But when the question is to point out the time at which the use of animal food was introduced, ideas become clouded, and highly intelligent minds, bewildered by the obscurity which envelops the subject, have frequently appealed to absurd legends and ridiculous fables, invoking the aid of their false and contested authority. Xenocrates pretends that Triptolemus forbad the Athenians to eat animals.[XV-14] Man must, then, have been still frugivorous for four centuries after the Deluge. This opinion found contradictors, who maintained that man contented himself with fruit only because fire was wanting to cook meat; but Prometheus came, and taught him how to draw the useful element from the flint which concealed it, and was the first to venture on the sacrifice of an ox.[XV-15] This happened in the year of the world 2412.[XV-16] All this is a mistake, say other and very sensible writers; here is the truth on this difficult point: The goddess Ceres had sown a field, and the wheat came up as desired, when a pig entered, tumbled about, and caused considerable damage, which so irritated the lady that she punished him with death. Now, as a pig is good for nothing except to eat, this one was eaten; and from that day, so fatal to the swinish race, mankind learnt to appreciate the flesh of animals.[XV-17] At the same time, Bacchus killed a goat he found nibbling at the tendrils of his darling vines;[XV-18] and Hyberbius, son of Mars, and a slasher, like his father, amused himself by killing another, in order to become familiar thus early with scenes of combat.[XV-19] These goats were roasted; and as experience had as yet furnished no rule of comparison, and formed no taste--that exquisite sentiment of the beautiful in the plastic arts, and of the good in the culinary science--it was decided that this dish was very tolerable. Hitherto the bovine race had only lost one individual: its sad destiny began in the year 1506, before our era, under the reign of the fourth king of Athens, Erichtonius, on a day of great solemnity, when an ox, pressed probably by hunger, came near the altar, and devoured one of the sacred cakes which heathen piety had dedicated to Jupiter. The zealous Diomus rushed forward, and pierced the heart of the sacrilegious quadruped. It might be supposed that the anger of the god was immediately appeased; but no! the terrible Jupiter knitted his brows; Olympus was in great agitation; and pestilence came, and spread its ravages amongst the Athenians. “All did not die, but all were struck;”[XV-20] and, to propitiate the implacable scourge, they thought of nothing better than to institute the Buphonic Feast, which happily re-established their health, and which they continued to celebrate every year. They sacrificed an ox,[XV-21] offered a piece to Jupiter, and the faithful divided the rest among themselves.