The Orphics, a reactionary movement which attempted to modifiy the 'primitive' forms of Dionysian worship, abstained from all animal flesh, as we see in the following lines from Euripides' play The Cretans, which form the 'confession' of one who had been initiated in the mysteries of Orpheus and became a Bacchos: "Robed in pure white, I have borne me clean from man's vile birth and coffined clay, and exiled from my lips alway touch of all meat where life hath been."
According to Porphyry, "The Egyptian priests abstained from eating fish, one-hoofed quadrupeds or such as had more than two divisions in their hoofs and no horns, and all carnivorous birds." (De Abstinentia 4.7)
In many places, the prohibition against eating fish - which truly applied only to the priesthood, since fish has always been a staple in the diet of the poor - arose because the fish was said to have eaten the penis of Osiris. Plutarch, in On Isis and Osiris testifies to this, "And this is not the least of their reasons for the great dislike which they have for fish, and they even make the fish a symbol of 'hatred,'." (32)
Copyright 2005 Sannion
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