THE GREEKS
In Plato's Republic the great Greek philosopher Socrates recommended a vegetarian diet
because it would allow a country to make the most intelligent use of its agricultural
resources. He warned that if people began eating animals, there would be need for more
pasturing land. "And the country which was enough to support the original inhabitants
will be to small now, and not enough?" he asked of Glaucon, who replied that this was
indeed true. "And so we shall go to war, Glaucon, shall we not?" To which
Glaucon replied, "Most certainly."
"The earth affords a lavish supply of riches, of innocent foods, and offers you
banquets that involve no bloodshed or slaughter; only beasts satisfy their hunger with
flesh, and not even all of those, because horses, cattle, and sheep live on grass. As long
as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seeds of
murder and pain cannot reap joy and love." - Pythagoras
The biographer Diogenes tells us that Pythagoras ate bread and honey in the morning and
raw vegetables at night. He would also pay fishermen to throw their catch back into the
sea.
THE ROMANS
"Can you really ask what reason Pythagoras had for abstinence from flesh? For my
part I rather wonder both by what accident and in what state of mind the first man touched
his mouth to gore and brought his lips to the flesh of a dead creature, set forth tables
of dead, state 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 sores of others and sucked juices and serums from mortal wounds? It is
certainly not lions or wolves that we eat out of self-defense; on the contrary, we ignore
these and slaughter harmless, tame creatures without stings or teeth to harm us. For the
sake of a little flesh we deprive them of sun, or light, of the duration of life to which
they are entitled by birth and being." -- Plutarch. in his essay On Eating 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 your own
resources, unaided by clever or cudgel or any kind of axe." - Plutarch.
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