Miscellanies 2.18.92

It seems to me that Pythagoras too took his gentleness toward irrational animals from the law. For example, he forbade taking the young born in flocks of sheep, goats, and cattle for immediate enjoyment, not even on the pretext of sacrifices, for the sake of the young and the mothers, training man up to gentleness from below, from the irrational animals. “Grant the young,” it says, “to its mother at least for the first seven days.” For if nothing happens without a cause, and milk pours down in those who have given birth for the nourishment of the young, the one who tears the newborn from the provision of milk dishonors nature. Let the Greeks, then, be ashamed, and anyone else who runs down the law, if the law shows kindness even to irrational animals, while they expose even the offspring of human beings; though the law, from afar and prophetically, cut short their savagery through the commandment just mentioned. For if it forbids the young of irrational animals to be separated from the mother before weaning, much more does it treat in advance the cruel and untamed disposition in the case of human beings, so that, if they despise nature, they may at least not despise instruction.