Pythagoros and the bean

Contemporary Review, Oct, 1993 by Kate Garnons Williams

Another purely practical consideration that may have weighed with Pythagoras when he banned the bean from his community's diet concerned the widely-held belief among the Greeks that the broad bean was an aphrodisiac. Given that the Brotherhood embraced both men and women, every sensible precaution needed to be taken to preserve amity and order: chastity and silence both made good sense; nothing should be allowed to discourage either.

For a more unexpected explanation of the prohibition, we must return to Aristotle, the fount of so much knowledge, philosophical as well as scientific. He explains it, somewhat surprisingly, in terms of politics. , Pythagoras, he argues, in forbidding his followers to associate with the bean, was in fact forbidding them to participate in the democratic process of voting as it was practised in many Greek cities. Approval or disapproval of a candidate for public office was registered by the voter, depending on whether he placed a dark or a light coloured broad bean in a large urn. Pythagoras's rejection of the democratic process, if that is what it was, was all of a piece with the exclusivity he enjoined on the Brotherhood. Aristotle probably got it right.

One final, if less convincing, interpretation of Pythagoras's embargo on beans has to do with the Greek practice of consulting oracles for advice and guidance. Since 'paging the Oracle' at Delphi and the other shrines of Apollo, the god of prophecy, was an expensive and time-consuming business, people often preferred to use cheaper and more readily-available options. Among these latter were 'bean oracles', to use which you paid a fee to draw from a jar, lucky-dip fashion, a single bean on which was inscribed a sign. For a translation of the sign, you could refer to a ready-reckoner, usually on display in a public place, to discover there the sort of advice you can today pick up in any newspaper horoscope: basically, variants of 'Go ahead' or 'Wait and see'. It's just possible that Pythagoras was issuing a health warning against relying overmuch on the gods to make the important decisions, when he voted against the bean. But this interpretation is unlikely in view of his known reverence for the god Apollo.

Whatever the true explanation for Pythagoras's fixation about the broad bean, something of his attitude towards it persisted well into Roman times, long after his Brotherhood was dispersed and many other of his theories were discredited. The Romans even added refinements to the taboo: the black spot, so often visible on the bean's pale skin, became for them an omen of death, so the bean itself became associated with bad luck.

Sceptical though we too may remain about much of Pythagoras's philosophy, perhaps he was on to something when he banished Vicia Fava from his diet -- whatever his motive might have been. He did, it must be remembered, live to the age of 80. Not bad going for an anicent Greek; though bad news, maybe, for modern consumers of the broad bean.