There are many factors which make the taboo against the broad or fava bean (Vicia faba) worth looking at in the wider context of dietary restriction in antiquity. The obscurity shrouding the origins of the taboo gave rise to diverse and contradictory hypotheses amongst ancient authors. Aristotle, Cicero and Plutarch are among those who sought to explain this bizarre custom. This ambiguity makes it an enticing topic. Recent studies in the field of medicine may help cast a new light upon the restriction, transforming what at first appears an obscure and small-scale dietary prohibition into a phenomenon that could have been a matter of life and death for a sizeable section of ancient communities.
The principal reason for the significance of the bean taboo is that pulses must have formed a substantial part of ancient diet. Scholars such as John Wilkins and Peter Garnsey point to factors that would have restricted the amount of meat eaten: the importance of animal sacrifice in ancient religious experience; the sheer economic waste of keeping livestock only to slaughter it. Fish was also a rare and expensive luxury, beyond the pockets of many. Both meat and fish were the subject of religious prohibitions. Egyptian priests had precepts that prohibited them from eating fish, although this did not extend to the whole population.1 There are many references to the worship of the Syrian goddess known variously as Derceto, Astarte and Atargatis, to whom fish was sacred.2 Lucian’s de Syria dea deals extensively with the rites of this cult of Atargatis. There is mention of the fish taboo, and he refers to a lake near her temple where fish were raised.3 Severe punishments were threatened to those who did not properly revere and care for the sacred fish.4 As access to meat or fish is restricted, the predominant source of dietary protein was inevitably some form of legume or pulse.5
This was true for all social classes. The echoes of the tragêmata of a Greek symposion, attested by Athenaeus,6 or the street-food of a Roman town,7 are still to be found in the modern world. In supermarkets and delicatessens, alongside potato crisps and various types of nuts, may be found dried and salted chickpeas and broad beans. Pulses would undoubtedly have formed a central ingredient of the diet of both the rural and urban poor.8 A refusal to eat beans may have had a significant impact on one’s overall nutrition.
However, there were people who shunned broad beans. A bean taboo was frequently identified as one of the essential traits of Pythagoreans, along with physical characteristics such as untrimmed nails and flowing, unruly locks. An aversion to beans became a significant element of the stock caricature of this philosophical school.9 Lucian talks of the typical Pythagorean in two works.10
The roots of bean prohibition appear to have been in Egypt, certainly this is the inference that we can draw from Herodotus’ account.11 Given the biographical tradition that Pythagoras spent time in Egypt, some have supposed the regulation to have been transported to the Greek-speaking world by Pythagoras himself.12 However, if the practice did originate in Egypt, it seems more probable that it would have travelled by way of population migration or trade connections rather than through the actions of one individual in possession of nuggets of arcane wisdom. Also, one should not discount the possibility that a prejudice concerning bean usage may have existed over a geographically diverse area at the same time as, or even prior to the report by Herodotus. Burkert considers the possible influences of Orphism upon Pythagorean ideology.13 Pausanias relates the tale that Demeter (the goddess of agriculture) presented the Pheneatians (inhabitants of the city of Pheneos near Corinth) with a number of legumes, but specifically excluded the broad bean.14 Hence, the broad bean was one of the items of food that were regarded as unacceptable to initiates into the Eleusinian mysteries. This cult demanded a series of temporary fasts and abstinences. 15 Burkert cites other initiatory requirements for Greek mystery cults. They include dietary restrictions, the wearing (or avoidance) of particular items of clothing, and sexual tests and obligations. These appear to perform a purificatory function.16 Burkert considers the possibility of the widespread occurrence of similar cultic rituals among different sects.17
If Burkert is correct, the Pythagorean rules were not an innovation, but comparable to those in place in other mystery cults.18 They codified a pre-existing folk tradition. Burkert asserts that such practices supplied not only a means of binding together members of the group and excluding non-members, but were used to enforce control and to strengthen the position of the priestly leaders. If this model is correct, then the bean prohibition, whether based on fear and reverence of, or disgust for the legume, may be interpreted as a technique designed to strengthen systems of control and manipulation within the Pythagorean community, marking out the leader as a special individual, worthy of fealty.
It is perhaps worth considering the precise wording of the bean taboo as it has been transmitted. Empedocles and Callimachus, who were both cited by Aulus Gellius, used almost identical phrases for the maxim.19 The fragment of Callimachus reads as follows:
And withhold your hands from beans, a harmful food, I say, as Pythagoras ordered.20
Empedocles, named by Gellius as an adherent of Pythagoras, is quoted thus:
Wretches, utter wretches, withhold your hands from beans. 21
Ancient sources tended to divide into three camps on the matter of beans. The first saw the taboo as a technique that sought to facilitate the achievement of a state of purity. The next saw in the prohibition an allegorical message, a code designed to be tacitly understood to prevent other forms of behaviour. The third held the bean as a source of potential physiological and psychic disturbance.22 In the Pythagorean biographical tradition, Iamblichus discussed some of the reasons that Pythagoreans eliminated specified foods from their diet: because they had unfortunate physical effects (flatulence, a distended stomach, drowsiness), or were deemed in some way sacred.23
This refusal to engage with beans appears to have extended far beyond questions of diet and cookery. Iamblichus told of an attempt by the fourth-century bc Syracusan tyrant Dionysius to apprehend certain followers of Pythagoras. He despatched his general Eurymenes to effect a capture:
Therefore in Phalae, a rugged part of Tarentum, through which the Pythagoreans were scheduled to pass,Eurymenes insidiously concealed his troop; and when the unsuspecting Pythagoreans reached there about noon, the soldiers rushed upon them with shouts, after the manner of robbers.Disturbed and terrified at an attack so unexpected, at the superior number of their enemies, –the Pythagoreans amounting to no more than ten, – and being unarmed against regularly equipped soldiery, the Pythagoreans saw that they would inevitably be taken captive, so they decided that their only safety lay in flight, which they did not consider inadmissible to virtue. For they knew that according to right reason, fortitude is the art of avoiding as well as enduring. So they would have escaped, and their pursuit would have been given up by Eurymenes’ soldiers, who were heavily armed, had their flight not led them up against a field sown with beans, which were already flowering.
Unwilling to violate their principle not to touch beans, they stood still, and driven to desperation turned, and attacked their pursuers with stones and sticks, and whatever they found to hand, till they had wounded many, and slain some. But (numbers told), and all the Pythagoreans were slain by the spearmen, as none of them would suffer himself to be taken captive, preferring death, according to the Pythagorean teachings.
In this context, Iamblichus chose to use the word ‘touch’, rather than anything associated with eating.24
Diogenes Laertius offered up two possible justifications for the taboo. Firstly, the physical effects of flatulence and stomach upsets,25 later, that beans were one of a selection of foods that were taboo in order to achieve a state of ritual purity.26 Seeking to achieve clarification, he invoked Aristotle’s reasons for the prohibition. However, far from illuminating the problem, they only muddy the water. Aristotle suggested they resembled male genitals (the testicles), that they have ‘a harmful nature’, that they somehow have links with oligarchy and, in cryptic (and incomprehensible) summation, ‘they are like the nature of the whole’.27 It appears Aristotle had no clear notion as to why this dietary rule existed.28 His hypotheses attempted to cover all areas and do not sit particularly well together. The linking of beans with oligarchy seems to indicate that Aristotle believed the bean taboo was, for Pythagoreans, a symbolic rejection of conventional political systems (in which beans were used as ballots in elections). He seems unsure whether the hostility was directed towards the bean per se or at some other entity, of which the bean was symbolic embodiment.29
Plutarch seems to have inclined towards the conjecture that the Pytha-gorean imperative originated from Egypt.30 Cicero, however, thought the custom linked to the physical effects of the bean: flatulence has a disruptive effect upon sleep patterns and may be the source of neurological disturbance and hence unusual dreams. In this, he is in accord with Diogenes Laertius.31
In all probability, it would be unwise to suppose that the prohibition of beans had uniform characteristics across the Mediterranean world. Latin agricultural authors such as the elder Cato, Varro and Columella all related techniques of planting and harvesting the bean, which seems to imply that a taboo was not prevalent within their culture.32 Galen, while acknowledging the flatulence, nonetheless praised the bean as nutritious and versatile, extensively used.33 He notes that it was a regular feature of the diet of gladiators.34 He also claimed that bean flour could act as an exfoliant and was effective in removing dirt from the skin.35 He fails to mention any prohibition or taboo concerning the bean, and since he must have been aware of the custom, evidently felt it was of little importance or relevance (certainly from a medical viewpoint).
The elder Pliny was even more unstinting in his praise of this legume, drawing attention to its wide range of uses, including its addition to bread flour.36 He did address himself to the issue of the Pythagorean rule, associating it with potential somatic disorders, particularly insomnia.37 As with Aristotle, Pliny suggested other possible reasons, including the linking of beans with religious custom and its qualities as a talisman that could bring good fortune in the auction place.38 Reverence for, or avoidance of, the bean was present not just within the confines of an esoteric doctrine, but within folklore and popular superstition.
Although all these varied opinions are voiced, they do seem at one in suggesting that there existed reservations about the broad bean, both at the level of folk wisdom and within the more restricted environs of quasi-mystical religious and political groups. However, even here there was much disagreement. Aulus Gellius, whilst duly recording the opinions of Callimachus and Empedocles, asserts that Aristoxenus, a pupil of Aristotle, believed that, far from being excluded from the diet, beans were, in fact, a particular Pythagorean favourite.39 Given that this runs counter to the general consensus (at least according to the extant material), some doubt has been cast on this Aristoxenian explanation.40
In addition, Gellius suggests that the misunderstanding is etymological. He maintained that people had misinterpreted the Empedoclean line, and that kuamos (bean) was in fact a synonym for testicles.41 With this linguistic interpretation, the exhortation is to sexual, not dietary, abstinence. Plutarch also saw a connection with sex, attempting to link the flatulent qualities of beans with sexual desire.42 Such a view presumes that the Pythagorean precepts should be understood as symbolic and allegorical. Gellius’ interpretation of Empedocles seems compelling, and the modern critic Walter Burkert has posited that the word kuamos has other connotations that would tend to endorse this hypothesis.43
It could be argued that one of the principal functions of food prohibitions was to simplify diet.44 Foods that are viewed as ‘luxurious’ may be discarded by the individual or community committed to a spiritual existence.45 Learning to survive on basic foodstuffs could be an act of self-discipline and a rejection of the perceived frivolities of corporeal existence. However, this surely cannot apply to the broad bean, whose ubiquity and lowly status hardly made it a sybaritic delicacy. Rejection of the broad bean cannot have implied a rejection of luxury.46 Those who may have viewed the Pythagorean community as a hermetically sealed patrician clique would surely have had their worst fears confirmed by the rejection of a staple food of the impoverished majority.
It seems too simple to dismiss the precept as a marker of social identity that was chosen arbitrarily. It may have been used as a way of forging and main-taining social cohesion; a pivot around which to stabilize the group identity in the face of a hostile or uncomprehending wider world. Yet this may be only half of the story. The evidence points to greater symbolic weight attached to the broad bean by both Greeks and Romans (and other cultures, such as the Egyptians). The religious and cultural baggage surrounding this legume appears less apparent within Latin culture. Perhaps this is because we possess Latin texts that tend to assess the agricultural and nutritional value of the bean, rather than focusing upon its symbolic resonances. This in turn may be a Roman rejection of Greek practices, although this is unlikely. Clearly there existed a reverence for the potential supernatural qualities of the bean in Latin culture. The preponderance of material concerning the bean taboo in Greek texts may simply be an historical accident of survival. However it is not impossible that the imbalance between the two cultures concerning this particular legume may be explained by the way in which certain sections of ancient populations physically reacted to the broad bean.
Latin writers did investigate the mysteries of the taboo, but with an almost antiquarian interest. It was a problem upon which to exert the intellect and an enigma to be solved. Nevertheless, in certain contexts (mainly religious) a certain veneration surrounded the bean. This was not always manifested as avoidance; sometimes it was seen to act as a charm, or as an integral element of specific rituals and festivals, such as the Lemuria – when Romans exorcized ghosts and evil spirits from their homes (lemures are restless spirits). The spirits were propitiated with offerings of beans. It was certainly associated with death, and perhaps served as a marker not merely to separate and segregate social groups and individuals, as may have been the case with both the Pythagoreans and some mystery cults, but the boundaries between life and death. Beans may even have been viewed as a form of memento mori, a concrete reminder of human mortality. What both cultures appear to have shared was a sentiment that linked the bean with the souls of the dead. One of the reasons advanced by Plutarch (he offers up several) is that a bean prohibition may have been intimately linked with their use in sepulchral ritual.47 The Pythagorean belief in metempsychosis, the transmigration of souls, meant that if beans potentially contained life, then consuming them was as much a transgression for Pythagoreans as the ingestion of animal flesh. It may have, taken to its logical extreme, been assumed to have been equivalent to cannibalism. The bean was clearly held to possess a supernatural link with death and decay,and this ensured that it was treated with reverence and respect, or fearfully avoided (at least by some).
There may be another, and simpler, explanation for the association of the broad bean and death: beans might kill. Legumes are not innocuous: they contain a number of toxins.48 Their dangers may be minimized or eliminated by preparatory processes such as soaking or boiling,49 and it would seem likely, given the ubiquity and popularity of the broad bean in antiquity, that such stratagems were well known. Thus, some legumes have unpleasant, occasionally lethal side effects. Neolathyrism, for example, which may result in severe paralysis, is a possible consequence of eating vetch.50 Ingestion of the broad bean may give rise to the medical condition known as favism (in brief, hemolytic anaemia or jaundice provoked by eating fava beans if the subject is deficient in the G6PD enzyme).51 Favism is not a phenomenon that affects whole populations, merely those individuals lacking the enzyme (a hereditary condition). It affects some geographical areas more than others, not least Sicily and southern Italy,52 and parts of Greece and North Africa.53 The geographical spread is significant, and seems to indicate a split in the Graeco-Roman world.54 The phenomenon of favism in these areas gives rise to speculation that the Pythagorean bean taboo was a tacit acknowledgement of an actual condition suffered by Pythagoras or some of his adherents.55 The ban on consumption was a mechanism for survival by those whose life was seriously endangered by the broad bean.
The hypothesis is not unattractive. The prevalence of the enzyme deficiency amongst predominantly Greek-speaking populations may partially explain why the bean was never subject to much hostility or suspicion among Latin authors. The fact that favism has been detected in Egypt may be behind the Egyptian taboo on beans reported by Herodotus. However, the argument still does not entirely persuade. If the condition only affected certain people (and to differing degrees), how would one have been able to discern that it was the broad bean that was to blame for favistic symptoms? If many people would have been able to (and indeed did) eat broad beans on a regular basis with few ill effects, any condition arising from them would have been difficult to detect and isolate.56 It also seems odd that if the Pythagoreans were aware of such serious symptoms, they did not refer to the dangers directly, instead choosing to shroud their warnings in allusive and allegorical language. The only observed physical effects were the bean’s bloating and soporific qualities. There was no warning issued that bean consumption would perhaps result in death. It is not an explanation that is offered by later writers who would have been able to see the symptoms of favism for themselves. The obvious mystification experienced by later writers when attempting to justify the taboo makes it abundantly clear that death by broad bean was not an obvious way of explaining the taboo. Beans must have possessed a religious and cultural significance that transcended the medical facts.
If favism did exert an influence, it may have been at a subliminal level. The physiological effects of bean consumption (flatulence, bloating, disturbed sleep patterns) may have given warning of a more serious condition. Evidence for favism in antiquity may have been no more than anecdotal, or the remnants of folk wisdom, that have survived neither to us nor to the extant ancient authors. If favism manifested itself only sporadically, and only resulted in death in a small percentage of cases, it may have been viewed as a selective phenomenon, resulting from divine will.57 If this is the case, it may provide an explanation for the manner in which they were regarded by ancient peoples, and the religious atmosphere surrounding them, although surely they cannot have been regarded with greater apprehension than plants that were genuinely and more consistently toxic to man.
Ultimately, it may be impossible to discern a coherent explanation for this form of dietary restriction. Beans’ ambiguous status in Greek and Roman culture and their associations with death marked them out as an object of avoidance or as a hallowed element of religious ritual. Their principal signi-ficance seems to have been that they were a marker of Pythagorean identity, a motif immediately associated with this particular philosophical school. The vagaries of its origins elicited a number of responses in antiquity, some convincing, some less so. They all contribute to the bean’s aura of mystery.
(1) Hooke (1961), 535; Plut. De Is.. et Os. 353C–D. Hdt. II.72.
(2) See Burkert (1983), 204–207; Gilhus (2006), 93.
(3) Lucian Syr. D. 45. There is also a reference in Xenophon to sacred fish, revered by the Syrians in the Chalus river; Xen. An. 1.4.9.
(4) Plut. De superst. 170D.
(5) Columella Rust. II. vii; Garnsey (1998), 243.
(6) Ath. Deip. II 54f; IV 138a (quoting Pl. Resp. 372c); IV, 139a.
(7) Mart. Epi. 1.103.
(8) Garnsey (1998), 219.
(9) Burkert (1972), 183.
(10) Lucian Somn.; Vit. auct.
(11) Hdt. II 37; Plut. Quaest. conviv. VIII.8.279; Gorman (1979), 22.
(12) Iambl. VP 19; Diog. Laert. Pythag. 3–4.
(13) For the possible in fluence so fOr phismupon Pythagorean ideology,see Burkert(1972), 125–133.
(14) Pausanias. 8.15.3; Flint-Hamilton (1999), 379.
(15) Burkert (1972), 177; Porphyry Abst. 4. 16: ‘[to abstain from] fish and beans and pomegranates and apples, and one who has contact with the marriage bed is equally polluted with those who have died’. Also Grmek (1983), 214. Similar restrictions were in place for another festival of Demeter, the Haloa; 358–363.
(16) Burkert (1972), 177–178.
(17) Burkert (1972), 178.
(18) See Burkert (1985), 276–304, in particular Eleusis; 285–290. Parker (1983); 358–363.
(19) Gell. NA. IV xi, 2; 9.
(20) Fr. 128, Sch; Gell. NA. IV xi, 2
(21) Fr. 141, Diehls; Gell. NA. IV xi, 9.
(22) Iambl. VP 24.106; Diog. Laert. Pythag. 8.24; Cic. Div. I. xxix. 62–63
(23) Iambl. VP 24.106 See Clark (1989), 24, note 61.
(24) Iambl. VP 31.191.
(25) Diog. Laert. Pythag. 8.24.
(26) Diog. Laert. Pythag. 8.33–34.
(27) Diog. Laert. Pythag. 8.34.
(28) See Burkert (1972), 183–184.
(29) For Aristotle on Pythagoreanism, see Philip (1963a), 251–265; (1963b), 185–198.
(30) Plut. Quaest. conviv. VIII.8.729. It seems that Plutarch was of the opinion that there may have existed other taboos concerning the bean, beyond its Egyptian influence, as elsewhere he asserts that abstention from legumes is a generic characteristic of all those occupying holy office; Plut. Quaest. Rom. 95.
(31) Cic. Div. I. xxix. 62–63; Diog. Laert. Pythag 8.24. Kingsley (1995), 285.
(32) Cato Agr. XXXV.1; XXXVI.2; Varro Rust. XXXII.2; Collumella Rust. II.vii.
(33) Dioscor. De mat. Med. 2.127, who also commented upon its impact upon the dreaming process.
(34) Gal. De al. fac. 6.529 K.
(35) Gal. De al. fac. 6.530 K. For beans and pulses employed as beauty aids in antiquity, see Green (1979), 381–392.
(36) Plin. HN XVIII.xxx.117.
(37) Plin. HN XVIII.xxx.118.
(38) Plin. HN XVIII.xxx.119.
(39) Gell. NA. IV.ii.4–5.
(40) I am grateful to Dr Peter van Nuffelen for pointing out the possible anti-Pythagorean stance of Aristoxenus. See Burkert (1972), 106–108 for Aristoxenus on Pythagoreanism.
(41) The association is derived from the verb kuein, ‘to conceive’, or, ‘to impregnate’
(42) Plut. Quaest. Rom. 95.
(43) Burkert (1972), 176.
(44) Diog. Laert. Pythag. 8.13.
(45) Wilkins and Hill (2006), 195; 204–207 for advocates of dietary restriction for the philosopher: for example, Musonius Rufus, Seneca, Plato.
(46) If anything, it seems to demonstrate a spurning of the food of the penurious peasantry.
(47) Plut. Quaest. Rom. 95. The elder Pliny notes a similar attitude: ‘Varro et ob haec flaminem ea non vesci tradit et quoniam in flore eius litterae lugubres reperiantur’: ‘Varro relates that it is both for this reason that the priest does not eat it and because in its flower are discovered letters of mourning’ (Plin. NH. XVIII.xxx.119).
(49) Garnsey (1999), 220.
(48) Flint-Hamilton (1999), 374; Garnsey (1999), 219; Grmek (1983), 239; Parker (1983), 365. Delwiche (1978), 566.
(50) Flint-Hamilton (1999), 374; Garnsey (1999), 219; Grmek (1983), 239; Parker (1983),365.
(51) Flint-Hamilton (1999), 374.
(52) Parker (1983), 365.
(53) Grmek (1983), 229; 231; 240.
(54) Grmek (1983), 231.
(55) Grmek (1983), 239.
(56) Grmek (1983), 214.
(57) The wrath of the gods directed at those who had offended them or who had failed to perform the required propitiatory rites.