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Certainly, said Solon, let us not show ourselves to be less discriminating than the Egyptians, who cut open the dead body and expose it to the sun, and then cast certain parts of it into the river, and perform their offices on the rest of the body, feeling that this part has now at last been made clean. For this, in truth, it is which constitutes the pollution of our flesh and its bowels of Hell, as it were, teeming with frightful streams and wind, intermingled with burning fire and corpses.This somewhat exaggerated description of the digestive tract is probably influenced by Homer Od. x. 513 and ix. 157, and Il. i. 52 and viii. 13. For no living man feeds upon another living creature; nay, we put to death the animate creatures and destroy these things that grow in the ground, which also are partakers in life, in that they absorb food, and increase in size; and herein we do wrong. For anything that is changed from what it was by nature into something else is destroyed, and it undergoes utter corruption that it may become the food of another. Cf. Lucretius, De rerum natura, iii. 701 ff. But to refrain entirely from eating meat, as they record of Orpheus Orpheus is said to have abstained from animal food (Euripides, Hippolytus, 992; Plato, Laws, p. 782 C). of old, is rather a quibble than a way of avoiding wrong in regard to food. The one way of avoidance and of keeping oneself pure, from the point of view of righteousness, is to become sufficient unto oneself and to need nothing from any other source. But in the case of man or beast for whom God has made his own secure existence impossible without his doing injury to another, it may be said that in the nature which God has inflicted upon him lies the source of wrong. Would it not, then, be right and fair, my friend, in order to cut out injustice, to cut out also bowels and stomach and liver, which afford us no perception or craving for anything noble, but are like cooking utensils, such as choppers and kettles, and, in another respect, like a baker’s outfit, ovens and dough-containers and kneading-bowls? Indeed, in the case of most people, one can see that their soul is absolutely confined in the darkness of the body as in a mill, making its endless rounds in its concern over its need of food; just as we ourselves, only a few minutes ago, as a matter of course, neither saw nor listened to one another, but each one was bending down, enslaved to his need of food. But now that the tables have been removed, we have, as you see, been made free, and, with garlands on, we are spending our time in conversation and in the enjoyment of one another’s society, and we have the leisure to do this now that we have come to require no more food for a time. Assuming, then, that the state in which we find ourselves at the present moment will persist without interruption throughout our whole life, shall we not always have leisure to enjoy one another’s society, having no fear of poverty and no knowledge of what wealth is? For craving for the superfluous follows close upon the use of necessities, and soon becomes a settled habit,
