De esu carnium I

These two badly mutilated discourses, urging the necessity for vegetarianism, are merely extracts from a series (see 996 a) which Plutarch delivered in his youth, perhaps to a Boeotian audience (995 e).[*](This was Hirzel’s opinion (Der Dialog, ii, p. 126, n. 2), which Ziegler (RE, s.v. Plutarchos, col. 734) combats.) In spite of the exaggerated and calculated rhetoric[*](F. Krauss, Die rhetorischen Schriften Plutarchs, pp. 77 ff.) these fragments probably depict faithfully a foible of Plutarch’s early manhood, the Pythagorean or Orphic[*](Plato, Laws, 782 c. Plutarch, Mor. 159 c, makes Solon say, To refrain entirely from eating meat, as they record of Orpheus long ago, is rather a quibble than a way of avoiding wrong diet. ) abstention from animal food. There is little trace of this in his later life as known to us, though a corrupt passage in the Symposiacs (635 e) seems to say that because of a dream our author abstained from eggs for a long time. In the De Sanitate Tuenda also (132 a) Plutarch excuses flesh-eating on the ground that habit has become a sort of unnatural second nature.

The work appears, on the whole, rather immature beside the Gryllus and the De Sollertia Animalium, but the text is so poor that this may not be the author’s fault. In fact the excerptor responsible for our jumbled text, introducing both stupid interpolations (see especially 998 a) and even an extract from an entirely different work (994 b-d), may well have

altered Plutarch’s wording in many other places where we have not the means to detect him.

Porphyry[*](It is, of course, possible that Porphyry used some portion of the missing parts of our work; but this cannot be proved and may even be thought unlikely in view of the fact that he makes no use of any extant portion.) (De Abstinentia, iii. 24) says that Plutarch attacked the Stoics and Peripatetics in many books; in this one the anti-Stoic polemic has only just begun (999 a) when the work breaks off. For a more complete assault the reader must turn back to the two preceding dialogues.

It is interesting to learn that Shelley found these fragments inspiring. In the eighth book of Queen Mab (verses 211 ff.) we read:

1. No longer now
2. He slays the lamb that looks him in the face,
3. And horribly devours his mangled flesh,
4. Which, still avenging Nature’s broken law,
5. Kindled all putrid humours in his frame,
6. All evil passions, and all vain belief,---
7. The germs of misery, death, disease, and crime.

To this passage the poet appended, more suo, a long note which ended with four quotations from our essay in Greek, untranslated (a compliment to the public of his day, one may suppose). This note he subsequently republished as A Vindication of Natural Diet (1813), omitting the Greek; and in the same year he wrote to Thomas Hogg that he had translated the two Essays of Plutarch, Περὶ σαρκοφαγίας. But this has been lost; it has not, at least, been found among the unpublished Shelley material in the Bodleian.[*](These facts I owe to the kindness of Professors J. A. Notopoulos of Trinity College and J. E. Jordan of the University of California; see also K. N. Cameron, The Young Shelley, pp. 224 f.)

This is one of the eighteen works of the received Corpus of Plutarch that do not appear in the Lamprias Catalogue. Such a fact is not, however, to be adduced against its genuineness, since the Symposiacs themselves are not to be found there.[*](It is important to observe that H. Fuchs, Der geistige Widerstand gegen Rom, p. 49, n. 60, athetizes this work. A further discussion by this great critic would be warmly welcomed, especially since Wilamowitz recognized here also den unverkennbaren Stempel der plutarchischen Art. )

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?

1. The skins shivered; and upon the spits the flesh bellowed,
2. 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.)

Or would everyone declare that the reason for those who first instituted flesh-eating was the necessity of their poverty? It was not while they passed their time in unlawful desires nor when they had necessaries in abundance that after indulgence in unnatural and antisocial pleasures they resorted to such a practice. If, at this moment, they could recover feelings and voice, they might, indeed, remark: Oh blessed and beloved of the gods, you who live now, what an age has fallen to your lot wherein you enjoy and assimilate a heritage abounding in good things! How many plants grow for you! What vintages you gather! What wealth you may draw from the plains and what pleasant sustenance from trees! Why, you may even live luxuriously without the stain of blood. But as for us, it was a most dismal and fearful portion of the world’s history[*](Cf. Empedocles, frag. B 2. 3 (Diels-Kranz, Frag. der Vorsok. i, p. 309); the whole passage is received as a doubtful fragment (B 154; i, pp. 371 f.).) that confronted us, falling as we did into great and unbearable poverty brought on by our first appearance among the living. As yet the heavens and the stars were concealed by dense air that was contaminated with turbid moisture, not easily to be penetrated, and fire and furious wind. Not yet was

the sun established undeviating

1. In his firm course,
2. Dividing day and night; he brought them back
3. Again and crowned them with the fruitful hours
4. All wreathed with bloom, while violence

had been done to earth by rivers pouring forth their floods at random and most parts were deformed by pools.[*](You could not tell land from water, because invading water made pools that dried up later.) Earth was made a wilderness by deep quagmires and the unfruitful growth of thickets and forests; nor was there as yet any agricultural production or professional tool or any resource of skill. Our hunger gave us no respite nor was there any seed at that time awaiting the annual season of sowing. What wonder if, contrary to nature, we made use of the flesh of beasts when even mud was eaten and the bark of trees devoured, and to light on sprouting grass or the root of a rush was a piece of luck? When we had tasted and eaten acorns we danced for joy around some oak,[*](Drys was a term used especially for Quercus robur L. phegos for Q. aegilops L. Actually the early Greeks ate the acorns mostly of Q. aegilops. (Andrews.)) calling it life-giving [*](The epithet properly meant wheat-giving (as in Homer, Iliad, ii. 548), but was early misinterpreted.) and mother and nurse. This was the only festival that those times had discovered; all else was a medley of anguish and gloom. But you who live now, what madness, what frenzy drives you to the pollution of shedding blood, you who have such a superfluity of necessities? Why slander the earth by implying that she cannot support you? Why impiously offend law-giving Demeter[*](Cf.Mor. 1119 e.) and bring shame upon Dionysus, lord of the cultivated vine,[*](Cf.Mor. 451 c (where the epithet is otherwise interpreted), 663 d, 692 e.) the gracious one, as if you did not receive enough from their hands? Are you not ashamed to mingle domestic crops with blood and gore? You call serpents and panthers and lions savage, but you yourselves, by your own foul slaughters, leave them no room to outdo you in cruelty; for their slaughter is their living, yours is a mere appetizer. [*](As above in 991 d. See the interesting observations in G. Murray, Rise of the Greek Epic ³, p. 64 and the note.)

It is certainly not lions and wolves that we eat out of self-defence; on the contrary, we ignore these and slaughter harmless, tame creatures without stings or teeth to harm us, creatures that, I swear, Nature appears to have produced for the sake of their beauty and grace--- [*](The rest of this chapter, though possibly by Plutarch, is probably from another quite different work. Chapter 4 follows quite naturally upon this sentence.)

[It is as though one, seeing the Nile overflow its banks, filling the landscape with its fertile and productive stream, should not marvel at this, its nourishing of plants and its fruitfulness in such crops as are most to be cultivated and contribute most to the support of life, but should espy a crocodile swimming there somewhere or an asp being swept along or a thousand other savage creatures and should cite them as the reasons for his censure and his compulsion to do as he does.[*](These words, plainly out of context as the passage stands, are too vague to be rendered with any certainty.) Or, I swear, it is as though one fixed ones gaze on this land and its soil covered with cultivated crops and heavy with ears of wheat, and then, looking beneath these rich harvests, one were to catch sight somewhere of a

growth of darnel or broom-rape and, without more ado, ceasing to reap the benefit and claim the booty of the good crops, burst into a tirade about the weeds. Another example: if one should see an orator making a speech at some trial where he was advocate, a speech in which his eloquence in full flood was advancing to the succour of someone in jeopardy or (so help me) to the conviction or denunciation of rash acts or defaults - a flood of eloquence not simple or jejune, but charged with many (or rather all kinds of) emotional appeals for the simultaneous influencing of the many different kinds of minds in the audience or jury, which must either be roused and won over or (by heaven!) soothed and made gentle and calm - then if one neglected to observe and take into account this main point and issue of the matter, but merely picked out flaws of style that the flood of oratory, as it moved to its goal, had swept along by the momentum of its current, flaws that came rushing out and slipped by with the rest - and seeing --- of some popular leader --- [*](The rest of this perplexing fragment has been lost, so that we do not know what the object of these three comparisons is.)]

But nothing abashed us, not the flower-like tinting of the flesh, not the persuasiveness of the harmonious voice, not the cleanliness of their habits or the unusual intelligence that may be found in the poor wretches. No, for the sake of a little flesh we deprive them of sun, of light, of the duration of life to which they are entitled by birth and being. Then we go on to assume that when they utter cries and squeaks their speech is inarticulate, that they do not, begging for mercy, entreating, seeking justice,

each one of them say, I do not ask to be spared in ease of necessity; only spare me your arrogance! Kill me to eat, but not to please your palate! Oh, the cruelty of it! What a terrible thing it is to look on when the tables of the rich are spread, men who employ cooks and spicers to groom the dead! And it is even more terrible to look on when they are taken away, for more is left than has been eaten. So the beasts died for nothing! There are others who refuse when the dishes are already set before them and will not have them cut into or sliced. Though they bid spare the dead, they did not spare the living.[*](Post believes that there is another lacuna after this chapter; and Stephanus posited another one after the first sentence of chapter 5, rightly, if Bernardakis’ emendation is not accepted.)

We declare, then, that it is absurd for them to say that the practice of flesh-eating is based on Nature. For that man is not naturally carnivorous is, in the first place, obvious from the structure of his body.[*](See 988 e supra and the note.) A man’s frame is in no way similar to those creatures who were made for flesh-eating: he has no hooked beak or sharp nails or jagged teeth, no strong stomach or warmth of vital fluids able to digest and assimilate a heavy diet of flesh.[*](Cf.Mor. 87 b, 642 c.) It is from this very fact, the evenness of our teeth, the smallness of our mouths, the softness of our tongues, our possession of vital fluids too inert to digest meat that Nature disavows our eating of flesh. If you declare that you are naturally designed for such a diet, then first kill for yourself what you want to eat. Do it, however, only through your own resources,

unaided by cleaver or cudgel of any kind or axe. Rather, just as wolves and bears and lions themselves slay what they eat, so you are to fell an ox with your fangs or a boar with your jaws, or tear a lamb or hare in bits. Fall upon it and eat it still living, as animals do.[*](Let the advocate of animal food force himself to a decisive experiment on its fitness, and, as Plutarch recommends, tear a living lamb with his teeth, and, plunging his head into its vitals, slake his thirst with the steaming blood (Shelley, op. cit.).) But if you wait for what you eat to be dead, if you have qualms about enjoying the flesh while life is still present, why do you continue, contrary to nature, to eat what possesses life? Even when it is lifeless and dead, however, no one eats the flesh just as it is; men boil it and roast it, altering it by fire and drugs, recasting and diverting and smothering with countless condiments the taste of gore so that the palate may be deceived and accept what is foreign to it.

It was, indeed, a witty remark of the Spartan[*](Cf.Mor. 234 e-f, where it is meat, not fish, that is bought; see also 128 c.) who bought a little fish in an inn and gave it to the innkeeper to prepare. When the latter asked for cheese and vinegar and oil,[*](To make a sauce for the fish. The innkeeper’s action was natural enough, in view of Hegesander’s comment (Athenaeus, 564 a) that apparently everyone liked the seasonings, not the fish, since no one wanted fish plain and unseasoned.) the Spartan said, If I had those, I should not have bought a fish. But we are so refined in our blood-letting that we term flesh a supplementary food[*](See 991 d (and the note), 993 b, 994 b supra.); and then we need supplements for the flesh itself, mixing oil, wine, honey, fish paste, vinegar, with Syrian and Arabian spices,[*](See 990 b supra.) as though we were really embalming a corpse for

burial. The fact is that meat is so softened and dissolved and, in a way, predigested that it is hard for digestion to cope with it; and if digestion loses the battle, the meats affect us with dreadful pains and malignant forms of indigestion.

Diogenes[*](Cf. 956 b supra where the context is quite different. See also Athenaeus, 341 e; Lucian, Vit. Auctio 10; Julian, Oration, vi. 181 a, 191 c ff.; Diogenes Laertius, vi. 76; al. ) ventured to eat a raw octopus in order to put an end to the inconvenience of preparing cooked food. In the midst of a large throng he veiled his head and, as he brought the flesh to his mouth, said, It is for you that I am risking my life. Good heavens, a wondrous fine risk! Just like Pelopidas[*](Cf.Life of Pelopidas, chapters 7-11.) for the liberty of the Thebans or Harmodius and Aristogiton[*](Cf. Thucydides, vi. 54-59.) for that of the Athenians, this philosopher risked his life struggling with a raw octopus - in order to brutalize our lives!

Note that the eating of flesh is not only physically against nature, but it also makes us spiritually coarse and gross by reason of satiety and surfeit. For wine and indulgence in meat make the body strong and vigorous, but the soul weak. [*](A quotation from the medical writer Androcydes; see Mor. 472 b and the note.) And in order that I may not offend athletes, I shall take my own people as examples. It is a fact that the Athenians used to call us Boeotians[*](Cf. Rhys Roberts, The Ancient Boeotians, pp. 1-5.) beef-witted and insensitive and foolish, precisely because we stuffed ourselves.[*](The passage that follows is badly mutilated: it probably contained other quotations and fuller ones than the mss. indicate.) These

men are swine [*](Cf. the proverbial sow and Athena (Life of Demosthenes, xi. 5, 851 b and Mor. 803 d) and the Introduction to the Gryllus.); --- and Menander[*](Kock, Com. Att. Frag. iii, p. 238 (frag. 748 Koerte); the words probably mean Who are greedy fellows. ) says, Who have jaws; and Pindar[*](Olympians, vi. 89, which continues whether we are truly arraigned by that ancient gibe, Boeotian swine. (For this interpretation see G. Norwood, Pindar, pp. 82 and 237.)) And then to learn ---; A dry soul is wisest according to Heraclitus.[*](Diels-Kranz, Frag. der Vorsok. i, p. 100, frag. B 118; cf. the note on Mor. 432 f.) Empty jars make a noise when struck, but full ones do not resound to blows.[*](Cf.Mor. 721 b-d.) Thin bronze objects will pass the sounds from one to another in a circle until you dampen and deaden the noise with your hand as the beat goes round.[*](Mor. 721 c-d suggests that Plutarch is talking about a single cauldron with a wave going around it rather than about a circular arrangement of tuning forks. Sounding brass: cf. L. Parmentier, Recherches sur l’Isis et Osiris (Mem. Acad. Roy. Belg. ii, vol. II, 1912/13), pp. 31 ff.) The eye[*](Cf.Mor. 714 d.) when it is flooded by an excess of moisture grows dim and weakened for its proper task. When we examine the sun through dank atmosphere and a fog of gross vapours, we do not see it clear and bright, but submerged and misty, with elusive rays. In just the same way, then, when the body is turbulent and surfeited and burdened with improper food, the lustre and light of the soul inevitably come through it blurred and confused, aberrant and inconstant, since the soul lacks the brilliance and intensity to penetrate to the minute and obscure issues of active life.

But apart from these considerations, do you not find here a wonderful means of training in social responsibility? Who could wrong a human being when he found himself so gently and humanely disposed

toward other non-human creatures? Two days ago in a discussion I quoted the remark of Xenocrates,[*](See Heinze, Xenokrates, p. 151, frag. 99.) that the Athenians punished the man who had flayed a ram while it was still alive; yet, as I think, he who tortures a living creature is no worse than he who slaughters it outright. But it seems that we are more observant of acts contrary to convention than of those that are contrary to nature. In that place, then, I made my remarks in a popular vein. I still hesitate, however, to attempt a discussion of the principle underlying my opinion, great as it is, and mysterious and incredible, as Plato[*](Phaedrus, 245 c.) says, with merely clever men of mortal opinions, just as a steersman hesitates to shift his course[*](The Greek is both difficult and ambiguous; perhaps hesitates to set his ship in motion while a storm is raging. ) in the midst of a storm, or a playwright to raise his god from the machine in the midst of a play. Yet perhaps it is not unsuitable to set the pitch and announce the theme by quoting some verses of Empedocles.[*](The verses have fallen out, but may be, in part, those quoted infra, 998 c, or a similar passage.)--- By these lines he means, though he does not say so directly, that human souls are imprisoned in mortal bodies as a punishment for murder, the eating of animal flesh, and cannibalism. This doctrine, however, seems to be even older, for the stories told about the sufferings and dismemberment of Dionysus[*](See I. M. Linforth, The Arts of Orpheus, chapter 5, The Dismemberment of Dionysus, and especially pp. 334 ff., on this passage. A good illustration is the fragment of Dionysius in D. L. Page, Greek Literary Papyri, i (L.C.L.), pp. 538-541.) and the outrageous assaults of the Titans upon him, and their punishment and blasting by thunderbolt after they had tasted his blood - all this is a myth which in its inner meaning has to do with rebirth. For to that faculty in us which is unreasonable and disordered and violent, and does not come from the gods, but from evil spirits, the ancients gave the name Titans,[*](See Hesiod’s etymology, Theogony, 209 f. For this Greek equivalent of original sin see Shorey on Plato, Laws, 701 c (What Plato Said, p. 629), Mor. 975 b supra; and Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational, pp. 155 and 177.) that is to say, those that are punished and subjected to correction---[*](The first discourse breaks off at this point.)