Religious Vegetarianism

by Walters and Portmess

What interested me in the book is the section on Pythagorean vegetarianism. I know Pythagoras from my math class in school, but it’s news to me that he’s vegetarian, and that part of his philosophy is so close to Buddhism.

“For I have already been once a boy and a gril, a bush and a bird and a leaping journeying fish.”

“We should permit bodies which may possibly have sheltered the souls of our parents or brothers, or those joined to us by some other bond, or of men at least, to be uninjured and respected, and not load our stomaches as with a Thyestean banquet!”