On Abstinence from Animal Food

Porphyry · Thomas Taylor

Translated by Thomas Taylor, 1812 Like Pythagoras, Porphyry was a keen advocate of vegetarianism on spiritual and ethical grounds. Both philosophers are perhaps the most famous vegetarians of classical antiquity. Porphyry’s treatise On the Abstinence of Eating Animals recommends against the consumption of animals, in which he posits that everything was created for mutual advantage and argues that vegetarianism is a way to preserve universal harmony of nature. The work is still cited with approval in vegetarian literature up to the present day. 1. HEARING FROM some of our acquaintance, O Firmus 1, that you, having rejected a fleshless diet, have again returned to animal food, at first I did not credit the report, when I considered your temperance, and the reverence which you have been taught to pay to those ancient and pious men from whom we have received the precepts of philosophy. But …

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• Thomas Taylor (this edition) — read
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