Lupins in the history
Introduction by Rosa Bianca Gallo

Already known by Egyptian and pre-Incan populations, seeds of various species of lupins have been used as a food for over 3000 years around the Mediterranean and for as much as 6000 years on the Andes, but they have never been accorded the same status as soy beans or dry peas and other pulse crops. A better fortune they gain during the Ancient Roman Empire. In fact lupins were yet known to Roman agriculturalists to contribute to the fertility of soils (only in the late eighteenth century lupins were introduced into northern Europe as a means of improving soil quality). Wild Lupins have always grown along the coasts of the Mediterranean sea, especially the variety known as Lupinus Albus = White Lupin.

First crop of the legume has been traced back to 4,000 years ago. Lupins have the particularity to grow even in acidic soils. Apparently ancient Greeks and Romans knew this plant very well, in fact lupines are even mentioned in some works of Horace and Hippocrates.

We can say that at Romans time lupin was considered the food of gladiators, due to its high protein value it was the best nutrient for the warriors muscles.

Lupinus, Lupin(e), is a genus of flowering plants in the legume family named Fabaceae.

This genus includes over 200 species.

GLADIATORS ATE A VEGETARIAN DIET
AND DRANK ASHES AS CALCIUM SUPPLEMENT

Source: Lsch S, Moghaddam N, Grossschmidt K, Risser DU, Kanz F. Stable: Isotope and trace element studies on gladiators and contemporary Romans from Ephesus (Turkey, 2nd and 3rd ct. AD) - Implications for differences in diet.PLOS One.2014.

Most gladiators were slaves, prisoners of war, or condemned legal offenders. Because of this, anthropologists believe gladiators consisted of men from almost every social class of Roman society.
In 1993, a cemetery for gladiators was discovered in Ephesus, Turkey, a former capital of the Ancient Roman province of Asia. Researchers used spectroscopy light analysis for the bones of the relics and discovered that gladiators mostly ate a vegetarian diet. The researchers also highlighted a significant difference between gladiators and the normal population. The amount of strontium measured in their bones suggests an ash drink may have indeed been part of the gladiators diets.

Recipes
Lomentum: lupins soaked in cold water and mixed with honey. Alcyoneus (emollient after bath cream): Barley, lentils, turnips, lupine, iris bulbs of roasted and chopped, mixed with honey, powder of deer horns, with dung of sea birds (kingfishers or Alcyoneus).

Indeed in the Ancient Rome lupins did not have a single use. For example, in Pompei, a patrician named Felicione, had a very nice garden in which he used to grow lupins. Its flowers and seeds formed, along with honey, the basis of the ointment known as Lomentum, but they were also used in combination with herbs and vegetables for the preparation of those face whitening and softening beauty masks mentioned by Pliny, Galen, Ovid.

From the muscles of the slaves, to the skin of the patricians

The government was striving to cope with food shortages only in the capital, Naples, to ensure that the city wouldnt rise the spirit of Masaniello once again, sacrificing so the marginal lands for the good of the city. In the countryside residents were left without bread and fed only with wild grass, and when the food situation seemed to be improved an outbreak of plague struck the land and spread rapidly, causing the death of thousands of people.

During the Napoleonic Kingdom of Naples, in 1764, the region known as Kingdom of Naples had been hit by a dire shortage of grain.

Lupins save Italy from starvation and death: famines and plague epidemics in 1700

Few years later another food shortage threatens Italy but this time: The famine of 1789 affected the whole Kingdom of two Sicilies.

Umberto Caldora writes that during this period people, because of the famine, resorted to lupins to make even bread, with chicory, wild fennel and other wild herbs. These recipes are in vogue since then.

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