Among the dietary restrictions associated with early Greek philosophy, the Pythagorean prohibition against eating beans was one of the most distinctive. While Pythagoras of Samos is widely remembered for establishing an avoidance of animal flesh, ancient sources record that he enforced an equally strict ban on the fava bean. This injunction applied to his inner circle of followers and generated a complex body of mystical, physiological, and political interpretations across antiquity.
To understand the bean taboo, it is necessary to consider the broader context of Pythagorean thought. Born on Samos in the sixth century BC, Pythagoras absorbed theological and mathematical concepts across the Mediterranean world, including the doctrine of metempsychosis, or the transmigration of souls. This belief held that the human soul is immortal and reborn after death into new bodies, whether human, animal, or plant. In this framework, all living beings share a kinship, and killing an animal is equivalent to taking the life of a fellow creature. Pythagoras sought to preserve psychic purity through strict ascetic renunciation, which included abstaining from foods that might cloud the intellect, disrupt the soul, or incur guilt.
The rejection of the broad bean, or Vicia faba, stems partly from its role in ancient Egyptian ritual. During his extensive studies in Egypt, Pythagoras observed the elaborate purification practices of the temple priesthoods. As recorded by Herodotus, Egyptian priests strictly avoided beans, an avoidance attributed in part to the belief that the plant generated bodily impurities and flatulence that would compromise the dignity of religious rites. The Egyptian term for bean, iwryt, also bore a linguistic resemblance to iwr, the word meaning to conceive or generate. This connection placed the legume at the very center of concepts of generation and life.
Beyond priestly dignity, the Pythagorean school developed several biological and mystical theories concerning the origin of beans. Ancient writers noted a Pythagorean belief that beans arose from the same putrefactive matter that gave rise to human life. Pliny reported the conviction that the souls of the dead inhabited the bean. Later writers, such as Porphyry, documented esoteric experiments where beans were buried in earth or dung for extended periods, after which they were said to emerge resembling human forms or reproductive organs. Porphyry also recorded the belief that a damaged bean exposed to sunlight gave off the scent of human semen or blood.
The scholar Marcel Detienne noted that the structure of the plant reinforced these associations. The stem of the fava bean is hollow and lacks internal nodes, leading Pythagoreans to view it as a continuous conduit connecting the subterranean realm of Hades with the world of the living. According to Pythagorean Sacred Speeches, bean stalks functioned as a ladder for souls returning upward from the underworld. Because beans were so intimately linked with human souls and physical generation, consuming them was treated as an act of violence against human essence. One Pythagorean fragment warned that eating beans was equivalent to consuming the heads of one’s own parents.
Other explanations preserved from antiquity present more practical or political motivations. The bean was commonly used across Greek city-states as a voting token in the selection of magistrates; consequently, an injunction against handling or eating beans served as an allegorical command to abstain from civic politics. Another dimension involves the physical toxicity of the plant itself. The hereditary condition known as favism causes acute hemolytic anemia in susceptible Mediterranean populations when they ingest broad beans or inhale pollen from the flowering plant. Finally, ancient writers noted that the smell of cooking was believed to ascend directly to the divine realm, and beans were viewed with disdain because their odor was likened to dung.
While ordinary Greeks, laborers, and even notable figures enjoyed beans as an everyday staple, the followers of Pythagoras maintained the prohibition as an essential component of their pursuit of spiritual refinement. By rejecting the bean alongside the flesh of sacrificed animals, the Pythagorean community sought to separate itself entirely from bloodshed, putrefaction, and the physical constraints of mortal existence.
Bibliographic Information
- Title: Vegetarianism: A History
- Subtitle: A History
- Author: Colin Spencer
- Publisher: Four Walls Eight Windows (New York/London)
- Publication Year: 2002 (First Four Walls Eight Windows printing; originally published as The Heretic’s Feast by Fourth Estate, London, 1993; revised and published as Vegetarianism by Grub Street, London, 2000)
- Edition: Second Edition (Revised and updated)
- ISBN: 1-56858-238-2 (hc.)
- Historical Period Covered: Prehistory (Miocene epoch, 24 million years ago) to the early 21st century (circa 2002)
- Main Subject Areas: History of Vegetarianism, Evolutionary Anthropology, Classical Philosophy, Comparative Religion, Christian Heresy and Sectarianism, History of Science and Medicine, Social Reform Movements, Environmental and Animal Rights History.
(Chapter 2)