Before we leave the ἱερεῖον, the animal sacrificed and eaten, one word of caution is necessary. It is sometimes argued that animal sacrifice, as contrasted with the simpler offerings of grain and fruits, is the mark of a later and more luxurious civilization. Such was the view of Porphyry[127] the vegetarian. Flesh-eating and flesh sacrifice is to him the mark of a cruel and barbarous licence. Such too was the view of Eustathius[128]. In commenting on the οὐλοχύται, the barley grain scattered, he says, ‘after the offering of barley grain came sacrifices and the eating of meat at sacrifices, because after the discovery of necessary foods the luxury of a meat diet and imported innovations in food were invented.’ As a generalization this is false to facts; it depends on the environment of a race whether man will first eat vegetable or animal food; but as regards the particular case of the Greeks themselves, the observations of Porphyry and Eustathius are broadly true. The primitive dwellers in Greece and round the Mediterranean generally lived mainly on vegetarian diet, diversified by fish, and the custom of flesh-eating in large quantities was an innovation brought from without[129] (ἐπείσακτον). Athenaeus[130] in his first book discusses the various kinds of food, and dwells with constant astonishment on the flesh-eating habits of the Achaean heroes of Homer. He quotes the comic poet Eubulos as asking ‘I pray you, when did Homer ever make An Achaean chief eat fish? ’tis always flesh, And roasted too, not boiled.’ Achaean chiefs, he notes—and in this they resemble their northern descendants—‘do not care for made-dishes, kickshaws and the like. Homer sets before them only roast meat, and for the most part beef, such as would put life into them, body and soul.’ It is true Athenaeus is arguing about the simplicity of the Homeric as contrasted with later Greek life, but the fact he states is beyond dispute, i.e. that the Homeric diet was mainly of flesh and unlike the vegetarian and fish diet of the ordinary Greek. Given a flesh diet for man, and the sacrifice of flesh to the gods he makes in his own image follows. The terms θύειν and ἱερεύειν belong then to sacrifice regarded as a feast; it remains to consider the term ἐναγίζειν, in the definition of which we come, I think, to the fullest understanding of the ideas of the lower stratum of Greek religion.