ON ABSTINENCE

1. Truly, I also thought it was both worthy of our mutual friendship and suitable for those who have dedicated their own life to the truth. For when I consider the cause of this change, I would by no means think it was for the sake of health and strength—as the common and vulgar crowd asserts—because, on the contrary, a diet free from meat original: "uictum à carnibus alienum" contributes both to health and to a moderate endurance of philosophical labors. You yourself used to confess this while living with us, and it is easy to know by experience itself that you were speaking the truth when you affirmed these things.

Either, then, you have been led by some deception into thinking that whether you eat in this way or that, it makes no difference to wisdom original: "prudentiam" — translating the Greek phronesis, which refers to practical wisdom or the intelligence required for a virtuous life; or perhaps it is for some other reason, unknown to me, which could strike a greater terror into you than the impiety of violating your established rule, that you seem to me to have run back to your former sins. For I will never claim that it was on account of a lack of self-control or for the sake of gluttonous greed that you have thus held in contempt the ancestral laws of philosophy which you used to admire. Nor will I say that you are by nature inferior to unlearned and common men of certain nations A common rhetorical device in Neo-Platonism, comparing the philosopher's discipline to the strict religious taboos of "barbarian" cultures like the Egyptians or Jews who, when they have accepted laws contrary to those they previously used, both endure the cutting off of their limbs original: "membrorum præsectiones" — likely a reference to ritual circumcision or the self-mutilation practiced by certain priesthoods, such as the Galli of Cybele and would, if necessity pressed upon them, almost more likely abstain from certain animals with which they were previously filled than from human flesh. Since, however, some have also called to mind arguments which are against...