their diet with blood. Alas! what a crime is it, for entrails to be
buried in entrails, and for one ravening body to grow fat on {other}
carcases crammed {into} it; and for one living creature to exist through
the death of another living creature! And does, forsooth! amid so great
an abundance, which the earth, that best of mothers, produces, nothing
delight you but to gnaw with savage teeth the sad {produce of your}
wounds, and to revive the habits of the Cyclops? And can you not appease
the hunger of a voracious and ill-regulated stomach unless you first
destroy another? But that age of old, to which we have given the name of
'Golden,' was blest in the produce of the trees, and in the herbs which
the earth produces, and it did not pollute the mouth with blood.

"Then, both did the birds move their wings in safety in the air, and the
hare without fear wander in the midst of the fields; then its own
credulity had not suspended the fish from the hook; every place was
without treachery, and in dread of no injury, and was full of peace.
Afterwards, {some one}, no good adviser[9] (whoever among mortals he
might have been), envied this simple food, and engulphed in his greedy
paunch victuals made from a carcase; 'twas he that opened the path to
wickedness; and I can believe that the steel, {since} stained with
blood, first grew warm from the slaughter of wild beasts. And that had
been sufficient. I confess that the bodies {of animals} that seek our
destruction are put to death with no breach of the sacred laws; but,
although they might be put to death, yet they were not to be eaten as
well. Then this wickedness proceeded still further; and the swine is
believed to have deserved death as the first victim, because it grubbed
up the seeds with its turned-up snout, and cut short the hopes of the
year. Having gnawed the vine, the goat was led[10] for slaughter to the
altars of the avenging Bacchus. Their own faults were the ruin of the
two. But why have you deserved this, ye sheep? a harmless breed, and
born for the service of man; who carry the nectar in your full udders;
who afford your wool as soft coverings for us, and who assist us more by
your life than by your death. Why have the oxen deserved this, an animal
without guile and deceit, innocent, harmless, born to endure labour? In
fact, the man is ungrateful, and not worthy of the gifts of the harvest,
who could, just after taking off the weight of the curving plough,
slau