to an entirely separate mythical race known as the Blemmyes, who were independently described in classical sources as headless creatures with facial features located on their chests. The two groups—the cannibal anthropophagi and the headless Blemmyes—were distinct entities in the ancient and medieval bestiary tradition. Yet Shakespeare's close juxtaposition of them in a single breath of verse blurred the boundary, and the conflation has proven remarkably durable. From illustrations to modern fantasy art, the image of a faceless, torso-faced cannibal persists as one of literature's most enduring visual misunderstandings.

Echoes in Modern Fiction

Long after Shakespeare, the Anthropophagi continued to haunt the pages of modern and contemporary fiction. T.H. White wove them into his beloved novel The Sword in the Stone, where Robin Hood and his Merry Men face the cannibals as a direct threat, with the narrator lamenting the loss of Matthew, Peter, Walter, Colin, and many more to their hands. Here the mythical race becomes a concrete antagonist in a story otherwise rooted in English legend, lending an exotic, terrifying edge to the familiar world of Sherwood Forest. More recently, American novelist Rick Yancey folded the Anthropophagi mythology into his 2010 novel The Monstrumologist, using the ancient cannibal race as part of a broader tapestry of mythical creatures in a young-adult narrative. These appearances demonstrate that the anthropophagus has never fully faded from the Western literary imagination; it simply migrates from one genre and audience to another, retaining its core identity as a symbol of the monstrous "other" while adapting to whatever narrative framework surrounds it.

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