GREEK AND PERSIAN LEGEND AND THE LINK BACK TO THE GOLDEN ERA
THE DELPHIC ORACLE
Delphi lies to the north and west of the Corinthian Isthmus of Greece. The Oracle of Delphi, originally the Oracle of Pythia, is at least as old as the Mycenaean era, 14th Century B.C.E., and probably older. There are similar legends about the oracles of Dodona (Homer, Odyssey 14:326-7, Iliad 16:127; Herodotus 2:54-58) and Cumaea.
Ancient kings consulted the earliest Pythic Oracle; so too did ordinary people. An “inquirer” would speak directly to a priestess who would deliver her answer face to face. A priestess had to be over 50 years old, and could be married or widowed. There were one to three priestesses. There is mention of at least one male priest of the earliest Oracle. The theatre-like temple was located on the lower slopes of Mt. Parnassus. A stone in the temple was regarded as the omphalos, the navel of the world. Some kind of gas, probably methane, may have emerged from underground to intoxicate the priestess and stimulate her visions.
The priestess was called the Pythia, which is a term for serpent or python. The python had mantic powers, the ability to tell the future and protect the Earth. Recall that the caduceus, the coiled serpent on a cross, was a symbol of healing, which Moses erected in order to heal the Israelites. (Numbers 21:8, 2 Kings 18:4.)
Aeschylus said the goddess of the Oracle was the primeval goddess. Ancient authors say the name of the original deity of the oracle was Gaea, the earth-goddess and that Gaea was protected by the she-dragon Pythia. Poseidon shared the oracle with Gaea and assisted in its protection. Gaea was the goddess of the Pelasgians, the indigenous people of Greece, Crete, and the Levant, who spoke pre-Indo-European languages. Homer said that Poseidon was the god of the Pelasgians. (Iliad 16:127.) The Cretan Minoans were Pelasgians as probably were the Philistines of Palestine-Israel and the Etruscans of Italy.
According to legend, Apollo slew Pythia, the she-dragon. In oldest Greek myth, the Pythia which Apollo slew was female, but later Greek writers switched her gender, calling her Python instead, perhaps to magnify Apollo’s conquest—a historical “sex change operation.” The town of Delphi was known as Pythos before it was known as Delphi. Around 1050 B.C.E. the savage Dorians—another Indo-European speaking, Aryan tribe—invaded Greece and overwhelmed the Mycenaeans. The Mycenaeans were descended from patriarchal invaders and had adopted various matristic, Minoan, and Egyptian customs. From around 850 B.C.E., the oracle came to be referred to as the oracle of Apollo.
The male priests of Apollo reduced the priestesses to subject status. They did not evict the priestesses from Delphi because the oracle continued to speak only through them, never through the new priests. So the priests of Apollo changed the ancient procedures. A consultant seeking to question the oracle was no longer allowed to meet directly with a priestess. Instead he met with a priest of Apollo to submit his question and make his donation, usually sizeable. The priest in turn submitted the question to a priestess. She prepared her answer and gave it in writing to the priest, who then delivered it in written form to the consultant. Legend says that Poseidon was forced to yield his part in the oracle to Apollo. The oracle of Delphi was shut down by the Christian Roman emperor Arcadius in 398 C.E. Pan was silenced. (T. Dempsey, The Delphic Oracle: Its Early History, Influence and Fall, p. 3 ff., 21-30, 36, 53-55, 183 ff.; Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1979 ed., “Delphi,” III, p. 452; Merlin Stone, When God Was a Woman, p. 202 f.; Howatson & Chilvers, The Concise Oxford Companion to Classical Literature, “Dorians,” “Apollo,” “Mycenae.”)
From such surviving data about the Oracle, we can theorize that following a peaceful era in which the goddess was worshiped at Pythia, cruel patriarchal invaders killed off or enslaved much of the early goddess-worshiping population and almost all of the priestesses of the old matristic religion, allowing only a few priestesses to carry on in subordinate position and only because they were useful to the patriarchs. (Cf. Exodus 22:18; Numbers 31:13-18, 32-35.) The oracles may have been among the last surviving remnants of the matristic civilizations of Old Europe.
PYTHAGORAS, MUSICIAN, PHYSICIAN, PHILOSOPHER, MATHEMATICIAN, VEGETARIAN, 569-470 B.C.E.
Until the 1800s, when the word “vegetarian” was coined, vegetarians were referred to as “Pythagoreans.” Pythagoras was born in Samos, Greece. He was the son of a Greek mother and a Phoenician father. Herodotus said the Phoenicians had come from India. His parents may have named him after the goddess Pythia. “Pythagoras” might mean “assembly of Pythia.” He extended the concept of ethics and justice to include animals and
… commanded [people] to consider these [animals] as their familiars and friends; so as neither to injure, nor slay, nor eat any one of them. (Iamblichus’ Life of Pythagoras, p. 90.)
Pythagoras and his followers believed in metempsychosis, today referred to as reincarnation, including the belief that humans sometimes are reincarnated as animals and animals as humans.
Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Apollonius of Tyana, Ovid, Plotinus, Porphyry, the Jewish Essenes of Palestine, the Jewish Therapeutae of Egypt, John the Baptist, Jesus, James the brother of Jesus, Simon Peter, Matthew, the original Judeo-Christians of Jerusalem, the Ebionites, the Nazaraeans, Copernicus, Galileo, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Gottfreid Leibniz can be considered Pythagoreans or strongly influenced by Pythagoreanism.
These individuals and groups held to most or all of the following Pythagorean beliefs and customs: an emphasis on high ethical standards; an opposition to returning violence for violence; dressing in white robes and in some cases an opposition to the wearing of wool along with a preference for wearing linen; opposition to slavery; an optional communalism coupled with the belief that wealth inevitably interfered with spiritual development; knowledge of herbs, medicine, and healing; an optional celibacy; elevation of the status of women; an emphasis on sexual purity; abstinence from wine; opposition to animal sacrifice; and a vegetarian diet. Eating a vegetarian diet was one part of a “Pythagorean package” of beliefs and values which all these individuals and groups shared.
Pythagoras received a scholarship at age 31, in around 538 B.C.E., and went to study in Egypt. There he learned the Egyptian language and hieroglyphics. He had access to Egyptian temples and partook of the religious mysteries. In pursuit of spiritual insight as part of these mysteries, he consumed mind-altering drugs of some kind. It is assumed that he became a priest of Isis. These priests ate no meat because of their belief in reincarnation, and they even refused to wear wool. (Peter Gorman, Pythagoras: A Life, p. 59.) It is possible that Brahman, Jain, and Buddhist ideas about reincarnation and vegetarianism arose not in India, but traveled there from Egypt and Greece?
After Pythagoras had been in Egypt for 13 years, the Persians conquered the country around 525 B.C.E. They took Pythagoras, along with others, into captivity in Babylon. There he studied Eastern thought for 12 years, and it may have been there that he learned the Golden Ratio and the Pythagorean Theorem. He may have had contact with Jews who had been exiled in large number to Babylon around 586 B.C.E. Vegetarianism was a strong tradition among some Jews by this time, and Pythagoras’ contact with them may have reinforced his vegetarianism and theirs. (See the sections of this book entitled Judaism and the History of Food, p. 51, and Jesus Quoted the Vegetarian Hosea, Opposed the Sacrifices, p. 178.)
Likewise, both Pythagoras and the Jews may have had contact in Persia with Buddhist missionaries; Persia at that time controlled Babylon and part of India, and there were close connections between Persia and India. Pythic-Delphic, Buddhist, and Hebrew traditions may have reinforced each other. This may explain why the teachings of the Buddhists, the Hebrew prophets, the Pythagoreans, and the Judeo-Christians overlap so much. Certain Buddhist values even survive in Catholicism and Orthodoxy, such as the asceticism of the monks and Christianity’s early five-day and two-day-per-week vegetarianism. (See the section of this book entitled Early Christian Fasting and the Didache, p. 158.)
Around 510 B.C.E., Pythagoras returned to Greece. He set up a communal society at Croton in southern Italy, which was then a frontier province of Greece and an area from which the Greeks customarily kidnapped and enslaved powerless, perhaps indigenous people. Pythagoras abolished slavery in Croton and set up abolitionist towns throughout southern Italy. He also abolished the sacrificing and eating of animals. The Pythagoreans aroused the enmity of neighboring dictators. Unfortunately, the Pythagoreans were strict pacifists and had developed no defensive skills. The dictators easily destroyed Pythagorean towns and killed or enslaved thousands of Pythagoras’ followers. Pythagoras himself fled Italy and returned to Greece.
Although his followers adulated him, Pythagoras refused to allow them to exalt him. He denied that he knew everything. He would not even allow himself to be called a sage; he coined the term “philosopher,” or lover of wisdom, and used that term to refer to himself. Pythagoras and his followers wore their hair long, and they wore white robes, as later did the Hebrew Essenes and Therapeutae—vegetarian Hebrew sects active in the First Century C.E. (See the sections of this book entitled The Therapeutae, p. 88, and Stephen, Hellenist, Foe of the Sacrificial System, p. 98.)
Women were admitted to Pythagorean schools on an equal footing with men. Theano, wife of Pythagoras was a noted teacher. She wrote a treatise on the Golden Ratio and carried on Pythagoras’ teaching after he died. Pythagoras’ daughter Myia wrote on the rearing of children.
Throughout this section, note the similarities between the teachings of Pythagoreans and those of the Essenes and Jesus and his brother James. Pythagoras’ followers were divided into two classes, the first class being the acusmatici and politici, those who lived in the world at large, and the second being the mathematici, higher level followers who lived as celibates in communes. Likewise, the Jewish Essenes later had two classes, a larger group that lived in the world at large and married and a core group that lived communally and were celibate. (Cf. Acts 2:44, 4:34; 1 Corinthians 7:26; 1 Timothy 4:3.)
Pythagoras opposed taking oaths, saying “… that their language should be such as to render them worthy of belief even without oaths.” (Cf. Matthew 5:34, James 5:12.) Pythagoras counseled his followers to avoid responding to violence with violence. (Cf. Matthew 5:39, James 1:19.) His biographer Iamblichus said of him, “And he said, that it is much more holy to be injured than to kill a man.” Pythagoras advised his followers to “… have an unstudied contempt of and hostility to glory, wealth, and the like… .” (Iamblichus’ Life of Pythagoras, p. 36, 83, 90; cf. Matthew 19:24; James 2:6, 5:1 ff.)
Pythagoras was a noted physician, having studied medicine in Egypt and Babylon. He employed various techniques including music therapy. (Iamblichus’ Life of Pythagoras, p. 87-88). Recall that the Pythagorean Essenes were noted physicians (Josephus, Wars of the Jews, ed. Whiston, p. 477) and that Jesus, the Pythagorean Essene, was famous first as a healer. Pythagoras opposed the eating of animal food and the drinking of wine. (Iamblichus’ Life of Pythagoras, p. 36, 58, 90, 98, 99, and 116; Vaclavik, The Vegetarianism of Jesus Christ, p. 38.) He advised his followers not “… to sacrifice animals to the Gods, nor by any means to injure animals, but to preserve most solicitously justice towards them.” However, there is some confusion on this point, for Pythagoras allegedly ordered the acusmatici and the politici, those Pythagoreans who lived in the outside world and did not live communally “… to sacrifice animals, such as a cock, or a lamb, or some other animal recently born, but not frequently.” (Iamblichus’ Life of Pythagoras, p. 58, 80.)
Pythagoras opposed the wearing of wool; there is no consensus as to why. Perhaps he saw it was intertwined with the slaughter and eating of mutton. Maybe he was aware of the environmental impacts of grazing, that sheep and goats destroy oases and eat small tree seedlings and girdle and kill saplings and even large trees, thus hindering the recovery of wooded areas after humans have cut down the trees. On the other hand Ovid (43 B.C.E.-17 C.E.) said that Pythagoras lauded sheep for giving milk and wool. (Ovid, Metamorphoses, book 15, line 115, Loeb Classical Library, p. 373.) The Pythagoreans may have been lacto-vegetarians or even lacto-ovo-vegetarians. Bear in mind that Ovid and Iamblichus wrote centuries after Pythagoras’ death, and they may have gotten some of their facts wrong.
Instead of wool, Pythagoras wore linen, which is produced from flax or hemp. (Iamblichus’ Life of Pythagoras, p. 80.) If Pythagoras and his community wore linen, then they too would have eaten flax and/or hemp. Without eating flax, hemp, or chia, a diet free of meat is not sustainable or healthy, given that they are the best vegetable sources of Omega-3 essential fatty acids. Another source is greens, however, a very large quantity must be eaten.
Pythagoras’ disciples referred to him as “the man,” saying, for example, “the man said such and such.” (Vaclavik, The Vegetarianism of Jesus Christ, p. 36; See Ovid, Metamorphoses, book 15, line 60, Loeb Library, p. 368 ff.) Recall that Jesus referred to himself as “the son of man.” Although there are numerous references to “the son of man” in the Old Testament (e.g., Daniel 7:13), it is possible that Jesus adopted this terminology because he considered himself a disciple of Pythagoras and was referring to himself as a son of Pythagoras. It is not impossible that the author of Daniel also considered himself a Pythagorean and derived the term “son of man” from the Pythagoreans, since the book of Daniel—although it describes events that allegedly happened around 600 B.C.E.—was written or last rewritten and edited around 168 B.C.E. (Harper’s Bible Dictionary, “Daniel,” p. 205 f.)
Roman poet Ovid (43 B.C.E.-17 C.E.) said of Pythagoras: “He was the first to decry the placing of animal food upon our tables.” Ovid quotes Pythagoras as saying:
O mortals, do not pollute your bodies with a food so impious! You have the fruits of the earth, you have apples, bending down the branches with their weight, and grapes swelling to ripeness on the vines; you have also delicious herbs and vegetables which can be mellowed and softened by the help of fire. Nor are you without milk or honey, fragrant with the bloom of thyme. The earth, prodigal of her wealth, supplies you her kindly sustenance and offers you food without bloodshed and slaughter… .
But that pristine age, which we have named the golden age, was blessed with the fruit of the trees and the herbs which the ground sends forth, nor did men defile their lips with blood. Then birds plied their wings in safety through the heaven, and the hare loitered all unafraid in the tilled fields, nor did its own guilelessness hang the fish upon the hook. All things were free from treacherous snares, fearing no guile and full of peace. But after someone, an ill exemplar, who envied the food of lions, and thrust down flesh as food into his greedy stomach, he opened the way for crime. It may be that, in the first place, with the killing of wild beasts the steel was warmed and stained with blood. This would have been justified, and we admit that creatures which menace our own lives may be killed without impiety. But, while they might be killed, they should never have been eaten. (Ovid, Metamorphoses, book 15, line 95 ff., Loeb Classical Library, p. 370 ff.)
Pythagoras had great influence on those who came after him. He is important to my study because he constitutes evidence that there were vegetarian societies in pre-historic times. My argument goes like this: Pythagoras did not get his vegetarian values from thin air. He admitted that he learned much of what he knew, which would have included his vegetarian values, at the feet of Themistoclea, a priestess of the Oracle of Pythia-Delphi. (See Mary Ellen Waithe, “Early Pythagoreans: Themistoclea, Theano, Arignote, Myia, and Damo,” A History of Women Philosophers; www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/9974/old.html.) And we can presume that Themistoclea was not a solitary vegetarian but that all the priestesses of the Oracle shared the same values. The Oracle was apparently part of a religious tradition that extended back past written history, back through that Dark Age that began with the Aryan invasions around 4300 B.C.E. and was reintensified with the coming of the Dorians. The Oracle appears to have been a surviving remnant of the pre-Aryan, goddess culture, which I would argue was at least in part vegetarian.
It is possible that Pythagoras got not only his vegetarian ideas but also his mathematical and scientific ideas from the priestesses of the Oracle, who in turn had preserved them for thousands of years.
Pythagoras may be the missing link between Old Europe and the classical and modern worlds.
THE ORPHIC MYSTERY, THE CULT OF DIONYSUS
Early Dionysian rituals included omophagia, the eating of animal, human, and even infant flesh. However, the religion of Dionysus was reformed by Orpheus, and for flesh was substituted a eucharist of bread and wine. Old line adherents of the cult of Dionysus murdered Orpheus. Followers of Dionysus came to reject the eating of meat. (Martin A. Larson, The Religion of the Occident, p. 74-76; “Asceticism,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1979 ed., 2, p. 136.)
Relatively little is know of the religion of Orpheus and the Orphic mystery. Its followers believed that man’s wicked tendency should be suppressed and his heavenly nature cultivated, and this could be done by “… living an Orphic life, which included abstention from meat, wine, and sexual intercourse.” (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1979 ed., Micropaedia, VII, p. 594; Martin A. Larson, The Religion of the Occident, p. 74.) The Latin Church Father Jerome, a vegetarian who extolled vegetarianism but regarded it as optional for Christians, said, “Orpheus in his song utterly denounces the eating of flesh.” (Jerome, “Against Jovianus,” Schaff & Wace, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Volume VI, II:14, p. 398.)
SOCRATES AND PLATO
Plato studied under Socrates and transcribed his dialogs, or perhaps he reworked them or even created them out of whole cloth. In Book 2 of The Republic Plato wrote of Socrates’ discussion of the development of a city, in light of its economy, specialization by occupation, and considerations of justice, health, and conflict. There Plato advocated specialization of occupations as being good for the economy and also discussed the problem of developing a full-time, specialized army that would be skilled enough at war to defend the city but also principled enough to abide by the law. Plato spoke sympathetically of vegetarianism.
According to Plato in The Republic, Socrates envisioned a city in which the diet was loaves of wheat and barley, olives, cheese, onions, greens, figs, chick-peas, beans, toasted myrtle berries, acorns, and wine. It is clear from the context that he intentionally omitted meat.
So they will spend their days in health and peace, living to old age as you might expect and leaving another such life to their children.
Plato’s Socrates was asked how things would be different if the diet of the city included meat. He described how such a city would develop:
A city of that sort might show us possibly how justice and injustice grow up in states. However, the real city seems to me what we have described, a healthy sort; but if you wish us to examine one in a high fever, there is nothing to hinder… . [T]hat healthy city is not enough now; it must be swollen and filled with people and things which are not in cities from necessity—hunters of all sorts… . And besides we shall want swineherds; there were none in our first city, because they were not wanted, but they will be wanted in this one, and lots of all kinds of other pasturing animals will be wanted if anyone is to eat them… . And shan’t we need physicians much more than before in such a manner of life?… Take the land also; what was enough to feed them then will not be enough now, it will be too small… . Then we must take a slice of our neighbors’ land, if we are to have enough for grazing and plowing, and they also must take a slice of ours, if they, too, pass the bounds of the necessary, and give themselves to the boundless getting of wealth… . The next thing is, we shall go to war… . [W]e have discovered the origin of war now, from that whence cities get most of their troubles… . (Great Dialogues of Plato, p. 165 ff.)
THE ZOROASTRIAN VISION OF THE VEGETARIAN PEACE SURE TO COME
The Indo-Europeans invaded Persia sometime around 2000 B.C.E., several centuries before they invaded India. Persian prophet Zarathustra, known in the West as Zoroaster, lived probably around 1400 to 1300 B.C.E., although scholars radically disagree as to his dates. Until Moslems conquered the Persian Empire in the 600s C.E., Zoroastrianism was a strong influence on all the other major world religions. Zoroastrianism survives as an organized religion today primarily in India. Zoroastrian priests were called magi (singular magus) A “magus” is a seer or wizard or wise one. According to Christian legend magi attended the birth of Jesus. (Matthew 2:1, where the Greek word magoi is used.)
In the Zoroastrian myth the first man and woman were charged by god as follows:
You are the seed of man, you are the parents of the world, you have been given by me the best perfect devotion; think good thoughts, speak good words, do good deeds, and do not worship the demons.
The first man and woman were misled by the evil Ahriman to conclude that the world derived from evil. This was their original and worst sin. They began to offer sacrifices [animal?] which were not pleasing to god. They started drinking milk. (John R. Hinnells, Persian Mythology, The Greater or Iranian edition of the Bundahishn, 14:11, p. 62.)
The Zoroastrians believed the history of the world began in 9660 B.C.E. and would last some 12,000 years. (Martin A. Larson, The Religion of the Occident, p. 96.) At some point a second savior will come, born of a virgin. “The original paradisal state will draw yet nearer. Men will no longer need to eat meat, they will become vegetarians and drink only water.” A third savior will come, born in the same way. “All disease, death and persecution will be overcome, vegetation will flourish perpetually and mankind will eat only spiritual food. The world is now to be perfectly and finally renovated.” The world will end around 2340 C.E., and then all will be judged. Those who have committed evil will be punished to a level that is exactly proportional to the wrongs they have done. Then their punishment will end, and all humanity will be reunited. (John R. Hinnells, Persian Mythology, p. 69.)