Plutarch, De esu carnium I, Harold Cherniss (Translator), William C. Helmbold (Translator), 1

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[1] Can you really ask what reason Pythagoras¹ 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 man² 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, stale³ 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?

The skins shivered; and upon the spits the flesh bellowed,

Both cooked and raw; the voice of kine was heard.⁴

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 man⁵ who first began these practices that one should seek out, not him who all too late desisted.⁶

De esu carnium I. Plutarch. Harold Cherniss (Translator), William C. Helmbold (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1957.

Sponsored by Perseus Project, Tufts University.

Funding provided by The National Endowment for the Humanities.

Current edition Perseus

On the eating of flesh I (English) (Plutarch. Moralia, Vol. XII. Cherniss, Harold, and Helmbold, William C., translators. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1957 (printing).)

Editions (1)

Περὶ σαρκοφαγίας λόγος α′ Perseus (Plutarch. Plutarchi Chaeronensis Moralia, Vol. VI. Vernardakēs, Grēgorios N., editor. Leipzig: Teubner, 1895.) — 1 focus

[1] 993a ἀλλὰ σὺ μὲν ἐρωτᾷς; τίνι λόγῳ Πυθαγόρας ἀπείχετο σαρκοφαγίας, ἐγὼ δὲ θαυμάζω καὶ τίνι 5 993b πάθει καὶ ποίᾳ ψυχῇ ἢ λόγῳ ὁ πρῶτος ἄνθρωπος ἥψατο φόνου στόματι καὶ τεθνηκότος ζῴου χείλεσι προσήψατο σαρκός· καὶ νεκρῶν σωμάτων καὶ ἑώλων προθέμενος τραπέζας ὄψα καὶ τρυφὰς καὶ προσέτι εἰπεῖν τὰ μικρὸν ἔμπροσθεν βρυχώμενα μέρη καὶ 10 φθεγγόμενα καὶ κινούμενα καὶ βλέποντα· πῶς ἡ ὄψις ὑπέμεινε τὸν φόνον σφαζομένων δερομένων διαμελιζομένων, πῶς ἡ ὄσφρησις ἤνεγκε τὴν ἀποφοράν πῶς τὴν γεῦσιν οὐκ ἀπέτρεψεν ὁ μολυσμὸς 993c ἑλκῶν ψαύουσαν ἀλλοτρίων καὶ τραυμάτων θανασίμων 15 χυμοὺς· καὶ ἰχῶρας ἀπολαμβάνουσαν.

εἷρπον μὲν ῥινοί, κρέα δʼ ἀμφʼ ὀβελοῖς ἐμεμύκει

ὀπταλέα τε καὶ ὠμά, βοῶν δʼ ὣς γίγνετο φωνὴ

τοῦτο πλάσμα καὶ μῦθός ἐστι, τὸ δέ γε δεῖπνον ἀληθῶς τερατῶδες, πεινῆν τινα τῶν μυκωμένων ἔτι, καὶ διδάσκοντα ἀφʼ ὧν δεῖ τρέφεσθαι ζώντων ἔτι καὶ λαλούντων, καὶ διαταττόμενον ἀρτύσεις τινὰς καὶ ὀπτήσεις καὶ παραθέσεις· τούτων ἔδει ζητεῖν τὸν πρῶτον ἀρξάμενον οὐ τὸν ὀψὲ παυσάμενον 5

Translations (1)

Of eating of flesh: Tract I. Perseus (Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals, Vol. V. Goodwin, William W., editor; Baxter, William, translator. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company; Cambridge: Press of John Wilson and Son, 1874.) — 1 focus

[1] You ask of me then for what reason it was that Pythagoras abstained from eating of flesh. I for my part do much admire in what humor, with what soul or reason, the first man with his mouth touched slaughter, and reached to his lips the flesh of a dead animal, and having set before people courses of ghastly corpses and ghosts, could give those parts the names of meat and victuals, that but a little before lowed, cried, moved, and saw; how his sight could endure the blood of slaughtered, flayed, and mangled bodies; how his smell could bear their scent; and how the very nastiness happened not to offend the taste, while it chewed the sores of others, and participated of the saps and juices of deadly wounds.

Crept the raw hides, and with a bellowing sound

Roared the dead limbs; the burning entrails groaned.

This indeed is but a fiction and fancy; but the fare itself is truly monstrous and prodigious, — that a man should have a stomach to creatures while they yet bellow, and that he should be giving directions which of things yet alive and speaking is fittest to make food of, and ordering the several manners of the seasoning and dressing them and serving them up to tables. You ought rather, in my opinion, to have enquired who first began this practice, than who of late times left it off.

Notes on the current edition

On the eating of flesh I

1. Cf. 964 f supra.

2. Cf. 959 e supra.

3. Cf. 991 d supra, 995 c infra.

4. Homer, Odyssey, xii. 395-396.

5. 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.

6. Pythagoras.

Plutarch De esu carnium I 1

Harold Cherniss (Translator), William C. Helmbold (Translator)

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