60There was a man here, Samian by birth, but he had fled at once both Samos and its masters, and through hatred of tyranny was an exile by choice; and though the gods were remote in the region of the sky, he approached them with his mind, and what nature denied to human sight he drank in with the eyes of his heart; and when he had examined everything with his mind and watchful care, he set it out publicly to be learned, and taught gatherings of silent listeners, marvelling at his words, the beginnings of the great universe and the causes of things, and what nature is, what god is, whence come the snows, what the origin of lightning is, whether Jupiter or the winds thunder when the cloud is burst apart, what shakes the earth, by what law the stars move — and whatever lies hidden; 72and he was the first to condemn the placing of animals on our tables, the first too to open his lips, learned indeed but not believed, in words like these: 'Forbear, mortals, to defile your bodies with unholy feasts!
76There are crops, there are apples bending the branches with their weight, and grapes swelling on the vines; there are sweet herbs, there are those that can be made mild and soft with fire; 79nor are you robbed of the milky liquid, nor of honey fragrant with the flower of thyme: the lavish earth supplies its riches and gentle nourishment and offers feasts without slaughter and blood. 83Wild beasts appease their hunger with flesh, and yet not all: for the horse, the sheep and the cattle live on grass. 85But those whose nature is savage and fierce, Armenian tigers and wrathful lions, and bears together with wolves, delight in feasts with blood.
88Alas, what a crime it is for flesh to be buried in flesh, for a greedy body to grow fat on another body heaped into it, and for one living creature to live by the death of another! 91Can it be that amid such wealth as earth, the best of mothers, brings forth, nothing pleases you but to chew piteous wounds with savage tooth and bring back the ways of the Cyclopes, and that you cannot appease the hunger of your greedy and ill-mannered belly unless you have destroyed another? 96But that ancient age, to which we have given the name golden, was blessed with the fruit of trees and the herbs that the soil brings up, and did not pollute its mouth with gore.
99Then birds moved their wings safely through the air, and the hare wandered unafraid in the midst of the fields, nor had its own credulity hung the fish on the hook: all things were without snares, fearing no deceit, and full of peace. 103After some author of no benefit, whoever he was, envied the diet of the gods and plunged fleshly feasts into his greedy belly, he opened a path for crime; it may be that the steel first grew warm, stained with blood, from the slaughter of wild beasts (and that would have been enough), and we admit that creatures seeking our death were put to death without offence to piety: but as they were to be given to death, so they were not to be feasted on.
111From there the wickedness went further, and the pig is thought to have been the first victim to deserve death, because it had rooted up the seeds with its curved snout and cut off the hope of the year. 114The goat, for gnawing the vine, is said to have been slaughtered at the altars of avenging Bacchus; 115their own fault harmed the pair! 116What did you deserve, sheep, peaceful flock, born to protect men, you who carry nectar in your full udders, who offer us your wool as soft coverings and help us more by your life than by your death? 120What did oxen deserve, a creature without deceit or tricks, harmless, simple, born to endure toil?
122Ungrateful indeed is he, and unworthy of the gift of crops, who could slaughter his farm-hand just after removing the weight of the curved plough, who struck with an axe that neck worn by toil, with which he had so often renewed the hard field and produced so many harvests. 127Nor is it enough that such wickedness is committed: they have made the gods themselves party to the crime, and believe that the power above delights in the slaughter of the toiling bullock. 130The victim, free of blemish and of the finest form (for to have pleased does harm), marked out with ribbons and gold, is set before the altars and, unknowing, hears the one who prays, and sees placed on its brow between its horns the grain it has tended, and, struck down, stains with its blood the knives it had perhaps glimpsed beforehand in the clear water.
136At once they inspect the entrails torn from the living breast and search out the minds of the gods in them: and on this (so great is man's hunger for forbidden foods!) do you dare to feed, O mortal race? 139Do not do so, I beg, and turn your minds to my warnings! 141And when you give the limbs of slaughtered oxen to your palate, know and feel that you are chewing your own farm-hands. 143And since a god moves my lips, I shall duly follow the god who moves my lips, and I shall open my Delphi and the very heavens, and unlock the oracles of the august mind.
146Great things, never searched out by the minds of earlier men, things that have long lain hidden, I shall sing; 147it delights me to travel through the lofty stars, it delights me to leave the earth and its sluggish abode and ride upon a cloud and stand on the shoulders of mighty Atlas, and to look down from afar on men wandering everywhere and lacking reason, anxious and fearing death, and so to exhort them and unroll the sequence of fate: