“‘What wonder, then, if, contrary to nature, we had recourse to the flesh of living beings, when all our other means of subsistence consisted in wild corn [or a sort of grass--ἄγρωστιν], and the bark of trees, and even slimy mud, and when we deemed ourselves fortunate to find some chance wild root or herb? When we tasted an acorn or beech-nut we danced with grateful joy around the tree, hailing it as our bounteous mother and nurse. Such was the gala-feast of those primeval days, when the whole earth was one universal scene of passion and violence, engendered by the struggle for the very means of existence.
“‘But what struggle for existence, or what goading madness has incited _you_ to imbrue your hands in blood--you who have, we repeat, a superabundance of all the necessaries and comforts of existence? Why do you belie the Earth [τὶ καταψεύοεσθε τῆς Γῆς] as though it were unable to feed and nourish you? Why do you do despite to the bounteous [goddess] Ceres, and blaspheme the sweet and mellow gifts of Bacchus, as though you received not a sufficiency from them?
“‘Does it not shame you to mingle murder and blood with their beneficent fruits? Other _carnivora_ you call savage and ferocious--lions and tigers and serpents--while yourselves come behind them in no species of barbarity. And yet for them murder is the only means of sustenance; whereas to you it is a superfluous luxury and crime.’
“For, in point of fact, we do not kill and eat lions and wolves, as we might do in self-defence--on the contrary, we leave them unmolested; and yet the innocent and the domesticated and helpless and unprovided with weapons of offence--these we hunt and kill, whom Nature seems to have brought into existence for their beauty and gracefulness....
“Nothing puts us out of countenance [δυσωπεῖ], not the charming beauty of their form, not the plaintive sweetness of their voice or cry, not their mental intelligence [πανουργία ψυχῆς], not the purity of their diet, not superiority of understanding. For the sake of a part of their flesh only, we deprive them of the glorious light of the sun--of the life for which they were born. The plaintive cries they utter we affect to take to be meaningless; whereas, in fact, they are entreaties and supplications and prayers addressed to us by each which say, ‘It is not the satisfaction of your real necessities we deprecate, but the wanton indulgence [ὕβριν] of your appetites. Kill to eat, if you must or will, but do not slay me that you may feed _luxuriously_.’