Since, however, nutriment greatly contributes to the best discipline,
when it is properly used, and in an orderly manner, let us consider what
Pythagoras also instituted as a law about this. Universally, therefore,
he rejected all such food as is flatulent, and the cause of
perturbation, but he approved of the nutriment contrary to this, and
ordered it to be used, viz. such food as composes and compresses the
habit of the body. Hence, likewise, he thought that millet was a plant
adapted to nutrition. But he altogether rejected such food as is foreign
to the Gods; because it withdraws us from familiarity with the Gods.
Again, according to another mode also, he ordered his disciples to
abstain from such food as is reckoned sacred, as being worthy of honor,
and not to be appropriated to common and human utility. He likewise
exhorted them to abstain from such things as are an impediment to
prophesy, or to the purity and chastity of the soul, or to the habit of
temperance, or of virtue. And lastly, he rejected all such things as are
adverse to sanctity, and which obscure and disturb the other purities of
the soul, and the phantasms which occur in sleep. These things therefore
he instituted as laws in common about nutriment.
Separately, however, he forbade the most contemplative of philosophers,
and who have arrived at the summit of philosophic attainments, the use
of superfluous and unjust food, and ordered them never to eat any thing
animated, nor in short, to drink wine, nor to sacrifice animals to the
Gods, nor by any means to injure animals, but to preserve most
solicitously justice towards them. And he himself lived after this
manner, abstaining from animal food, and adoring altars undefiled with
blood. He was likewise careful in preventing others from destroying
animals that are of a kindred nature with us, and rather corrected and
instructed savage animals through words and deeds, than injured them
through punishment. And farther still, he also injoined those
politicians that were legislators to abstain from animals. For as they
wished to act in the highest degree justly, it is certainly necessary
that they should not injure any kindred animal. Since, how could they
persuade others to act justly, if they themselves were detected in
indulging an insatiable avidity by partaking of animals that are allied
to us? For through the communion of life and the same elements, and the
mixture subsisting from these, they are as it were conjoined to us by a
fraternal alliance. He permitted, however, others whose life was not
entirely purified, sacred and philosophic, to eat of certain animals;
and for these he appointed a definite time of abstinence. These
therefore, he ordered not to eat the heart, nor the brain; and from the
eating of these he entirely prohibited all the Pythagoreans. For these
parts are of a ruling nature, and are as it were certain ladders and
seats of wisdom and life. But other[25] things were considered by him as
sacred on account of the nature of a divine reason. Thus he exhorted his
disciples to abstain from mallows, because this plant is the first
messenger and signal of the sympathy of celestial with terrestrial
natures. Thus, too, he ordered them to abstain from the fish melanurus;
for it is sacred to the terrestrial Gods. And also not to receive the
fish erythinus, through other such like causes. He likewise exhorted
them to abstain from beans, on account of many sacred and physical
causes, and also such causes as pertain to the soul. And he established
as laws other precepts similar to these, beginning through nutriment to
lead men to virtue.