Strange animals: extremely interspecific hybridization (and anthropopoiesis) in Plutarch

Abstract

Speaking of hybridization between humans and animals, in the ancient world, means referring to dealing with genetic chaos logoi of the mythic tradition. But it also means constructing human-animal boundaries in a view which anthropologists call “anthropopoietic”. Whereas Aristotle, in his De generatione animalium, had rationalized all the beliefs dealing with extremely interspecifi c crossbreeding, secularizing also the concept of teras, Plutarch seems to go back to a more fl exible idea of nature, where prodigious births are again permitted. This does not mean an abjuration of the natural history principles which Greek philosophical tradition has fi xed. Simply, these principles are embedded in a larger theological and anthropopoietic framework, which in some ways constructs the animals as a moral ideal and as “manimals”.