Key Arguments

• Sextius holds that non‑bloody food suffices: 'Sextius believed that man had enough food to sustain him without shedding blood, and that when men took this tearing of flesh so far that it became a pleasure a habit of cruelty was formed.'
• He connects flesh‑eating pleasure to character deformation: 'when men took this tearing of flesh so far that it became a pleasure a habit of cruelty was formed.'
• He adds an anti‑luxury argument: 'He argued in addition that the scope for people’s extravagance was in any case something that should be reduced; and he gave reasons for inferring that variety of diet was incompatible with our physical make-up and inimical to health.'

Source Quotes

Each had a quite different reason, but each was a striking one. Sextius believed that man had enough food to sustain him without shedding blood, and that when men took this tearing of flesh so far that it became a pleasure a habit of cruelty was formed. He argued in addition that the scope for people’s extravagance was in any case something that should be reduced; and he gave reasons for inferring that variety of diet was incompatible with our physical make-up and inimical to health.

Sextius believed that man had enough food to sustain him without shedding blood, and that when men took this tearing of flesh so far that it became a pleasure a habit of cruelty was formed. He argued in addition that the scope for people’s extravagance was in any case something that should be reduced; and he gave reasons for inferring that variety of diet was incompatible with our physical make-up and inimical to health. Pythagoras, on the other hand, maintained that all creatures were interrelated and that there was a system of exchange of souls involving transmigration from one bodily form to another.

Key Concepts

• Sextius believed that man had enough food to sustain him without shedding blood, and that when men took this tearing of flesh so far that it became a pleasure a habit of cruelty was formed.
• He argued in addition that the scope for people’s extravagance was in any case something that should be reduced; and he gave reasons for inferring that variety of diet was incompatible with our physical make-up and inimical to health.

Context

In Letter CVIII’s discussion of youthful zeal, Seneca recalls Sotion’s account of why Sextius refrained from eating animals, presenting his ethical and medical rationale for vegetarianism.