“Nothing puts us out of countenance [δυσωπεῖ], not the charming beauty of their form, not the plaintive sweetness of their voice or cry, not their mental intelligence [πανουργία ψυχῆς], not the purity of their diet, not superiority of understanding. For the sake of a part of their flesh only, we deprive them of the glorious light of the sun—of the life for which they were born. The plaintive cries they utter we affect to take to be meaningless; whereas, in fact, they are entreaties and supplications and prayers addressed to us by each which say, ‘It is not the satisfaction of your real necessities we deprecate, but the wanton indulgence [ὕβριν] of your appetites. Kill to eat, if you must or will, but do not slay me that you may feed luxuriously.’
“Alas for our savage inhumanity! It is a terrible thing to see the table of rich men decked out by those layers out of corpses [νεκρόκοσμους], the butchers and cooks: a still more terrible sight is the same table after the feast—for the wasted relics are even more than the consumption. These victims, then, have given up their lives uselessly. At other times, from mere niggardliness, the host will grudge to distribute his dishes, and yet he grudged not to deprive innocent beings of their existence!
“Well, I have taken away the excuse of those who allege that they have the authority and sanction of Nature. For that man is not, by nature, carnivorous is proved, in the first place, by the external frame of his body—seeing that to none of the animals designed for living on flesh has the human body any resemblance. He has no curved beak, no sharp talons and claws, no pointed teeth, no intense power of stomach [κοιλίας εὐτονία] or heat of blood which might help him to masticate and digest the gross and tough flesh-substance. On the contrary, by the smoothness of his teeth, the small capacity of his mouth, the softness of his tongue, and the sluggishness of his digestive apparatus, Nature sternly forbids him [ἐξομνύται] to feed on flesh.
“If, in spite of all this, you still affirm that you were intended by nature for such a diet, then, to begin with, kill yourself what you wish to eat—but do it yourself with your own natural weapons, without the use of butcher’s knife, or axe, or club. No; as the wolves and lions and bears themselves slay all they feed on, so, in like manner, do you kill the cow or ox with a gripe of your jaws, or the pig with your teeth, or a hare or a lamb by falling upon and rending them there and then. Having gone through all these preliminaries, then sit down to your repast. If, however, you wait until the living and intelligent existence be deprived of life, and if it would disgust you to have to rend out the heart and shed the life-blood of your victim, why, I ask, in the very face of Nature, and in despite of her, do you feed on beings endowed with sentient life? But more than this—not even, after your victims have been killed, will you eat them just as they are from the slaughter-house. You boil, roast, and altogether metamorphose them by fire and condiments. You entirely alter and disguise the murdered animal by the use of ten thousand sweet herbs and spices, that your natural taste may be deceived and be prepared to take the unnatural food. A proper and witty rebuke was that of the Spartan who bought a fish and gave it to his cook to dress. When the latter asked for butter, and olive oil, and vinegar, he replied, ‘Why, if I had all these things, I should not have bought the fish!’
“To such a degree do we make luxuries of bloodshed, that we call flesh ‘a delicacy,’ and forthwith require delicate sauces [ὄψων] for this same flesh-meat, and mix together oil and wine and honey and pickle and vinegar with all the spices of Syria and Arabia—for all the world as though we were embalming a human corpse. After all these heterogeneous matters have been mixed and dissolved and, in a manner, corrupted, it is for the stomach, forsooth, to masticate and assimilate them—if it can. And though this may be, for the time, accomplished, the natural sequence is a variety of diseases, produced by imperfect digestion and repletion.[48]
“Diogenes (the Cynic) had the courage, on one occasion, to swallow a polypus without any cooking preparation, to dispense with the time and trouble expended in the kitchen. In the presence of a numerous concourse of priests and others, unwrapping the morsel from his tattered cloak, and putting it to his lips, ‘For your sakes,’ cried he, ‘I perform this extravagant action and incur this danger.’ A self-sacrifice truly meritorious! Not like Pelopidas, for the freedom of Thebes, or like Harmodius and Aristogeiton, on behalf of the citizens of Athens, did the philosopher submit to this hazardous experiments; for he acted thus that he might unbarbarise, if possible, the life of human kind.
“Flesh-eating is not unnatural to our physical constitution only. The mind and intellect are made gross by gorging and repletion; for flesh-meat and wine may possibly tend to give robustness to the body, but it gives only feebleness to the mind. Not to incur the resentment of the prize-fighters [the athletes], I will avail myself of examples nearer home. The wits of Athens, it is well known, bestow on us Bœotians the epithets ‘gross,’ ‘dull-brained,’ and ‘stupid,’ chiefly on account of our gross feeding. We are even called ‘hogs.’ Menander nicknames us the ‘jaw-people’ [οἱ γνάθους ἔχοντες]. Pindar has it that ‘mind is a very secondary consideration with them.’ ‘A fine understanding of clouded brilliancy’ is the ironical phrase of Herakleitus....
“Besides and beyond all these reasons, does it not seem admirable to foster habits of philanthropy? Who that is so kindly and gently disposed towards beings of another species would ever be inclined to do injury to his own kind? I remember in conversation hearing, as a saying of Xenokrates, that the Athenians imposed a penalty upon a man for flaying a sheep alive, and he who tortures a living being is little worse (it seems to me) than he who needlessly deprives of life and murders outright. We have, it appears, clearer perceptions of what is contrary to propriety and custom than of what is contrary to nature....
“Reason proves both by our thoughts and our desires that we are (comparatively) new to the reeking feasts [ἕωλα] of kreophagy. Yet it is hard, as says Cato, to argue with stomachs since they have no ears; and the inebriating potion of Custom[49] has been drunk, like Circe’s, with all its deceptions and witcheries. Now that men are saturated and penetrated, as it were, with love of pleasure, it is not an easy task to attempt to pluck out from their bodies the flesh-baited hook. Well would it be if, as the people of Egypt turning their back to the pure light of day disembowelled their dead and cast away the offal, as the very source and origin of their sins, we, too, in like manner, were to eradicate bloodshed and gluttony from ourselves and purify the remainder of our lives. If the irreproachable diet be impossible to any by reason of inveterate habit, at least let them devour their flesh as driven to it by hunger, not in luxurious wantonness, but with feelings of shame. Slay your victim, but at least do so with feelings of pity and pain, not with callous heedlessness and with torture. And yet that is what is done in a variety of ways.
“In slaughtering swine, for example, they thrust red-hot irons into their living bodies, so that, by sucking up or diffusing the blood, they may render the flesh soft and tender. Some butchers jump upon or kick the udders of pregnant sows, that by mingling the blood and milk and matter of the embryos that have been murdered together in the very pangs of parturition, they may enjoy the pleasure of feeding upon unnaturally and highly inflamed flesh![50] Again, it is a common practice to stitch up the eyes of cranes and swans, and shut them up in dark places to fatten. In this and other similar ways are manufactured their dainty dishes, with all the varieties of sauces and spices [καρυκείαις—Lydian sauces, composed of blood and spices]—from all which it is sufficiently evident that men have indulged their lawless appetites in the pleasures of luxury, not for necessary food, and from no necessity, but only out of the merest wantonness, and gluttony, and display....”[51]