From the book
Empedocles’ Complete Fragments, Volume I
Empedocles of Acragas · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordKyamos is a bean; the printed plural genitive belongs to the command to keep one's hands away.
- In EmpedoclesB141 sharply addresses its audience as wretched, doubly emphasizing the reproach before telling them to keep their hands from beans.
- In this editionThe whole surviving line is a command without a supplied reason.
- A place to readAn emphatic rebuke introduces the command to keep hands from beans.
Meaning
Kyamos is a bean; the printed plural genitive belongs to the command to keep one's hands away. The surviving verse names no botanical variety. “Bean taboo” is a conventional description of the prohibition, not a separate term found in it.
Use in the book
B141 sharply addresses its audience as wretched, doubly emphasizing the reproach before telling them to keep their hands from beans. The force of the command is clear, but its reason is absent. It cannot be securely explained from this line through digestion, sexual symbolism, political voting, or the beans' supposed relation to the dead.
The introduction places the prohibition in a Pythagorean context. That is a historical comparison made by the modern discussion, not a statement by the verse that Pythagoras issued this rule or that Empedocles studied under him. The book itself warns against overconfident master-and-pupil biographies. The useful connection to the other food fragments is narrower: abstention extends beyond killing and eating animals to at least one named plant food, so the ethical regimen cannot be summarized as a simple permission to eat anything vegetarian.
Places to read
- B 141An emphatic rebuke introduces the command to keep hands from beans.
- Introduction I (editorial discussion)The introduction treats the bean prohibition as evidence of a Pythagorean connection while questioning direct discipleship.
Translation in this edition
The whole surviving line is a command without a supplied reason. Any confident symbolic or medical explanation would require evidence not printed in this book.