42 The Customs of the Massagetae (§§215-216)
Herodotus treats the customs of the Massagetae briefly but dramatically. They have both cavalry and infantry. They make a great use of gold and bronze, which are abundant in their country, and no use of iron and silver, which are not (215). Though each man marries one woman, wives are held in common. When a Massagetae man wishes to lie with a woman, he hangs his quiver in front of her wagon and lies with her fearlessly. When a man grows very old, his relatives come together and kill him. Then they slaughter some sheep and goats, stew the meat together with pieces of the relative’s corpse, and eat the mixture.[1] This end of life the Massagetae consider most happy; if a person dies of disease, however, he is buried, and the Massagetae lament that he did not have the good fortune to be eaten.[2] They do not farm, but live off of fish and cattle. They drink milk. They worship only the sun, to whom they sacrifice horses, the swiftest of mortal things, to the swiftest of the gods (216).
It was in his effort to conquer this people that the great king lost his life. Herodotus’s Greek audience, who share the fundamental Greek rever ence for the aged and who look with horror on cannibalism, will surely not deem the Massagetae a people worth conquering.[3] A diet scarce in agricultural products will be similarly unappealing. Nor was much gold or glory to be won by the defeat of so primitive a people. Thus, the first book of the History ends with a comment on ambition: is conquest for its own sake of any value? Why cause so much death and misery?
Contentment with one’s own possessions is not a value that the Persians learned; in subsequent books Persian expansionism aims at Egypt, Ethiopia, Scythia, and Greece. Again and again the readers of the History will ask themselves what worthwhile effect the Persians achieved. Were they happier? Were they more prosperous? The lesson that conquest is not the source of happiness was, alas, lost on the Persians; Herodotus, no doubt, hoped it would not be lost on the Greeks. We, of a modern age, with perhaps more wisdom, may hope that it is not lost on us.
- According to Pearson, 344, Herodotus accentuates the gruesomeness of the Massage tae in order to emphasize the tragedy of Cyrus’s fate. I think, however, that Herodotus intends to show the folly of Cyrus’s imperialistic ambition. ↵
- Redfield (104-05) does not believe that people anywhere ever regularly ate their dead, yet he cites E. Sagan (Cannibalism: Human Aggression and Cultural Form [New York: Harper & Row, 1974]), who cites many parallels. ↵
- Flory (97) takes an opposite view:
Their treatment of their elderly also strikes a utopian note. Herodotus does not explicitly praise this custom, but the language he uses (ὀλιβιώτατα, συμφορήν) echoes the stories Solon tells Croesus. This is not a cruel, “barbarian” custom but an economical solution to a social problem. For the Massagetae it is ὀλιβιώτατα,to die (like Tellus, Cleobis, and Biton) in full possession of one’s faculties and συμφορήν to prolong the enjoyment of life to its natural end. The Massagetae, in sum, appear the purest of Herodotus’ noble savages, for after Cyrus, no other nation even attempts to conquer them, and they show no interest in foreign conquest either.
For a view similar to mine, however, see Redfield, 113. Readers should recall that when a man becomes old, the Massagetae gather his friends and relatives, kill and eat him in a stew (216). ↵
