how does odyssey's forbidden meat relate to the greek child-eating motif? atreus and thyestes, tereus, cronos, lycaon, tantalus, ooh and also the general idea that sacrifice means feasting so human sacrifice is inherently conflated with cannibalism??? like in the agamemnon when the chorus feels the need to specifically point out that iphigenia's death is ἄδαιτον (151) because otherwise i guess the assumption would be that they ate her, because that's what you do as part of a sacrifice????
the Forbidden Meat in the odyssey is a) polyphemus’ sheep, which odysseus steals, b) odysseus’ men while they are turned into pigs, c) sacred cattle of the sun, d) odysseus’ cattle, which the suitors eat, e) The Flesh Of The Suitors. these are all extremely human-adjacent: polyphemus’ sheep were literally used as substitutes for the men when they escaped the cave; the Companions-As-Pigs are literally humans, and are specifically described as still retaining human qualities as pigs!; the sacred cattle are the same as odysseus’ cattle and odysseus is a double of helios, but the companions being almost-cattle so often, and odysseus’ “owning” of them being parallel to his/helios’ owning the cattle means That Cattle Is Just Human Beings!!! and the destruction of the companions at the point when they eat the cattle is like. they eat themselves babeyyyy. so Forbidden Meat is definitely related to the child-eating thing bcs they are both a cannibalism thing.
they are also both uhhhhhh a mimetic thing imo, but in different ways, bcs the odyssey is Weird about mimesis. here are some of girard’s Thots on sacrifice and cannibalism:
(i think you can also add that the consumption of a scapegoat (=outside of the community) figure is a way of physically (re)integrating them and so removing the disruptive power a scapegoat can have even in death.) (also bear in mind girard thinks all animal sacrifice is just substitution for og human sacrifice)
the almost-cannibalism in the odyssey is Weird in relation to this though, bcs a) the sacred cattle/odysseus’ cattle Are killed to be eaten, and then this killing is dressed up in the language of sacrifice to make it look like less of a god-crime, and b) when odysseus In A Metaphor Describing Him As A Lion essentially eats the suitors, it’s odysseus who really should be the scapegoat figure here! the pattern of Community Uniting Against Individual is flipped to Individual Destroying Community And Maybe Also Eating Them, and That’s Bad! follow for more soft pessimistic reading of the ending of the odyssey…… odysseus fucks up the rituals and makes the mimetic crisis Worse. i’m still figuring out What’s Going On Here but it’s probably the failure of rituals in the face of the mimetic crisis blah blah blah.
anyway the child-eating motif. people mostly eat their Own children, and often sons? eating your son can be a good way to not have mimetic conflict with your son (e.g. cronos). tantalus is weird about it and feeds his own son to his dad zeus which ends up Causing? or contributing? to their mimetic conflict?? similarly atreus tricks thyestes into eating his own sons as part of his mimetic conflict w thyestes, kinda as if he was displacing the Eat Your Rival thing onto thyestes’ other potential rivals? except that doesn’t actually Resolve any conflict.
another thing girard says which i think is sexy is that sacrifice is just Terminal Violence, which stops the cycle of violence of the mimetic crisis, and so can only really be labelled as sacrifice Retrospectively. it only counts as sacrifice if it Works at resolving the conflict.
which makes makes iphigeneia being Not For Eating another way in which the “””sacrifice””” of iphigeneia Isn’t Really Sacrifice. not eating iphigeneia (not words i ever expected to type!) means the ritual of sacrifice, which really Should include eating the sacrificial meat, is incomplete, and sp the sacrifice Doesn’t Count…… and when agamemnon gets back to mycenae the house of atreus mimetic crisis curse is very much Still Happening, and is even Made Worse by agamemnon’s not-sacrifice of iphigeneia! (if you define sacrifice as Violence That Successfully Ends Other Violence then the real sacrifice in the oresteia is orestes killing clytemnestra. which oddly enough is the death with the Least sacrificial imagery. girard also thinks the nature of real sacrifice is to disguise its function as sacrifice. Much To Think About.) also imo clytemnestra bringing up iphigeneia’s death as a reason for doing More Mimetic Conflict is like…… iphigeneia is Still Out There having the disruptive power of a sacrificial victim / scapegoat figure…… maybe she would not be able to haunt the rest of the oresteia if agamemnon had eaten her! wow i hate that i just wrote that.
idk where i’m going with this but i guess the Connection between Forbidden Meat and Eating Your Son is that they both Could be successful sacrifice and stop various mimetic crises……. but in most? all? of these stories they Don’t Work. storytelling as focusing on mimetic crises that Weren’t resolved as reenactment (=a ritual! sacrifice!) that replaces Actual failure of rituals? greek tragedy just being really into Mimetic Fuckups? unfortunately it’s almost 1am and i have no idea!
