Miscellanies 7.6.33

In this way the Jews above all abstain from pork, as though this animal were unclean, since more than the others it roots up and destroys crops. And if they say that animals have been given to human beings, we too agree, but not at all for eating in every case, nor all of them, only those that do no work. That is why the comic poet Plato says not badly in his play The Festivals: “Of four-footed beasts we ought henceforth to kill none but pigs; for they have the sweetest meat, and nothing comes to us from a pig except bristles, mud, and squealing.” Hence Aesop too said, not badly, that pigs squeal loudest when they are dragged off, for they know they are useful for nothing except sacrifice. That is why Cleanthes too says that they have their soul instead of salt, to keep the meat from rotting. Some, then, eat it as useless, others do not eat it because it destroys crops, and others because the animal is much given to intercourse. In this way the law does not sacrifice the goat either, except only for sending away evils, since pleasure is the mother city of vice. Indeed, they say that eating goat's meat contributes to epilepsy. And they say that the most nourishment comes from pork; so it is useful for those who train the body, but no longer for those who try to strengthen the soul itself, because of the sluggishness that comes from eating meat. Perhaps one of those who know might abstain from eating flesh for the sake of discipline, and so that the flesh may not swell with sexual desire. “For wine,” says Androcydes, “and gorging on meat make the body strong but the soul more sluggish.” Such food, then, is unfit for precise understanding. That is why the Egyptians too, in their purifications, do not allow their priests to eat flesh; they use birds as the lightest food and do not touch fish, partly because of certain myths, but chiefly because such food makes the flesh flabby.