“To such a degree do we make luxuries of bloodshed, that we call flesh ‘a delicacy,’ and forthwith require delicate sauces [ὄψων] for this same flesh-meat, and mix together oil and wine and honey and pickle and vinegar with all the spices of Syria and Arabia--for all the world as though we were embalming a human corpse. After all these heterogeneous matters have been mixed and dissolved and, in a manner, corrupted, it is for the stomach, forsooth, to masticate and assimilate them--if it can. And though this may be, for the time, accomplished, the natural sequence is a variety of diseases, produced by imperfect digestion and repletion.[48] “Diogenes (the Cynic) had the courage, on one occasion, to swallow a _polypus_ without any cooking preparation, to dispense with the time and trouble expended in the kitchen. In the presence of a numerous concourse of priests and others, unwrapping the morsel from his tattered cloak, and putting it to his lips, ‘For your sakes,’ cried he, ‘I perform this extravagant action and incur this danger.’ A self-sacrifice truly meritorious! Not like Pelopidas, for the freedom of Thebes, or like Harmodius and Aristogeiton, on behalf of the citizens of Athens, did the philosopher submit to this hazardous experiments; for _he_ acted thus that he might _unbarbarise_, if possible, the life of human kind. “Flesh-eating is not unnatural to our physical constitution only. The mind and intellect are made gross by gorging and repletion; for flesh-meat and wine may possibly tend to give robustness to the body, but it gives only feebleness to the mind. Not to incur the resentment of the prize-fighters [the _athletes_], I will avail myself of examples nearer home. The wits of Athens, it is well known, bestow on us Bœotians the epithets ‘gross,’ ‘dull-brained,’ and ‘stupid,’ chiefly on account of our gross feeding. We are even called ‘hogs.’ Menander nicknames us the ‘jaw-people’ [οἱ γνάθους ἔχοντες]. Pindar has it that ‘mind is a very secondary consideration with them.’ ‘A fine understanding of clouded brilliancy’ is the ironical phrase of Herakleitus.... “Besides and beyond all these reasons, does it not seem admirable to foster habits of philanthropy? Who that is so kindly and gently disposed towards beings of another species would ever be inclined to do injury to his own kind? I remember in conversation hearing, as a saying of Xenokrates, that the Athenians imposed a penalty upon a man for flaying a sheep alive, and he who tortures a living being is little worse (it seems to me) than he who needlessly deprives of life and murders outright. We have, it appears, clearer perceptions of what is contrary to propriety and custom than of what is contrary to nature....