The Magical Fruit? Ritual Aspects of Broad Beans in the Roman World

Abstract

The bean holds a rather unique place among food plants in the ancient world. While the Mediterranean triad of grains, grapes, and olives has special economic and culinary significance, all of those three most important crops lack the same breadth of ritual significance as Vicia faba, the fava or broad bean. Regarded in antiquity as a cheap and hearty peasant fare, fava beans also were the subject of a number of taboos and were an element in several rituals of an especially funereal nature: Pythagoras famously prohibited the consumption of beans, the Roman flamen Dialis similarly was not allowed to consume or be near them, and Ovid describes magically-charged rites during the Lemuria and the Feralia festivals which involve beans. The avoidance of fava beans and their association with the dead has been attributed by some scholars to the condition known as favism, a severe reaction to the food which is more common around the Mediterranean than anywhere else, though a solely medical explanation is not an entirely satisfactory justification for the range of religious and philosophical attitudes towards fava beans. More likely, a combination of favism, certain features of the plant, and the ideas which over time attached to those features, is what led to the popularity of fava beans for funerary rites. Just how popular they were in actual practice, outside of literary scenes such as those from Ovid’s Fasti, may be evident from archaeobotanical finds from grave sites around Italy — indeed, remains of beans as burnt offerings and as a part of funeral meals have been found at such sites. However, plant preservation and recovery is often a matter of chance: so, to what degree can archaeobotanical evidence be used to understand historical ritual practices? The aim of this work is to investigate this question, and the possible reasons for the customs surrounding broad beans in the Roman world.