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no city or town, but dwell together in separate communities. … They do not discard their dress for a new one, before the first is really worn out by length of time. There is no buying and selling amongst them. Each gives to each according to his or her wants, and there is a free interchange between them. … They come to their dining-hall as to some pure and undefiled temple, and when they have taken their seats quietly, the baker sets their loaves before them in order, and the cook gives them one dish each of one sort, while their priest first recites a form of thanksgiving for their pure and refined food (τροφῆς ἁγνῆς οὖσης καὶ καθαρᾶς).”

      The testimony of the national historian of the Jews, it is interesting to observe, is equally favourable to those pioneers of the modern communisms. “The Essenes, as we call a sect of ours,” writes Josephus, “pursue the same kind of life as those whom the Greeks call Pythagoreans. They are long-lived also, insomuch that many of them exist above a hundred years by means of their simplicity of diet and the regular course of their lives” (Antiquities of the Jews.). Upon entering the society and partaking of the common meal (which, with baptism, was the outward and visible sign of initiation) three solemn oaths were administered to each aspirant:—

      “First, that he would reverence the divine ideal (τὸ θεῖον); second, that he would carefully practise justice towards his fellow-beings and refrain from injury, whether by his own or another’s will; that he would always hate the Unjust and fight earnestly on the side of (συναγωνιζεσθαι) the Just and lovers of justice; keep faith with all men; if in power, never use authority insolently or violently; nor surpass his subordinates in dress and ornaments; above all things always to love Truth.”

      As for their food, while they seem not to have been bound to total abstinence from every kind of flesh, they may be considered to have been almost Vegetarian in practice. To kill any innocent individual of the non-human species that had sought refuge or an asylum amongst them was a breach of the most sacred laws: to spare the domesticated races, or fellow-workers with man, even in an enemy’s country, was a solemn duty. For, says Porphyry, their founder had no groundless fear that there could be any overabundance of life productive of famine to ourselves, inasmuch as he knew, first, that those animals who bring forth many young at a time are short lived, and, secondly, that their too rapid increase is kept down by other hostile animals. “A proof of which is,” he continues, “that though we abstain from eating very many, such as dogs, wild beasts, rats, lizards, and others, there is yet no fear that we should ever suffer from famine in consequence of their excessive multiplication; and, again, it is one thing to have to kill, and another to eat, since we have to kill many ferocious animals whom we do not also eat.”

      He quotes the historians of Syria who allege that, in the earlier period, the inhabitants of that part of the world abstained from all flesh, and, therefore, from sacrifice; and that when, afterwards, to avert some impending misfortune they were induced to offer up propitiatory victims, the practice of flesh-eating was by no means general. And Asklepiades says, in his History of Cyprus and Phœnicia, that “no living being was sacrificed to heaven, nor was there even any express law on the subject, since it was forbidden by the law of Nature (νομῷ φυσικῷ):” that, in course of time, they took to occasional propitiatory sacrifice: and that, at one of these times, the sacrificing priest happened to place his blood-smeared finger on his mouth, was tempted to repeat the action, and thus introduced the habit of flesh-eating, whence the general practice. As for the Persian Magi (the successors of Zerdusht), we are informed that the principal and most esteemed of their order neither eat nor kill any living being, while those of the second class eat the flesh of some, but not of domesticated, animals; nor do even the third order eat indiscriminately. Instances are adduced of certain peoples who, being compelled by necessity to live upon flesh, have evidently deteriorated and been rendered savage and ferocious, “from which examples it is clearly unbecoming men of good disposition to belie their human nature (τῆς ἀνθρωπίνης καταψεύδεσθαι φύσεως).”

      Amongst individuals he instances the example of the traditionary Athenian legislator Triptolemus—

      “Of whom Hermippus, in his second book on the legislators, writes: Of his laws, according to Xenokrates the philosopher, the three following remain in force at Eleusis—‘to gratify Heaven with the offering of fruits,’ ‘to harass or harm no [innocent] living being.’ … As to the third, he is in doubt for what particular reason Triptolemus charged them to abstain—whether from believing it to be criminal to kill those that have an identical origin with ourselves (ὁμογενὲς), or from a consciousness that the slaughter of all the most useful animals would be the inevitable consequence of addiction to it, and wishing to render human life mild and innocent, and to preserve those species that are tame and gentle and domesticated with man.”[88]

      Somewhat later than Porphyry, the name of Julian (331–363), the Roman emperor, may here be fitly introduced. During his brief reign of sixteen months he proved himself, if not always a judicious, yet a sincere and earnest reformer of abuses of various kinds, and he may claim to be one of the very few virtuous princes, pagan or christian. Unfortunately the just blame attaching to his ill-judged attempt to suppress the religion of Constantine, from whose family his relatives and himself had suffered the greatest injury and insult, has enabled the lovers of party rather than of truth successfully to conceal from view his undoubted merits.

      In his manner of living, with which alone we are now concerned, he seems to have almost rivalled the most ascetic of the Platonists or of the Christian anchorets. One of his most intimate friends, the celebrated orator, Libanius, who had often shared the frugal simplicity of his table, has remarked that his “light and sparing diet, which was usually of the vegetable kind, left his mind and body always free and active for the various and important business of an author, a pontiff, a magistrate, a general, and a prince.” That his frugal diet had not impaired his powers, either physical or mental, may sufficiently appear from the fact that—

      “In one and the same day he gave audience to several ambassadors, and wrote or dictated a great number of letters to his generals, his civil magistrates, his private friends, and the different cities of his dominions. He listened to the memorials which had been received, considered the subject of the petitions, and signified his intentions more rapidly than they could be taken in shorthand by the diligence of his secretaries. He possessed such flexibility of thought, and such firmness of attention, that he could employ his hand to write, his ear to listen, and his voice to dictate, and pursue at once three several trains of ideas without hesitation and without error. While his ministers reposed, the prince flew with agility from one labour to another, and, after a hasty dinner, retired into his library till the public business, which he had appointed for the evening, summoned him to interrupt the prosecution of his studies. The supper of the emperor was still less substantial than the former meal; his sleep was never clouded by the fumes of indigestion. … He was soon awakened by the entrance of fresh secretaries who had slept the preceding day, and his servants were obliged to wait alternately, while their indefatigable master allowed himself scarcely any other refreshment than the change of occupation. The predecessors of Julian, his uncle, his brother, and his cousin, indulged their puerile taste for the games of the circus under the specious pretence of complying with the inclination of the people, and they frequently remained the greater part of the day as idle spectators. … On solemn festivals Julian, who felt and professed an unfashionable dislike to these frivolous amusements, condescended to appear in the Circus, and, after bestowing a careless glance on five or six of the races, he hastily withdrew with the impatience of a philosopher who considered every moment as lost that was not devoted to the advantage of the public, or the improvement of his own mind. By this avarice of time he seemed to protract the short duration of his reign, and, if the dates were less securely ascertained, we should refuse to believe that only sixteen months elapsed between the death of Constantius and the departure of his successor for the Persian war in which he perished.”[89]

      Following the principles of Platonism, “he justly concluded that the man who presumes to reign should aspire to the perfection of the divine nature—that he should purify his soul from her mortal and terrestrial part—that he should extinguish his appetites, enlighten his understanding,

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