The modern world often looks to the ancient past for the roots of its ideals, and among those celebrated by ethical vegetarians and vegans is Pythagoras—the philosopher from Samos, a mystic, mathematician, and founder of a spiritual brotherhood that wove together science, religion, and art into a single cosmic vision.
In popular imagination, he is cast as the archetype of ancient vegetarianism, a sage who refused to consume meat for moral and spiritual reasons. Yet ancient sources reveal a far more complex and nuanced picture, one that challenges the simplistic label of the “first vegan.”
The truth lies in the intersection of philosophy, ritual, and symbolism. For Pythagoras, abstinence from meat was neither a social statement nor an ethical doctrine in the modern sense. It was an act of metaphysical alignment—a way to bring the soul closer to the divine order it once came from.
Was Pythagoras vegan? Meat not as a sin but as an exercise of moderation
Ancient sources are divided on whether Pythagoras himself actually avoided meat. In his Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (Book VIII), Diogenes Laertius, the doxographer, recounts that when Pythagoras discovered the famous theorem bearing his name, he offered an ox as a sacrifice. This act seems to clash with the image of a strict vegetarian.
Moreover, Laertius adds that Pythagoras was the first to train athletes on a meat-based diet, having realized that animal protein enhanced their strength and endurance. Prior to this, athletes sustained themselves on dried figs, barley, and butter.
This reveals Pythagoras’ pragmatic side, which often goes forgotten by his admirers. He was not an ascetic detached from the physical world but saw the body as the temple of the soul, and training the body as a form of discipline was essential to philosophical life. Eating meat, in that context, served a purpose—to strengthen the body so it could endure long fasts, intense study, and contemplation.
He taught his students to eat little—not nothing—and to train the body to stand firm with minimal nourishment. This was not the abstinence of denial, but the exercise of moderation.
Exoteric and esoteric reasons for abstinence and veganism—the case of Pythagoras
Pythagoras provided two different reasons for abstaining from animal flesh—one exoteric and the other esoteric. The exoteric, intended for the uninitiated, rested on the idea of metempsychosis, or the transmigration of souls. According to this doctrine, the soul, after death, could enter the body of another human or even an animal. To kill or eat an animal, therefore, meant risking harm to the reincarnated soul of a loved one. This teaching, accessible to all, appealed both to compassion and to the fear of divine retribution. It was a moral allegory, designed to cultivate empathy and respect for life across a broad audience.
The esoteric reason, however, ran much deeper. Pythagoras, like Empedocles after him, believed in a cosmic dualism—an eternal struggle between Harmony and Chaos. Harmony represented unity, love, and order. Chaos signified strife, corruption, and division. To live harmoniously was to align one’s soul with the eternal principles of number, proportion, and rhythm—the same laws governing the cosmos.
Numbers, for Pythagoras, were not mere symbols or tools of calculation. They were divine archetypes—eternal, incorruptible, and pure. Plato would later call them “Ideas,” the unchanging forms of which the material world is but a reflection. A soul could ascend to the divine only by imitating these eternal numbers.
Eating meat, which involved the destruction of life, symbolized participation in the corruptible realm of strife and chaos. By abstaining from meat—or at least reducing its consumption—one reduced one’s involvement in death and decay. The less one corrupted, the closer to the eternal he or she would get. Thus, Pythagoras’ reason for being “vegan” was not about animal rights but about cosmic purification.
Pythagoras as a vegan: Blood, sacrifice, and the limits of purity
Pythagoras understood that absolute purity was impossible. To exist was to consume, destroy, and transform. Life fed upon life in a continuous cycle, and the goal was not to escape that law but to minimize corruption and live with reverence toward all living beings, aware of the sacred rhythm that sustained the cosmos.
This awareness explains why even the Pythagoreans occasionally consumed meat during sacrifices. Plutarch the philosopher, in his Symposiacs, notes that the older followers of Pythagoras avoided consuming living creatures, especially fish, but later generations permitted moderate consumption of flesh during rituals offered to Zeus. The offering was sacred rather than profane. It was an act that maintained harmony between mortals and gods.
In his Life of Pythagoras, Porphyry, the Neoplatonist philosopher, preserves reports from various philosophers—Clodius, Heraclides of Pontus, and the Stoics—who all agreed that Pythagoras encouraged meat-eating among athletes to strengthen their bodies. His system, then, was flexible. It demanded purity of intention rather than rigid prohibition. Eating for strength, moderation, or sacred duty was permissible; eating for pleasure or greed was a descent into Chaos.
Harmony, not rights
Modern veganism rests on the concept of individual animal rights, an ethical extension of liberal humanism. It argues that animals possess intrinsic moral value, independent of human needs or divine order. Pythagoras’ world knew nothing of such notions. His was a hierarchical cosmos governed by order, measure, and purpose. Animals, plants, and humans existed within a grand chain of being—connected but not equal.
Labeling Pythagoras a vegan in the modern sense is misleading. His abstinence stemmed from religious and metaphysical beliefs, not political or ethical principles. He sought harmony and spiritual purification rather than justice or liberation. Modern vegans can draw inspiration from him, but only through the mystical and sacred aspects of his practice—not the secular, rights-based ideology of today.
Pythagoras’ abstinence from meat was part of a grander quest: to transcend the corruptible, purify the soul from chaos, and ascend toward the eternal harmony of the divine numbers. His teachings remind us that food like music, mathematics, and ritual could be a path to spiritual order.
In that sense, whether he ate meat or not matters less than what he sought through abstaining from it—the restoration of the divine balance within the soul.
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