This chapter investigates the peculiar human habit of attributing political qualities to honeybees. It shows that by distinguishing a ‘queen bee’ from ‘workers’ we continue a tradition that has its roots in classical antiquity and in Aristotle’s inclusion of honeybees among the zōa politika (the ‘political animals’). The chapter asks why honeybees ‘need’ politics and why human politics ‘needs’ honeybees. The answer to these questions in the context of the ancient world shows what is at stake in current attempts to draw lines between humans and other social animals. The chapter shows that for the purpose of theorizing about human politics as well as in the scientific study of the natural world itself, to naturalize often means to normalize. The chapter shows that this frequently occurs in ways that resonate with what has been called ‘the naturalist fallacy’: the idea that because something occurs in nature it is by definition good.

This chapter explores metamorphosis by focusing on the so-called ‘shearwaters of Diomedea’ – a group of seabirds whose odd behaviour recalls their previous existence as humans. It puts these birds in conversation with other humans-turned-animals both ancient and modern and investigates how they reflect on the experience of transformation. The chapter reveals that both ancient and modern tales of metamorphosis draw on the notion of hybridity in so far as many of the creatures undergoing such a transformation are, in effect, hybrids: they retain part of their human identity while also sporting the body of an animal. At the same time the chapter points to an important difference between ancient and modern ways of thinking the human. It shows that modern tales of metamorphosis tend to explore the dissolution of the boundary that separates the human from all other animals. The ancient conversation, by contrast, returns to – and ultimately affirms – the positions of some of the Greek philosophers arguing for an essential human difference.

This chapter focuses on the figure of the Cyclops and the use of ‘the animal’ in thinking human difference. It presents the animalizing of certain humans (the attribution of animal features to them) as a potent strategy to dehumanize and thus marginalize certain ways of being human. In the ethnographic imagination of Homer’s Odyssey, the margins of the known world are shown to coincide with the margins of the human. The chapter further illustrates that this spatial concept of the human did not remain restricted to the ancient world but carries on into the modern: The figure of the Cyclops, whose problematic humanity is in sharp contrast to the enlightened, educated, and cunning Odysseus, in many ways anticipates that of ‘the savage’ as the quintessential ‘other’ in the modern Western ethnographic literature. And yet the question arises as to whether the ancient story does not already expose the kind of hubris at play when we normalize certain ways of being human while dismissing others.

We have (nearly) reached the end. Our way through this book has brought us face to face with many weird and wonderful creatures: from the humanized lion of Androclus, to the questionable humanity of the Cyclops. From Achilles’ speaking horse Xanthus to the peculiar cries of the searwaters of Diomedea. From monarchic bees to their democratic counterparts. In the course of exploring these and other creatures in their select ancient and modern habitats, the journey has taken us to many fascinating places: the gates of Troy, the labyrinth of Knossos, a dinner party on the gulf of Naples, Sigmund Freud’s consulting rooms, the political philosophy of Hannah Arendt, and the works of Pablo Picasso. I hope you enjoyed the ride.

This chapter explores hybridity by exploring the figure of the Minotaur in the context of a number of similar ancient creatures, such as the centaurs and satyrs, and of the god of shepherds, flocks, and the wild: Pan. It illustrates that the peculiar hybridity of the Minotaur and the ancient story explaining his genesis raise questions about the scope and limits of human intervention into the realm of nature. It shows that, rather than exploring the limits of the human in positive ways, the figure of the Minotaur manifests the monstrous consequences of human transgression.

The second chapter touches more firmly on the philosophical debate and the arguments for human exceptionalism put forward over its course. The chapter puts Xanthus (the prophetic horse from Homer’s Iliad) as the first and prototypical speaking animal in the Western tradition in conversation with other famous speaking animals, including Plutarch’s speaking pig Grunter (Gryllus), a speaking rooster who claims to be a re-incarnation of the philosopher Pythagoras, and Kafka’s Red Peter. The chapter shows that the figure of the speaking animal is central to Western conceptions of the human. In classical antiquity, it features in stories that confirm the vertical relationship between humans (at the top) and animals (below). And yet, at the same time, right from the start of the conversation in the ancient world, the apparent anthropomorphism of the speaking animal was also used to critique the very idea of human exceptionalism. There is a direct line between how some modern animal fables point to man’s animal nature and the concept of the human explored in parts of the ancient evidence.

This book speaks to all those with an interest in the question of the human in its relation to the non-human. More specifically, it illustrates how the ancient world mobilized concepts of ‘the animal’ and ‘animality’ to conceive of the human in a variety of ways. To this end, it offers ten essayistic interventions into ways of ‘thinking the human’ that reach from antiquity to the present in the ultimate aim to challenge our understanding of who we really are.

This chapter explores meat-eating as an important way by which humans define themselves and explores it as part of a broader ‘anthropology’ of food and eating. It tells the story of a boastful consumption of a wild boar at a (fictional) Roman dinner party to show that in the ancient world (as in the modern), what you eat is who you are.

This chapter illustrates the power of the animal story to challenge anthropocentric positions and ideas of human exceptionalism. It centres upon the famous story of Androclus and the lion (as told by Gellius and other ancient and modern authors) to show that anthropomorphizing is not merely a tool of human appropriation of the animal; it can also bring out real sympathies and correspondences between human and non-human creatures. With its particular focus on the capacity to experience pain as a shared feature of humans and animals, the story driving this chapter anticipates modern attempts to bring questions of sentience and suffering into the picture and to reimagine justice as extending beyond the human.

This chapter revolves around the famous story of how the Greeks managed to get into the city of Troy concealed in a gigantic wooden horse – and thus won a long and drawn-out war. The chapter follows this story and dismantles the odd human/animal hybrid at its core in the ultimate aim to explore how notions of animality define the human at war. Moving away from the ‘othering’ at work in the previous chapter, this one illustrates an area of existence in which analogies between human and animal prevail. Fighting emerges as an area of life in which our animal side comes to the fore.

This chapter introduces the human as a question. It revolves around the figure of the Theban Sphinx and her interaction with Oedipus and traces her presence from the ancient world into the works of Sigmund Freud. The chapter invokes the Sphinx as a presence that both prompts and challenges the way we think the human. Oedipus’ troubled humanity stands at the intersection between his success in solving the Sphinx’s riddle and his apparent failure to understand how her words apply to his own existence. As such, the Sphinx’ intervention at Thebes exposes a deep-seated vulnerability at the core of the human condition – a vulnerability springing from the fact that while the riddle can be solved with the powers of reasoning, the human as a riddle remains enigmatic and beyond the application of logos.