Animals, Gods and Humans - Chapter 3 pps

Porphyry’s solution to the problem of the relationship between animal sacrifice and eating flesh is to say that even if animals are sacrificed, it does not necessarily follow that they s

It seems to be the case, from the limited material at our disposal, that the

“animal question” was pursued across the boundaries of religions and philo-sophical schools and was seen as an entertaining subject to disagree on Sometimes, though, this subject had more serious subtexts When animals were discussed in relation to diet, things became more serious, since eating

is not a thing to be taken lightly

The question of vegetarianism – abstention from eating flesh (to

sarkofagein) – is closely connected to the definition of animals and humans in

relation to each other How one thought about animals and their status and value clearly had consequences for how they were treated Could animals be eaten? Could they be sacrificed? The question of animal sacrifice in partic-ular goes to the heart of ancient religion

One of the main subjects of Porphyry’s treatise On Abstinence is the

ques-tion of a vegetarian diet Together with Plutarch’s two works against eating

flesh, On Abstinence is the most vigorous defence of vegetarianism from the

ancient world Porphyry’s solution to the problem of the relationship between animal sacrifice and eating flesh is to say that even if animals are sacrificed, it does not necessarily follow that they should be eaten (2.2) This

is a point to which Porphyry repeatedly returns (2.42, 2.53, 2.57; see also Chapter 7)

A revival of Pythagoreanism in these centuries once again called attention

to a vegetarian lifestyle, as seen in Philostratus’ biographical novel about Apollonius of Tyana And while a vegetarian diet is especially associated with Pythagoreanism, it also became, after Plato, part of the Academy (Haussleiter 1935: 204ff; Tsekourakis 1987)

Vegetarianism often had a religious dimension and could be a mark of religious affiliation Seneca, for instance, put an end to his vegetarian lifestyle because his father did not want him to be regarded as one who

participated in foreign cults (Epistle, 108) In several of the religions of the

empire, only certain animals, parts of animals or certain plants could be

V E G E TA R I A N I S M , N AT U R A L

H I S T O RY A N D P H Y S I O G N O M I C S

eaten, and only at certain times (Haussleiter 1935: 128) In general, periodic fasting and prohibition against eating some types of food were found much more widely in ancient times The Pythagorean prohibition against eating beans is well known

Generally, vegetarianism may be built on two different attitudes to animals – or on a combination of these attitudes Either humans should abstain from eating animals because animals and humans are part of the same community, or they should abstain from eating animals because humans are on a higher level than animals, and animals are a source of pollu-tion for humans (see Dierauer 1977: 286–90) Thus a vegetarian diet was not only based on the idea of a unity of soul between humans and animals but could just as well be a means of showing the difference between them and making humans distance themselves from animals and move closer to the gods

The classical defenders of vegetarianism had identified themselves with the first position Both Pythagoras and Empedocles had connected vegetari-anism with a belief in the transmigration of souls If souls were passing from human to animal bodies and vice versa, would it not be just as bad to eat animals as it was to eat humans? The swine or the lamb that was slaughtered and eaten could have been one’s dead father or mother Beliefs in reincarna-tion and a vegetarian lifestyle are often found together India is a case in point The idea of reincarnation across species establishes a world in which all creatures have a life in common and makes it possible that relatives could

be reborn as animals

Even if Plutarch does not support the idea of a transmigration of souls wholeheartedly, he refers repeatedly to Empedocles and Pythagoras as well as

to the Orphics in an argument about the eating of animal flesh, cannibalism and reincarnation in his two small vegetarian texts (993A, 996B–C), which are the two surviving ones of a whole series of discourses on the subject Plutarch’s position is rather one of modified support for the idea of reincar-nation.1Perhaps the idea is true, and if it is, would anybody really take the chance of eating meat if it could be their mother, brother or son reborn as an animal (997D–E, 998D)? Thus Plutarch keeps open the possibility of such a close connection between animals and humans as the idea of reincarnation implies, but without wholeheartedly supporting it

Reincarnation was not the only argument against slaughtering animals and eating food made from their dead bodies Seneca mentions that Pythagoreans could have different reasons for abstaining from meat, but he

hastens to add that “it was in each case a noble reason” (Epistle, 108) One

reason for vegetarianism was that animals, like humans, had the capacity for suffering Therefore, out of compassion towards their fellow beings, humans ought to treat animals well In this case, a relationship between animals and humans was clearly recognized According to Plutarch, eating flesh may take place because of hunger but never as a luxury (996F) The killing must be

done “in pity and sorrow”, not by degrading and torturing the animal Plutarch also criticizes the fact that beasts are slain to fill the tables of the rich, who seldom eat what has been put on the table: “more is left than has been eaten So the beasts died for nothing!” (994F)

This ethical vegetarianism often included an element of concern for humans “Who could wrong a human being when he found himself so gently

and humanely disposed towards other non-human creatures?” (Moralia,

996A) asks Plutarch He argues that the killing of animals is part of a process that eventually leads to further moral debasement of humans Slaughtering of animals may, for instance, lead to the slaughtering of humans (998A ff) However, vegetarianism did not only imply a realization of the closeness between animals and humans It could also be based on a wish to create a distance between man and beast A means of attaining a pure soul was to keep up a vegetarian diet One of Philostratus’ issues was how man – the high point of nature – should think and act As we have seen, his answer was the ideal of the gentle philosopher Apollonius of Tyana, who did not want to contaminate his body with such poisonous food as meat or sully his soul with bloody offerings or with unkindness towards other living beings Compassion towards animals was, in the case of Apollonius, a by-product of his concern for humans and subordinate to Philostratus’ wish to launch Apollonius as the ideal human being This text signals not only that animals are on a lower level in the hierarchy of being but also that they are a source

of pollution Some of the Stoics led vegetarian lives and based their absten-tion from meat on rules about purity (Haussleiter 1935: 20–4) According

to Plutarch, eating meat was not only disgusting, it was also polluting

(molysmos, 993B).

Plutarch opens his defence of a fleshless diet vigorously in one of the two

treatises that have been labelled On the Eating of Flesh:

Can you really ask what reason Pythagoras had for abstaining from flesh? For my part I rather wonder by what accident and in what state of soul or mind the first man who did so, touched his mouth

to the gore and brought his lips to the flesh of a dead creature, he who set forth tables of dead, stale bodies and ventured to call food and nourishment the parts that had a little before bellowed and cried, moved and lived How could his eyes endure the slaughter when throats were slit and hides flayed and limbs torn from limb? How could his nose endure the stench? How was it that the pollu-tion did not turn away his taste, which made contact with the sores

of others and sucked juices and serums from mortal wounds?

(On the Eating of Flesh, 993A–B)

This treatise has been characterized as a work of his youth and “on the

whole, rather immature beside the Gryllus and the De Sollertia Animalium,”

and its rhetoric has been described as “exaggerated and calculated” (Helmbold 1968: 537) Be that as it may, these treatises are interesting because of their vigorous and varied arguments against eating meat

Plutarch’s point of departure is the question of what reason Pythagoras had for abstaining from flesh Plutarch’s answer is that the man one should seek out is not the one who abstains but the one who starts to eat animal flesh Plutarch’s point is that eating flesh is unnatural Man is not a carnivorous animal, and accordingly eating flesh is not appropriate for him Another of his points is that people are eating harmless tame creatures, not lions and wolves (994B) Implicit is the argument that it is unjust to harm those who

do not harm humans Plutarch compares the gain to men, a little flesh, with the fact that animals are deprived of the life to which they are entitled However, the pollution of animal flesh is also evoked in the battle against eating meat It was conceived of as making humans spiritually gross, although it made their bodies strong: “It is a fact that the Athenians used to call us Boeotians beef-witted and insensitive and foolish precisely because we stuffed ourselves” (995E) says Plutarch To cultivate the brilliance of the human soul, one must not burden the body with improper food:

When we examine the sun through dank atmosphere and a fog of gross vapours, we do not see it clear and bright, but submerged and misty, with elusive rays In just the same way, then, when the body is turbulent and surfeited and burdened with improper food, the lustre and light of the soul inevitably come through it blurred and confused, aberrant and inconstant, since the soul lacks the bril-liance and intensity to penetrate to the minute and obscure issues

of active life

(Moralia, 995F)

Plutarch supports the view that a fleshless diet is beneficial for health (cf

Porphyry, On Abstinence, 1.52) Seneca points out that he was more active when

he abstained from animal food, which implies still another aspect of eating

meat, namely that the human soul is weighed down by it (Epistle, 108) When Porphyry in On Abstinence is defending a fleshless diet, he excepts

those who are doing manual work, as well as soldiers, sailors and rhetori-cians The vegetarian life is especially designed for the man who considers what he is, where he came from and where he ought to go (1.27; cf 2.3) Abstention from animal food is for the man who will stay spiritually awake (1.27) and who wants to withdraw himself from the senses and imagination, irrationality and passions (1.31) In short, an animal diet nourishes the body, while a vegetable diet nourishes the rational soul (1.47, 1.53, 4.20; cf Philo,

On the Contemplative Life, 74).

Vegetarianism could further be an expression of an even more acute aver-sion to incorporating anything from animals into human bodies Sometimes

a demonic presence was thought to linger in the dead bodies of animals This thought is also seen in some Christian authors, especially in connection with meat that had been sacrificed to pagan gods Porphyry mentions that the souls of animals that have been slaughtered and have died by violence used to lurk around their dead bodies The animal soul, which no longer has its former abode, is attracted to a body of a kindred nature Therefore, eating meat from these animals could include an incorporation of an alien soul – that of the dead animal – into the human body (2.43, 2.47) Such a soul is impure and is a disturbing presence within a human being

A similar mechanism is at work in some types of prophecy According to Porphyry, the souls of prophetic animals can be received into a person who eats the heart of the animal (2.48) A prohibition against eating the heart and brain of animals because they are ladders and seats of wisdom and life is found among the Neoplatonists It expresses a link between humans and animals in terms of their mental capacities, even if it does not necessarily mean a belief in transmigration It also implies that it is undesirable to develop this connection, because the animal soul is inferior In other types of prophecy, purity of soul and a vegetarian diet are explicitly required According to J Haussleiter, the mantic motif was predominant in the vege-tarian diet of Apollonius of Tyana and in his opposition to bloody sacrifices (Haussleiter 1935: 308)

As we have seen, both a belief in a close relationship between animals and humans and a wish to create a distance between them could lead to vegetari-anism and abstention from eating meat In both cases, abstinence from animal food shows a concern for the categorical boundary between the species Both attitudes are often present in the same author – arguments supporting the human-like qualities of animals as well as arguments against the pollution inherent in their dead bodies Plutarch, for instance, combines

a mixture of respect and compassion towards living beings with an abhor-rence of eating flesh because it is disgusting and polluting (993B) According to Plutarch, the eating of animal flesh is unnatural for man – it is

not according to nature (kata physin) (994F) but contrary to nature (para

physin) (993E, 996B).

All the same, and in spite of his highly rhetorical arguments against eating meat, Plutarch does not oppose meat eating under all circumstances However, it is only permitted out of hunger and on the condition that the animal has been killed in a humane way (996F)

The question of vegetarianism was mainly a question of how to relate to

tame animals Greek authors made a clear distinction between tame animals

(hemeros) and wild animals (agrios) Latin authors made a similar distinction between pecus, “cattle”, and wild animals, which were designated agrestis,

ferus, bestia or belua.2What pertains to the one category does not necessarily

pertain to the other Humans were said to wage a just war (dikaios polemos) against some animals In consonance with his views in On the Cleverness of

Animals, where he distinguishes between what is just treatment of harmful

and harmless animals, Plutarch says explicitly that it is the tame animals that people kill for food that he is concerned about: “harmless, tame crea-tures without stings or teeth to harm us, creacrea-tures that, I swear, Nature

appears to have produced for the sake of their beauty and grace” (On the

Eating of Flesh, 994B).3

A special case is the question of why “the Pythagoreans used to abstain from fish more than from any other living creature”, a question that

Plutarch discusses in Table Talk 8 (Moralia, 728C–730F) Several reasons are

mentioned One possible reason is that it was because the early Pythagoreans considered silence a god-like thing and fish are silent creatures (728E); another is that Pythagoras was influenced by Egyptian sages, who regarded the sea as unrelated, alien and hostile to humans and its creatures as being impure (729A–C); and a third possible reason is that Pythagoreans usually tasted flesh only from sacrificed animals, and these animals did not include fish When Plutarch speaks in the text, he stresses that Pythagoras was friendly towards fish because these creatures gave humans no excuse to treat them badly: they “do us no harm, no matter how capable they are of doing so” (729D) At the end of the work, one of the participants mentions as yet another argument for not eating fish the belief that man originally devel-oped from the moist element and was related to fish (730D–F)

Abstaining from fish, like abstaining from all types of meat, may have several reasons and may in a similar way be based on the belief in a close relationship between these creatures and humans, as well as in an experience

of distance and impurity Plutarch also stresses here his general argument against harming animals – never to harm those animals that do not harm humans

Like Plutarch, Porphyry finds that “those irrational animals that are unjust and evil by nature” can be destroyed, but as for those animals that do

not naturally harm humans, it is unjust (adikos) to destroy and murder them

(2.22.2) Justice towards animals meant on this point treating them as they treat us

Putting a distance between humans and beasts of prey, like lions and wolves, which themselves had a diet based on meat, was an issue When Seneca supports vegetarianism, he quotes his teacher Sotion, a Pythagorean, who kept the question of transmigration open, saying: “I am merely depriving

you of food which sustains lions and vultures” (Epistle, 108) Plutarch points

out that if humans were meant to eat animals, their bodies would have been equipped for killing them, with fangs and claws (995A–B)

The human relationship with animals that is reflected in vegetarian prac-tices mainly encompasses tame animals and is more complicated than Graeco-Roman attitudes towards wild animals In vegetarianism, there is a mingling of different attitudes towards animals – empathy as well as distance,

a naturalization of similarities as well as a wish to underline differences This

ambiguity was rather typical of several of the genres that in the ancient world had animals as their subject Natural history is a case in point

Natural histories

The relations between animals and humans were not only a subject of philo-sophical debate and vegetarian practice but also the focus of natural histories Just as animals were assembled from all parts of the empire, so ethnographical and zoological information about them was collected as well This collecting activity presupposed ample means of producing, circulating and storing books and texts, which is to be seen, for instance, in the fact that

in the fourth century CE twenty-nine libraries existed in Rome (Balsdon 1969: 148; Casson 2001: 92) These collections of information belonged mainly to the literary elite, but the natural histories did not present observa-tions on animals that were elitist or radically new In comparison with modern science, Roman natural histories reflected a mixture of genuine knowledge about different species combined with animal lore and hearsay; often, the blend was quite fantastic

This blend represented a change in comparison with earlier descriptions

of animals Even if many of Aristotle’s commentaries on animals are obvi-ously wrong and several of his views could have been rectified by observation, it is still a long way from Aristotle’s dissections and direct observation of animals to the natural histories of Pliny, Oppian and Aelian, for instance These Roman authors based their works more on knowledge compiled from texts and compendia than on direct observation of animals; they had little interest in the logical and philosophical problems of animal classification and had a tendency to mix fact and fancy (Wallace-Hadrill 1968: 34)

In these centuries, there is also a tendency to blur the concepts of real animals with fictional ones Animals are food for thought, as well as for fantasy and imagination Not only live animals but also imaginary ones are important to humans, and no absolute division exists between the two types Since representations of animals, real or fictional, are always based on mental images, a sort of inner vision of the animal in question, and since this mental image is never identical with any “real” animal, the borderline between the real and fictional animals is not clear-cut

Graeco-Roman authors of natural histories wrote about animals they had seen as well as those they had never seen but believed they existed Among the many various animals that Pliny describes, he mentions camelopards

(giraffes) (Natural History, 8.27), first seen at games held by Julius Caesar, but he also refers to the Scandinavian achlis, probably an elk or a reindeer, an animal that had never appeared in Rome (Natural History, 8.16, 8.39; cf.

Zeuner 1963: 428) However, in parallel with these animals, Pliny also describes fantastic and non-existent creatures such as Ethiopian sphinxes and

pegasi (Natural History, 8.30), as well as the Indian unicorn and the basilisk serpent of Cyrenaica (Natural History, 8.33), as if these animals were just as real as the camelopard and the achlis.

A similar phenomenon is reflected in art In the upper part of the Palestrina mosaic from the second century BCE, which presents in a vivid and detailed way a general view of life in Egypt, forty kinds of animal are depicted Some of them do not live in Egypt, which may suggest that the mosaic shows a contemporary zoological garden in Alexandria, as has recently been suggested by archaeologist Gyözö Vörös (2001: 114) The animals are labelled with Greek names, and although most of them can be identified as real animals, such as the giraffe, lion and rhinoceros, at least

one of them seems to be a fabulous creature, the onokentaura, a female human-headed ass But even if the depiction of the onokentaura may be an

attempt to depict a gnu, as has been suggested (Meyboom 1995: 111–14), its human head shows a confusion of categories that makes this animal rather peculiar In any case, the Palestrina mosaic is a picturesque illustra-tion of the combinaillustra-tion of well-known animals with lesser-known ones, some of which are on the verge of being fabulous Thus this mosaic illus-trates in a way similar to the natural histories the blurring of the borderline between real and more fanciful creatures

However, to label this genre of natural history “natural history of nonsense”, as one modern critic has done (Evans 1946), overlooks the fact that these natural histories also had other types of “cultural work” in view than modern natural science has

Some of the content of this “cultural work” has recently been illuminated

by Roger French, who has stressed how the authors and compilers of natural histories were interested in the material resources that existed in nature and how they eventually could be of use and interest to the Romans According

to French, the educated Roman was at the centre of Pliny’s natural history,

as Pliny was at the centre of the civilized world A presupposition in these natural histories was the originally Stoic doctrine, which seems to have been more and more accepted, that all things had been made for the sake of man

(Natural History, 7.1; French 1994: 207).

In addition to this interest in the hegemony of man, the natural histories are also keen to establish a friendly world One result is that while humans and animals are seen as categorically different, the natural histories also present some animals as rather similar to humans Thus the natural histories reflect an important characteristic of human–animal relations, namely a sort

of double view or internal ambiguity in the relationship There is both a categorical division between humans and animals based on reason/lack of reason and a web of correspondences between them that criss-cross the

natural world Aelian, for instance, attributes wisdom (sophia) and intelli-gence (synesis), and even justice (dikaiosyne), to animals (Kindstrand 1998:

2966) Pliny says of the elephant that it is nearest to man in intelligence and

“possesses virtues rare even in man, honesty, wisdom, justice, also respect for

the stars and reverence for the sun and moon” (Natural History, 8.11) The cleverness of horses Pliny finds beyond description (Natural History, 8.65).

There are several examples of how the division between animals and humans is ignored in radical ways, for instance in the many stories of rein-carnation across species and, not least, in the stories of love and friendship between a human and an animal Pliny, as well as Oppian and Aelianus, passed on many classical stories in which animal intelligence and goodness were praised

Oppian writes of dolphins that they had earlier been men and had “lived

in cities along with mortals” (1.649–50) He regards the hunting of

dolphins as immoral (5.416ff) Aelian (c 170–230 CE), an Italian Sophist and priest who lived in Praeneste, never left Italy but nevertheless wrote in Greek and only quoted Greek authors, describes peculiarities of animal

behaviour, their names, habits and characteristics In On the Characteristics of

Animals, a work in seventeen books, ethnographic reports are combined with

myths and fables in an odd mixture Aelian writes of storks that when they reach old age, they are transformed into human shape (he insists that it is no fairytale! (3 23)) He also reports that on the island of Diomeda, there are birds that were originally Greeks and contemporaries of Diomedes (1.1) Pliny is more sceptical; for instance, he does not believe that humans can

turn into werewolves (Natural History, 8.34) But stories about friendship

between humans and dolphins, as well as about dolphins that are helpful to humans, which are commonplaces in natural histories, are also told by Pliny

(Natural History, 9.8–10).

In Aelian’s work, several anecdotes about cross-species love relationships appear (Kindstrand 1998: 2964; cf Salisbury 1994: 84–101) Humans are paired with a dog, a horse, a dolphin and a serpent, but also with a ram and

a goose Usually, the animal makes the first move (1.6, 2.6, 5.29, 6.15, 6.17;

cf Natural History, 7.13–14), signalling, perhaps, that it is the human form

that is the object of the love and lust of the animal because the human form

is the highest of animate beings and therefore the most attractive Aelian has only one example of a human being who takes the initiative (4.8) It is a groom falling in love with a mare But when the groom consummated his union with the mare, he was immediately killed by the mare’s foal Thus, in this case, the overstepping of this limit was promptly punished All the same, in these stories about love and friendship between animals and humans, the dividing line between the categories is transcended in an important way

In the natural histories, animals are both modelled on humans and in their turn used as models for humans Pliny calls special attention to the elephant, the dolphin, the eagle and the bee, species that he regards as espe-cially outstanding in their respective animal categories The strong moralizing tendency in Pliny and Aelian conveys the message that animals

are sometimes and on some points better than humans, and that humans can learn lessons from animals about how to live and behave towards each other Several of the authors stress how some animals have a meagre diet and only copulate when the female wishes to conceive – characteristics that they found highly admirable and ideal

In pseudo-Oppian’s work the Chase, Artemis urges the poet to “tell me of

the hates of wild beasts, sing their friendships, and their bridal chambers of tearless love upon the hills, and the births which among wild beasts need no midwife” (1.38–40) According to this description, the life of beasts has a certain similarity to the life and passions of humans as described in ancient novels (Klingender 1971: 91–2; Bartley 2003) With his voluminous work

On the Characteristics of Animals, Aelian wanted to inform, entertain and

teach his readers morals, therefore he constructed the animal world as a reflection of the world of humans, a mirror in which Aelian’s contemporaries were invited to see themselves Jan Fredrik Kindstrand characterizes Aelian’s manner of thinking about animals as typical of a general moral/philosophical attitude based on Stoic-Cynic ideas, an attitude that was common in these centuries (Kindstrand 1998: 2965, 2990)

There is a strong tendency to model animals on humans Pliny, for instance, draws a picture of elephants that makes them close to humans

(Natural History, 8.1–13) According to him, elephants are near to man in

intelligence They understand human language, show reverence towards heaven, form close friendships with each other and are reported to fall in love with humans It is also possible to teach elephants to do tricks, a token

of their capacity for intelligent learning

But the ability of animals to learn tricks is a two-edged sword, because it also makes them subordinate to humans and makes them recognize humans

as their masters Pliny writes about an elephant that was scolded because of its mediocre performance and because of that kept rehearsing during the

night to get its performance right (Natural History, 8.3) Is the dog cleverer

than the cat because it can learn tricks, or is the cat cleverer because it refuses to do as humans tell it? When the “cleverness” of animals is measured against a human ideal, it tends to turn animals into abortive humans In contrast to the way that, for instance, Alexander, Philo’s nephew, mentioned the ability of animals to learn tricks as proof of their intelligence, Augustine used performing animals as examples of animals’ subordination

to humans (Questions on Various Topics, 83).

While elephants resemble humans and may be taught tricks, other animals are unaffected by humans and in some cases develop societies that may appear as models for human societies This perspective is most system-atically exploited with regard to insects Insects, especially bees and ants, are frequently referred to and treated as models for humans Pliny gives pride of place to bees because they alone among insects “have been made for the sake

of man” (Natural History, 11.4) But an important reason why he admires