The mythical figure of Triptolemus, "the most ancient of the Athenian legislators…established laws for the Athenians…Honour your parents; Sacrifice to the Gods from the fruits of the earth; Injure not animals." Porphyry [c 245-305], On Abstinence From Animal Food, "Book the Fourth")
Manu, [the Brahmins] mythical survivor of the Flood and father of the human race" although did not denounce meat eating or sacrifice as sinful, does conclude that the only way to obtain "great rewards" including "endless", "heavenly bliss" and freedom from disease is by "abstaining entirely from the use of meat" which is both "cruel" and "disgusting" (Laws of Manu [500-200 BCE]).
ca 28,000-11,000 BCE | "Cave paintings…are almost entirely of animals and the artists rarely portrayed the animals as being hunted or eaten." (Richard Ryder, Animal Revolution "The Ancient World")
Although Jainism is the only religion to consistently advocate against harming any living being, passages against cruelty to animals can be found in the literature of many other ancient religions as well as those that evolved from them; Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Zoroastrianism and others advocate kindness to animals and often prescribe vegetarianism as a way of life.
The doctrines of Ahimsa & Vegetarianism evolve with the Jains in historic India.
8th c. BCE | REL-VEG | Hesiod, Works and Days "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. (Howard Williams, Ethics of Diet, "Hesidos")
621 BCE | Law of Draco: "Let this be an eternal sacred law…that the Gods, and indigenous Heroes, be worshipped…with auspicious words, the firstlings of fruits, and annual cakes. (Porphyry [c 245-305], On Abstinence From Animal Food, "Book the Fourth")
599-527 BCE India | As the last of the twenty-four Tirthakaras ("perfectly enlightened ones"), Mahavira’s teachings evolved into the Sacred Jain Texts dating Jainism and the concept of Ahimsa 1500 years prior. (The Kalpa Sutra, "Life of Mahâvîra, Lecture 2")
c 599-510 BCE | REL-VEG | Siddhartha Guatama (Buddha Sakyamuni), "the great Hindu profit…proclaims [abstinence from animal food] as a great moral truth, based upon…universal justice and compassion" (Howard Williams, Ethics of Diet, "Sakya Muni"). In The Lankavatara Sutra, "a distinctive and influential philosophical discourse…Buddh a preaches (Encyclopædia Britannica Online, s.v. "Lankavatara Sutra") to "cherish the thought of kinship with [living beings] and refrain from meat-eating:…for the sake of love and purity…and for the fear of causing terror to living beings" . He denounces not those who eat flesh, but those who pay for or profit from the destruction of "sentient beings" as "evil minded, evil-doers…[condemned] to the most horrifying hell" . "Thus," he concludes, "meat-eating I have not permitted to anyone, I do not permit, I will not permit" (The Lankavatara Sutra, "On Meat-Eating").
c 552-496 BCE | HUM-INT-REL-VEG | The most contemplative of the philosophers, who had arrived at the summit of philosophic attainments, were forbidden superfluous, food such as wine, or unjustifiable food such as was animated; and not to sacrifice animals to the Gods, nor by any means to injure animals, but to observe most solicitous justice towards them. [Pythagoras] himself lived after this manner, abstaining from animal food, and adoring altars undefiled with blood. (Iamblichus, Life of Pythagoras, XXIV "Dietary Suggestions"). Pythagoras also ordained abstinence from animal food, for many reasons, besides the chief one that it conduced to peaceableness.…He ordered his disciples to extend [justice] to the most kindred animal races, considering these as their intimates and friends, which would forbid injuring, slaying, or eating any of them.…Further, he ordered abstaining from animal food even to politicians; for as they desired to act justly to the highest degree, they must certainly not injure any kindred animals. (Iamblichus, Life of Pythagoras, XXX "Justice and Politics"). In addition, the best polity, popular concord, community of possessions among friends, worship of the Gods, piety to the dead, legislation, erudition, silence, abstinence from eating the flesh of animals, continence, temperance, sagacity, divinity, and in one word, whatever is anxiously desired by the scholarly, was brought to light by Pythagoras. It was, on account of all this, as we have already observed, that Pythagoras was so much admired (Iamblichus, Life of Pythagoras, VI "The Pythagorean Community").
c 500-200 BCE | REL-VEG | The Laws of Manu condemn those who permit slaughter, as well as those who buy, sell, cook, serve or eat meat, acknowledging them as responsible for the slaughter as the one who actually killed the animal.
"The Egyptian Priests…hold it matter of religion not to kill anything that has life, except such things as they offer in sacrifice," Herodotus [c 484-425 BCE] recounts in his narratives The Histories. In the next book, he informs us that animals are accounted sacred.…Should any one kill any of these beasts, if wilfully, death is the punishment" .
450 BCE | REL-VEG | "Pythagorean in his ethical principles," Empedocles, made their doctrines public by means of his poems". In the fragments that remain he "sings of the 'Golden Age'…exhorting the world to abandon the foul diet of blood" (Howard Williams, Ethics of Diet, "Empedokles") he exclaims, "Will ye not cease from evil slaughter? See ye not that ye are devouring each other in heedlessness of mind?'" (Empedocles, Fragments "On Purification").
c 396-314 BCE | REL-VEG | Xenocrates, treats of "the food derived from animals," (non-extant), attributing laws against cruelty to animals to the mythical figure of Triptolemus.
c 300 BCE | REL-VEG | Considered one of the more noteworthy of the ancient texts of Jainism (Jain, Jain Sutra Sources), the Acaraoga Sutra elaborates on the first vow of a Jain, that of Ahimsa, the avoidance of "himsa" or injury toward any living being. The Kalpa Sutra devoted to the life of Mahavira, dates Jainism and the concept of Ahimsa to 2000 BCE.
d. 276 BCE | VEG | Polemon, On Life According to Nature (non-extant) "seems clearly to say that animal food is unwholesome" (Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata, or Miscellanies).
c 274-232 BCE | BSH-LAW REL-USE-VEG | Asoka, Fourteen Rock Edicts, Minor Rock Edicts & The Seven Pillar Edicts "No living beings are to be slaughtered or offered in sacrifice" (The Fourteen Rock Edicts) professes Asoka, as emperor of India who "became a Buddhist and a vegetarian and, in accordance with the doctrine of 'ahimsa' (nonviolence), suppressed the royal hunts and ordered the curtailment of the slaughter of animals throughout his empire" (Richard Ryder, Animal Revolution, The Ancient World). "Royal edicts, confirming the decisions of the Council were published throughout his empire, and some of them are still found engraved on columns and on rocks throughout the peninsula." (Howard Williams, Ethics of Diet, "Asoka"). Asoka "made provision for medical treatment…and had wells dug and trees planted for the benefit of humans and animals" (The Fourteen Rock Edicts). His edicts promoted "kindness to living beings" (The Fourteen Rock Edicts) and "not killing living beings" (Minor Rock Edicts) and in stating that "animals were to be protected" (The Seven Pillar Edicts) provides us with perhaps "the earliest known list of protected species" (Guruge, Emperor Asoka's Place in History).
3rd Century BCE | Prompted by King Asoka's edits, Hinduism and Buddhism "abandon animal sacrifice, and the feeling against unnecessary destruction of life led to widespread vegetarianism in both Hindu and Buddhist societies from the third century BC onward (Richard Ryder, Animal Revolution,"The Ancient World").
c 99-55 BCE | INT-REL-VEG | Lucretius in De Rerum Natura; [On the Nature of Things] proposes that "animals, not less than men, are known to each other" recognizing the suffering of any mother at the loss of her young in the lines of "A Cow Morning Her Calf".
c 99-55 BCE | REL-VEG | "Empedocles Eulogized" as "the most remarkable of the poet-philosophers of Antiquity" by Lucretius in On the Nature of Things.
55 BCE | BSH | Cicero, in his Letter to M. Marius, suggests that in the games of Pompeii "only worthy of contempt…[there was] no pleasure whatever. Nay, there was even a certain feeling of compassion aroused by [the elephants], and a kind of belief created that that animal has something in common with mankind.
1st c. BCE | REL-VEG | Quintus 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:…and supposed of meats…no means a preservative of health, but the contrary. (Seneca, Epistles)
c 46 BCE- 17 CE | REL-VEG | Ovid immortalizes "Pythagoras's Teachings: [on] Vegetarianism" in Metamorphoses [8 CE]. Disdain for hunting and sacrifice is evident in his verses of in Metamorphoses and Fasti. "All the productions of Ovid are characterised, more or less, by extraordinary elegance and sensibility; and his master-pieces by good taste, humaneness, and richness of fancy." (Howard Williams, The Ethics of Diet, "Publius Ovidius Naso").
1st c. BCE-CE | REL-VEG | Sotion the Younger of Alexandria, taught Seneca why Pythagoras abstained from animal food, and why after him Sextius," inspiring Seneca to "abstain from eating flesh" (Seneca, Epistle CVIII, The Right Use of Reading or Hearing the Philosophers ).
4 BCE-65 CE | VEG | Seneca, Epistles | Nature requires nothing of us that is hard and difficult;…we can have every thing that is necessary for the uses of life, were we content with such things as the earth produceth on its surface? which things, if mankind would give their attention to, we should find there would be no more need of cooks than of a standing army.
Under the reign of Tiberius Caesar, abstaining from the flesh of certain animals was considered a superstition and banned from Rome(Seneca, Epistles, "How I Came to Discontinue This Way of Life").
23-79 | BSH-INT-REL-VEG | Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History "recounted anecdotes about the alleged intelligence and religiousness of elephants, the medical skill of the hippopotamus and the love that dolphins showed for music and young children" (Richard Ryder, Animal Revolution, "The Ancient World"). "The agonized trumpetings," often quoted as part of Cicero's letter to M. Marius, are actually related by Pliny in his Natural History when he suggests that the elephants "implored the compassion of the…people…bewailing their unhappy fate".
46-120 | VEG | Plutarch composes entire essays against the eating of flesh—Whether it be Lawfull to Eat Flesh or No, Of Eating Flesh. These are the first, extant and include the oft quoted: "And for a little piece of flesh we take away their life, we bereave them of their sun and of light, cutting short that race of life which nature had limited and prefixed for them; and more than so, those lamentable and trembling voices which they utter for fear we suppose to be inarticulate or insignificant sounds, [are] nothing less than pitiful prayers, supplications, pleas & justifications of those poor innocent creatures, who in their language, every one of them cry."
46-120 | INT | Plutarch, That Brute Beastes Have Use of Reason; BSH-INT-HUM-REL-USE-VEG | Which are Most Crafty, Water-Animals or Those Creatures that Breed Upon the Land; INT-USE | Marcus Cato The Censor, The Lives of Noble Grecians and Romaines
2nd or 3rd c. | INT-VEG | Sextus Empiricus refutes the ridicule of his "greatest opponents, the Dogmatics," with their own arguments, concluding in the affirmative to the question, "Have the So-called Irrational Animals Reason?" in Outlines of Pyrrhonism. In Against the Physicists, he relates the philosophical arguments of Pythagoras and Empedocles stating "there is one spirit which pervades all the universe like a soul, and which also makes us one with those animals. Hence, if we kill them and eat their flesh we shall be doing wrong and committing a sacrilege."
c160-230 | REL-VEG | Tertullian, the most learned of all the Latin theologians…bold enough to proclaim his convictions…taught—that flesh-eating was not conducive to the highest life, that it violated the written and unwritten moral law, that it debased man in intellect and heart and that it closed the doors of the inner Temple of his Intuition." (J. Todd Ferrier, On Behalf of the Creatures, "Tertullian's Writings"). In On Fasting (De Jejuniis: Adversus Psychios), an essay in dietetic ethics…seems specially to recommend, if, indeed, not absolutely to enjoin, the vegetable diet. (Howard Williams, Ethics of Diet, "Tertullian").
c 3rd Century | REL-VEG | Pythagoras and Empedocles in The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Laertius Diogenes.
c. 3rd Century | REL-VEG | "What Tertullian was for the west, Clement of Alexandria [d. 215] became for the east. The founder of the famous school of thought at Alexandria," (J. Todd Ferrier, On Behalf of the Creatures) He preached abstinence from flesh food for health, moral reasons and spiritual values. Clement contended, "if any one of the righteous does not burden his soul by the eating of flesh, he has the advantage of a rational reason" and believed "sacrifices were invented by men to be a pretext for eating flesh." Clement introduces the non-extant works of "Xenocrates, treating by himself of 'the food derived from animals,' and Polemon in his work On Life according to Nature, [which] seem clearly to say that animal food is unwholesome." (Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor [Paedagogus]; The Stromata, or Miscellanies)
c 204-270 | INT-REL-VEG-VIV | Plotinus, asserting that all life is "enchained," accords reason, soul and a life of true happiness to animals. (Enneads) He refused medical treatments derived from animals and "could not approve of eating the flesh of animals." (Porphyry, On the Life of Plotinus).
c 210-276 | VEG | Mani, founder of Manichaenism.
c 280-333 | REL-VEG | Iamblichus of Syrian Chalcis's Life of Pythagoras
c 384-322 | REL-VEG | Aristotle in his Rhetoric tells us that when Empedocles "bids us to kill no living creature," it is an "all-embracing law."
c 245-305 | REL-VEG | Porphyry, On Abstinence from Animal Food, Book the First, Book the Second, Book the Third, Book the Fourth; On the Life of Pythagoras and On the Life of Plotinus
c 347-407 | REL-VEG | St. Chrysostom, Homilies
c 820-891 | VEG | Anonymous Biography on the Life of Pythagoras, Preserved by Photius
c 570-632 | REL | Muhammad
c 1181-1226 |INT | St. Francis Assisi
c 1410 | REL | Dives and Pauper
 Transcriber's Notes
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