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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, translated by Thomas Morrell, in two volumes (London, 1786; Google Books: Online Library of Free eBooks).

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)