Disquisitio philol. de Iudaeorum odio et abstinentia a porcina, eiusque c ausis

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which is likewise testified of the Persians, who, having been polluted with the gravest of crimes, were divinely afflicted with these things, as HERODOTUS relates, Book I, 138, p. 57: Ὁς ἂν δὲ τῶν ἀστῶν λέπρην ἢ λευκὴν ἔχῃ, ἐς πόλιν οὗτος οὐ κατέρχεται, οὐδὲ συμμίσγεται τοῖσι ἄλλοισι Πέρσῃσι. Φασὶ δὲ μιν ἐς τὸν ἥλιον ἁμαρτάνοντά τι, ταῦτ᾽ ἔχειν If anyone of the citizens has leprosy or white vitiligo, he does not enter the city, nor does he associate with the other Persians. They say these diseases were sent upon him because he sinned against the sun. Those lepers among the Persians were called by the proper name PISAGAE, whose conversation everyone avoided, as CTESIAS relates in his Persian History: πισίγας δὲ λέγεται παρὰ Πέρσαις ὁ λεπρὸς, καὶ ἐστὶ πᾶσιν ἀπρόσιτος A leper is called Pisagas among the Persians, and he is inaccessible to all. See BURTON, Leipzig Persian Language, p. 74; SEELEN in the notes there; HADRIAN RELAND, Miscellaneous Dissertations, Part 2, p. 220, who derives this word from the Persian word Pis leprosy, or from Pisah an impure man. B. BRISSONIUS, On the Kingdom of the Persians, Book II, § 180, p. 524. THEOPHRASTUS in Ethical Characters, chap. 20 rightly names a man infected with leprosy as a man of extreme filth: ὁ δὲ δυσχερὴς τοιοῦτος, οἷος λέπραν ἔχων καὶ ἄλφον A filthy man is one who suffers from leprosy and vitiligo. Anyone who weighs the matter more carefully will perceive that the conclusion of Spencer is of no moment: "The Jews, living among Christians, do not touch swine, rather they hold them to be unclean, they execrate them as a wicked thing, therefore Christians would not raise pigs by the example of the Jews, nor would they have boar in their delicacies?" 3) "That they abhorred both touch and sight." That was not done for the sake of leprosy alone, but by force of the Law, by which they were forbidden to eat swine’s flesh, since they were by nature very prone to leprosy. Not to mention that Spencer contradicts himself while, among his reasons for why he thinks this animal is so abominable, he sets the second as that uncleanness and leprosy. And thus I think I have done enough for the objections of Spencer.

III. Since there is something praiseworthy in almost all living creatures, but clearly nothing in the pig, and since the pig provides no use in human life