Chiara Cremonesi, Marianna Ferrara, The Politics of Ritual Vegetarianism: a Comparative Study of the Motif of the Ascetic/Wise King Between the Indian and Graeco-Roman Worlds.

This chapter investigates how vegetarianism and the rejection of ritual killing functioned as strategies of ethical and political legitimization across Indian, Graeco-Roman, and early Christian contexts. Focusing on Aśoka’s institutionalization of ahiṃsā as imperial policy and Philostratus’s portrayal of Apollonius of Tyana’s vegetarianism as a sign of philosophical superiority, the authors explore how ascetic dietary practices shaped models of righteous sovereignty. The study also suggests that Eusebius of Caesarea polemically inverted these models, casting Apollonius and the Indian sages as tyrannical figures while appropriating vegetarianism to support Christian critiques of pagan sacrifice. Through this triangulation, the chapter shows how renunciation of animal sacrifice became a powerful medium for articulating authority, purity, and religious identity, and how the figure of the ascetic or wise king emerged as a trans-cultural symbol of alternative sovereignty.