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Animal Rights History Timeline » [BCE-CE] Antiquity » Quintus Sextius

Why Quintus Sextius Abstained from Animal Food

Seneca, Epistles: Right Use of Reading Hearing the Philosophers

[1st c.] Seneca "Why Quintus Sextius Abstained from Animal Food, in Epistle CVIII, The Right Use of Reading or Hearing the Philosophers in The Epistles of Lucius Annæus Seneca [Google Books], translated by Thomas Morrell, in two volumes (London, 1786).

Pythagoras Sotion…taught me, why Pythagoras abstained from animal food, and why after him Sextius: their reasons were different, but, both, very great. Sextius thought, that there was food enough for man in the world without shedding blood; and that the taking pleasure in butchering helpless animals, only inspired men with cruelty: he added hereunto, that luxury was not to be encouraged, and supposed of meats, and particularly such as are foreign to our constitutions are by no means a preservative of health, but the contrary. (266)