turned into a proverb. On this,
he founded the city of Crotona, and another colony founded the city
of Sybaris on the spot which he had preferred; a place which
afterwards became infamous for its voluptuousness and profligacy.

FABLES II. AND III. [XV.60-478]

Pythagoras comes to the city of Crotona, and teaches the principles
of his philosophy. His reputation draws Numa Pompilius to hear his
discourses; on which he expounds his principles, and, more
especially, enlarges on the transmigration of the soul, and the
practice of eating animal food.

There was a man, a Samian by birth; but he had fled from both Samos and
its rulers,[8] and, through hatred of tyranny, he was a voluntary exile.
He too, mentally, held converse with the Gods, although far distant in
the region of the heavens; and what nature refused to human vision, he
viewed with the eyes of his mind. And when he had examined all things
with his mind, and with watchful study, he gave them to be learned by
the public; and he sought the crowds of people {as they sat} in silence,
and wondered at the revealed origin of the vast universe, and the cause
of things, and what nature {meant}, and what was God; whence {came} the
snow, what was the cause of lightning; {whether it was} Jupiter, or
whether the winds that thundered when the cloud was rent asunder; what
it was that shook the earth; by what laws the stars took their course;
and whatever {besides} lay concealed {from mortals}.

He, too, was the first to forbid animals to be served up at table, and
he was the first that opened his lips, learned indeed, but still not
obtaining credit, in such words as these: "Forbear, mortals, to pollute
your bodies with {such} abominable food. There is the corn; there are
the apples that bear down the branches by their weight, and {there are}
the grapes swelling upon the vines; there are the herbs that are
pleasant; there are some that can become tender, and be softened by {the
action of} fire. The flowing milk, too, is not denied you, nor honey
redolent of the bloom of the thyme. The lavish Earth yields her riches,
and her agreable food, and affords dainties without slaughter and
bloodshed. The beasts satisfy their hunger with flesh; and yet not all
of them; for the horse, and the sheep, and the herds subsist on grass.
But those whose disposition is cruel and fierce, the Armenian tigers,
and the raging lions, and the bears together with the wolves, revel in