Christian fish-eaters
Many people wear a stylised fish as a symbol of their Christian faith - you may have seen them, or a fish as a bumper sticker or in the back window of a car or even in a shop window. Fewer people understand the reason, which was that the Greek word for "fish" - "ICHTHUS" - was an anagram for a statement of Christian faith. It worked like this:
| I | Iesous | Jesus |
| CH | Christos | Messiah or Anointed One |
| TH | Theos | God |
| U | Huios | Son |
| S | Soter | Saviour |
As a symbol for the new religion it was both meaningful and it avoided the negative connotations of a cross, an instrument of execution. It may also have been a common element of Christian diet - at least in Rome!
Leonard Rutgers and his team has been working in the catacombs, in particular in the Catacomb of St Callistus on the Appian Way. According to popular legend, Christians took refuge in the catacombs in order to escape persecution. While some Christians may well have done so, the catacombs were actually vast cemeteries, built underground in order to cope with the problem of lack of space above ground in which to buy Rome's burgeoning population. As a result it was usually the poor who were buried in these narrow maze-like corridors, as the rich could still afford to buy land and build tombs above ground, where their ruined monuments line the Appian Way.
Over the last couple of years Rutgers and his team have analysed twenty-two skeletons from this catacomb, half of them from the stacks of loculi or graves, one above the other in the walls of the passage-ways, and half from cubicula or burial chambers which could hold up to 50 graves. Unfortunately the volcanic soil in which the graves were dug was somewhat acid, so the bones were in a poor state of preservation and it was not always possible to tell the age or even the sex of the body being studied. However the team were able to state that one of the bodies was that of a young baby, probably still being breast-fed, while another was of an old man well into his eighties.
The first surprise was that while the archaeologists had thought that the Catacomb of St Callistus dated to the 3rd-5th centuries AD, some of the skeletons were carbon-14 dated to the second century AD. The second surprise came from an analysis of collagen recovered from the bones - usually from the finger or toe bones. This was analysed for its carbon and nitroget levels, which are a good guide to diet. The surprise came in the discovery that all the bones showed similar levels of these elements, indicating that the people all ate much the same diet.
That diet was fresh-water fish! Of course, lots of people eat fish, including fresh water fish, but analysis of collagen from other skeletons elsewhere in Italy or in the rest of the Mediterranean does not have such high levels of nitrogen allied with low levels of carbon. The average diet of these catacomb burials was 30% fish, varying between 18% and 43%. Of course the diet also included other food sources - fruit and vegetables, cereals and other meats - but 30% fish is still quite a high proportion.
We know that sea fish was considered a luxury food item in ancient Greece and nothing in Roman cook books would lead us to think that the situation was different in Italy. Sea food, from fish to eels and shell-fish, were popular but expensive items on the menu. Archaeologists have found jars containing salt fish and fish sauce from the Atlantic, indicating that fish were a high-priced commodity worth processing and transporting for long distances.
However there may be a clue in the Edict on Prices issued by the persecuting emperor Diocletian in AD 301, in which he attempted to fix the prices of various commodities in the Roman markets. Like all attempts at controlling inflation by fiat, the Edict was a failure, but it is interesting as a guide to the prices and relative values of various commodities at the start of the 4th century AD. According to the Edit, the price of fresh water fish was set at half to a third the price of comparable sea fish and it would seem that this was deliberately done in order to make it possible for the poor to eat fish.
In addition it is quite likely that fish from the Tiber were free to anyone with a hook and line, which may also explain its popularity with the poorer classes of society.
There is, however, another possibility. The custom developed - and still persists among Roman Catholics - of avoiding meat on a Friday. This was thought to somehow honour the crucifixion of Christ. However fish was not considered "meat", so you could eat fish on this "fast day" without breaking the fast. The early Christian document called Didache urges its readers to fast twice in the week.
But let not your fasts be with the hypocrites (the Jews), for they fast on the second and fifth day of the week. Rather, fast on the fourth day and the Preparation (Friday).
If, at this early period, Christians fasted two days in the week, that is almost 30% of the time - and if, like their later co-religionists, they felt that fish was exempt from the restriction, then that would account for the average of 30% of fish in the diet. Of course, I can't prove that, but as explanations go it seems to meet all the criteria: it is supported by documentary evidence and it fits the facts discovered by scientific analysis.
© Kendall K. Down 2009
