Taste or Taboo: Dietary Choices in Antiquity

This book explores dictary restriction in Graeco-Roman antiquity and maintains that food choice, whether for reasons of taste or to propitiate religious or cultural taboos, was integrally linked to the formation and perception of cultural, political and religious identities. This is paralleled by the way social and ethnic groups use indigenous cuisines and particular modes of food consumption as social markers to define and negotiate notions of identity, particularly in periods of social transition, migration and cultural integration. Michael Beer looks at all these questions through the literature of the Classical, Hellenistic and Roman periods. He focuses on the first and second centuries AD, a time rich in both cultural interaction and tension, but, owing to the particular cultural and philosophical strands that were current, the material will in fact range from the Homeric texts to Porphyry. These tensions throw into sharp relief the problems of defining the nature and limits of group and individual identity within a sprawling ethnic melting pot. The book examines such phenomena as vegetarianism, the taboos and anxieties surrounding the bean, the ambiguous status of fish, the dietary legislation of the Jews and the restrictions that were placed upon the consumption of alcohol. These particular instances serve as examples of dictary flash points, when differing ideologies act as potent illustrations of the undercurrents of ethnic, racial and cultural tensions in the ancient world.

Michael Beer received a doctorate for his researches on this topic from Exeter University. This is his first book. He lives and teaches in Exeter.