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Pythagoras : The Vegetarian
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107
“At that place ( viz., Crotona ), there lived a man, who was a Samian by birth. His hatred of tyranny had prompted him to leave Samos and its ruler, and to live in voluntary exile.
"By spiritual means, he approached the Gods, remote though they be in their celestial spheres, and whatsoever nature withholds from the human eye, he perceived with the mental one. After he had fathomed all things by reason and attentive scrutiny, he would give out the essence. Before assemblies of silently listening men, whom his words struck with wonder, he would proclaim his teachings, speaking of the origin of the universe, the causes of things, and what their nature was, what God was, where the snows came from, how lightning was caused, whether Jupiter or the winds were thundering from the shaking clouds, how earthquakes came about, by what laws the stars were moving, and whatsoever lies hidden from human knowledge
"He too was the first to argue against animal food being placed on the table, and to pronounce words as the following, which, reasonable though they be, yet did not find believers :
‘Beware, Oh mortals', he exclaimed, ‘of defiling your bodies with sinful food ! There are cereals, there are fruits, bending the branches down by their weight, and luxurious grapes on the vines. There are sweet vegetables and herbs which the flame can render palatable and mellow. Nor are you denied milk, nor honey, fragrant of the aroma of the thyma flower. The bountiful earth offers you an abundance of pure food, and provides for meals obtainable without slaughter and bloodshed.
'It is the beasts that appease their hunger with flesh, and yet not all of them. For the horses and sheep and cattle live on grass. Armeni's tigers and fierce lions, however, and wolves and bears, and others whose nature is wild and brutish, they do delight in bloody meals, Oh how atrocious is it to think how entrails are buried in entrails, how one greedy body grows fat on another creature's body, which it has devoured, and how one animal lives on the death
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