On the eating of flesh II (4)

Who, then, were they who later decreed this?

The first to forge the highway’s murderous sword,

And first to eat the flesh of ploughing ox.[*]

This is the way, you may be sure, in which tyrants begin their course of bloody slaughters. Just as, for instance, at Athens[*] they put to death initially the worst of the sycophants, and likewise in the second and third instances; but next, having become accustomed to bloodshed they allowed Niceratus,[*] the son of Nicias, to be killed and the general Theramenes[*] and the philosopher Polemarchus.[*] Just so, at the beginning it was some wild and harmful animal that was eaten, then a bird or fish that had its flesh torn. And so when our murderous instincts had tasted blood and grew practised on wild animals, they advanced to the labouring ox and the well-behaved sheep and the house-warding cock; thus, little by little giving a hard edge to our insatiable appetite, we have advanced to wars and the slaughter and murder of human beings. Yet if someone once demonstrates that souls in their rebirths make use of common bodies and that what is now rational reverts to the irrational, and again what is now wild becomes tame, and that Nature changes everything and assigns new dwellings

Clothing souls with unfamiliar coat of flesh[*];

will not this deter the unruly element in those who have adopted the doctrine from implanting disease and indigestion[*] in our bodies and perverting our souls to an ever more cruel lawlessness, as soon as we are broken of the habit of not entertaining a guest or celebrating a marriage or consorting with our friends without bloodshed and murder?