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Pomona
Pythagoras is a famous philosopher, mathematician, and theologian who lives in Croton and delivers speeches to audiences. Numa attends one of Pythagoras’s speeches in which Pythagoras urges people not to eat meat as animals are often incarnations of humans. Pythagoras also asserts that the universe is always in a state of change, and that nothing in the world maintains its form for long.
Pythagoras Quotes in Metamorphoses
The Metamorphoses quotes below are all either spoken by Pythagoras or refer to Pythagoras . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Book 15: Pythagoras
Quotes
The earth supplies nourishing food in lavish
abundance; she offers you feasts that demand no slaughter or bloodshed.
[…]
Here is the wondrous wealth which the earth, the kindest of mothers,
produces; and yet you are happy to bite cruel wounds in your victims,
chomping them up with your teeth in the grisly style of the cyclops.
You have no way of relieving the hunger-pangs of your greedy,
uncivilized bellies except by destroying the life of another.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
All is subject to change and nothing to death. The spirit
in each of us wanders from place to place; it enters whatever
body it pleases, crossing over from beast to man,
and back again to a beast. It never perishes wholly.
As pliable wax is easily stamped with a new impression
and never remains as it was nor preserves one single shape,
but still is the selfsame wax, so I say that our souls are always
the same, though they move from home to home in different bodies.
I rejoice that the walls of my kinsmen
are rising so fast, that the Greeks won a war for the good of the Trojans.
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Pythagoras Quotes in Metamorphoses
The Metamorphoses quotes below are all either spoken by Pythagoras or refer to Pythagoras . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Book 15: Pythagoras
Quotes
The earth supplies nourishing food in lavish
abundance; she offers you feasts that demand no slaughter or bloodshed.
[…]
Here is the wondrous wealth which the earth, the kindest of mothers,
produces; and yet you are happy to bite cruel wounds in your victims,
chomping them up with your teeth in the grisly style of the cyclops.
You have no way of relieving the hunger-pangs of your greedy,
uncivilized bellies except by destroying the life of another.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
All is subject to change and nothing to death. The spirit
in each of us wanders from place to place; it enters whatever
body it pleases, crossing over from beast to man,
and back again to a beast. It never perishes wholly.
As pliable wax is easily stamped with a new impression
and never remains as it was nor preserves one single shape,
but still is the selfsame wax, so I say that our souls are always
the same, though they move from home to home in different bodies.
I rejoice that the walls of my kinsmen
are rising so fast, that the Greeks won a war for the good of the Trojans.
