Titus Andronicus’s Human Pie

“Why, there they are both, baked in that pie;
Whereof their mother daintily hath fed,
Eating the flesh that she herself hath bred.”

William Shakespeare (1564-1616), ‘Titus Andronicus’ Act V Scene III

A number of stories in Greek mythology involve cannibalism, in particular cannibalism of close family members, for example the stories of Thyestes, Tereus and especially Cronus, who was Saturn in the Roman pantheon. The story of Tantalus also parallels this. These mythologies inspired Shakespeare’s cannibalism scene in Titus Andronicus…