[46] Parallel Lives: Cato the Censor. Translated by John and William Langhorne, 1826.
[47] See Odyssey, xii., 395, of the oxen of the sun impiously slaughtered by the companions of Ulysses.
[48] “Hinc subitæ mortes, atque intestata Senectus.”—“Hence sudden deaths, and age without a will.” Juvenal, Sat. I.
“The anarch Custom’s reign.”
Shelley: Revolt of Islam.
[50] Such it seems, were some of the popular methods of torture in the Slaughter Houses in the first century of our æra. Whether the “calf-bleeding,” and the preliminary operations which produce the pâté de foie gras, &c., or the older methods, bear away the palm for ingenuity in culinary torture, may be a question.
[51] See Περὶ Σαρκοφαγίας Λόγος—in the Latin title, De Esu Carnium—“On Flesh-Eating,” Parts 1 and 2. We shall here add the authority of Pliny, who professes his conviction that “the plainest food is the most beneficial.” (Hist. Nat. xi., 117); and asserts that it is from his eating that man derives most of his diseases. (xxv., 28.) Compare the feeling of Ovid, whom we have already quoted—Metamorphoses xv. We may here refer our readers also to the celebration, by the same poet, of the innocent and peaceful gifts of Ceres, and of the superiority of her pure table and altar—Fasti iv., 395–416.
Pace, Ceres, læta est. At vos optate, Coloni,
Perpetuam pacem, perpetuumque ducem.