Today I learned that until the mid-1800’s, people who didn’t eat meat were referred to as “Pythagoreans”.  That’s about the time when some killjoy invented the word “vegetarian”.

This Rubens painting is Pythagoras Advocating Vegetarianism.

That’s from Wikipedia, and it doesn’t make sense because the painting is from the 1600’s.  Doesn’t matter, I’m still going to start calling them Pythagoreans.

In Arthur Conan Doyle’s book, Gothic Tales, he refers to a character as a Pythagorean, so the word was in usage in the 1800’s.  Back in the day, culture changed slowly and not uniformly.