On Food and Cooking

quarters    poured  out glistening  wine    while

young   men at  his side    held    five-pronged

forks.  Once    they    had burned  the bones   and

tasted  the organs  they    cut the rest    into

pieces, pierced them    with    spits,  roasted

them    to  a   turn    and pulled  them    off the fire.

—   Homer,  Iliad,  ca. 700 BCE

For neither is  it  proper  that    the altars  of  the

gods    should  be  defiled with    murder, nor

that    food    of  this    kind    should  be  touched by

men,    as  neither is  it  fit that    men should  eat

one another.

—   Porphyry,   On  Abstinence, ca. 300 CE

The structure of muscle tissue and meat. A
piece of meat is composed of many individual
muscle cells, or fibers. The fibers are in turn