“O fools! they know not, in their selfish soul,
How far the half is better than the whole:
The good which Asphodel and Mallows yield,
The feast of herbs, the dainties of the field”—
he seems to have a profound conviction of the truth taught by Vegetarianism—that luxurious living is the fruitful parent of selfishness in its manifold forms.[3]
That Hesiod regarded that diet which depends mainly or entirely upon agriculture and upon fruits as the highest and best mode of life is sufficiently evident in the following verses descriptive of the “Golden Age” life:—
“Like gods, they lived with calm, untroubled mind,
Free from the toil and anguish of our kind,
Nor did decrepid age mis-shape their frame.