‘The modern diet is the result of many years’ discovery. What fairer or more fitting name can be given to such research and discovery than that of medicine, which was founded for the health, preservation and nourishment of man and to rid him of that diet which caused pain, sickness and death?’

The author of Tradition in Medicine, written about 400BC (Chadwick and Mann, 1950).

As my quotation shows, ancient medical writers were well aware of the relationship between food and health, and Garnsey makes good use of them in this interesting book. But although the relationship of food and health figures largely in his book, he discusses many other aspects of food in Greek, Roman and Jewish life. His topics include the distribution of vines and olives, the types of cereals and pulses grown, bread and other cereal products, fish and meat. He considers the production, distribution, private and public importation of food, its apportionment to the different sexes, classes and age-groups, its symbolism and its social functions in symposia and civic banquets. And he discusses the food taboos of the whole Jewish people and of eccentric sects among the Greeks and Romans. A very interesting group of chapters is concerned with famines and food shortages (the subject of an excellent earlier book by Garnsey, 1989), the pathological effects of famine foods, acute and chronic malnutrition and it tell-tale effects on skull and teeth, together with evidence of specific deficiency diseases. Peripheral peoples (Celts, Germans, Scythians) are not neglected, and Garnsey considers the dietary aspects of nostalgia for ‘the good old days’.

Some of Garnsey’s points could usefully be amplified. He notes that pulses can supplement cereals as nutrients, but it is worth adding that when cereals and pulses are fed to young rats in different ratios, a fifty-fifty combination gives the best protein balance (Russell, 1967). And it is worth here telling the story of Daniel avoiding non-kosher meat by persuading the Babylonian eunuch catering for him and fellow-Jews to give them pulses instead, despite the official’s fears that he would be accused of undernourishing them: ‘and at the end of ten days their countenances appeared fairer and fatter in flesh than all the children which did eat the portion of the king’s meat’ (Daniel, 1.8-16).

An evidence for malnutrition not considered by Garnsey is the high mortality in some ancient epidemics and pandemics, which was also no doubt accentuated by a lack of animal fats in these Mediterranean peoples. And among indicators of starvation episodes he has omitted to include Harris’s lines of arrested growth in the long bones, which have been much used in studies of palaeopathology (Wells, 1964).

Some of Garnsey's observations have interesting parallels from other societies. He notes the many kinds of bread mentioned by Athenaeus, including loaves with distinctive shapes: one is reminded here of the enormous diversity of bread shapes described by Drower (1956) in the many religious cults of the Near and Middle East. Garnsey notes that poorer people could only afford badly sieved flour with ‘a high phytate content, and the higher the phytate content, the more deprived of vital minerals the body was likely to be’ (p.21). This recalls the even more drastic class distinction in medieval Europe, where ‘the clean grain was reserved for nobles and clergy, the ergotized grain left for the peasants’ (Russell and Russell, 1978)!

Garnsey discusses at length the male chauvinism of the Greeks, including the underfeeding of girl children. Women had, of course, a much higher status in effect in Italy, but it is worth noting that, in Trajan’s admirable public assistance for poor children, the boys got sixteen sesterces a month, the girls twelve (Garzetti, 1976). After discussing the Jewish food taboos, Garnsey notes that the universalism of the Christians ‘militated against the prescription of a distinct dietary code’ (p.95). But he omits to mention Peter’s vision (Acts, 10.10-17), in which a great sheet was let down to earth ‘wherein were all manner of four-footed beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and creeping things, and fowls of the air’, and a voice, brushing aside his Jewish objections, bade him ‘kill and eat’. This is of course the scriptural passage authorising, even commanding, Christians to have no food taboos at all.

Except for the pathological effects of famine foods, Garnsey does not discuss food poisoning. Some upper class Romans (including Caesar) suffered from bulimia, a disease not mentioned by Garnsey, and I have suggested that this may have been due to zinc deficiency promoted by lead poisoning. ‘Though the Romans knew of the dangers of poisoning by the formation of white lead oxide, they continued to make and use lead pipes in their water supply. They also ate and drank out of wares of lead or pewter (lead-tin alloy), and used lead acetate (‘sugar of lead’) as a sweetener in wine; high levels of lead have been found in bones from the more Romanized sites of Roman Britain’ (Russell, 1988).

Garnsey discusses the taboo on beans maintained by Pythagoras, but in a brief footnote considers the evidence for his favism ‘suggestive, but not conclusive’ (p.88). This certainly deserves further consideration. ‘The enzyme glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase is important in the reactions that provide energy for erythrocytes. Its production is controlled by a single sex-linked gene. Certain alleles of this gene cause more or less deficient production of the enzyme in the absence of the normal allele. The deficiency leads to anaemia in the presence of certain infections or drugs. One allele is associated with the disease favism: this means that eating the broad bean Vicia faba or inhaling its pollen produces anaemia, which may be fatal in twenty-four hours. Favism is nevertheless widespread in the Mediterranean, almost certainly because the (female) heterozygote is protected from one or another form of malaria. Malaria was at least as prevalent in the Mediterranean in ancient times, and favism is suspected in ancient Egypt, whose priests also avoided beans’ (Russell and Russell, 1983). Diogenes Laertius gives several alternative versions of the death of Pythagoras (8.39-40). In two of these traditions, he was being pursued by enemies (Syracusans or men of Croton), and let them catch up and kill him sooner than cross a bean-field (presumably in flower). These traditions seem to me very strong evidence for his favism. ‘The taboo begun by Pythagoras (or Egyptian priestly sufferers from favism) would be maintained by his (or their) legendary prestige, and reinforced by any later philosophers who carried the allele (Russell and Russell, 1983).

There is one curious blind spot in Garnsey’s book: ‘In antiquity men lived longer than women. This cannot be proved. But I am sure that this is what we would find, if the data were adequate to permit a demographic investigation of Graeco-Roman ancient societies’ (p.100). There is nothing wrong with his conclusion, but in fact there is plenty of good evidence for it (Acsadi and Nemeskeri, 1970). Szilagyi computed means for age at death, of the two sexes separately, from 24,848 epitaphs collected from 48 cities and regions of the Roman Empire. Only in 7 of the 88 series (2092 epitaphs) did men die younger than women; in one the ages were equal, and in 40 women died younger than men. At Intercisa and Brigetio in the province of Pannonia, complete life tables have been established for the two sexes separately. Life expectancy was 7 years higher for men than for women at birth, and ten years higher between the ages of 1 and 20: only if they survived beyond 37 did women begin to have higher life expectancies.

I would not have added all these details if I had not found the book extremely stimulating, and it is full of interesting facts. Although it is not concerned with either eugenics or birth control as such, it is certainly likely to be of interest to members of this Institute, and to a wide public with a taste for social biology. The few Greek or Latin germs are always explained, and the book is clearly meant to be popular. There is an excellent bibliography. The word ‘population’ does not occur in Garnsey’s index, but this aspect of ancient food supply and consumption has been amply discussed in a book recently available to members of the Institute (Russell and Russell, 1999).

W M S Russell

References:

Acsadi, Gy. and Nenieskeri, J., History of Human Life Span and Mortality, (transl. Balas, K.) Akademiai Kiado, Budapest, 1970.

Chadwick, J. and Mann, W.N. (transl.), The Medical Works of Hippocrates, Blackwell, Oxford, 1950.

Drower, E.S., Water into Wine: a Study of Ritual Idiom in the Middle East, Murray, London, 1956.

Garnsey, P., Famine and Food Supply in the Graeco-Roman World: Responses to Risk and Crisis, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989.

Garzetti,A., From Tiberius to the Antonines: a History of the Roman Empire, AD 14-192, (transl. Foster, J.R.), Methuen, London, 1976.

Russell, C. and Russell, W.M.S., Population Crises and Population Cycles, Galton Institute, London, 1999.

Russell, W.M.S., Man, Nature and History, Aldus, London, 1967.

Russell, W.M.S., The Social Biology of Zinc, Social Biology and Human Affairs, 53, 21—38, 1988.

Russell, W.M.S. and Russell, C., The Social Biology of Werewolves, in: Porter, J.R. and Russell, W.M.S. (eds.), Animals in Folklore, Brewer, Ipswich and Cambridge, 143-182 and 260-269, 1978.

Russell, W.M.S. and Russell, C., Evolutionary and Social Aspects of Disease, Eco1ogy of Disease, 2, 95-106, 1983.

Wells, C., Bones, Bodies and Disease, Thames and Hudson, London, 1964.