Today I discovered that before 1847 vegetarians were known as Pythagoreans; at first this fact shocked me because I have always known the Pythagoreans as the followers of the Greek philosopher Pythagoras of Samos who based their beliefs on the school of mathematics, but also held mystical beliefs. Until today I was unaware their views on vegetarianism, but it seems they were deeply against meat eating.
It is clear that Pythagorean views were not widely held until 1847, so how did the term, Pythagorean, come to cover all vegetarians for over 2000 years after the death of Pythagoras himself. It seems most likely to me that as the number of vegetarians was low at the time the name of group of famous vegetarians was given to all vegetarians. Not it seems not all of #php agrees with me, they claim, “All Pythagoreans were vegetarians, but not all vegetarians were Pythagoreans, so to say non-meat eaters were Pythagoreans or were called that, is false, since only the vegetarians who were that because of Pythagoras could really be called Pythagoreans”. This seems to me to be presuming that a groups name must directly link to the belief system they hold, and cant just be what people call them. I mean does every single person that calls them self Catholic today even believe in God, no; and that is what people are calling themselves not what the majority call the minority. It seems to me that some of #php are too quick to make assumptions without looking into the evidence.
http://www.salagram.net/veg1.html
http://www.ivu.org/faq/definitions.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoreans
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarian