“Reason proves both by our thoughts and our desires that we are (comparatively) new to the reeking feasts [ἕωλα] of kreophagy. Yet it is hard, as says Cato, to argue with stomachs since they have no ears; and the inebriating potion of Custom[49] has been drunk, like Circe’s, with all its deceptions and witcheries. Now that men are saturated and penetrated, as it were, with love of pleasure, it is not an easy task to attempt to pluck out from their bodies the flesh-baited hook. Well would it be if, as the people of Egypt turning their back to the pure light of day disembowelled their dead and cast away the offal, as the very source and origin of their sins, we, too, in like manner, were to eradicate bloodshed and gluttony from ourselves and purify the remainder of our lives. If the irreproachable diet be impossible to any by reason of inveterate habit, at least let them devour their flesh as driven to it by hunger, not in luxurious wantonness, but with feelings of shame. Slay your victim, but at least do so with feelings of pity and pain, not with callous heedlessness and with torture. And yet that is what is done in a variety of ways. “In slaughtering swine, for example, they thrust red-hot irons into their living bodies, so that, by sucking up or diffusing the blood, they may render the flesh soft and tender. Some butchers jump upon or kick the udders of pregnant sows, that by mingling the blood and milk and matter of the _embryos_ that have been murdered together in the very pangs of parturition, they may enjoy the pleasure of feeding upon unnaturally and highly inflamed flesh![50] Again, it is a common practice to stitch up the eyes of cranes and swans, and shut them up in dark places to fatten. In this and other similar ways are manufactured their dainty dishes, with all the varieties of sauces and spices [καρυκείαις--Lydian sauces, composed of blood and spices]--from all which it is sufficiently evident that men have indulged their lawless appetites in the pleasures of luxury, not for necessary food, and from no necessity, but only out of the merest wantonness, and gluttony, and display....”[51] Among the illustrious earlier contemporaries of Plutarch who practised no less than preached rigid abstinence, Apollonius of Tyana, the Pythagorean, one of the most extraordinary men of any age, deserves particular notice. He came into the world in the same year with the founder of Christianity, B.C. 4. The facts and fictions of his life we owe to Philostratus, who wrote his memoirs at the express desire of the Empress Julia Domna, the wife of Severus.