A Small Puzzle About Cattle, Pigs, and Vegetarianism in Plato's Republic

Then we shall have to enlarge the city again. For that healthy state is no longer sufficient, but we must proceed to swell out its bulk [and population] and fill it up with a multitude of things that exceed the requirements of necessity in states, as, for example, the entire class of huntsmen, and the imitators, many of them occupied with figures and colors and many with music—the poets and their assistants, rhapsodists, actors, chorus-dancers, contractors—and the manufacturers of all kinds of articles, especially those that have to do with women's adornment. And so we shall also want more servitors. Don't you think that we shall need tutors, nurses wet and dry, beauty-shop ladies, barbers and yet again cooks and chefs? And we shall have need, further, of swineherds; there were none of these creatures in our former city, for we had no need of them, but in this city there will be this further need; and we shall also require other cattle in great numbers if they are to be eaten.--Plato, Republic 373b-c, Translated by Paul Shorey.

The quoted passage is part of the transition from the healthy, "true city" (372e5)-- thanks to Glaucon's intervention known as the "city of pigs" (372d3-4)-- to the luxurious or feverish city. At this point we learn that the city of pigs actually does not contain any real pigs because they were not needed in a city devoted to meeting our necessary needs.

At first, I thought this meant that pigs were taken to be luxury (a bit like salmon today). Even so, this puzzled me because pigs have been domesticated for more than 9000 years,  and seemed to have been an important food staple.

The last quoted sentence ("and we shall also require other cattle in great numbers if they are to be eaten,") implies that the inhabitants of the city of pigs are vegetarian. This is also implied in 372b: "for their nourishment they will provide meal from their barley and flour from their wheat, and kneading and cooking these they will serve noble cakes and loaves on some arrangement of reeds or clean leaves." However, as 373c implies, there is cattle in the city of pigs (which is explicitly mentioned at 370e1).  

So, given the presence of cattle (and sheep) it is by no means obvious that the city of pigs is vegetarian. True, the only function explicitly and originally ascribed to cattle is to plough (3701e1). Since the good folk of  the city of pigs don't go around naked (they will have weavers for clothes and cobblers for shoes 369d7-9), it is not a stretch to assume the cows also supply leather. In addition, in response to Glaucon's horror, Socrates admits that the cows also supply the necessary city with cheese (the latter explicitly mentioned at 372c3), and so presumably also milk. So, why not meat?

It would, after all, be a waste not to eat cattle meat. And since the city explicitly trades of luxury for population growth, it would make sense for them to eat meat. But if they do, why not also farm pigs? Since the city requires export commodities (370e-371a), one could argue that the cattle meat is used to pay for necessary goods from abroad. Of course, this kind of local vegetarianism is not especially principled. 

There is a further more far-fetched hint that the inhabitants of the city of pigs were not vegetarians. When in Book 3, Socrates describes the lifestyle of the auxiliaries of the luxurious city when they are on campaign, he explicitly notes that soldiers prefer roasted meat because it is most easily available (404c2). If the inhabitants of the city of pigs would find themselves on a military campaign it's likely they would eat meat. However, (recall) Socrates explicitly denies that they go to war (372c). They maintain an optimal population to avoid poverty, luxury, and war. 

So, if the inhabitants of the city of pigs are vegetarians, as seems most likely (but not certain), it is odd that they keep cattle. But if they are not vegetarians it is odd that they do not farm pigs. Why are pigs only introduced in the feverish city. Perhaps, some classicist will inform me they had high status as a luxury item in Socratic Athens. But I doubt it.

One of my undergraduate students from a farming background* made the following plausible observation. Unlike cattle, pigs will eat almost anything. They thrive in environments such as the luxurious city with many forms of human waste. Whereas in the city of pigs, which, due to trying to maintain being on an equilibrium point of population growth, is constantly on the edge of hardship, it would require considerable and impossible effort to make sure that the pigs are adequately fed.  Since Plato's readers were gentlemen-farmers, it is not implausible they would have recognized this at once (unlike city-slickers like me).

I liked this hypothesis. But why does Socrates say that pigs are "needed" in the luxurious city? Why not use and expand existing cattle? Here my class proposed that pigs are more efficient meat producers than cattle. And so these are much better able to sustain a larger population without requiring ever expanding land something Socrates explicitly wants to prevent. For, territorial and population expansion of the territory of the Kallipos has to be governed not by population or farming pressures, but by the need to maintain (what we may call) social unity (423b). Unfortunately, I have no idea whether modern relative Feed Conversion Ratios (FCR) among animals match those in ancient times. But I'd like to think so.

 

*I believe it was Patrick van Oosterom. Apologies to all involved if I misremember.

 

Comments

[George Gale]

As a matter of fact, ye Olde Greeks kept sheep and goats. Greek agronomy was much too poor in nutrients/crops to support a thriving cattle industry. Can't imagine why Plato ignored this fundamental, basic fact. Beef would have been a supremely luxury item. And I suspect there was a bias against pork in the diet--think back to ancient menus in Greece: is pork ever mentioned at, e.g., banquets? Not so far as I know.

Food for thoght, perhaps, but not for the belly, this discussion.

[David Duffy]

Yes, pigs are less mobile, less heat tolerant and requiring more water than sheep (more suited to nomadism), so associated with sedentary subsistence and city lifestyles. Famously regarded as unclean, but very heterogenously. I read that most meat in Ancient Greece was sacrificed first - cattle are the most expensive sacrifice, and pig bones are less common in sanctuaries.