Hyperborean Frugivores

“When I go back,” says Higgins in Anacalypsis II, page 147, “to the most remote periods of antiquity which it is possible to penetrate, I find clear and positive evidence of several important facts: First, no animal food was eaten, no animals were sacrificed.” Origenes has left us the record that “the Egyptians would prefer to die, rather than become guilty of the crime of eating any kind of flesh.”

Herodotus tells us that the Egyptians subsisted on fruits and vegetables, which they ate raw. Plinius confirms this statement. Harold Whitestone, in his The Private Lives of the Romans, says: “Of the Romans it may be said that during the early Republic perhaps almost through the second century B.C., they cared little for the pleasures of the table. They lived frugally and ate sparingly. They were almost strict vegetarians, much of their food was eaten cold, and the utmost simplicity characterized the cooking and the service of their meals.”

It was only after the conquest of Greece that the Romans altered their table customs and became a luxury-loving, meat-eating people. Even then the poorer classes lived frugally and, as Whitestone says, “every schoolboy knows that the soldiers who won Caesar’s battles for him lived on grain which they ground in their handmills and baked at their campfires.” http://soilandhealth.org/wp-content/uploads/02/0201hyglibcat/020126shelton.orthotrophy/020126.ch17.htm

Vegetarian Gladiators ~ http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2014/10/22/gladiators-diet-ancient-rome_n_6024614.html?ir=Australia

From the Rig Veda (10.87.16) written around 3900 year ago (said by Bal Gangadhar Tilak to be of Arctic/Northern origins) “One who partakes of human flesh, the flesh of a horse or of another animal, and deprives others of milk by slaughtering cows, O King, if such a fiend does not desist by other means, then you should not hesitate to cut off his head.“

Indo-European Zoroastrians of Iran: In Chapter 39 of Bundahishn manuscript belonging to Tehmuras Dinshawji Anklesaria of Bombay (as cited by E. W. West in 1880),“The Arabs rushed into the country of Iran in great multitude… and their own irreligious law was propagated by them and many ancestral customs were destroyed, and eating of dead matter was put into practice. …From the original creation until this day, evil more grievous than this has not happened….” http://zoroastrianheritage.blogspot.com.au/2011/07/were-ancient-iranians-zoroastrians.html

“Much of our recorded history was destroyed during the destruction of the great libraries of Alexandria and Carthage. What remains tells us of great gardens and orchards. Herodotus, the Greek historian, records that Greeks were heavy eaters of olives, figs, dates, grapes, apples, oranges and other fare. This noted historian wrote: “The oldest inhabitants of Greece, the Pelasgians, who came before the Dorian, Ionian and Elian migrations, inhabited Arcadia and Thessaly, possessing the islands of Lesbos and Lakemanas, which were full of orange groves. The people with their diet of dates and oranges lived on an average of more than 200 years.”

Another Greek, the poet Hesiod, said, “The Pelasgians and the people who came after them in Greece, ate fruits of the virgin forest and blackberries from the fields.” Plutarch, the Greek biographer, observed: “The ancient Greeks, before the time of Lycurgus, ate nothing but fruits.”

http://www.rawfoodexplained.com/the-human-dietetic-character-part-ii/humans-developed-to-their-hight-state-entirely-on-fruits.html

130. And all creatures, both animals and birds, were tame and gentle towards men, and friendliness glowed between them. http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/app/app26.htm

Hesiod (c. 700 bc, one of the earliest Greek poets, often called the “father of Greek didactic poetry.”) spoke of a fallen golden race, who once lived like the Gods.

(ll. 109-120) First of all the deathless gods who dwell on Olympus made a golden race of mortal men who lived in the time of Cronos when he was reigning in heaven. And they lived like gods without sorrow of heart, remote and free from toil and grief: miserable age rested not on them; but with legs and arms never failing they made merry with feasting beyond the reach of all evils. When they died, it was as though they were overcome with sleep, and they had all good things; for the fruitful earth unforced bare them fruit abundantly and without stint. They dwelt in ease and peace upon their lands with many good things, rich in flocks and loved by the blessed gods.

(ll. 121-139) But after earth had covered this generation — they are called pure spirits dwelling on the earth, and are kindly, delivering from harm, and guardians of mortal men; for they roam everywhere over the earth, clothed in mist and keep watch on judgements and cruel deeds, givers of wealth; for this royal right also they received….

This golden race descends spiritually and physically, lesser each age

“… and they left the bright light of the sun.”

The Silver Age, though less transcendentally pure, still preserved much of the primitive innocence, cultivated friendliness with the lower creatures, and wholly abstained from the slaughter of animals in the preparation of their food; nor did they offer sacrifices.

The feast of blood was inaugurated with The Brazen Age: “Strong with the ashen spear, and fierce and bold, their thoughts were bent on violence alone, the deed of battle and the dying groan, Bloody their feasts with wheaten food unblessed.”

Similar is mentioned by Empedocles (c. 490 BC)

128. And for them there was no god Ares, nor Battle-Din, nor Zeus the King, nor Cronos nor Poseidon, but only Cypris the Queen. These men sought to please her with pious gifts—with painted animals and perfumes of cunningly-devised smell, with sacrifice of unmixed myrrh and of fragrant incense, and by casting libations of yellow honey on the ground. And the altar was not drenched with the unmixed blood of bulls, but this was the greatest pollution among men, to devour the goodly limbs (of animals) whose life they had reft from them. www.sacred-texts.com/cla/app/app26.htm
“Take not away the life you cannot give; For all things have an equal right to live, Kill noxious creatures where ’tis sin to save; This only just prerogative we have; But nourish life with vegetable food, And shun the sacrilegious taste of blood. Forbear, O mortals, To spoil your bodies with such impious food! There is corn for you, apples, whose weight bears down The bending branches; there are grapes that swell On the vines, and pleasant herbs, and greens Made mellow and soft with cooking; there is milk And clover-honey. Earth is generous With her provision, and her sustenance Is very kind; she offers, for your tables, Food that requires no bloodshed and no slaughter.” “Oh, Ox, how great are yours desserts! A being without deceit, harmless, simple, willing for work! Ungrateful and unworthy of the fruits of the earth, man kills his own farm helper with the axe, that toil-worn neck that had so often renewed for him the face of the hard earth; so many harvests given!” Ovid (43BC – 17AD, Roman poet and scholar)

Concerning the people of Thule: “The people live on millet and other herbs, and on fruits and roots; and where there are grain and honey, the people get their beverage, also, from them. As for the grain, he says, – since they have no pure sunshine – they pound it out in large storehouses, after first gathering in the ears thither; for the threshing floors become useless because of this lack of sunshine and because of the rains.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pytheas

PLATO: (428-347 B.C.) 2nd book of the “Republic” Socrates develops his idea of the diet best adapted to the general community.

“The work-people will live , I suppose, on barley and wheat, baking cakes of the meal and kneading loaves of the flour. And spreading these excellent cakes and loaves upon mats of straw or upon clean leaves, and themselves reclining upon rude beds of yew or myrtle boughs, they will make merry, themselves and their children, drinking their wine, weaving garlands, and singing the praises of the gods, enjoying one another’s society and not begetting children beyond their means through a prudent fear of poverty or war … We shall also set before them a dessert, I imagine, of figs. peas and beans; they may roast myrtle berries and beech nuts at the fire, taking wine with their fruit in great moderation. And thus passing their days in tranquility and sound health, they will, in all probability, live to a very advanced age and, dying. bequeath to their children a life in which their own will be reproduced.”

Then Socrates proceeds to point out how the new ideal Republic will become plunged into injustice and violence and fall into decay just as soon as it oversteps the limits of necessaries and makes the flesh diet and the acquisition of wealth objects of supreme endeavour.

“By this extension of our inquiry we shall perhaps discover how it is that injustice takes root in our cities.. .If you also contemplate a city that is suffering from inflammation (whose people have departed from simplicity), they will not be satisfied, it seems, with the mode of life we have described, but must have in addition, couches and tables and every other showy article of furniture, as well as meats and viands. We shall need swine-herds (for such a city) … and great quantities of all kinds of cattle for those who may wish to eat them … Then decline and decay.”

… All this is told in an inimitable Dialogue between Socrates and Glaucon, which only lack of space prohibits reproducing in full [see pp. 50-51 below].

Ovid remarks that “Plato, doubtless, reached his great age, because of his moral purity, temperance, and natural food diet : of herbs, berries, nuts, grains, and the wild plants of the mountains, which the earth, that best of mothers produces.”

PLATO – from The Ethics of Diet by Howard Williams, 1883
The Republic of Plato (link to archive.org) trans. Thomas Taylor c.1800. This edition: London, c.1894. In Books II & III Plato (428-347 BC) develops the dietary ideas of Pythagoras.
Plato’s Republic (link to archive.org) commentary by Lewis Campbell M.A., Ll.D., London, 1902.

“The highly wise seven celestial Rishis, the Valakshillyas, and those Rishis who drink the rays of the sun, all speak highly of abstention from meat. The self-created Manu has said that the man who does not eat meat, or who does not kill living creatures, or who does not cause them to be killed, is a friend of all creatures. Such a man is incapable of being oppressed by any creature. He enjoys the confidence of all living beings. He always enjoys the praise of the pious. The virtuous Narada has said that that man who wishes to multiply his own flesh by eating the flesh of other creatures meets with disaster.” (Mahabharata, Anu.115.9-12)

Pythagoras – “Alas, what wickedness to swallow flesh into our own flesh, to fatten our greedy bodies by cramming in other bodies, to have one living creature fed by the death of another.”

Leonardo da Vinci – Truely man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds theirs. We live by the death of others: we are burial places! I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look on the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men.

Voltaire – How pitiful, and what poverty of mind, to have said that the animals are machines deprived of understanding and feeling . . . Judge (in the same way as you would judge your own) the behaviour of a dog who has lost his master, who has searched for him in the road barking miserably, who has come back to the house restless and anxious, who has run upstairs and down, from room to room, and who has found the beloved master at last in his study, and then shown his joy by barks, bounds and caresses. There are some barbarians who will take this dog, that so greatly excels man in capacity for friendship, who will nail him to a table, and dissect him alive, in order to show you his veins and nerves. And what you then discover in him are all the same organs of sensation that you have in yourself. Answer me, mechanist, has Nature arranged all the springs of feeling in this animal to the end that he might not feel? Has he nerves that he may be incapable of suffering?

Nikola Tesla – “It is certainly preferable to raise vegetables, and I think, therefore, that vegetarianism is a commendable departure from the established barbarous habit. That we can subsist on plant food and perform our work even to advantage is not a theory, but a well-demonstrated fact.”

Henry David Thoreau – One farmer says to me, “You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make the bones with;” and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying himself with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle.

Leo Tolstoy – “A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral. If a man aspires towards a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from injury to animals.”

Charles Darwin – “There is no fundamental difference between man and animals in their ability to feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery.”

Arthur Schopenhauer – “The world is not a piece of machinery and animals are not articles manufactured for our use. Such views should be left to synagogues and philosophical lecture-rooms, which in essence are not so very different.”

“Thus, because Christian morality leaves animals out of account …, they are at once outlawed in philosophical morals; they are mere “things”, mere means to any ends whatsoever. They can therefore be used for vivisection, hunting, coursing, bullfights and horse racing, and can be whipped to death as they struggle along with heavy carts of stone. Shame on such a morality that is worthy of pariahs, chandalas and mlecchas, and that fails to recognize the eternal essence that exists in every living thing, and shines forth with inscrutable significance from all eyes that see the sun!”

James George Frazer – “For strength of character in the race as in the individual consists mainly in the power of sacrificing the present for the future, of disregarding the immediate temptations of ephemeral pleasure for more distant and lasting sources of satisfaction. The more the power is exercised the higher and stronger becomes the character; till the height of heroism is reached in men who renounce the pleasures of life and even life itself for the sake of winning for others, perhaps in distant ages, the blessings of freedom and truth.”

Nath

https://bhelenos.wordpress.com/2015/11/01/hyperborean-frugivores-2/