This volume, an expansion of the author's doctoral thesis, explores the ways in which restrictions and taboos relating to food and drink in the Graeco-Roman world helped the ancients construct their own identities and those of others. The approach is most welcome, as recent scholarship has tended to focus on the communal aspects of eating and drinking at the expense of the more restrictive or controversial aspects of the ancient diet. Beer's approach, therefore, is not only fresh but also allows him to examine a wide range of Greek and Latin literary sources.

Ch. 1 reviews the most significant elements of the ancient Mediterranean diet. Here the reader will find an expanded treatment of that found in Garnsey's Food and Society in Classical Antiquity, as everything from wheat and barley to olives, grapes, meat and fish receive attention. Amid this framework, B. offers two points that are especially important in relation to identity: food restrictions in antiquity were not always voluntary or ideologically based, since a majority of the population lived in substantial want; and, food and drink were not always easy to categorize as patrician or plebeian because context and methods of preparation played a significant rôle.

Vegetarianism, the focus of ch. 2, proves a difficult topic, largely because the author's main focus, Pythagoras, remains hard to know. Still, the chapter is informative, with B. offering an insightful precis of ancient attitudes towards animals and meat before turning to Pythagoreanism, which he characterizes as neither monolithically vegetarian nor widespread in its appeal. To be sure, we are left to wonder why one would have chosen a Pythagorean diet in the first place if, as B. suggests, social isolation and perhaps being looked upon as Eastern or foreign were the potential consequences of choosing such an identity.

Chs 3 and 4 treat beans and fish, respectively, and reveal much about taboo and identity. B. characterizes beans as having an ‘aura of mystery’ based on factors such as their Pythagorean (and possibly Eastern) origins, as well as their association with flatulence and bad dreams. Furthermore, the Greeks were generally more suspicious of the bean than the Romans. Underlying all of this is the fact that, if not prepared properly, beans could be fatal. On the other hand, concerns about fish were not based so much on health as on cultural anxieties about wealth and status. While fish was marginal to the ancient diet, it was hugely symbolic in the sources as a foodstuff most closely associated with growing wealth and the anxieties that accompanied this reality. One genre that B. could have exploited more fully in this regard is Roman satire. Juvenal's fourth satire, on the big fish presented to the emperor Domitian, comes immediately to mind.

Turning from specific foodstuffs, B. next considers restriction and taboo in the context of the dietary laws of the Jews of the Diaspora, with Philo as the main source. While Philo poses problems, B. nevertheless makes it clear that Jewish dietary restrictions, which the Gentiles tended to see only in terms of denial, were an effective means of reinforcing religious and cultural selfhood. Even so, B. argues that the Jews were an enigma when it came to food, although they remained vital participants in the economic life of antiquity.

The theme of restriction continues in the succeeding chapters, with a focus on alcohol (wine), the Spartan diet, and sumptuary laws. Concerning wine, B. naturally focuses on the Greek symposium and Roman convivium, where control was achieved through self-regulation, and not from above. Missing here is a discussion of collegia, whose surviving charters add much to the theme of self-regulation and drinking among the lower orders. B.'s treatment of the Spartan syssitia and Roman sumptuary laws, two of the most notorious examples of restrictions on food and drink, is well conceived and highlights, especially in the case of sumptuary laws, Rome's continuing difficulty in trying to legislate behaviour. The final chapter on gluttony and abstinence is strong on the former topic, owing to B.'s treatment of various Roman emperors. The theme of abstinence is not nearly as fully developed, however, and could have benefited from a more systematic examination of Christian sources on this topic.

B. writes clearly (typos noted on pp. 15, 34, 35, 87) and he provides a useful bibliography. By sharpening our appreciation of the cultural complexity of food and drink, this slim volume provides a clear lens through which to examine the larger issues of identity and its formation in the ancient Mediterranean world.