Animal Rights Quotes • Law • Humane Education • Historical Literature eBook Library: Free Full-Text eBooks • Primary Sources
Activists Against Cruelty to Animals: A » B » C » D » E » F » G » H » I » J » K » L » M » N » O » P » Q » R » S » T » U » V » W » X » Y » Z

Animal Rights History Timeline » [BCE-CE] Antiquity » Euripides

Euripides

Hippolytus

[480-406 BCE] Euripides, Hippolytus" in The Nineteen Tragedies and Fragments of Euripides, vol. 1, trans. Michael Wodhull, 3 vols. (1782; London, 1809; Google Books: Online Library of Free eBooks.

Now glory in thy vegetable food,
Disciple of the tuneful Orpheus, rave.

"In these words Euripides seems to me, with equal learning and truth, to have ascribed the same origin to the instructions of Bacchus, Orpheus, and Pythagoras, the latter of whom evidently borrowed from Orpheus a total abstinence from animal food. To eat not flesh is recorded of antient Orpheus, says Plutarch in his Banquet of the seven wise Men. Alexis and Antiphanes, in Atheneaus, deride the Philosophers for such abstinence; and in this respect Zeno imitated the Pythagoreans, making use, according to Diogenes Laertisu, … of bread, honey, and such kid of food as could be prepared without the aid of fire." Falkenaer. [note: quoted by Wodhull from "Valkenaer's Dissertation Subjoined to his Hippolytus"] (362-363)