QUESTION VIII.

Why the Pythagoreans Command Fish Not to Be Eaten, More Strictly Than Other Animals.

EMPEDOCLES, SYLLA, LUCIUS, TYNDARES, NESTOR.

Our former discourse Lucius neither reprehended nor approved, but, sitting silent and musing, gave us the hearing. Then Empedocles addressing his discourse to Sylla, said: If our friend Lucius is displeased with the discourse, it is time for us to leave off; but if these are some of their mysteries which ought to be concealed, yet I think this may be lawfully divulged, that they more cautiously abstain from fish than from other animals. For this is said of the ancient Pythagoreans; and even now I have met with Alexicrates's scholars, who will eat and kill and even sacrifice some of the other animals, but will never taste fish. Tyndares the Spartan said, they spared fish because they had so great a regard for silence, and they called fish [Greek omitted], because they had their voice SHUT UP ([Greek omitted]); and my namesake Empedocles advised one who had been expelled from the school of Pythagoras to shut up his mind like a fish, and they thought silence to be divine, since the gods without any voice reveal their meaning to the wise by their works.

Then Lucius gravely and composedly saying, that perhaps the true reason was obscure and not to be divulged, yet they had liberty to venture upon probable conjectures, Theon the grammarian began thus: To demonstrate that Pythagoras was a Tuscan is a great and no easy task. But it is confessed that he conversed a long time with the wise men of Egypt, and imitated a great many of the rites and institutions of the priests, for instance, that about beans. For Herodotus delivers, that the Egyptians neither set nor eat beans, nay, cannot endure to see them; and we all know, that even now the priests eat no fish; and the stricter sort eat no salt, and refuse all meat that is seasoned with it. Various reasons are offered for this; but the only true reason is hatred to the sea, as being a disagreeable, or rather naturally a destructive element to man. For they do not imagine that the gods, as the Stoics did that the stars, were nourished by it. But, on the contrary, they think that the father and preserver of their country, whom they call the deflux of Osiris, is lost in it; and when they bewail him as born on the left hand, and destroyed in the right-hand parts, they intimate to us the ending and corruption of their Nile by the sea, and therefore they do not believe that its water is wholesome, or that any creature produced or nourished in it can be clean or wholesome food for man, since it breathes not the common air, and feeds not on the same food with him. And the air that nourisheth and preserves all other things is destructive to them, as if their production and life were unnecessary and against Nature; nor should we wonder that they think animals bred in the sea to be disagreeable to their bodies, and not fit to mix with their blood and spirits, since when they meet a pilot they will not speak to him, because he gets his living by the sea.

Sylla commended this discourse, and added concerning the Pythagoreans, that they then chiefly tasted flesh when they sacrificed to the gods. Now no fish is ever offered in sacrifice. I, after they had done, said that many, both philosophers and unlearned, considering with how many good things it furnisheth and makes our life more comfortable, take the sea's part against the Egyptians. But that the Pythagoreans should abstain from fish because they are not of the same kind, is ridiculous and absurd; nay, to butcher and feed on other animals, because they bear a nearer relation to us, would be a most inhuman and Cyclopean return. And they say that Pythagoras bought a draught of fishes, and presently commanded the fishers to let them all out of the net; and this shows that, he did not hate or not mind fishes, as things of another kind and destructive to man, but that they were his dearly beloved creatures, since he paid a ransom for their freedom.

Therefore the tenderness and humanity of those philosophers suggest a quite contrary reason, and I am apt to believe that they spare fishes to instruct men, or to accustom themselves to acts of justice; for other creatures generally give men cause to afflict them, but fishes neither do nor are capable of doing us any harm. And it is easy to show, both from the writings and religion of the ancients, that they thought it a great sin not only to eat but to kill an animal that did them no harm. But afterwards, being necessitated by the spreading multitude of men, and commanded (as they say) by the Delphic oracle to prevent the total decay of corn and fruit, they began to sacrifice, yet they were so disturbed and concerned at the action, that they called it [Greek omitted] and [Greek omitted] (TO DO), as if they did some strange thing in killing an animal; and they are very careful not to kill the beast before the wine has been cast upon his head and he nods in token of consent. So very cautious are they of injustice. And not to mention other considerations, were no chickens (for instance) or hares killed, in a short time they would so increase that there could be no living. And now it would be a very hard matter to put down the eating of flesh, which necessity first introduced, since pleasure and luxury hath espoused it. But the water-animals neither consuming any part of our air or water, or devouring the fruit, but as it were encompassed by another world, and having their own proper bounds, which it is death for them to pass, they afford our belly no pretence at all for their destruction; and therefore to catch or be greedy after fish is plain deliciousness and luxury, which upon no just reason unsettle the sea and dive into the deep. For we cannot call the mullet corn-destroying, the trout grape-eating, nor the barbel or seapike seed-gathering, as we do some land-animals, signifying their hurtfulness by these epithets. Nay, those little mischiefs which we complain of in these house-creatures, a weasel or fly, none can justly lay upon the greatest fish. Therefore the Pythagoreans, confining themselves not only by the law which forbids them to injure men, but also by Nature, which commands them to do violence to nothing, fed on fish very little, or rather not at all. But suppose there were no injustice in this case, yet to delight in fish would argue daintiness and luxury; because they are such costly and unnecessary diet. Therefore Homer doth not only make the Greeks whilst encamped near the Hellespont, eat no fish, but he mentions not any sea-provision that the dissolute Phaeacians or luxurious wooers had, though both islanders. And Ulysses's mates, though they sailed over so much sea, as long as they had any provision left, never let down a hook or net.

But when the victuals of their ship was spent, ("Odyssey," xii. 329-332.)

a little before they fell upon the oxen of the Sun, they caught fish, not to please their wanton appetite, but to satisfy their hunger -

With crooked hooks, for cruel hunger gnawed.

The same necessity therefore forced them to catch fish and devour the oxen of the Sun. Therefore not only among the Egyptian and Syrians but Greeks too, to abstain from fish was a piece of sanctity, they avoiding (as I think), a superfluous curiosity in diet, as well as being just.

To this Nestor subjoining said: But sir, of my citizens as of the Megarians in the proverb, you make no account; although you have heard me often say that our priests of Neptune (whom we call Hieromnemons) never eat fish. For Neptune himself is called the Breeder. And the race of Hellen sacrificed to Neptune as the first father, imagining, as likewise the Syrians did, that man rose from a liquid substance. And therefore they worship a fish as of the same production and breeding with themselves, in this matter being more happy in their philosophy than Anaximander; for he says that fish and men were not produced in the same substances, but that men were first produced in fishes, and, when they were grown up and able to help themselves, were thrown out, and so lived upon the land. Therefore, as the fire devours its parents, that is, the matter out of which it was first kindled, so Anaximander, asserting that fish were our common parents, condemneth our feeding on them.