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

Ethics of Diet: Hesiod

Howard Williams

Howard Williams, "Hesiodos" in The Ethics of Diet (1883; London & Manchester, 1896); Online at Animal Rights History, 2006.

"It is possible that the Orphic Societies, originating about the eighth or seventh century, B.C., to some extent at least [practiced] abstinence from flesh-foods—and which claimed the semi-legendary Orpheus as their founder, may claim the honour of having inaugurated in the West this most important of social revolutions. That the preference for the purer diet, evidently displayed in the Hesiodic poems, derived its origin in part from these Orphic sacred or semi-sacred writings, though an uncertain, is a reasonable, conjecture. Hesiod, who, like his yet more celebrated (epic) successor, has given his name to a collection of world-famous poems, may be regarded as the poetic representative of Agriculture and peaceful Industry, as "Homer" is of War and the heroic virtues.…The well-known verses, in which is figured the gradual declension of men from the Golden to the present Iron race, may be taken as the remote original of all later poetic fictions of Golden Ages and Times of Innocence."