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Can you really ask what reason Pythagoras Cf. 964 f supra. had for abstaining from flesh? For my part I rather wonder both by what accident and in what state of soul or mind the first man Cf. 959 e supra. who did so, touched his mouth to gore and brought his lips to the flesh of a dead creature, he who set forth tables of dead, stale Cf. 991 d supra, 995 c infra. bodies and ventured to call food and nourishment the parts that had a little before bellowed and cried, moved and lived. How could his eyes endure the slaughter when throats were slit and hides flayed and limbs torn from limb? How could his nose endure the stench? How was it that the pollution did not turn away his taste, which made contact with the sores of others and sucked juices and serums from mortal wounds? The skins shivered; and upon the spits the flesh bellowed, Both cooked and raw; the voice of kine was heard.Homer, Odyssey, xii. 395-396. Though this is an invention and a myth, yet that sort of dinner is really portentous - when a man craves the meat that is still bellowing, giving instructions which tell us on what animals we are to feed while they are still alive uttering their cries, and organizing various methods of seasoning and roasting and serving. It is the man Hyperbius first killed an animal, Prometheus an ox. (Pliny, Nat. Hist. vii. 209.) See also the amusing analysis of Prometheus and the vulture (= disease) in Shelley’s A Vindication of Natural Diet. who first began these practices that one should seek out, not him who all too late desisted.Pythagoras.
