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Plutarch
THE EATING OF FLESH
[Plutarch
(c. 46-120) was educated in Athens and lectured in Rome. Best
known for his "Lives" -- a series of biographies of
famous philosophers and politicians -- Plutarch was also an
esteemed philosopher in his own right. This essay is among his
most frequently cited works.]
TRACT I
You ask of me then for what reason it was
that Pythagoras abstained from eating of flesh. I for my part do
much wonder in what humor, with what soul or reason, the first
man with his mouth touched slaughter, and reached to his lips
the flesh of a dead animal, and having set before people courses
of ghastly corpses and ghosts, could give those parts the names
of meat and victuals, that but a little before lowed, cried,
moved, and saw; how his sight could endure the blood of
slaughtered, flayed, and mangled bodies; how his smell could
bear their scent; and how the very nastiness happened not to
offend the taste, while it chewed the sores of others, and
participated of the saps and juices of deadly wounds.
Crept the raw hides, and with a bellowing sound
Roared the dead limbs; the burning entrails groaned.
("Odyssey," xii. 395.)
This indeed is but a fiction and fancy; but the fare itself is
truly monstrous and prodigious,--that a man should have a
stomach to creatures while they yet bellow, and that he should
be giving directions which of things yet alive and speaking is
fittest to make food of, and ordering the several kinds of the
seasoning and dressing them and serving them up to tables. You
ought rather, in my opinion, to have inquired who first began
this practice, than who of late times left it off.
And truly, as for those people who first ventured upon eating of
flesh, it is very probable that the whole reason of their so
doing was scarcity and want of other food; for it is not likely
that their living together in lawless and extravagant lusts, or
their growing wanton and capricious through the excessive
variety of provisions then among them, brought them to such
unsociable pleasures as these, against Nature. Yea, had they at
this instant but their sense and voice restored to them, I am
persuaded they would express themselves to this purpose:
"Oh! happy you, and highly favored of the gods, who now
live! Into what an age of the world are you fallen, who share
and enjoy among you a plentiful portion of good things! What
abundance of things spring up for your use! What fruitful
vineyards you enjoy! What wealth you gather from the fields!
What delicacies from trees and plants, which you may gather! You
may glut and fill yourselves without being polluted. As for us,
we fell upon the most dismal and affrighting part of time, in
which we were exposed by our production to manifold and
inextricable wants and necessities. As yet the thickened air
concealed the heaven from our view, and the stars were as yet
confused with a disorderly huddle of fire and moisture and
violent fluxions of winds. As yet the sun was not fixed to a
regular and certain course, so as to separate morning and
evening, nor did the seasons return in order crowned with
wreaths from the fruitful harvest. The land was also spoiled by
the inundations of disorderly rivers; and a great part of it was
deformed with marshes, and utterly wild by reason of deep
quagmires, unfertile forests, and woods. There was then no
production of tame fruits, nor any instruments of art or
invention of wit. And hunger gave no time, nor did seed-time
then stay for the yearly season. What wonder is it if we made
use of the flesh of beasts contrary to Nature, when mud was
eaten and the bark of wood, and when it was thought a happy
thing to find either a sprouting grass or a root of any plant! But
when they had by chance tasted of or eaten an acorn, they danced
for very joy about some oak or esculus, calling it by the names
of life-giver, mother, and nourisher. And this was the only
festival that those times were acquainted with; upon all other
occasions, all things were full of anguish and dismal sadness.
But whence is it that a certain ravenousness and frenzy drives
you in these happy days to pollute yourselves with blood, since
you have such an abundance of things necessary for your
subsistence? Why do you belie the earth as unable to maintain
you? Why do you profane the lawgiver Ceres, and shame the mild
and gentle Bacchus, as not furnishing you with sufficiency? Are
you not ashamed to mix tame fruits with blood and slaughter? You
are indeed wont to call serpents, leopards, and lions savage
creatures; but yet yourselves are defiled with blood, and come
nothing behind them in cruelty. What they kill is their ordinary
nourishment, but what you kill is your better fare."
For we eat not lions and wolves by way of revenge; but we let
those go, and catch the harmless and tame sort, and such as have
neither stings nor teeth to bite with, and slay them; which, so
may Jove help us, Nature seems to us to have produced for their
beauty and comeliness only. [Just as if one seeing the river
Nilus overflowing its banks, and thereby filling the whole
country with genial and fertile moisture, should not at all
admire that secret power in it that produces plants and
plenteousness of most sweet and useful fruits, but beholding
somewhere a crocodile swimming in it, or an asp crawling along,
or mice (savage and filthy creatures), should presently affirm
these to be the occasion of all that is amiss, or of any want or
defect that may happen. Or as if indeed one contemplating this
land or ground, how full it is of tame fruits, and how heavy
with ears of corn, should afterwards espy somewhere in these
same cornfields an ear of darnel or a wild vetch, and thereupon
neglect to reap and gather in the corn, and fall a complaining
of these. Such another thing it would be, if one-- listening to
the harangue of some advocate at some bar or pleading, swelling
and enlarging and hastening towards the relief of some impending
danger, or else, by Jupiter, in the impeaching and charging of
certain audacious villanies or indictments, flowing and rolling
along, and that not in a simple and poor strain, but with many
sorts of passions all at once, or rather indeed with all sorts,
in one and the same manner, into the many and various and
differing minds of either hearers or judges that he is either to
turn and change, or else, by Jupiter, to soften, appease, and
quiet --should overlook all this business, and never consider or
reckon upon the labor or struggle he had undergone, but pick up
certain loose expressions, which the rapid motion of the
discourse had carried along with it, as by the current of its
course, and so had slipped and escaped the rest of the oration,
and, hereupon undervalue the orator.]
But we are nothing put out of countenance, either by the
beauteous gayety of the colors, or by the charmingness of the
musical voices, or by the rare sagacity of the intellects, or by
the cleanliness and neatness of diet, or by the rare discretion
and prudence of these poor unfortunate animals; but for the
sake of some little mouthful of flesh, we deprive a soul of the
sun and light, and of that proportion of life and time it had
been born into the world to enjoy. And then we fancy that
the voices it utters and screams forth to us are nothing else
but certain inarticulate sounds and noises, and not the several
deprecations, entreaties, and pleadings of each of them, as it
were saying thus to us: "I deprecate not thy necessity
(if such there be), but thy wantonness. Kill me for thy feeding,
but do not take me off for thy better feeding." O
horrible cruelty! It is truly an affecting sight to see the very
table of rich people laid before them, who keep them cooks and
caterers to furnish them with dead corpses for their daily fare;
but it is yet more affecting to see it taken away, for the
mammocks remaining are more than that which was eaten. These
therefore were slain to no purpose. Others there are, who are so
offended by what is set before them that they will not suffer it
to be cut or sliced; thus abstaining from them when dead, while
they would not spare them when alive.
Well, then, we understand that that sort of men are used to say,
that in eating of flesh they follow the conduct and direction of
Nature. But that it is not natural to mankind to feed on flesh,
we first of all demonstrate from the very shape and figure of
the body. For a human body no ways resembles those that were
born for ravenousness; it hath no hawk's bill, no sharp talon,
no roughness of teeth, no such strength of stomach or heat of
digestion, as can be sufficient to convert or alter such heavy
and fleshy fare. But even from hence, that is, from the
smoothness of the tongue, and the slowness of the stomach to
digest, Nature seems to disclaim all pretence to fleshy
victuals. But if you will contend that yourself was born to
an inclination to such food as you have now a mind to eat, do
you then yourself kill what you would eat. But do it yourself,
without the help of a chopping-knife, mallet, or axe, --as
wolves, bears, and lions do, who kill and eat at once. Rend an
ox with thy teeth, worry a hog with thy mouth, tear a lamb or a
hare in pieces, and fall on and eat it alive as they do. But if
thou hadst rather stay until what thou greatest is become dead,
and if thou art loath to force a soul out of its body, why then
dost thou against Nature eat an animate thing? Nay, there is
nobody that is willing to eat even a lifeless and a dead thing
as it is; but they boil it, and roast it, and alter it by fire
and medicines, as it were, changing and quenching the
slaughtered gore with thousands of sweet sauces, that the palate
being thereby deceived may admit of such uncouth fare. It
was indeed a witty expression of a Lacedaemonian, who, having
purchased a small fish in a certain inn, delivered it to his
landlord to be dressed; and as he demanded cheese, and vinegar,
and oil to make sauce, he replied, if I had had those, I would
not have bought the fish. But we are grown so wanton in our
bloody luxury, that we have bestowed upon flesh the name of meat
[Greek omitted], and then require another seasoning [Greek
omitted], to this same flesh, mixing oil, wine, honey, pickle,
and vinegar, with Syrian and Arabian spices, as though we really
meant to embalm it after its disease. Indeed when things are
dissolved and made thus tender and soft, and are as it were
turned into a sort of a carrionly corruption, it must needs be a
great difficulty for concoction to master them, and when it hath
mastered them, they must needs cause grievous oppressions and
qualmy indigestions.
Diogenes ventured once to eat a raw pourcontrel, that he might
disuse himself from meat dressed by fire; and as several priests
and other people stood round him, he wrapped his head in his
cassock, and so putting the fish to his mouth, he thus said unto
them: It is for your sake, sirs, that I undergo this danger, and
run this risk. A noble and gallant risk, by Jupiter! For far
otherwise than as Pelopidas ventured his life for the liberty of
the Thebans, and Harmodius and Aristogiton for that of the
Athenians, did this philosopher encounter with a raw pourcontrel,
to the end he might make human life more brutish. Moreover,
these same flesh-eatings not only are preternatural to men's
bodies, but also by clogging and cloying them, they render their
very minds and intellects gross. For it is well known to most,
that wine and much flesh-eating make the body indeed strong and
lusty, but the mind weak and feeble. And that I may not offend
the wrestlers, I will make use of examples out of my own
country. The Athenians are wont to call us Boeotians gross,
senseless, and stupid fellows, for no other reason but our
over-much eating; by Pindar we are called hogs, for the same
reason. Menander the comedian calls us "fellows with long
jaws." It is observed also that, according to the saying of
Heraclitus, "the wisest soul is like a dry light."
Earthen jars, if you strike them, will sound; but if they be
full, they perceive not the strokes that are given them. Copper
vessels also that are thin communicate the sound round about
them, unless some one stop and dull the ambient stroke with his
fingers. Moreover, the eye, when seized with an over-great
plenitude of humors, grows dim and feeble for its ordinary work.
When we behold the sun through a humid air and a great quantity
of gross and indigested vapors, we see it not clear and bright,
but obscure and cloudy, and with glimmering beams. Just so in a
muddy and clogged body, that is swagged down with heavy and
unnatural nourishments; it must needs happen that the gayety and
splendor of the mind be confused and dulled, and that it ramble
and roll after little and scarce discernible objects, since it
wants clearness and vigor for higher things.
But to pass by these considerations, is not accustoming one's
self to mildness and a human temper of mind an admirable thing?
For who would wrong or injure a man that is so sweetly and
humanly disposed with respect to the ills of strangers that are
not of his kind? I remember that three days ago, as I was
discoursing, I made mention of a saying of Xenocrates, and how
the Athenians gave judgment upon a certain person who had flayed
a living ram. For my part I cannot think him a worse criminal
that torments a poor creature while living, than a man that
shall take away its life and murder it. But (as it seems) we are
more sensible of what is done against custom than against
Nature. There, however, I discussed these matters in a more
popular style. But as for that grand and mysterious principle
which (as Plato speaks) is incredible to base minds and to such
as affect only mortal things, I as little care to move it in
this discourse as a pilot doth a ship in a storm, or a comedian
his machine while the scenes are moving; but perhaps it would
not be amiss, by way of introduction and preface, to repeat
certain verses of Empedocles. ... For in these, by way of
allegory, he hints at men's souls, as that they are tied to
mortal bodies, to be punished for murders, eating of flesh and
of one another, although this doctrine seems much, ancienter
than his time. For the fables that are storied and related about
the discerption of Bacchus, and the attempts of the Titans upon
him, and of their tasting of his slain body, and of their
several punishments and fulminations afterwards, are but a
representation of the regeneration. For what in us is
unreasonable, disorderly, and boisterous, being not divine but
demoniac, the ancients termed Titans, that is, TORMENTED and
PUNISHED (from [Greek omitted]). ...
TRACT II
Reason persuades
us now to return with fresh cogitations and dispositions to what
we left cold yesterday of our discourse about flesh-eating. It
is indeed a hard and a difficult task to undertake (as Cato once
said) to dispute with men's bellies, that have no ears; since
most have already drunk that draught of custom, which is like
that of Ciree,
Of groans and frauds and sorcery replete.
("Odyssey," x. 234.)
And it is no easy task to pull out the hook of flesh-eating from
the jaws of such as have gorged themselves with luxury and are
(as it were) nailed down with it. It would indeed be a good
action, if as the Egyptians draw out the stomach of a dead body,
and cut it open and expose it to the sun, as the only cause of
all its evil actions, so we could, by cutting out our gluttony
and blood- shedding, purify and cleanse the remainder of our
lives. For the stomach itself is not guilty of bloodshed, but is
involuntarily polluted by our intemperance. But if this may not
be, and we are ashamed by reason of custom to live unblamably,
let us at least sin with discretion. Let us eat flesh; but let
it be for hunger and not for wantonness. Let us kill an animal;
but let us do it with sorrow and pity, and not abusing and
tormenting it, as many nowadays are used to do, while some run
red-hot spits through the bodies of swine, that by the tincture
of the quenched iron the blood may be to that degree mortified,
that it may sweeten and soften the flesh in its circulation;
others jump and stamp upon the udders of sows that are ready to
pig, that so they may crush into one mass (O Piacular Jupiter!)
in the very pangs of delivery, blood, milk, and the corruption
of the mashed and mangled young ones, and so eat the most
inflamed part of the animal; others sew up the eyes of cranes
and swans, and so shut them up in darkness to be fattened, and
then souse up their flesh with certain monstrous mixtures and
pickles.
By all which it is most manifest, that it is not for
nourishment, or want, or any necessity, but for mere gluttony,
wantonness, and expensiveness, that they make a pleasure of
villany. Just as it happens in persons who cannot satiate their
passion upon women, and having made trial of everything else and
falling into vagaries, at last attempt things not to be
mentioned; even so inordinateness in feeding, when it hath once
passed the bounds of nature and necessity, studies at last to
diversify the lusts of its intemperate appetite by cruelty and
villany. For the senses, when they once quit their natural
measures, sympathize with each other in their distempers, and
are enticed by each other to the same consent and intemperance.
Thus a distempered ear first debauched music, the soft and
effeminate notes of which provoke immodest touches and
lascivious tickling. These things first taught the eye not to
delight in Pyrrhic dances, gesticulations of hands, or elegant
pantomimes, nor in statues and fine paintings; but to reckon the
slaughtering and death of mankind and wounds and duels the most
sumptuous of shows and spectacles. Thus unlawful tables are
accompanied with intemperate copulations, with unmusicianlike
balls, and theatres become monstrous through shameful songs and
rehearsals; and barbarous and brutish shows are again
accompanied with an unrelenting temper and savage cruelty
towards mankind. Hence it was that the divine Lycurgus in his
Three Books of Laws gave orders that the doors and ridges of
men's houses should be made with a saw and an axe, and that no
other instrument should so much as be brought to any house. Not
that he did hereby intend to declare war against augers and
planes and other instruments of finer work; but because he very
well knew that with such tools as these you will never bring
into your house a gilded couch, and that you will never attempt
to bring into a slender cottage either silver tables, purple
carpets, or costly stones; but that a plain supper and a homely
dinner must accompany such a house, couch table, and cup. The
beginning of a vicious diet is presently followed by all sorts
of luxury and expensiveness,
Ev'n as a mare is by her thirsty colt.
=============
And what meal is not expensive? One for which no animal is put
to death. Shall we reckon a soul to be a small expense? I will
not say perhaps of a mother, or a father, or of some friend, or
child, as Empedocles did; but one participating of feeling, of
seeing, of hearing, of imagination, and of intellection; which
each animal hath received from Nature for the acquiring of what
is agreeable to it, and the avoiding what is disagreeable. Do
but consider this with yourself now, which sort of philosophers
render us most tame and civil, they who bid people to feed on
their children, friends, fathers, and wives, when they are dead;
or Pythagoras and Empedocles, that accustom men to be just
towards even the other members of the creation. You laugh at a
man that will not eat a sheep: but we (they will say
again)--when we see you cutting off the parts of your dead
father or mother, and sending it to your absent friends, and
calling upon and inviting your present friends to eat the rest
freely and heartily--shall we not smile? Nay, peradventure we
offend at this instant time while we touch these books, without
having first cleansed our hands, eyes, feet, and ears; if it be
not (by Jupiter) a sufficient purgation of them to have
discoursed of these matters in potable and fresh language (as
Plato speaketh), thereby washing off the brackishness of
hearing. Now if a man should set these books and discourses in
opposition to each other, he will find that the philosophy of
the one sort suits with the Seythians, Sogdians, and
Melanchlaenians, of whom Herodotus's relation is scarce
believed; but the sentiments of Pythagoras and Empedocles were
the laws and customs of the ancients Grecians.
Who, then, were the first authors of this opinion, that we
owe no justice to dumb animals?
Who first beat out accursed steel,
And made the lab'ring ox a knife to feel.
In the very same manner oppressors and tyrants begin first to
shed blood. For example, the first man that the Athenians ever
put to death was one of the basest of all knaves, who had the
reputation of deserving it; after him they put to death a second
and a third. After this, being now accustomed to blood, they
patiently saw Niceratus the son of Nicias, and their own general
Theramenes, and Polemarchus the philosopher suffer death. Even
so, in the beginning, some wild and mischievous beast was killed
and eaten, and then some little bird or fish was entrapped. And
the desire of slaughter, being first experimented and exercised
in these, at last passed even to the laboring ox, and the sheep
that clothes us, and to the poor cock that keeps the house;
until by little and little, unsatiableness, being strengthened
by use, men came to the slaughter of men, to bloodshed and wars.
Now even if one cannot demonstrate and make out, that souls in
their regenerations make a promiscuous use of all bodies, and
that that which is now rational will at another time be
irrational, and that again tame which is now wild,--for that
Nature changes and transmutes everything,
With different fleshy coats new clothing all,--this thing should
be sufficient to change and show men, that it is a savage and
intemperate habit, that it brings sickness and heaviness upon
the body, and that it inclines the mind the more brutishly to
bloodshed and destruction, when we have once accustomed
ourselves neither to entertain a guest nor keep a wedding nor to
treat our friends without blood and slaughter.
And if what is argued about the return of souls into bodies is
not of force enough to beget faith, yet methinks the very
uncertainty of the thing should fill us with apprehension and
fear. Suppose, for instance, one should in some night-engagement
run on with his drawn sword upon one that had fallen down and
covered his body with his arms, and should in the meantime hear
one say, that he was not very sure, but that he fancied and
believed, that the party lying there was his own son, brother,
father, or tent- companion; which were more advisable, think
you,--to hearken to a false suggestion, and so to let go an
enemy under the notion of a friend, or to slight an authority
not sufficient to beget faith, and to slay a friend instead of a
foe? This you will all say would be insupportable. Do but
consider the famous Merope in the tragedy, who taking up a
hatchet, and lifting it at her son's head, whom she took for her
son's murderer, speaks thus as she was ready to give the fatal
blow, Villain, this holy blow shall cleave thy head; (Euripides,
"Cresphontes," Frag. 457.) what a bustle she raises in
the whole theatre while she raises herself to give the blow, and
what a fear they are all in, lest she should prevent the old man
that comes to stop her hand, and should wound the youth. Now if
another old man should stand by her and say, "Strike, it is
thy enemy," and this, "Hold, it is thy son";
which, think you, would be the greater injustice, to omit the
punishing of an enemy for the sake of one's child, or to suffer
one's self to be so carried away with anger at an enemy as to
slay one's child? Since then neither hatred nor wrath nor any
revenge nor fear for ourselves carries us to the slaughter of a
beast, but the poor sacrifice stands with an inclined neck, only
to satisfy thy lust and pleasure, and then one philosopher
stands by and tells thee, "Cut him down, it is but an
unreasonable animal," and another cries, "Hold, what
if there should be the soul of some kinsman or god enclosed in
him?"--good gods! is there the like danger if I refuse to
eat flesh, as if I for want of faith murder my child or some
other friend?
The Stoics' way of reasoning upon this subject of flesh-eating
is no way equal nor consonant with themselves. Who is this that
hath so many mouths for his belly and the kitchen? Whence comes
it to pass, that they so very much womanize and reproach
pleasure, as a thing that they will not allow to be either good
or preferable, or so much as agreeable, and yet all on a sudden
become so zealous advocates for pleasures? It were indeed but a
reasonable consequence of their doctrine, that, since they
banish perfumes and cakes from their banquets, they should be
much more averse to blood and to flesh. But now, just as if they
would reduce their philosophy to their account-books, they
lessen the expenses of their suppers in certain unnecessary and
needless matters, but the untamed and murderous part of their
expense they nothing boggle at. "Well! What then?" say
they. "We have nothing to do with brute beasts." Nor
have you any with perfumes, nor with foreign sauces, may some
one answer; therefore leave these out of your banquets, if you
are driving out everything that is both useless and needless.
Let us therefore in the next place consider, whether we owe any
justice to the brute beasts. Neither shall we handle this point
artificially, or like subtle sophisters, but by casting our eye
into our own breasts, and conversing with ourselves as men, we
will weigh and examine the whole matter. ...
Ovid
Metamorphoses
Book XV:60-142
Pythagoras’s* Teachings: Vegetarianism
There
was a man here, Pythagoras, a Samian by birth, who had fled
Samos and its rulers, and, hating their tyranny, was living in
voluntary exile. Though the gods were far away, he visited their
region of the sky, in his mind, and what nature denied to human
vision he enjoyed with his inner eye. When he had considered
every subject, through concentrated thought, he communicated it
widely in public, teaching the silent crowds, who listened in
wonder to his words, concerning the origin of the vast universe,
and of the causes of things; and what the physical world is;
what the gods are; where the snows arise; what the origin of
lightning is; whether Jupiter, or the storm-winds, thunder from
colliding clouds; what shakes the earth; by what laws the stars
move; and whatever else is hidden; and he was the first to
denounce the serving of animal flesh at table; the first voice,
wise but not believed in, to say, for example, in words like
these :
‘Human beings, stop desecrating your bodies with impious
foodstuffs. There are crops; there are apples weighing down the
branches; and ripening grapes on the vines; there are
flavoursome herbs; and those that can be rendered mild and
gentle over the flames; and you do not lack flowing milk; or
honey fragrant from the flowering thyme. The earth, prodigal of
its wealth, supplies you with gentle sustenance, and offers you
food without killing or shedding blood.
Flesh satisfies the wild beast’s hunger, though not all of
them, since horses, sheep and cattle live on grasses, but those
that are wild and savage: Armenian tigers, raging lions, and
wolves and bears, enjoy food wet with blood. Oh, how wrong it
is for flesh to be made from flesh; for a greedy body to fatten,
by swallowing another body; for one creature to live by the
death of another creature! So amongst such riches, that earth,
the greatest of mothers, yields, you are not happy unless you
tear, with cruel teeth, at pitiful wounds, recalling Cyclops’s
practice, and you cannot satisfy your voracious appetite, and
your restless hunger, unless you destroy other life!
But that former age, that we call golden, was happy with the
fruit from the trees, and the herbs the earth produced, and did
not defile its lips with blood. Then birds winged their way
through the air in safety, and hares wandered, unafraid, among
the fields, and its own gullibility did not hook the fish: all
was free from trickery, and fearless of any guile, and filled
with peace. But once someone, whoever he was, the author of
something unfitting, envied the lion’s prey, and stuffed his
greedy belly with fleshy food, he paved the way for crime. It
may be that, from the first, weapons were warm and bloodstained
from the killing of wild beasts, but that would have been
enough: I admit that creatures that seek our destruction may
be killed without it being a sin, but while they may be killed,
they still should not be eaten.
From that, the wickedness spread further, and it is thought that
the pig was first considered to merit slaughter because it
rooted up the seeds with its broad snout, and destroyed all hope
of harvest. The goat was led to death, at the avenging altar,
for browsing the vines of Bacchus. These two suffered for their
crimes! What did you sheep do, tranquil flocks, born to serve
man, who bring us sweet milk in full udders, who give us your
wool to make soft clothing, who give us more by your life than
you grant us by dying? What have the oxen done, without guile or
deceit, harmless, simple, born to endure labour?
He is truly thankless, and not worthy of the gift of corn,
who could, in a moment, remove the weight of the curved plough,
and kill his labourer, striking that work-worn neck with his
axe, that has helped turn the hard earth as many times as the
earth yielded harvest. It is not enough to have committed such
wickedness: they involve the gods in crime, and believe that the
gods above delight in the slaughter of suffering oxen! A victim
of outstanding beauty, and without blemish (since to be pleasing
is harmful), distinguished by sacrificial ribbons and gold, is
positioned in front of the altar, and listens, unknowingly, to
the prayers, and sees the corn it has laboured to produce,
scattered between its horns, and, struck down, stains with blood
those knives that it has already caught sight of, perhaps,
reflected in the clear water.
Immediately they inspect the lungs, ripped from the still-living
chest, and from them find out the will of the gods. On this (so
great is man’s hunger for forbidden food) you feed, O human
race! Do not, I beg you, and concentrate your minds on my
admonitions! When you place the flesh of slaughtered cattle
in your mouths, know and feel, that you are devouring your
fellow-creature.’
Bk XV:453-478 Pythagoras’s Teachings:The Sanctity of Life
‘Now (lest I stray too far off course, my horses forgetting to
aim towards their goal), the heavens, and whatever is under
them, change their form, and the earth, and whatever is within
it. We, as well, who are a part of the universe, because we are
not merely flesh, but in truth, winged spirits, and can enter
into the family of wild creatures, and be imprisoned in the
minds of animals.
We should allow those beings to live in safety, and honour, that
the spirits of our parents, or brothers, or those joined to us
by some other bond, certainly human, might have inhabited: and
not fill our bellies as if at a Thyestean feast! What evil
they contrive, how impiously they prepare to shed human blood
itself, who rip at a calf’s throat with the knife, and listen
unmoved to its bleating, or can kill a kid to eat, that cries
like a child, or feed on a bird, that they themselves have fed!
How far does that fall short of actual murder? Where does the
way lead on from there?
Let the ox plough, or owe his death to old age: let the sheep
yield wool, to protect against the chill north wind: let the
she-goats give you full udders for milking! Have done with nets
and traps, snares and the arts of deception! Do not trick the
birds with limed twigs, or imprison the deer, scaring them with
feathered ropes, or hide barbed hooks in treacherous bait. Kill
them, if they harm you, but even then let killing be enough. Let
your mouth be free of their blood, enjoy milder food!’
©Copyright 2000 A.S.Kline, All Rights Reserved
This work MAY be FREELY reproduced, stored and transmitted,
electronically or otherwise, for any NON-COMMERCIAL purpose.
Note:
Ovid's Metamorphoses is online at <http://etext.virginia.edu/latin/ovid/trans/Ovhome.htm>
Brittish
Government Refuses to Ban Religious Slaughter
On April 1st, the Government made its long awaited announcement
on slaughter without prestunning. The Government rejected the
call made by its own advisory body last year to ban the
practice, which is currently permitted if the animals are killed
for the Muslim halal and Jewish kosher meat markets. Despite
accepting that animals killed in this way “are likely to
experience very significant pain ands distress” the Government
refused to outlaw the practice on the grounds of defending
religious freedom. Viva! condemns this decision as a missed
opportunity to save millions of animals from a terrible death.
For more information on our response and what you can do to
help, click here
<campaigns/ritual_slaughter/index.htm>
*Italics
added by J.B.Suconik
*
I have been unable to determine his date of birth. He was,
according to encyclopedia Britannica "The Greek philosopher
Pythagoras who was active c. 530 b.c..." JBS
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