The philosophic teaching which even from boyhood exercised a powerful
fascination on the eager soul of Seneca was at least something better
than this; and more than one of his philosophic teachers succeeded in
winning his warm affection, and in moulding the principles and habits of
his life. Two of them he mentions with special regard, namely Sotion the
Pythagorean, and Attalus the Stoic. He also heard the lectures of the
fluent and musical Fabianus Papirius, but seems to have owed less to him
than to his other teachers.

Sotion had embraced the views of Pythagoras respecting the
transmigration of souls, a doctrine which made the eating of animal food
little better than cannibalism or parricide. But, even if any of his
followers rejected this view, Sotion would still maintain that the
eating of animals, if not an impiety, was at least a cruelty and a
waste. "What hardship does my advice inflict on you?" he used to ask. "I
do but deprive you of the food of vultures and lions." The ardent
boy--for at this time he could not have been more than seventeen years
old--was so convinced by these considerations that he became a
vegetarian. At first the abstinence from meat was painful, but after a
year he tells us (and many vegetarians will confirm his experience) it
was not only easy but delightful; and he used to believe, though he
would not assert it as a fact, that it made his intellect more keen and
active. He only ceased to be a vegetarian in obedience to the
remonstrance of his unphilosophical father, who would have easily
tolerated what he regarded as a mere vagary had it not involved the
danger of giving rise to a calumny. For about this time Tiberius
banished from Rome all the followers of strange and foreign religions;
and, as fasting was one of the rites practiced in some of them, Seneca's
father thought that perhaps his son might incur, by abstaining from
meat, the horrible suspicion of being a Christian or a Jew!