Plutarch's Romane Questions · Plutarch
95.
_Why doth the law forbid them that are to live chaste, the eating of pulse?_ AS touching beanes, is it not in respect of those very reasons for which it is said: That the Pythagoreans counted them abominable? And as for the richling and rich pease, whereof the one in Greeke is called λάθυρος and the other ἐρεβινθος which words seeme to be derived of _Erebus_, that signifieth the darknesse of hell, and of _Lethe_, which is as much as oblivion, and one besides of the rivers infernall, it carieth some reason that they should be abhorred therfore. Or it may be, for that the solemne suppers and bankets at funerals for the dead, were usually served with pulse above all other viands. Or rather, for that those who are desirous to be chaste, and to live an holy life, ought to keepe their bodies pure and slender; but so it is that pulse be flateous and windy, breeding superfluous excrements in the body, which had need of great purging and evacuation. Or lastly, because they pricke and provoke the fleshly lust, for that they be full of ventosities.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.