Or would everyone declare that the reason for those who first instituted flesh-eating was the necessity of their poverty? It was not while they passed their time in unlawful desires nor when they had necessaries in abundance that after indulgence in unnatural and antisocial pleasures they resorted to such a practice. If, at this moment, they could recover feelings and voice, they might, indeed, remark: Oh blessed and beloved of the gods, you who live now, what an age has fallen to your lot wherein you enjoy and assimilate a heritage abounding in good things! How many plants grow for you! What vintages you gather! What wealth you may draw from the plains and what pleasant sustenance from trees! Why, you may even live luxuriously without the stain of blood. But as for us, it was a most dismal and fearful portion of the world’s history Cf. Empedocles, frag. B 2. 3 (Diels-Kranz, Frag. der Vorsok. i, p. 309); the whole passage is received as a doubtful fragment (B 154; i, pp. 371 f.). that confronted us, falling as we did into great and unbearable poverty brought on by our first appearance among the living. As yet the heavens and the stars were concealed by dense air that was contaminated with turbid moisture, not easily to be penetrated, and fire and furious wind. Not yet was 
 the sun established undeviating In his firm course, Dividing day and night; he brought them back Again and crowned them with the fruitful hours All wreathed with bloom, while violence had been done to earth by rivers pouring forth their floods at random and most parts were deformed by pools. You could not tell land from water, because invading water made pools that dried up later. Earth was made a wilderness by deep quagmires and the unfruitful growth of thickets and forests; nor was there as yet any agricultural production or professional tool or any resource of skill. Our hunger gave us no respite nor was there any seed at that time awaiting the annual season of sowing. What wonder if, contrary to nature, we made use of the flesh of beasts when even mud was eaten and the bark of trees devoured, and to light on sprouting grass or the root of a rush was a piece of luck? When we had tasted and eaten acorns we danced for joy around some oak, Drys was a term used especially for Quercus robur L. phegos for Q. aegilops L. Actually the early Greeks ate the acorns mostly of Q. aegilops . (Andrews.) calling it life-giving The epithet properly meant wheat-giving (as in Homer, Iliad , ii. 548), but was early misinterpreted. and mother and nurse. This was the only festival that those times had discovered; all else was a medley of anguish and gloom. But you who live now, what madness, what frenzy drives you to the pollution of shedding blood, you who have such a superfluity of necessities? Why slander the earth by implying that she cannot support you? Why impiously offend law-giving Demeter Cf. Mor. 1119 e. and 
 bring shame upon Dionysus, lord of the cultivated vine, Cf. Mor. 451 c (where the epithet is otherwise interpreted), 663 d, 692 e. the gracious one, as if you did not receive enough from their hands? Are you not ashamed to mingle domestic crops with blood and gore? You call serpents and panthers and lions savage, but you yourselves, by your own foul slaughters, leave them no room to outdo you in cruelty; for their slaughter is their living, yours is a mere appetizer. As above in 991 d. See the interesting observations in G. Murray, Rise of the Greek Epic ³, p. 64 and the note. It is certainly not lions and wolves that we eat out of self-defence; on the contrary, we ignore these and slaughter harmless, tame creatures without stings or teeth to harm us, creatures that, I swear, Nature appears to have produced for the sake of their beauty and grace The rest of this chapter, though possibly by Plutarch, is probably from another quite different work. Chapter 4 follows quite naturally upon this sentence. [It is as though one, seeing the Nile overflow its banks, filling the landscape with its fertile and productive stream, should not marvel at this, its nourishing of plants and its fruitfulness in such crops as are most to be cultivated and contribute most to the support of life, but should espy a crocodile swimming there somewhere or an asp being swept along or a thousand other savage creatures and should cite them as the reasons for his censure and his compulsion to do as he does. These words, plainly out of context as the passage stands, are too vague to be rendered with any certainty. Or, I swear, it is as though one fixed ones gaze on this land and its soil covered with cultivated crops and heavy with ears of wheat, and then, looking beneath these rich harvests, one were to catch sight somewhere of a 
	 growth of darnel or broom-rape and, without more ado, ceasing to reap the benefit and claim the booty of the good crops, burst into a tirade about the weeds. Another example: if one should see an orator making a speech at some trial where he was advocate, a speech in which his eloquence in full flood was advancing to the succour of someone in jeopardy or (so help me) to the conviction or denunciation of rash acts or defaults - a flood of eloquence not simple or jejune, but charged with many (or rather all kinds of) emotional appeals for the simultaneous influencing of the many different kinds of minds in the audience or jury, which must either be roused and won over or (by heaven!) soothed and made gentle and calm - then if one neglected to observe and take into account this main point and issue of the matter, but merely picked out flaws of style that the flood of oratory, as it moved to its goal, had swept along by the momentum of its current, flaws that came rushing out and slipped by with the rest - and seeing of some popular leader The rest of this perplexing fragment has been lost, so that we do not know what the object of these three comparisons is. ] But nothing abashed us, not the flower-like tinting of the flesh, not the persuasiveness of the harmonious voice, not the cleanliness of their habits or the unusual intelligence that may be found in the poor wretches. No, for the sake of a little flesh we deprive them of sun, of light, of the duration of life to which they are entitled by birth and being. Then we go on to assume that when they utter cries and squeaks their speech is inarticulate, that they do not, begging for mercy, entreating, seeking justice, 
 each one of them say, I do not ask to be spared in ease of necessity; only spare me your arrogance! Kill me to eat, but not to please your palate! Oh, the cruelty of it! What a terrible thing it is to look on when the tables of the rich are spread, men who employ cooks and spicers to groom the dead! And it is even more terrible to look on when they are taken away, for more is left than has been eaten. So the beasts died for nothing! There are others who refuse when the dishes are already set before them and will not have them cut into or sliced. Though they bid spare the dead, they did not spare the living. Post believes that there is another lacuna after this chapter; and Stephanus posited another one after the first sentence of chapter 5, rightly, if Bernardakis’ emendation is not accepted.