The starting point for this volume is a desire to explore in depth Greek myths about parents who sacrifice or eat their own children. As such the subject matter is highly focused, but at the same time the chapters are very wide-ranging, covering not only ancient Greek versions of the myths and their reception in Roman and later European literature, but also discussing these themes in Near Eastern myth, the Bible, fairy stories and folktales from Europe and Africa. The volume, which is written in French, derives from a colloquium on Expositions, sacrifices et ragouts d'enfants held in 2008. It contains 25 chapters and an introduction by one of the editors.

Many of the chapters in the book explore a specific myth. Child-victims whose fates are explored include Isaac (Gomez-Géraud), Iphigeneia (Gruffat, Winkler, Viscardi), Arcas (Kossaifi) and Menoeceus (de Cremoux), whose stories contain the theme of child-sacrifice, and Itys (Chazalon, Vial, Humbert-Mougin, Cremona), Pelops (Gangloff) and the children of Cronus (Hunzinger, Delattre) whose stories include the theme of cannibalism. Where these two story patterns intersect is that in both the children are treated as animals, acting as sacrificial beasts or as the meat in a feast. The myth of Pelops conveys both these senses, as well as expressing the tension between the desire to please the gods by making the ultimate sacrifice set against the outrage felt at the horror of the offering. The volume as a whole does much to grapple with these concepts of loss and revulsion, and it raises many interesting questions and paradoxes.

An area of investigation for some of the chapters is the appropriation of these mythic themes in stories about religious rituals or political activities. Sacrificing and eating children are expressions of perverted religious rituals, as explored in tragic myth. At the same time these myths become entwined in stories about religious rituals in Orphism (Wyler) and Christianity (Solier) as a mode of expressing fears and revulsion about the unknown. Another key theme is the children's part in a play for power. Delattre argues that the tale of Cronus is not about cannibalism, but his ingestion of his children is symbolic of the god's desire to maintain power. The link is made to medical texts and to childbirth suggesting that there is a gendered element to the violence. Women's power over birth and children is subverted in this myth, but is ultimately thwarted. Just so, Hunzinger outlines how these elements work in the examples from the Theogony, including in the example of Zeus, Metis and Athena. Damet, too, sees the cannibalism theme as typically indicative of a dispute over power, sometimes between genders as in the case of Procne and Tereus. The placing of all blame on the child-killing women rather than on the rapist Tereus is the theme of Chazalon's investigation of iconographic sources of the killing and cooking of Itys. The cannibalism theme is also associated with male disputes over power such as in the case of the feast of Thyestes. Similarly Kefallonitis suggests that the mythic examples become associated with historical tyrants whose thirst for power is seen as so great that they would rather destroy their own children than allow them to rule in their turn.

Similar themes are explored in the chapters which deal with the reception of these myths in later literature. Gruffat explores how French playwrights reimagine the sacrifice of Iphigeneia, suggesting that they made use of the sense of horror generated by the threat of child sacrifice to make a religious point (Rotrou) or a philosophical point (Racine). Winkler's investigation of the Iphigeneia myth in Goethe takes this point further suggesting that the horror of the sacrifice is simultaneously perceived as ‘barbarian’ and at the same time ‘Greek’, as the associations of the myth have shifted in the Christian age. Humbert-Mougin's discussion of Thyestes in French literature of the eighteenth century again makes the association between cannibalism and tyrannical power, contending that the writers use the mythic theme to make their political points.

One of the strengths of this volume is the way in which these mythic themes of sacrifice and cannibalism are central to the discussion in the majority of the chapters, but the context in which they are explored is quite narrowly defined in each chapter. These careful explorations mean that the volume is of great value for a specialist in mythic representations of infanticide, but the subjects covered would also hold interest for those with a general interest in myth and its reception. Religious and historical issues are for the most part examined through the perspective of myth, creating a strong coherence in the wide-ranging subject matter. The decision to focus on the sacrifice and eating of children and to leave aside for the most part the much-debated issue of the exposure of infants in antiquity works very well. However, the chapter of Damet is, therefore, slightly out of place in the volume, dealing as it does with the intersection of infanticide and exposure in tragedy and at Athens. The chapter also ranges through a great number of myths and is less focused than the rest which all examine one myth or source in detail. That said, there would also be value in drawing together in a more thorough study the myths mentioned by Damet in which children are murdered (e.g. the children of Medea), abandoned by their mothers (e.g. Ion) or slain by a parent who has been driven mad (e.g. Pentheus, the children of Heracles, the children of Ino) with the myths of child-sacrifice and cannibalism. The promised volume focusing on children who attack their parents also sounds very welcome. Although this volume does not reach any overarching conclusions, as is typical in collections of this type, it is a very worthwhile contribution to the study of infanticide in ancient myth and its reception.