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Pythagoras : The Vegetarian
111
"In all the world, there is nothing that lasts. All things are floating, and every shape is formed so that it must change for ever and ever."
In the following stanzas ( 179-452), the inconsistency of all shapes and conditions is dwelt upon and exemplified, such as the alternation of day and night, the seasons, weather, geological phenomena, diseases and their cures, spontaneous generation, historical happenings, etc., etc.
Finally, Ovid makes the philosopher conclude his long lecture with these words ( stanzas 453-478):
“But I must not digress too far, my steeds forgetting, as it were, to hasten towards to goal ! To make it short, the sky itself with all that exist under it, the earth with all that is upon it, all things keep changing their shapes.
"So do we too, part of the universe as we are, since we consist not of body exclusively, but also of agile souls, and we can choose as our abodes the bodies of wild beasts, or we can enter the bodies of tame cattle.
"So we ought to leave safe and unmolested those bodies, since they may possible be serving as abodes to the souls of our parents or brothers or of people linked to us by whatsoever bonds, or of other human creatures ! Careful ought we to be not to load our stomachs with Thyestean meals.
"To what sin does the impious man give himself up who cuts the throat of the calf, coldly shutting his ear to its woeful wailing, or the man who is capable of butchering the kid, in spite of its bleating, which so closely resembles the weeping of little human children ? Or the man who can feast on the fowl that he once used to feed with his own hand! All of them are, as it were, on the way to the murder of human beings. For insignificant is the step from the former deed to the full crime, and subtle the transition from one to the other.
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