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Omnia Mutantur, Nihil Interit: Pythagorean Ideas of Vegetarianism and Metempsychosis in Antiquity
Scalf, Emily Elizabeth
Scalf, Emily Elizabeth
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Abstract
Pythagoras was the first known advocate to voice a claim of moral rationale in opposition to the religio-political structure of the ancient world in defense of vegetarianism. Pythagorean vegetarianism started a shift in consciousness and new perspective of animal life in comparison to human life that persisted largely unchanged throughout the Greco-Roman world, despite its deep subservience of the religio-political system upon which the states of Greece and Rome functioned. The concept of metempsychosis was carried through antiquity from Pythagoras to Ovid, and the adoption of vegetarianism based on transmigration of the soul is seen strongly into the early Roman Empire. In this thesis I investigated the scope of vegetarian thought in antiquity and concluded that the Pythagorean view of vegetarianism, based on the concept of metempsychosis, continued persistently through different philosophers such as Empedocles, Porphyry, Plutarch. I looked at the works of these authors in comparison to each other and in comparison to the social climate in which they were writing their works to compare their practices of vegetarian philosophy on grounds of morality and the ways in which it largely remained the same from the years 600BCE100CE.
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Thesis (B.A. in Classical Studies, Minors in Art History and History)--John Cabot University, Spring 2021.
Date
2021
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Keywords
Pythagoras, Diet, Nutrition, Vegetables, Vegetarianism, Ancient philosophy, Transmigration
Citation
Scalf, Emily Elizabeth. "Omnia Mutantur, Nihil Interit: Pythagorean Ideas of Vegetarianism and Metempsychosis in Antiquity". BA Thesis, John Cabot University, Rome, Italy. 2021.