Vegetarianism

Before the coining of the terms “vegetarian” and “vegan” in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, respectively, Americans and Europeans who ate a fleshless diet were widely known as Pythagoreans, after the founder of the first vegetarian society of the West—Pythagoras, the Greek mathematician and philosopher who flourished in the sixth century BCE.

In Croton, a town in Magna Graecia (a grouping of ancient Greek colonies in the southern Italian peninsula), Pythagoras founded his society for the study of philosophy and mathematics, which served as the prototype for the Platonic Academy and the modern university. As a condition of membership in the order, members were required to take a vow pledging that they would abstain from the eating of animal flesh. The fleshless diet that Pythagoras recommended was based primarily on compassion for animals and opposition to animal sacrifice in Greek civic religion, with health being a secondary consideration.