Plutarch Septem sapientium convivium 16

[16] Certainly, said Solon, let us not show ourselves to be less discriminating than the Egyptians, who cut open the dead body and expose it to the sun, and then cast certain parts of it into the river, and perform their offices on the rest of the body, feeling that this part has now at last been made clean. For this, in truth, it is which constitutes the pollution of our flesh and its bowels of Hell, as it were, teeming with frightful streams and wind, intermingled with burning fire and corpses. ¹ For no living man feeds upon another living creature; nay, we put to death the animate creatures and destroy these things that grow in the ground, which also are partakers in life, in that they absorb food, and increase in size; and herein we do wrong. For anything that is changed from what it was by nature into something else is destroyed, and it undergoes utter corruption that it may become the food of another. ² But to refrain entirely from eating meat, as they record of Orpheus ³ of old, is rather a quibble than a way of avoiding wrong in regard to food. The one way of avoidance and of keeping oneself pure, from the point of view of righteousness, is to become sufficient unto oneself and to need nothing from any other source. But in the case of man or beast for whom God has made his own secure existence impossible without his doing injury to another, it may be said that in the nature which God has inflicted upon him lies the source of wrong. Would it not, then, be right and fair, my friend, in order to cut out injustice, to cut out also bowels and stomach and liver, which afford us no perception or craving for anything noble, but are like cooking utensils, such as choppers and kettles, and, in another respect, like a baker’s outfit, ovens and dough-containers and kneading-bowls? Indeed, in the case of most people, one can see that their soul is absolutely confined in the darkness of the body as in a mill, making its endless rounds in its concern over its need of food; just as we ourselves, only a few minutes ago, as a matter of course, neither saw nor listened to one another, but each one was bending down, enslaved to his need of food. But now that the tables have been removed, we have, as you see, been made free, and, with garlands on, we are spending our time in conversation and in the enjoyment of one another’s society, and we have the leisure to do this now that we have come to require no more food for a time. Assuming, then, that the state in which we find ourselves at the present moment will persist without interruption throughout our whole life, shall we not always have leisure to enjoy one another’s society, having no fear of poverty and no knowledge of what wealth is? For craving for the superfluous follows close upon the use of necessities, and soon becomes a settled habit,

But Cleodorus imagines that there ought to be food, so that there may be tables and wine-bowls and sacrifices to Demeter and the Daughter. Then let the next man argue that it is but right and proper that there be battles and war, so that we may have fortifications and dockyards and arsenals, and may offer sacrifice to celebrate the slaying of an hundred foemen, ⁴ as they say is the custom among the Messenians. Still another man, I imagine, may enter tain a violent hatred against health; for it will be a terrible thing if nobody is ill, and there is no longer any use for a soft bed or couch, and we shall not offer sacrifice to Asclepius or the averting deities, and the profession of medicine together with its numerous instruments and remedies shall be consigned to inglorious desuetude and contempt. Yet, what difference is there between this sort of reasoning and the other? The fact is that food is taken as a remedy for hunger, and all who use food in a prescribed way are said to be giving themselves treatment, not with the thought they are doing something pleasant and grateful, but that this is necessary to comply with Nature’s imperative demand. Indeed, it is possible to enumerate more pains than pleasures derived from food; or rather may it be said that the pleasure affects but a very limited area in the body, and lasts for no long time; but as for the ugly and painful experiences crowded upon us by the bother and discomfort which wait upon digestion, what need to tell their number? I think that Homer ⁵ had their very number in view when, in the case of the gods, he finds an argument to prove that they do not die in the fact that they do not live by food:

Since they eat no bread and drink no wine brightly sparkling, Therefore their bodies are bloodless, and they are called the Immortals.

He intimates by this that food is not only an element conducive to life, but that it is also conducive to death. For it is from this source that diseases come, thriving on the very same food as men’s bodies, ⁶ which find no less ill in fulness than in fasting. For oftentimes it is harder work to use up and again to distribute food, after it has been taken into the body, than it was to procure it and get it together in the first place. But just as the Danaids would be at a loss to know what kind of life and occupation they should follow if they should be relieved of their drudgery in trying to fill the great jar, so we are at a loss to know, if perchance we should have the opportunity to cease from heaping into this relentless flesh of ours all the multitudinous products of land and sea, what we shall do, since, owing to lack of acquaintance with noble things, we now content ourselves with the life conditioned on necessities. Just as men who have been slaves, when they are set free, do for themselves on their own account those very things which they used to do in service to their masters, ⁷ so the soul now supports the body with much toil and trouble, but if it be relieved of its drudgery, it will quite naturally maintain itself in its new freedom and live with an eye to itself and the truth, since there will be nothing to distract or divert it.

This then, Nicarchus, is what was said on the subject of food.

[16] Yea, doubtless, replies Solon, or we may be reputed more injudicious than the Egyptians. For when any person dies among them, they open him and show him so dissected to the sun; his guts they throw into the river, to the remaining parts they allow a decent burial, for they think the body now pure and clean; and to speak truly, they are the foulest parts of the body, and like that lower hell crammed with dead carcasses and at the same time flowing with offensive rivers, such as flame with fire and are disturbed with tempests. No live creature feeds upon another living creature, but we first take away their lives, and in that action we do them great wrong; forasmuch as whatsoever is transmuted and turned into another loseth the nature which it had before, and is corrupted that it may become nourishment to the others. Now the very plants have life in them,—that is clear and manifest, for we perceive they grow and spread. But to abstain from eating flesh (as they say Orpheus of old did) is more a pretence than a real avoiding of an injury proceeding from the just use of meat. One way there is, and but one way, whereby a man may avoid offence, namely by being contented with his own, not coveting what belongs to his neighbor. But if a man’s circumstances be such and so hard that he cannot subsist without wronging another man, the fault is God’s, not his. The case being such with some persons, I would fain learn if it be not advisable to destroy, at the same time with injustice, these instruments of injustice, the belly, stomach, and liver, which have no sense of justice or appetite to honesty, and therefore may be fitly compared to your cook’s implements, his knives and his caldrons, or to a baker’s chimney and bins and kneading-tubs. Verily one may observe the souls of some men confined to their bodies, as to a house of correction, barely to do the drudgery and to serve the necessities thereof. It was our own case but even now. While we minded our meat and our bellies, we had neither eyes to see nor ears to hear; but now the table is taken away, we are free to discourse among ourselves and to enjoy one another; and now our bellies are full, we have nothing else to do or care for. And if this condition and state wherein we at present are would last our whole life, we having no wants to fear nor riches to covet (for a desire of superfluities attends a desire of necessaries), would not our lives be much more comfortable and life itself much more desirable?

Yea, but Cleodemus stiffly maintains the necessity of eating and drinking, else we shall want tables and cups, and shall not be able to sacrifice to Ceres and Proserpina. By a parity of reason there is a necessity there should be contentions and wars, that men may have bulwarks and citadels and fortifications by land, fleets and navies abroad at sea, and that having slain hundreds, we may offer sacrifices (called Hecatomphonia) after the Messenian manner. By this reason we shall find men grudging their own health, for (they will say) there will be no need of down or feather beds unless they are sick; and so those healing Gods, and particularly Esculapius, will be vast sufferers, for they will infallibly lose so many fat and rich sacrifices yearly. Nay, the art of chirurgery will perish, and all those ingenious instruments that have been invented for the cure of man will lie by useless and insignificant. And what great difference is there between this and that? For meat is a medicine against hunger, and such as keep a regular diet are said to cure themselves,—I mean such as use meat not for wantonness but of necessity. For it is plain, the prejudices we receive by feeding far surmount the pleasures. And the pleasure of eating fills a very little place in our bodies and very little time. But why should I trouble you or myself with a catalogue of the many vexations which attend that man who is necessitated to provide for a family, and the many difficulties which distract him in his undertaking? For my part, I verily believe Homer had an eye to this very thing, when, to prove the immortality of the Gods, he made use of this very argument, that they were such because they used no victuals;

intimating meat to be the cause of death as well as the means of sustaining and supporting life. From hence proceed divers fatal distempers caused much more by fulness than by fasting; and to digest what we have eaten proves frequently a harder matter than to provide and procure what we eat. And when we solicitously enquire beforehand what we should do or how we should employ ourselves if we had not such care and business to take up our time, this is as if Danaus’s daughters should trouble their heads to know what they should do if they had no sieves to fill with water. We drudge and toil for necessaries, for want of better and nobler business. As slaves then who have gained their freedom do now and then those drudgeries and discharge those servile employments and offices for their own benefit which they undertook heretofore for their masters’ advantage, so the mind of man, which at present is enslaved to the body and the service thereof, when once it becomes free from this slavery, will take care of itself, and spend its time in contemplation of truth without distraction or disturbance. Such were our discourses upon this head, O Nicarchus.