Chapter 4
—David Grigg 1982:15
The history of agriculture was the history of mankind until the nineteenth century. Historians have concentrated upon political history, not upon the mundane and unexciting events of farming life: even economic historians have shown more interest in the life of towns and the fortunes of industry than the ways of farmers.
Farm residence, diversified crops, incorporation of marginal lands, slave labor—these were characteristic of a new type of agriculture and agrarian ideology that arose in the eighth to sixth century in Greece. The description of the emergence of agrarianism (Chapter 1), the discussion of infrastructures on the early Greek farm (Chapter 2), and the account of its work ethic and the political dominance of a farming class (Chapter 3) tell us little about Greek rural life. Too often when we speak of the rise and fall of the small farmers in both ancient and modern society there is the assumption that agrarianism, the rural chauvinism of homestead farming, is inherently noble or worth preserving. But in order for any who are not farmers to believe that, one must seek to glimpse the daily experiences and challenges of the ancient Greek farmer. Only in that way can we see what was unique about this new agrarianism, why it should have been intrinsically of more value than other types of farming. Only in that way comes empathy for those Greek geôrgoiproducing food, fighting, and making laws under the most demanding of circumstances.
I attempt to sketch in human terms the environment of a Greek farm during the four centuries of the polis in Greece, avoiding a portrait drawn exclusively from the Attic countryside—a difficult task since nearly all Greek tragedy and comedy, as well as oratory, were produced at Athens. A paradigm is needed because the scholarly emphasis on the lack of uniformity in the Greek landscape and the tendency to avoid chronological or regional assertions or generalization can go too far. There was enough common agricultural practice in antiquity to speak of a “typical” Greek farm, even if bolstered by evidence from later literary sources and both modern and ancient agronomic analogy.
The ancients, of course, were quite aware of the vast local differences in climate, weather, and soils in Greece, and they knew the effects of regional environments on crop selection and maturity.* Nor should we forget the presence of a strong political consciousness and chauvinism in each of the city-states. Yet Greek literature does describe a natural homogeneity, an agricultural sameness that favors the growing of cereals, vines, olives, fruit trees, and pulses in most areas in Greece (e.g., Theophr. HP 8.2.7-11; [Xen.] Ath. Pol.2.6), climatic, environmental, dialectal, or political differences notwithstanding.
One must not be Utopian about the ancient Greek geôrgoi, not romanticize their code of behavior or social and political outlook. Paradoxically, the success and dynamism of the farmer during the age of the Greek polis were a direct result of his peculiar notion of exclusivity. Disliked by traditional aristocrats, small farmers had a large array of their own inferiors. These new agriculturalists saw little reason to offer scarce land and thus citizenship to the foreigners or resident aliens of their communities, much less to their own chattel slaves. City-states were always referred to not in the abstract singular, but concretely in the masculine plural. Athens was usually dubbed hoi Athênaioi (literally “the Athenian men”), Thebes hoi Thebaioi, Argos hoi Argeioi; that is, Greek city-states were originally known by the men of the surrounding countryside, the citizens who owned property and who alone made the laws and fought the wars.
These geôrgoi were no friends of those who never acquired the skills, desire, or the opportunity to become successful independent farmers: the ranks of free but perpetually landless poor or those Greeks born into dire circumstances without political or social recourse, who either did not farm or farmed only sporadically. At least in the fifth and fourth centuries, such men at Athens rowed in the fleet, and at other poleis served as light-armed skirmishers outside the phalanx of landed hoplites (Arist. Pol. 6.1321a14-15). Incorporation of the Greek free landless into the body politic was the (revolutionary) achievement of Athenian democracy—and in that narrow sense it was ostensibly opposed by all landed interests. For all the Greeks without property, the new agrarianism offered little improvement over Dark-Age feudalism. In some sense agrarianism was antidemocratic, if by democracy we mean not constitutional government or elected assemblies per se, but simply government by all adult free natives, born of and residing in the polis.
Possessing a work ethic that is hauntingly similar to the modern “immigrant” philosophy of self-help, the Greek farmer saw little reason to extend social or political privilege to those who could not aid themselves. In the underworld of Homer’s Odyssey,Achilles’ ghost reflects the status of the propertyless when he says that he would rather “follow the plough as thrall to another man, one with no land allotted him and not much to live on, than be a king over all the perished dead” (Hom. Od. 11.489-91). Working for wages is unfortunate. But for the landless sharecropper working for wages is miserable. Later, the polis Greeks believed that the employment of the majority of the population out in the fields as farm laborers was a clear sign of a feudal or an aristocratic society, not a true community of yeomen (e.g., Plut. Mor. 291E).
Besides the landless poor, there were thousands of chattel slaves in the countryside throughout the Greek-speaking world. Their advance in real numbers into the polis community in the eighth through fifth centuries reflects the end of serfdom in Greece, and the rise of a broad-based and successful alternative to landed aristocracy. Slaves in large part were eventually responsible for the political and economic dynamism of the entire Greek agrarian movement itself. Despite the belief of many scholars that agricultural slaves were always and at every locale in Greece limited to “large estates,” often, as seen in Chapter 2, the small farmer entered into a paternalistic relationship with his servant, working alongside him in the field and marching with him on campaign. “The heads of the families ate their crops and fruits at the same table with their slaves,” the historian Philochorus writes, “with whom they had shared the labors of cultivation” (Philochorus 328 fr.97, in Macrob. Sat. 1.10.22).
Unlike later farm laborers on Hellenistic absentee estates, or chain gangs in the mines of the ancient world, slaves on small farms were—as captives go—undoubtedly treated relatively well and fed regularly, and their treatment became a real concern of the community. Nevertheless, slave exploitation was essential to the small farmer, and thus one must believe that nearly all servants attempted to flee in times of war or social chaos.*
In the farmer’s mind all agricultural slaves were to be worked hard (cf. Aesch. Ag. 1044-45) and not left alone like (say) Alciphron’s Noumenion who allegedly did nothing more than “eat and sleep” (Alciphr. 3.38). During the last years of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides remarks that “more than two myriads” of slaves fled from Attica (7.27). These 20,000 deserters roughly approximate the number of small farms of Attica. Thucydides suggests that the servile losses from the farms in the Athenian countryside may well have been total. If there was any widespread dislocation in Attic agriculture after the war, it perhaps derived largely from the need to replace servile workers rather than from the loss of orchards or vineyards to Spartan ravagers.**
Rural women worked nearly as hard as the slaves, but they enjoyed little more freedom: marriages usually arranged, opportunity to travel off the farm rare, childbearing of utmost importance, legal protection secondary to spousal dictate. So Hesiod assumes, as farmers have so often assumed, that a wife is not much more than property. He urges that the grower of food “first get a house, and then a woman, and then an ox for the plough” (405; cf. Arist. Pol. 1.1252bl-15), and Aristotle later sees scarcely any inherent difference among the three. Even Sappho, feminist poet of the early Greek world, revealed that the gulf between rural and urban, wealthy and yeomanry, transcended mere sex. Creature of an elite literary circle, she had disdain for the backward country woman, a “rural girl in farm-girl clothes, ignorant of the way to raise the gown over her ankles” (fir. 57).
Xenophon in his Oeconomicus has an elaborate schema for rural women. The (teenage) wife was to be responsible for all the indoor drudgery on the farm—weaving, food storage and preparation, raising children. The husband, “strong in the face of cold, heat, and campaigning, braver before physical threats,” was to stay outside, the two together thereby making a harmonious team (Oec. 7.25-28). The later and derivative Aristotelian Oeconomica explicitly delineates that plan: “By nature men were made stronger, women weaker, so that by reason of his manly prowess he might be more inclined to protect the household, she, due to her timidity, supervise it. He brings in the necessities from outside, she protects what lies already within” (Oec. 1.1343b30-1344a4).
Numerous passages in Greek literature identify clear spheres of influence inside and outside the house, and we should understand that constant work outside was not normal for Greek women. The rare employment of wives and daughters among the crops was to the Greeks a sign of either unusual distress in the countryside or of a family’s abject poverty. This ideology is not much different from the modern family farmers of southern Italy, whose philosophy of agrarian responsibility is summed up by the proverb: “The man by the shovel, the woman by the spoon.”*
Such utilitarianism is not confined to the ancient Greek world or even to rural parts of southern Europe. It survives today anywhere independent farmers attempt to feed themselves from small plots. In the 1970s a neighbor lamented that he had paid his wife—she was in her late fifties at that time—“too much” to tie the canes on the trellis wires of his twenty-acre vineyard, “wages” that she in turn was to use to manage the family budget. In his mind, her work was little different from simple stoop labor, and thus must be paid at the going rate. Most in the vicinity saw the wife’s presence in the vineyard as an embarrassing sign of the couple’s reduced circumstances. In my own childhood the only liberated farm women (if we may use “liberated” for the exchange of the enormous responsibility of raising a family for the equally tiresome task of raising food) I saw were the few childless widows who chose not to sell out after the early death of their spouses. Their reward was the gradual, but grudging, respect of their neighbors and decades of the hard, brutal work that had killed their husbands. Odd women, I remember them as, excellent farmers all, in bib overalls and boots, hands rough, faces burned by the sun, and so out of place amidst the china and doilies of local teas and improvement clubs. In a play of Menander the competent and independent female guardian (epiklêros) of her own family’s estate is ridiculed by her husband as a “witch,” a pushy female who has taken over “control of the house, fields, and everything” (fr. 406 Kock).
Elsewhere Hesiod worries about bringing an attractive wife onto the farm (“Don’t allow a woman with a showy ass (pugostolos) to deceive you with her pillow talk: she’s after your barn” [373]). At the same time Hesiod frets over whether she might be homely, “a joke (charmata) to the neighbors” (701)! The Works and Days is replete with warnings about the danger a bad woman can pose to the survivability of the farm (703-5; “The man who trusts women,” Hesiod says, “has trusted deceivers” [375]).
I grew up with the story of a cousin, who returned from pruning to find a stranger on the ranch “with”—as my grandfather put it—his wife. The story was retold repeatedly, partly to emphasize the need to marry wisely, partly to turn sympathy toward the victimized farmer, never to suggest that the relative in question—an arrogant, small-minded man—had probably bored his (urban-born and attractive) wife silly.
More than two centuries after Hesiod, Aristophanes combines the traditional agrarian mistrust of women with a similar suspicion of city dwellers. His citified wife is thus the worst of both worlds:
May the matchmaker have perished terribly
who urged me to marry your mother.
For my agricultural life used to be the sweetest,
one that was unwashed, without worry, unrestrained,
one full of honey-bees, sheepfolds, and olive-pulp.
But then I married a niece of Megacles,
a rustic, wed to a town-lady
—proud, luxurious, extravagant.
—(Ar. Nub. 41-48)
In the later Utopian comedy, the Ecclesiazusae, Aristophanes has his character Chremes say that when the assembly was to vote on turning Athens over to the women, the shoemakers approved, “but the farmers (hoi d’ ek tôn agrôn) grumbled their disapproval” (425-27). Alciphron has many letters reflecting the stock image of a miserable younger woman married to an older farmer who, in recompense for her unhappiness, depletes his carefully accumulated stores (1.27-28; 3.11). How often this was a real occurrence, rather than an imagined peril among the hidebound male farmers, we do not know. Ovid’s later idealistic portrait of Philemon and Baucis, the contented rustic couple who, in blissful partnership, ate their own produce on wooden utensils, ignores—typically, given the agrarian romanticism of the Augustan age—the starkly utilitarian view of women that most Greek farmers held (Met. 8.640-80). After all, even today in the modern Greek countryside most women walk while their husbands ride the family donkey. Near Leuctra in central Greece, I once watched a man harrow five acres with a small tractor, his plump wife perched precariously to the rear on his spring-tooth to give it added weight over the clods. Oblivious, uninterrupted and, strangest of all, quite contentwith their respective duties, for an hour he dragged her around through the dust storm.
It is not enough to attribute the farmers’ treatment of the landless, slaves, and women to the general climate of Greek culture—inasmuch as we are arguing throughout this book that the foundations of Greek polis culture were agrarian. That agrarian ideology of exclusivity, of the primacy of the free male landowner (who was to epitomize the entire community, urban and rural, of the polis) was a cause rather than a result of all Greek attitudes of social and political discrimination and privilege. Critics of the Greeks who fault Hellenic society for the narrowness and chauvinism of the adult, free male citizen, must locate their critique in the world of the countryside, rather than in the city, which is so overrepresented in literature. For most of the polis period in the great majority of Greek city-states, the chief unifying check on the participation of slaves, the poor, foreigners, and women in politics was not necessarily philosophical, racial, or sexual bias. Those living on the ideological margins of the Greek polis were stamped as second-, third-, and fourth-class groups largely by their inability to own land, and thence have a claim on political or legal representation, economic importance, or military prominence. No surprise, then, that when a man was to be exiled from the polis, and his citizenship to be stripped away, the state immediately moved to confiscate his land.1
That the Greek geôrgoi were constantly opposed by the aristocratic elite, and merely reacted in turn against the next lower rung on the social scale, is no explanation per se for agrarian exclusivity. Chauvinism on the part of the small farmer (“A farm for a man is life’s father, for only land knows how to hide poverty” [Amphis fr. 17.2-3 Kock]) reflects the utilitarianism that pervades all his social, economic, and political thinking—utilitarianism in the sense of doing everything he can to preserve his small farm from the disasters, natural and man-induced, that daily threatened his existence. Rarely in literature of the polis period is there patent racism (slaves, after all, could be of any race or ethnicity, including Greek) or misogyny. Even hard-nosed Hesiod concedes that “a man wins nothing better than a good wife (gunaikos tês agathês)” (702-3). “Good” here means a woman who, though attractive, keeps her looks from any but her husband in the privacy of his house, a woman who works as hard as her husband without complaint or demand for anything not crucial to the life of the farm.
The ancient Greek farmer unquestioningly assumed—must have assumed, if he were to survive—that the purpose of slaves, women, and children was identical to his own: to farm under his direction, since therein lay the time-proven formula of success and survival for all involved. The ties of these others to the polis derived from the farmer’s own claim as a landowning citizen—if he lost his ancestral plot, wife, children, and slaves suffered as well. In some cases there surely were genuine common interests. We hear occasionally of manumission of servants, of slaves who worshipped their master, of idealized lifelong marriages, where woman and man seem to be essentially a pair rather than inferior and superior.
In most instances the farmer was absolute tyrant on his ground, and all others bent their will to his directive. They were all, in a sense, tools, like his wagon, livestock, and dog, whose reason to be was simply survival on the land. The new agrarianism, the rise of the small farmers, must always assume a greater number of slaves and women (in both relative and absolute numbers), must realize that the labor that created these fundamental changes in Greek society largely derived from yet another rural “other,” who were always deemed unworthy to fight, own farmland, or make laws, men and women who remain in greater obscurity, even more forgotten than the largely nameless geôrgoi themselves. At the same time, understand this exploitation as a phenomenon apart from the distant and shady verandah. It is part of a brutal world where the small owners themselves labored to feed the community, their regimen interrupted occasionally by a short infantry campaign, where relief from backbreaking work meant only an opportunity to don bronze and die.
The Greeks felt that their own climate was adverse and the soil poor. Land might produce only flowers and just about the amount of barley one had sown in the fall (e.g., Men. fr. 96 Kock). “Poverty and Greece,” Herodotus says, “are stepsisters” (Hdt. 7.102; cf, Thuc. 1.2). Only a hostile farming environment could produce strong, vigorous, and intelligent citizens. In the Hippocratic corpus, hostile land—bare, without water, hot in summer, cold in winter (similar to Hesiod’s description of Ascra)—produced men “by nature keen and eager to work, headstrong, self-willed and prone to fierceness, rather than to timidity” (Aer. 16.8-9; 13.24; Arist. Pol. 7.1327b26-31; cf. Plut. Mor. fr. 152). A favorite regional contrast was between the indolent Thessalians on rich land, and the more admirable hardworking, rock-farming Megarians (e.g., Isoc. 8.117-18; cf. 4.132).
Menander writes that “the land that produces poorly makes men courageous” (fr. 63 Kock). Milder climate and richer ground only spoiled farmers (e.g., Hdt. 1.143), and made the general population weak and soft (Theophr. HP 8.7.4). Agriculture in the Near East and Egypt, in the Greek mind, was always easy; farming there was characterized by abundant harvests, large estates, and the absence of the work required on the Greeks’ own small plots (Theophr. HP 8.7.14; cf Hdt. 2.14). Xenophon apparently felt that when Greeks moved into the richer lands of Asia and prospered, it would demonstrate that any struggling kinsmen back home were themselves responsible for their own poverty (An. 3.2.26). Plato understood that climate and topography were critical to the moral formation of Greek citizenry, the presence of hard work creating strong bodies and souls (e.g., Leg. 5.747D-E). It is not necessary to ascertain the validity of this ancient belief (although, from my own experience of equating local soil types to farmers’ characters, I believe it in part to be true), only to acknowledge that it was prevalent in ancient Greece. The Hippocratic corpus states that “some men’s characters resemble well-wooded and watered mountains, others a thin and waterless soil, still others are like plains or dry bare earth” (Aer. 24.13).
In part, this bleak view of human character explains the Greek’s peculiar, paradoxical, and ultimately agrarian view of the world—a world both hostile and dangerous that alone could certify his excellence by means of his mastery of it. Nature is harsh, not idyllic; man is brutal and cruel, not gentle. Constant farm work curbs the human appetite for sloth and luxury and so saves man: rugged land that is tamed in turn tames its master.
Two elements pervaded the ancient Greek agrarian mind: the specter of disaster and efforts to master that disaster. Here is the key to understanding all work, all routine of the ancient Greek farmer. Danger (cf. Plato’s “the dreaded things in farming [ta en tê geô;rgia deina]” Lach. 195B]) came in nearly any guise, human or natural. To the farmer, all humans, from his closest neighbor to his most bitter enemies, could pose risks. Why, if not to cause harm, would a man ever venture onto another’s farm? Just as the farmer himself could pose hazards to others, so he knew well that another had the power to disrupt his agricultural regimen and hence destroy the livelihood of his farm. With the advent of the independent small farmer also arose a vast new network of like souls, the originals of the country neighbor, something far different from Mycenean or even Dark-Age communalism, when the countryside was less settled and the notion of private ownership of farms rare or nonexistent. Independence and private property brought agricultural productivity to Greece, but they also created never-ending quarrels over boundaries, water, and borrowing—the great triad of agricultural disputation that is the basis of so many private agrarian fights, ancient and modern, strife that once transferred to the community level became the natural catalyst for most wars.
There was the mundane challenge as a neighbor turned a flood course from his own land to the ground of another (e.g., Pl. Leg. 8. 844C; Ael. Ep. 6; Dem. 55.24-32; cf. Theophr. CP 3.6.3-4). Much worse in a Mediterranean climate, some stole communal irrigation water, diverting it to save their own gardens. I have had to padlock the irrigation gate on our own place to prevent the weekly theft of communal ditch water by an affable, smiling neighbor—a man I have known for thirty years, who considers himself a lifelong friend of the family: ideologically a kindred family farmer, prone to expound eloquently on the plight of the local farmer cooperative. He reminds of a fragment from Menander: “You pretend to be a rustic, but you are wicked” (Men. fr. 794 Edmonds). (My grandfather warred with him for the last twenty-five years of his own life and when he was eighty-six warned us of our own trials ahead with him.) When pressed about his “diversion” of summer water by the ditch tender who allots shares on the small community channel by careful regulation, the thief sheepishly replies: “You do what you have to do when the vines are thirsty.” (No wonder that neighborly disputes over water among farmers in the countryside provide a key part of Plato’s agrarian legislation in his Laws [e.g., at Leg. 844A-C; cf. Klingenberg 29-35; 66-116].) By most farmers on our communal ditch, he is generally avoided, though no one has considered moving, which was the case with Aeschines the Socratic, whom Athenaeus said was so hated that his neighbors abandoned their homes (612C; and cf. the fight over a farm at Hyper, fr. 36).
Although neighborliness was crucial to the farming community in general, to owners who shared a common political and social outlook, there was often an aloofness that prevented real friendship. Neighbors, after all, could do far more than divert water. They could also borrow equipment at the most inopportune time (“Two or three times you might succeed in requesting livelihood from them, but if you try it again, it will be for no use” [Hes. Op. 401-2]), essentially appropriating hard-won capital for their own needs at little or no cost. Thus arose the Greek proverb: “It is easy to say: ‘Lend me oxen and a wagon’; it is easy to answer: ‘I have work for my oxen’” (Plut. Mor. fr. 66). We lent our own vineyard wagons each raisin harvest for nearly thirty years to a hardworking neighbor who claimed that he could never afford to purchase his own. On his death, nearly a half million dollars were purportedly found in a shoe-box in his closet. For him the years of borrowing represented a carefully planned economy.
“The vintage is near,” Alciphron makes his beleaguered vine grower remind his neighboring olive farmer in a desperate appeal, “and I have need of vine-baskets. Please let me borrow any extra that you have. I’ll return them in a while. I too have more wine jars than I need, so if you need some, you’re welcome. The old saying ‘Friends have all things in common’ should be especially true among country-folk.” (Alciphr. 13.15). Even when there were surpluses on the farm and a desire to share the bounty with neighbors, self-interest usually ruled. The poor farmer in an anonymous fragment from Attic comedy complains that he digs and sows constantly, but still finds himself indigent; worse, he has lent out twenty medimnoi (measures) of barley, but received only seven in return (Anon. fr. 108-9 Kock). Often there was also a hidden pragmatic reason for apparent generosity. Another of Alciphron’s farmers, who wishes to give away his young porkers, says, “It is fitting in the farmer’s sense of fairness for those with surplus to share with friends,” but then confesses that in reality he could not feed the new litter of pigs anyway since “my stock of barley is low” (Alciphr. 3.73).
‘Neighborliness’ to both the ancient and modern small farmer has no air of collectivization where all share land ownership and labor for a common harvest: that idealization belongs today to the realm of the university-run organic garden, in antiquity to the idyllic scene on Homer’s shield of Achilles or to the romantic anecdote about the nobility of the Athenian statesman Cimon, who allowed anyone to pick fruit from his farm (Arist. Ath. Pol 27.3-4). Aristotle saw the practical problems of sharing in his own Hesiodic-like suspicion of communalism (Pol. 2.1263a11ff.). He writes that if “in the enjoyment of produce and in the production of it, people are not equal, but unequal, then there must be complaint between those who enjoy or take a lot, but work little, and those who take less, but work more.” He adds simply: “To live together and share all our human affairs is difficult.”
Plato, outlining the agrarian legislation (nomoi geôrgikoi) in his Laws (8.842E-846D; cf. Pl. Min. 316E; Klingenberg 21-62), envisions a host of fights between farmers over: (1) boundaries, (2) general maliciousness, (3) bees, (4) carelessness in starting fires, (5) planting too close to borders, (6) irrigation and water supplies, (7) drainage and flood control, (8) theft of fruit, (9) trespassing, and (10) injury of property. His detailed description of probable disputes gives the impression that they were well-known in every Greekpolis where the countryside was densely settled and farmed by tough independent yeomen, whose chief worry was their own crop. Plato’s concern is no mere utopian fantasy. Many of his proposals resemble Solon’s own rules regarding planting distances, property lines, and water disputes (Plut. Sol. 23).
In the real agrarian world, neighborliness refers to grudging respect and polite distance: “Play fair with your neighbor and pay him back with fairness—or better if you are able; that way if you ever have need again, you will find him always there” (Hes. Op. 350-51; and for other indications of “good neighborliness,” cf. Dem. 53.4-5; Ar. Plut. 223-25: “my farm-companions [sungeôrgous”]). Similarly, various anecdotes in Greek literature attest that the value of a farm was either decreased or increased by the character of the neighbors (e.g., Plut. Mor. fr. 50).
There were genuine differences among agrarians, for private farmers devised their own particular schemes to survive (cf. Arist. Pol. 2.1263b25-26), no geôrgos having exactly the same soil, weather, health, or family challenges. Each day, each week, each year that a farmer worked his own peculiar piece of ground drew him not closer to others, as we would imagine among like kind, but rather a little more distant. No wonder the farmer is often portrayed as the eccentric of Greek comedy. No wonder in our first picture of neighboring farmers in European literature, Homer tells us that warring armies are like two men “with measuring rods in their hands” who fight over their respective property rights (Hom. Il. 12.421-22).
The self-interest of each agrarian was too often at odds with his neighbor’s. “Ill-natured and envious is the eye of your neighbor, just as the proverb says” (Anon. fr. 440 Kock). The agricultural writer Varro (Rust. 1.16.6; cf. Colum. Rust. 5.8.7), in later Roman times, rightly observes that a neighbor’s oak grove could kill olives (no doubt through soil transmission of oak-root fungus). Theophrastus (HP 4.16.5) earlier devotes a discussion to the compatibility (or lack of it) among particular neighboring species of trees and vines. In a single year I have lost nearly a hundred vines (two percent of the entire vineyard) to Pierce’s Disease, a virus constantly transmitted by alfalfa hoppers from a nearby field. “Beg your neighbor to get rid of the alfalfa” is the only solution proffered by the local farm advisor, a county employee who acknowledged privately that in the real world a request like this was ridiculous. A radical change of farming strategy was, of course, too much to ask of any nearby farmer. Anthony Galt categorized the varying degrees of hostilities between the modern farmers of southern Italy; the “most serious level of estrangement” was simply “nen se trèmende chi m’bacce—‘they no longer look each other in the face’” (200). So it currently is with us and a neighbor to the east. He has decided to ignore an easement of fifty years and instead plough up a communal road. Embarrassed by our ostracism, he nevertheless loiters around our farm at persimmon harvest, begging in vain to borrow our tree props.
For their own survival, ancient Greek farmers could afford to make neighbors neither close friends nor real enemies. Hesiod concludes: “A bad neighbor is as great a pain as a good one is a blessing. A man who has a good neighbor has found a real possession. Not even an ox would die but for a bad neighbor” (Op. 346-49). Theophrastus suggests that occasional communal feasts in the Greek countryside were mechanisms for cementing neighborly ties (Char. 10.11), a tactic that indicates real tension.
Occasionally, the stakes of friendship were a question of life and death: “Please lend me twenty bushels of grain, to allow me to save my life, and the wife and children. When a good harvest returns, we’ll repay you ‘the same measure or better,’ if our crop is abundant. Don’t allow good neighbors to perish in hard times” (Alciphr. 1.24). More common is the stingy farmer portrayed by Theophrastus (Char. 10.13), who ordered his wife not to lend salt, lamp wicks, food or grain for sacrifice, or even garlands or cakes, in fear that such small generosity would lead only to increased demands during the year. Theophrastus’s better known “Boor” (Char. 4.10-12), once he lends out “his plough, basket, sickle, or sack, keeps up at night, remembering, and goes after it.” Aelian’s Dercyllos at one point prays: “May never the ways of farmers be full of jealousy” (Ael. Ep. 17)—after remarking on the fertility and bounty of Aischeas’s farm nearby. Under the agrarian regime of the polis, the countryside teemed with thousands of private agendas, each farmer in his own idiosyncratic way trying desperately to grow food in unique circumstances.
Far more bothersome than neighbors was the occasional trespasser. He was no mere rival, but a complete stranger who stole fruit or sometimes engaged in senseless destruction. In a speech attributed to the fourth-century orator Demosthenes, the speaker brings suit, claiming intruders have wantonly ransacked his estate (47.53-56). Here we learn that Greek farmers were particularly incensed at the loss of harvest or property to the vandal or the thief. Xenophon relates a ritualistic Thessalian skit in which the two dancers reenacted a fight between a robber and a plowman for the latter’s oxen (An. 6.1.1-13). Hesiod calls the more subtle rural burglar the “Day-sleeper” (Op. 604), the man who works at night on the property of those who work during the day. An ancient commentator on a comedy of Aristophanes tells us that farmers often put sharp spikes amid their vines, to pierce the feet of intruders who raided their vintage (Ach. 230 and cf. scholiast).
Both the early Athenian lawgivers, Draco and Solon, purportedly made it a capital crime to steal grapes (e.g., Alciphr.3.40). That may indicate that theft was not unusual at harvest time. In Plato’s ideal state there are various regulations, depending on one’s social status (foreigner, slave, free citizen), concerning the legality of picking another’s ripe fruit (Leg. 8.844E-845D), suggesting the problem warranted Utopian discussion. Pollux compiles a list of prickly, thorny bushes and “all the other spiked objects placed among the crops for their protection.” In southern Greece today practical cactus “fences” of nearly ten feet in height surround many vineyards.*
We saw earlier that the Athenian statesman Cimon was praised as the exception for allowing travelers to feed on his orchard’s fruit—such largess apparently resulted from kindness rather than despair at keeping poachers out; at least it reflects the tension between grower and traveler over the potential theft of produce (Plut. Cim. 10.1-3). Few followed such a model of generosity. Theophrastus more typically caricatured the stingy farmer as one who would not allow travelers to pass through his fields, much less sample a fig or pick up fruit that had fallen to the ground (Char. 10.8). Suspicion and distrust of any intruder must by necessity run deep for the homestead farmer.
A farm is quite different from a house in town. The urbanized fail to realize that to the agrarian walking through a vineyard or orchard is tantamount to the farmer’s intruding into the town dweller’s front yard. I lost my temper at an elderly man cutting through an orchard at harvest. Convinced he was intent on stealing fruit (no more than three or four dollars worth), I was on catching him humbled to learn he was entirely innocent—a diabetic attempting to get needed exercise via a country walk. But much worse is Menander’s Dyscolus (109-21), who greets a visitor: “Damned man, so you’re trespassing on my land. What’s the idea?” He then proceeds to pelt him with a grape-stake, and chases him “throwing clods, rocks, and pears when he had nothing left.” Later the playwright concludes: “Poor farmers are hot tempered, nearly all of them” (130-31).
The practice of transhumance was still known in many regions during the polis period. Oftentimes sheep and goats—as well as the herdsmen themselves—could consume produce on their trips to and from the mountains. So in both the Greek material and literary record, there is abundant evidence of fences on Greek farms, usually built of stone.* Hindrances could easily be made when clearing a field of large rocks for ploughing. But the ubiquity of stone and rock in the Greek landscape does not in itself explain the standard presence of small field walls.
Permanent rural borders are a reflection, I think, of both the independence and the fear (usually justified) of the Greek farmer. Demarcation is symbolic of the move toward agrarianism and intense identification with the land, ground that was not for mere sustenance, but instead private property to be passed on to kin for generations. The open Greek countryside was gradually becoming the rough private grid of a new class of farmers: “The way in which Greek farms were laid out must in many areas have resembled that of a dense patchwork, each subdivided by its plantings of vines, its rows of trees, its grain and bean fields and gardens” (Burford 1993: 110). Although fences could mark these property boundaries and ward off potential squabbles, they could only slow down, rather than keep out, intruders. Fenced borders were more to alert the stranger than to keep him away, and might stall the thief loaded down with produce.
Dogs, however, offered an even better method of protection from theft and attack (“Dogs,” says Xenophon, “keep out the wild animals from the crops and sheep” [Oec. 5. 6]), On every farm, as now in Greece, pets guarded the house and fields,* “sleeping inside during the day to keep watch at night” (Varro Rust. 1.21). The dogs of the swineherd Eumaios nearly tore apart the approaching Odysseus until their master “shouted at the dogs and scared them in every direction with volleyed showers of stones” (Hom. Od. 14. 35-36). These canines were not the aristocratic hounds, like Odysseus’s old Argus and the elegant hunters on Greek vases, but rather more pragmatic watchdogs of the type Hesiod assumed every farmer to have: “And take care of the dog,” he advised (Op. 604-5); “do not hold back on his food, or sometime a thief will carry off your belongings.” Theophrastus’s agrarian boor went so far as to bring his dog to the farmhouse door at every knock; holding him by the snout, he announced to strangers: “Here is the guardian of the farm, and of the man” (Char. 4). In one of Alciphron’s letters about farmers, the farm-dog is so highly prized that he is invited to attend a rural feast along with his master (3.18).2
As Aristotle saw, the most serious of all human threats was not the occasional thief or the vindictive neighbor, but rather organized bands of raiders and brigands, or worse, the wholesale onslaught of enemy armies, belligerents who wished to destroy in addition to plunder. There was enough banditry even in the fifth and fourth centuries to make farm life somewhat perilous. Packs of plunderers who come across mountain border passes, descend to farmland, and then flee are a common complaint in Greek literature, during both peace and wartime. That is precisely the scene in Aristophanes’ Acharnians, when poor Lamachos is forced to march out on the snowy heights of Mt. Parnes to ward off a band of Boeotian marauders who threaten Attic farms up on the border (Ar.Ach. 1073-77; 1140-43). Surely farmers working border ground took the most losses, largely in stolen livestock and slaves (e.g., Paus. 4.18.1; Hell. Oxy. 12.3-5).
Raiders had not much interest in wanton destruction—that activity was more often aimed at drawing out enemy troops—but rather went after easy plunder. From numerous texts such theft seems to be a common complaint of Greek farmers, and we sense that these references do not describe threats to uninhabited plots of commuting peasants, but rather to well-stocked, owner-occupied homestead farms (e.g., Thuc. 2.5.4; 2.5.5; 2.5.7; 4.103.5; 4.104.1; Hdt. 1.17; Polyb. 4.3.10; Xen. Hell 6.2.6). In passages from Greek literature, the emphasis is usually both on the attackers’ quick onslaught and the farmers’ anguished and often futile efforts to mount a posse of sorts to retrieve their lost capital. After all, for those attacked, it must have been awkward to don heavy armor—shield, spear, helmet, and breastplate (the formal gear of the farmers’ phalanx)—and expect to catch a quick-moving band of experienced robbers. Xenophon recommends that the farmer return the favor by simply plundering the food himself: “Often in war it is safer for one to maintain oneself with arms than to harvest food with farming implements” (Oec. 5.13).3
Ironically, much of the infrastructure stolen from farmers was, no doubt, simply reused by the attackers—often farmers themselves (e.g., Xen. Oec. 5.13)—on their own estates. The so-called Oxyrhynchus Historian tells us that during the last years of the Peloponnesian War (i.e., 413-404 B.C.) the Boeotians stole slaves, roof tiles, and other furnishings from the Attic countryside, as a byproduct of constant border raiding. This anonymous historian adds that predation was attractive since Attica at this time was the “most lavishly furnished” of any area in Greece. This prosperity in Attica grew because “whatever they took from other Greeks, they brought on to their own farms (eis tous idious agrous)” (Hell. Oxy. 12.4; cf. Hanson 1992: 217-18). That concluding and fragmented sentence is a much ignored passage, but it clearly implies that Athenian imperialism was not exclusively concerned with maritime trading and overseas profit, but could bring benefits to the farmers of Attica as well (cf. Dem. 21.167-68).
It was the invasion of entire armies, phalanxes of five thousand or more men which posed the greatest threat to rural inhabitants. Their mere presence on good farmland imposed serious losses, especially should their arrival coincide with harvest. Nevertheless, more than ten years ago I argued that, in fact, the entire strategy of crop destruction—the trigger for Greek infantry warfare of the polis period—rarely resulted in long-lasting economic catastrophe (Hanson 1983: 145-51). The inherent resiliency of trees and vines to cutting and burning, the short combustible period of ripening grain, the difficulty of organizing armed men into destroyers of orchards and vineyards during a brief invasion, the rough terrain of many Greek plots, and the effectiveness of local defense usually meant the farm was plundered, some of the stored crop lost, but the agricultural infrastructure not wiped out. The chief damage occurred when invaders caught an entire grain crop dry and thus combustible, but this required careful timing and even then was difficult, since grain is flammable for only an extremely short period and the harvests can extend for weeks in different locales. More often, as in the case of the Peloponnesian invasion of Attica during early summer of 431 B.C., prior word of a hostile advance meant the farming community could double their efforts to harvest at least a portion of the crop before the enemy’s arrival.
Besides the loss of livestock, tools, and slaves—and often these too were evacuated—the greatest damage was psychological. This injury to the agrarian psyche cannot be overestimated. The sight of enemy patrols running free over farms must have been insufferable for yeomen, and it is surely for this reason that in Greek agrarian warfare until the Peloponnesian War we rarely hear of drawn-out sieges, where rural folk abandon their plots and withdraw to safe ground. The mere threat of agricultural devastation was usually enough to draw the farmers out, to marshal their phalanx, and to try the issue decisively. As we will see (Chapter 6, “The Ways of Fighters”), the entire development of infantry battle served to perpetuate the enhanced position of the farmer within the Greek city-state.
So far we have discussed only overt human destruction—that is, the physical harm that neighbors, thieves, plunderers, and soldiers could do to a Greek farm. But humankind is also capable of more insidious damage, acts of malice that can be far more deadly to the survival of the farmer. These psychological wounds are important in understanding the ancient Greek geôrgoi. Chief among the small landowner’s worries were members of his own family. It was not enough that the geôrgos must work from dawn to dusk, and clothe himself in hoplite armor to risk his life; every bit as perilous to the family estate was the family itself (cf. Hesiod’s warning: “If trouble strikes your house, neighbors will come in their bedclothes, but family members will dress up” [Op. 344-45]).
Unlike the traditional mentality of the peasant who seeks as many children as possible to aid in farm work, the intensive Greek agriculturalist, who had access to slave labor, sometimes (like the modern farmer) saw multiple offspring, in particular daughters, as real liabilities to his consolidated holdings. In the polis period, when population was gradually rising while available land was continually dwindling, inheritance of the patrimonial estate was often the chief crisis in the life of any farm family. Without any constant tradition of primogeniture—the Greeks felt that all male offspring should have the opportunity to own farmland—the family plot theoretically could be divided by two, three, four, or more sons, jeopardizing the survival of the property, brother fighting brother over his own small allotment. That scenario forms the dramatic context of the Works and Days, where Hesiod’s brother, Perses, has apparently bribed the local magistrate into unfairly granting him the bulk of the family land (Op. 27-41; cf. Walcot 1970: 77-93; and Hom.Od. 14.207-10; Il. 12.421-22), resulting in Hesiod’s long diatribe against the injustice.
Later in Greek literature there is ample reference to blood feuds between brothers over the inheritance of the ancestral property (e.g., Xen. Mem. 2.3.1-10; Is. 2.28). Daughters, of course, cost the farmer expensive dowries and, if there were no surviving sons, brought sons-in-law into the family who might not always have similar regard for the so-called family plot. No wonder that Hesiod bluntly advises: “There should be only a single son (mounogenês pais) to look after his father’s house, that way wealth will increase in the home. But should you leave behind a second son, take care that you die old” (Op. 376-79; cf. Xenocr. fr. 97).4
There has been little discussion of a dilemma of near-equal gravity, the childless farmer who has no heir to assume control of the traditional estate. Although we hear that the sterile grower could pass on his farm to whomever he wished (e.g., Is. 7.30; Dem. 43.75), there was a real loss of accumulated expertise: the break between father and son reduced productivity in the life-cycle of the farm. A modern example reflects this process. In the middle and late 1970s the condition of our own farm after nearly a century was precarious. My grandparents were in their eighties, one daughter was dead, another an invalid, the third employed off the farm. The old man’s four grandsons were in college, with no apparent desire to retain the home place. The farm was overgrown with weeds. The equipment had been stolen. Repair, replanting, and maintenance had been ignored by a succession of hired hands, who looted infrastructure and planned their own regimen in open defiance of the patriarch. To watchful neighboring farmers (potential buyers all), this was clear enough proof of the moral inferiority of our clan, who “had gone off and gone bad.” Only the sudden reappearance of my brothers and cousin restored the farm to its past productivity (despite repeated mistakes and near disasters). Only in the last two years of my grandfather’s life—his eighty-fifth and eighty-sixth years—was the accrued damage of a decade and a half gradually reversed.
Many family-owned farms, ancient and modern, have gone through this “life cycle” of decay and renewal. Youth haphazardly awaits its turn, as the farm totters during the transition from one extreme of expertise without bodily strength to the other of hardiness without wisdom, the dangerous disequilibrium of “an old man’s wisdom” and “a young man’s muscles” (Aesch. Sept. 622). If a generation is skipped, the farm’s survival rests on the ability of the elder (in just a few years’ time) to transfuse his lifelong proficiency into the grandson before unchecked youthful exuberance proves fatal. Youth, after all, brings prerequisite strength and energy to farming, but it can also create fatal recklessness. Most middle-aged and elderly farmers lament their lost vigor while laughing about the stupid decisions they made in their twenties and thirties.
Besides concern over brothers, wife, sons, daughters, and in-laws, problems with inheritance, and property distribution, the farmer’s own health was a chief problem. Often he delayed marriage until his thirties (Hes. Op. 700-701; Pl. Leg. 4.721B; 785B;Resp.5.460E; Arist. Pol. 7.1335a6) and did not inherit until even later. Much of his family-raising and hard work, both often extremely stressful, was done in his late thirties, forties, and fifties, not in his teens and twenties. For many, the brutal regimen simply broke their health in a few years. These are daily occurrences on any farm, past or present, and more than anything else threaten the existence of the small agriculturalist. No surprise that Hesiod has elaborate advice on proper clothing to prevent exposure to the cold in winter or to avoid sunstroke in summer.*
Throughout later Greek literature we hear of freak accidents. (Agriculture traditionally has been statistically the most dangerous occupation, with the highest instances of accidental death and injury) Accidents and injuries must have been common among folk who lived and worked the majority of their lives outdoors. For one Antipater of Sidon there is a poignant epitaph, lamenting his death when he stepped on a snake while protecting his crop from birds (Ant. Pal. 7.172; cf. Hom. Il. 3.35-36). The Roman agronomist Columella assumed (“as generally happens,” quod accidit plerumque) that someone on the farm would be injured by the end of any given day (Rust. 11.1.18). In Menander’s Dyscolus, Kleainetos gashes his leg open while digging in his vineyard, and “by the third day the old man’s wound became swollen, and fever took hold; he was extremely ill” (Dys. 46-51). From the same play, we also learn that back injuries were a frequent occurrence while laborers were digging around vines (Dys. 533-38; cf. 372-73).
A hobbled farmer threatened the viability of the farm itself. Medicine was rudimentary and palliative—reduction of swelling and the staunching of bleeding—and as in the case of Kleainetos, completely ignorant of prophylaxis and treatment against bacterial or viral infection. In family farming, ancient or modern, there is no sick leave, no paid disability, no work that can be postponed until the return of health. Medical attention for trauma is often distant and an expense the farmer cannot afford.
On the farm, animal and human waste—and thus infection—was ubiquitous. Aelian relates the tale of Hemeron, who, like Menander’s Kleainetos, cut his leg on a rock only to have “inflammation take him and his groin swelled up” (Ael. Ep. 2). Nor must we forget military service, for which the small landowner was eligible as a hoplite until his early sixties. A war wound, although not fatal, might cause later disability and ruin the agrarian’s ability to plough, prune, or cultivate. Plenty of references exist in Greek literature to hoplites who are wounded or covered with scars (e.g., Xen. Mem. 3.4.1; cf. Hanson 1989: 210-18). In this context (see Chapter 6), the exigent nature of Greek infantry battle of the agrarian polis is easily understood.
Not all sickness is purely physical. Cardiologists in nearby Fresno expect between August and October to perform many heart bypasses on stressed grape-growers; their pumps have a predictable tendency to collapse during the tension of harvest. The sheer isolation of farm life, the constant repetition of technique, the ever-present fear of every conceivable natural and human danger, also played havoc with a man’s mind.*
There must have been plenty of instances in which the line between eccentricity—innate to most small homesteaders—and madness was crossed. Where self-reliance is at a premium, where challenges are unique, the sheer ingenuity and independence of the Greek farmer encouraged aberration and occasional derangement. The agriculturalist, ancient and modern, unceasingly seeks to go beyond mere rote and custom in his cultural practice (cf. Theophr. CP 3.2.3), desires to expand on the accumulated expertise of generations in order to know precisely what causes his crops either to die or to thrive. Unfortunately, that quest for a rational explanation of an irrational process, for the secret to success and failure is mostly futile: exact knowledge of plant biology and of crops’ reactions to outside stimuli is beyond the capabilities of mere agronomy. The endless and doomed contemplation of absolute agricultural science in an environment of solitude often pushes the farmer over the brink.
The late fourth-century playwright Menander saw potential for comic relief in this phenomenon. His play the Dyscolus, or “Curmudgeon,” features a misanthropic Attic farmer who seeks refuge from society on the slopes of Mt. Parnes, despising all social intercourse. Elsewhere we hear of even more bizarre 'font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black'>B.C.?) who sold his right to land at the new colony at Syracuse for a fruitcake (Athen. 4.167D; Archil, fr. 216); the Corinthian who gave up his vines for philosophy (Arist. fr. 64 Rose3); the philosopher Kelanthes who “for the sake of philosophy” cultivated and irrigated his garden incessantly (hence he was dubbed “the Water-Pump”) (Diog. Laert. 7.168-69). Alciphron also takes up the theme of the misanthropic Timon (apparently a stock character in earlier Attic literature) and makes him into a recluse who hits passersby with dirt clods (Alciphr. 3.34).
Why should we not hear of mental instability associated with agriculture? Farming requires solitary hours of repetitive work that not merely invites philosophical speculation but often demands continuous self-criticism and self-doubt, attempts to blame or exculpate oneself for the vagaries of nature. Without much interaction or conversation with others on the farm, these musings can drive a farming man, or any other man, nearly mad.
Consider the dilemma of the modern raisin grower, instructive of the timeless need for balance in the unbalanced environment of agriculture. At summer’s end, does he hold off picking his grapes until his crop reaches full maturity (20 to 22 degrees, Brix), ensuring a top quality, heavy raisin (raisins are sold by weight)? If so, in most years this mandates patience (especially for the grower of a lush, extremely productive but late-maturing vineyard [cf. Colum. Arbor. 3.2]), a long wait for harvest until September fifth or even later, and a subsequent drying period of at least twenty-one days. California grapes once picked for raisins are left exposed to the elements. They dry naturally in the sun on paper trays atop terraced earth between the vine rows (in contrast to the more conservative and smaller-scale Greek method of transporting the grapes to protected drying sheds and platforms). “Left naked one high” on the tray is the Fresno parlance: a whole year’s work absolutely vulnerable to the weather until dried and collected out of the field in October.
For the farmer who seeks the best quality of raisins, and thus the best price, the cost of delaying his grape harvest for a week or two (until mid or late September) is often one he can ill afford to pay (cf., “If he waits for the full ripening of the grapes, he may forfeit the vintage (amittat vindemiam praecoquem)” [Colum. Rust. 3.21.5-6]). For each day that the grapes are left to ripen on the vine and to gain sugar—and hence weight—the chance of fall rains increases commensurably. For each of those days the drying time on the ground lessens, as the daylight hours wane, the darkness lengthens, and the humidity rises. Each day that the grapes stay on the vine unpicked gaining crucial sugar, the chances decrease that the fruit will ever dry into finished raisins.
“Have ’em all in the sweatbox by the equinox,” my grandfather used to say of the need to get the raisins dry, out of the field, and boxed by around September 21, “and you’ll usually make out all right.” Hesiod advised picking in September: “When Orion and Seirios arrive in the middle of the heavens, and rosy-fingered Dawn looks on Arktouros, then cut all the grapes and bring them home (tote pantas apodrepen oikade Botrus)” (Op. 609-10). (Compare the similar advice on harvesting from the modern dry technical manual: “Harvesting should start when the grapes reach 22° or 23° Brix or September 1, whichever comes first. If the grapes have not reached Brix by September 1, it is an indication that the vines are carrying an overcrop and measures should be taken to correct the condition in future years” [Winkler et al. 653]).
The scholarly advice that “measures should be taken to correct the condition in future years” is no solace to the poor farmer on the brink of disaster on the first of September with an enormous and immature crop, with berries still unripe from a cool summer and with too many clouds now in the sky. For him it is not the “future years” of the university raisin manual that matter, but the here and now of overdue bills and a mortgage to service. Thus now he has no choice but a throw of the dice. For this gambler who wishes—mustwish—top quality and maximum returns (the ideal but impossible combination) on his year’s work in lieu of absolute safety, who must therefore wait too long, the ruin of an unseasonable fall rain is often total: financially a catastrophe, humiliation psychologically.
“I ran out of heat” a broken man of seventy remarked to me in October 1982 as I surveyed his 120 acres of stinking, fermenting wet grapes submerged in a sea of muck and worms—for a three-quarters dried grape is still a grape, never a raisin. Given a good inch of rain it is soon little more than a putrid mass of mold. Years of capital investment were no more than distillery material and z-grade mix for the local cattle feed lot. Theophrastus (CP 5.15.3) warned of “carrying out agricultural procedures at the wrong moment.”
Is it then wiser to play the odds conservatively, to cut your grapes much earlier, in the second or third week of August? This early picking, of course, greatly increases the chance that the raisin crop will be harvested. Grapes will dry quickly on the sizzling summer tray, given the hundred-degree searing heat of the August dog-days. Here, as every farmer knows, is the trade-off. Often early-picked grapes are immature. Without much sugar, they scorch in the sun. They fail raisin quality tests. They weigh little. They make a red, not a purple, raisin. They bring in some cash. But often it is far less cash than is required to pay the year’s expenses. So some farmers prefer the chance of September “mush” to the certainty of August “rocks.” “You’ll need a tarp on your semi to hold those Wheaties from blowing plumb off” a bothersome farmer once scoffed when, stung by the previous season’s late harvest and subsequent total loss to rain, we in our twenties picked too early on August 19. The grapes, without much sugar that year, turned into weathered flakes, not really raisins at all. Fifty to seventy tons evaporated (“Your kid’s new clothes just dried up too,” the old pest gibed). A fourth of the grapes that year were immature, sour in August, they were little more than water and skin.
The perfect equilibrium (the Greeks’ to meson/to metrion) is the farmer’s ideal. But if he is to survive, he must learn that the balance between good production and reasonable safety is never ascertainable until after the fact. During the harvest and the ensuing wait as the grapes dry, excellence is fickle. The “right” decision changes hourly with the weather. A rain scare on a September afternoon, a storm that threatens to annihilate every tray of grapes on the ground, turns the early harvester, who picked in August and has his now dried poor-grade raisins in the barn, into a genius, the late gambler, with green sweet grapes vulnerable on the dirt, into an abject greedy fool; all this will be confirmed by the night’s downpour or be erased from the mind as a strong wind—without any explanation or inherent logic, much less “fairness”—blows away the threatening clouds.
In the clear, cloudless heat of morning, yesterday’s wise man is seen as panicky. Given the new forecast of days of good drying weather ahead, he appears to have harvested immature grapes needlessly early, and thus to have given up for no good purpose tons of would-be raisins. He is, in short, a hothead who bolted too soon, scorned by the late harvester, a man who is now suddenly transformed from greedy and reckless into a paragon of wisdom and steely nerve.
These images, these thoughts, these realities—for they are in the last analysis, like the weather, real enough—change, day in and day out within an agricultural community, until the harvest is finally played out. The whole daily, hourly process is repeated silently, often unobserved by others in a man’s family, pounding in a farmer’s brain, year in, year out. Small wonder it is that the pacing, frowning farmer has a reputation for instability. In Aristophanes’ Plutus the character Cario meets an unknown Informer and asks him his occupation: “Are you a farmer (geôrgos ei)?” The Informer replies: “Do you think I am as melancholy mad as that?” (902). Menander observes: “The life of farmers has sweetness—by creating hopes to meet the pain” (fr. 641 Kock). In despair over an entire irrigation system washed away, Alciphron’s farmer simply sighs: “I must try another sort of life” (3.13).
Equipment and infrastructure are the tools a farmer uses to produce his crop; but appurtenances in themselves can often cause worry and pose considerable trouble. Like the weather, they can become hostile, wound, or maim a farmer and confound his carefully thought-out plans. Almost everything an ancient Greek farmer used or consumed on his plot was of his own fabrication, its maintenance his own responsibility. There is little evidence that there was an extensive urban industrial or manufacturing stratum at agrarianpoleis.* Water, food, and sewage disposal were his first concerns. The presence of a nearby spring, river, or lake was essential to his survival, and consequently there are plentiful references, as we have seen in Chapter 2, in the epigraphical, archaeological, and literary record, to mechanisms—wells, ditches, cisterns—for obtaining water on homestead farms. Food for the winter—both for consumption and to exchange in the local market for cash—had to be stored in bulk, and to be kept free from spoilage and insect damage, not to mention theft or destruction by intruders. Ancient agricultural handbooks are replete with advice on how to prevent loss of stored crops, and suggest that farmers’ problems often began rather than ended at harvest; insects, fungi, and rodents could attack stored grains and fruit (e.g., Plut. Mor. 219C1; Theophr. CP 4.15.3-16.4).
Sewage was less of a problem. Farmers simply constructed privies, often fashioning them in such a way that feces could fall into mounds and be collected as fertilizer for the fields, despite the disease that incorporation of human waste into the food chain can cause (cf. IG II2 2496; Pliny HN 17.6; Theophr. HP 2.7.4; Men. Dys. 584-85). Often these piles were veritable compost heaps, where straw, leaves, weeds, rotten food, wine, and every kind of refuse was dumped to be collected later when decomposed into fertile soil additives (e.g., Semple 1928: 134-36; White 1970a 127-135; cf. Varro Rust. 1.13.4).
Most tools, like the farmer’s infantry spear, were made of wood with iron heads and thus of simple, durable construction (e.g., Anth. Pal. 6.104). Nevertheless, a plough or wagon could often break at the most crucial time, causing the farmer to lose critical hours in its repair. Simiche, the slave-farmworker in Menander’s Dyscolus, was sure of punishment when he lost the farm’s shovel as he was trying to fetch a dropped bucket from the well (584-85). Hesiod, forever the pragmatist, therefore urges having spare implements on hand: “Have two ploughs on hand, and work over them at home, one jointed, the other all one piece. This is by far the best thing to do; for if you break one, you can still put the oxen to the other” (Op. 432-33).
Although most tools pale in complexity compared to modern equipment, their construction and upkeep was a constant task: “Fool, there are a hundred pieces of lumber in a wagon. Be sure to have these at home beforehand” (Hes. Op. 456-57; cf. Men. Dys. 375; Colum. Rust. 11.1.20). No doubt the poet realized that there was an ever-present temptation to “get by” with a single set of tools or to borrow implements from a neighbor. That was surely a shortsighted policy, for the salvation of a crop otherwise lost would more than pay for investment in good equipment. Independence, self-reliance, and responsibility are the key, traits to reappear throughout Greek military and political life. There is none of the palace decision making and bureaucratic overregulation found in the Linear B tablets of past Mycenean times.
Because the polis farmer lived on his ground, the house, as well as fences, terraces, pens, outbuildings, and “barns,” required constant maintenance—and became instant, visible reflections of the farm family’s relative success or failure within the general agricultural community. The repair of field walls and terraces was apparently the work Homer envisioned Laertes busy with in Book Twenty-four of the Odyssey (Od. 24.224). Later lease agreements on stone tablets always were careful to stipulate that the renter return the property as it was or much improved. The fear of a caved-in roof during a storm, a washed-out terrace taking part of the orchard, animals escaping through defective fencing (cf. Lys. 7.4.9-11) all explain the farmer’s inability to rest, and his obsession with keeping busy year-round to prevent catastrophe.
“In farming most things are impossible to know in advance,” Xenophon sighs. “Sometimes, hailstorms, frost, droughts, rains, blights and other things ruin plans which were otherwise well thought-out” (Xen. Oec. 5.18). Natural, not human-induced catastrophe, was the most feared (“The year bears the crop, not the soil,” Theophr. HP 8.7.6; cf. Guiraud 486-90), confirming the traditional image of the farmer battling against the elements (e.g., Pl. Resp. 7.527D).*
My concerns here, however, are much more narrow and mundane: What did the farmer do; what did he think when confronted with natural disaster and how did constant worry affect his overall outlook? The agrarian ideology of self against nature is crucial to understanding the political and military mentality of agrarianism, and thus the entire cultural history of the ancient Greek polis.
By “natural” threat I mean any slight deviation from the normal ecological environment to which the agriculturalist has grown accustomed. Chief among the elemental disasters was sudden rain, not merely the deluges that erode soil and damage infrastructure, but the more serious unseasonable downpours right at harvest. Those storms could be lethal, wiping out days or months, even years of work. Besides preventing access to the fields and damaging terraces and ditches (e.g., Alciphr.3.13; Theophr. HP 8.6.5-7), rainfall could soak ripening cereal stalks, split harvestable grapes, tree fruit, and olives, and rot drying raisins and figs (e.g., Xen. Symp. 2.25; cf. McDonald and Rapp 55). Less dramatic, but equally injurious, were storms at key times of planting or pollination. Continuous rain while fruit trees are in bloom can prevent fertilization and result in the absence of an entire year’s crop; “some permanent crops,” says Theophrastus (HP 4.14.8; cf. CP 2.9.3-4), “such as trees and vines, if rain falls on them as they are dropping their blossom, also lose their fruit.” If they occur right after planting, rain and accompanying humidity tend to rot seeds in the ground, ruining chances for germination. Plato once made a rhyming pun on this ubiquitous dual worry of the farmer over soils and seasons by dubbing ithôra kai chôra (Pl. Hipp. 225B-D).
What was the Greek farmer’s response to a disaster? In essence, there was little, if anything, he could do after the fact. Much effort instead was put into forecasting doom.* Aelian (NA 6.16) wrote that “dogs, oxen, swine, goats, snakes, and other animals have a prescient knowledge of impending famine, and also they are the first to know of an approaching earthquake. They can foretell fair weather and the fertility of crops. Though they have no share of reason, nevertheless, they do not make mistakes in the phenomena mentioned above.”
At other times, wild plants, not animals, could give some indication of the crop year. Theophrastus purportedly thought that farmers might look to the health of nearby oak and mastich trees to receive some idea of the upcoming yield of their grain crops (Plut.Mor.fr. 17). Often the best caution was simply to begin harvest a little early, sacrificing some quality in the produce, but increasing the odds that the entire crop could be gathered in the shortest period of time. The geôrgos was constantly apprehensive, continually examining plants and animals for some clue, some help in warding off disaster.
Given the Mediterranean climate, downpours could sometimes be beneficial (cf. Plut. Mor. fr. 68). The absence of rain was almost always a greater problem to Greek farmers (e.g., Theophr. Char. 3.3). Here, I mean both the “mini-drought” of a few weeks or months, or even a year or so, which retards plant growth and cuts into the size of the harvest, as well as the far more lethal climatic aberration, when little if any rain appears for years at time, where entire vineyards and orchards might die.
Peter Garnsey notes that in the years between 1931 and 1960, there was a twenty-eight percent chance that the annual wheat crop of Attica could have failed. In such atypical cases, farmers faced the real chance of food shortages. Temperatures—usually associated with July and August—can today in Greece exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit for weeks at a time. Since plentiful winter and spring rains are usually absent, there is no surplus moisture stored in the soil for the wheat or barley to draw on. The danger is not confined to cereals. As grapes ripen, especially in the early stages of development when their sugar content is low, they often are sunburned, the more exposed clusters shriveling up altogether. (As I write this paragraph, we have lost this week about twenty tons of immature grapes to four continuous days of 110-degree heat.) The same is true of other tree fruit and olives. Produce on drought-stricken trees and vines, with little foliage, is often scorched and ruined. Farmers impatient to sow grain might find their cereal crop lost at the very beginning of the agricultural year with the absence of fall rains.
The presence of a variety of crops and species ensured that all fruit on the farm was not in the same vulnerable cycle. Smaller immature berries and clusters cannot weather a sudden spate of excessive temperature as well as grapes on the verge of harvest. There are a few examples in the agricultural treatises of rudimentary attempts to spread dirt or clay over produce (hupokonisis), and other efforts to deflect heat (e.g., Colum. Rust. 4.28.1; 9.2.60; Theophr. HP 2.7.5; CP 3.16.3; Xen. Oec. 19.18-19). This was no doubt a desperate move by the farmer to try something, anything, rather than allow his crop to shrivel and vanish before his eyes, inasmuch as protective coatings—today everything from talc to polymers is employed on vegetables, tree fruit, and grapes—provided little real defense. One of Alciphron’s letters illustrates the dilemma: “There’s a drought here now … and the soil is parched. All our sacrifices to Zeus of the rain-storms are in vain” (Alciphr. 3.35). The comic playwright Philemon’s farmer compares his farm to a doctor who feeds him like an invalid, concluding, “I fear that his treatment will soon make me a corpse” (Philemon fr. 98 Kock).
Natural shade—we frequently hear of individual trees and entire groves appearing in almost a divine context in Greek literature—was essential to the small farm, requiring the planting of laurel, mulberry, fig, or other species with large canopies wherever possible. Far more important for combating drought and heat, however, were cultivation practices such as continued pulverization of the soil, which increases the carrying capacity of the ground during spring storms, or the use of straw over bare earth to conserve moisture. Irrigation, as we have seen, was essential during summer for gardens and the survival of young trees and vines.5
Frosts, wind, and hail could destroy crops, usually without warning in early spring: “The violent hailstorm has cut down the standing grain, and there is no hedge against famine.”* So too in a Homeric simile a sudden gust blows down a carefully nurtured olive tree (Hom. Il. 17.53-58). For frost prevention it was important to have sealed ground, not freshly cultivated earth that exposed roots and did not absorb daytime heat (Theophr. CP 5.13.1). Sometimes vines were buried to prevent cold damage (Theophr. CP5.12.6), or stones were put under the ground to transmit stored heat to roots (Theophr. CP 3.20.5). These nuances in cultivation practice might save an entire crop. I have seen a freshly disked vineyard lose its entire grape crop to a March frost, while a neighboring plot with sealed ground suffered no damage.
But the best protection was to spread risks by incorporating different species. In areas of violent gusts, windbreaks of poplars or other fast-growing, upright trees might cut down on some damage, but such plantings brought an entire array of problems of their own, from reducing available soil moisture for the crop, to attracting bird and insect pests, to shading out crops at the edge of the fields. Ironically, occasionally harsh winds could prove of some value, if the air movement occurred during grain winnowing (Ant. Pal. 6.53).
Insects are a constant pest in Greek literature. Grubs, coddling moths, locusts, mites, worms, grasshoppers, and beetles were the bane of any farmer (cf. Theophr. CP 4.14.1-5; HP 8.10.1-3). When Dicaiopolis in Aristophanes’ Acharnians compares an army to a “swarm of locusts,” he is surely drawing on a danger known to all Attic growers (Ach. 150). Elsewhere in Attic comedy we hear that pests could devour greens and thus raise the price of vegetables in the market (e.g., Alexis fr. 15.12-15 Kock).
The ancient practice of diversified crops must have mitigated some disasters. Flare-ups of insects, when natural hunters—birds and other insects—lose control of pest populations, occur when there are no alternative habitats nearby to encourage predator growth. The rise of intensive, diversified agriculture probably made Greek farmers of the polis innately less prone to locust and grasshopper swarms or to sudden destruction by spider mites. Like attempts to combat other natural disasters, there was little the ancient Greek farmer could do to kill insects on a large scale once they infested crops in numbers, despite the mention in our agronomic texts of a variety of innovative attempts at eradication.
The imaginative ways in which independent farmers attempted to combat birds and insects are striking. Aelian relates (NA 3.12) the romantic story of the residents of Thessaly, Illyria, and Lemnos who fed locust-eating jackdaws at public expense. That way, “the clouds of locusts are sizably reduced, and the produce of these peoples remains undamaged” (cf. Ar. Aves 588-90). Ancient agronomy, following Aristotle’s lead, believed in spontaneous generation of insects on plants; although wrong in its explanation for the explosive growth in insect populations, that belief could lead to careful cultural practices that would diminish insect habitat (Theophr. CP 3.22.3-23.1).6
Birds were less dangerous than insects; they could, however, attack all three legs of the intensive farmer’s triad: grain, tree fruit, and grapes (e.g., Anth. Pal.7.172; Theopompus FGrH 115 fr. 274). Aristophanes’ comedy the Birds plays on just that fear throughout, as the nightmarish cast of airborne pests threatens to eat the grain, grapes, and olives of the Athenians unless they are enthroned as masters (227-245; 1119-1125). Theophrastus (HP 8.6.1) tells us that bird pests usually ate the grain as soon as it was scattered. Much earlier Hesiod advises the farmer to have a young boy follow behind to throw dirt over the seed to prevent its loss to birds (Op. 470.). Aelian (NA 17.41) also felt that incursions of field mice and sparrows had as serious effects on grain production as drought or frost. Occasionally, we hear of rudimentary ways of fighting back, such as spreading sticky substances (“birdlime”) on fruit-tree branches where pests landed (e.g., Alciphr. 3.30; Eur. Cyc. 433; Athen. 10.451D; for the ancient viticulturalist’s use of herbs and animal products to fight mildew, ants, mice, and worms, see. Colum. Arbor.13-15), or planting honey cakes in the field to lure birds away from freshly scattered seed (Aelian HA 17.16).
There were frequent attacks by wild animals such as boars and deer, another indication that Greek intensive farming had encroached on hillsides near mountainous and uncultivated areas. Homer tells of the enormous boar Artemis sent to tear up the “tall trees” (Hom. Il. 9.533), a beast that was elsewhere rightly known as “the tireless destroyer of vines” (Anth. Pal. 6.169).
In the struggling farmer’s thinking, anything that walked or flew was a source of potential trouble better off dead. I have shot gophers and squirrels at regular intervals, in the field, beside the road, even on the house lawn. When pressed by urban friends to justify the gratuitous slaughter, I have searched for all sorts of excuses, from the fear of plant damage to their tunnels’ undermining irrigation ditches. But the true reason is the dislike of any creature that dares to pose a threat, however remote, to a carefully planned agricultural regime. Alciphron’s letters are replete with references to foxes who chew grapes and gulp down entire clusters (e.g., 3.22), varmints who repeatedly escape efforts to trap and kill them. In one incident, the farmer’s dog, instead of the fox, falls victim to poisonous baited meat. We also hear of one Greek farmer who boasted that he “had knocked out the brains of a rabbit.” Another dedicated a hedgehog to the gods, “its body full of sharp spines, a grape-eater, the destroyer of sweet vineyards, caught all curled into a ball rolling among the grapes” (Anth. Pal. 6.45; 6.72; 6.169).
Fungi, viruses, and bacterial infestations were common, and much more baffling than animal attack. Theophrastus lists a variety of diseases of viticulture—scab, mildew, bacterial fire blight, bacterial cancer, necrosis, sun-scorch (CP 5.9.1-12.1; and esp. 5.10.1-3;HP 4.14.1-10). Long experience in cultural practices (pruning, cultivation, pulling leaves, etc.), as well as additional fertilization and irrigation, might dramatically reduce outbreaks (cf. Theophr.CP 3.22.1-2). In some cases, we hear of bizarre remedies: burying stones, ashes, and iron, which theoretically could rectify deficiencies in micro-nutrients such as boron, zinc, and potassium. But without proper knowledge of botany or biology, most farmers blamed crops lost to disease either on the gods or on their own failed efforts at anticipating disaster. The poor farmer of the comic playwright Apollodorus of Carystus lamented that whereas others had vinegar-fig trees, which produced sour fruit, his farm was even worse: it produced bad grapes from the “vinegar-vine” as well (Apollodorus fr. 25 Edmonds).
As if natural calamity were not bad enough, the absence of crop damage was just as serious: there was the final irony that the complete want of disaster in any given year and the subsequent production of bounty could prove disastrous by creating a local market glut and diminished value for produce. Of course, the ancient Greek economy during the polis period was relatively unsophisticated. But its backwardness in comparison to modern capitalist systems has led too many scholars to downplay the importance of exchange, supply, demand, profit, speculation, and investment altogether when examining ancient economic life.* In the case of farmers of the Greek city-state, we know from a wide variety of literary sources throughout the polis period that a rudimentary food market operated on the local level, and that an oversupply of agricultural commodities could spell for producers as many problems as scarcity. This is exactly the situation Xenophon describes in his Ways and Means when he writes: “When there is a glut of wheat or wine, the prices of crops are cheap, and the profit from growing them vanishes, causing many farmers to give up” (Vect. 4.6-10). It is likely that this basic cycle of supply and demand, and consequent profiting in foodstuffs, emerged early in the history of the polis,providing a real incentive for intensive-farming geôrgoi to plant crops and take risks beyond the needs of their own immediate households.7
In this regard there are plenty of anecdotes from later sources demonstrating the desire of early Greeks to exchange and sell food. Besides the story of Solon’s visit to Egypt for trading purposes (Arist. Ath. Pol. 11.1-2; Diog. Laert. 1.26; Plut. Sol. 2.7), there is a tradition that the philosopher Thales sometime in the seventh century acquired as many olive-presses as possible in anticipation of a bountiful harvest at Miletus and Chios, when processing equipment would be especially valuable (Arist. Pol. 1.1259a10-21). Greek literature is replete with stories of excess agricultural profits in times of scarcity, and more commonly financial disaster during periods of overproduction.**
Because of the perilous environment, the farmer’s ideology of the need for hard work is not merely reasonable, but vital. Moreover, the threat of catastrophe—man-made, animal, insect, climatological, and meteorological—explains two other characteristic responses of farmers: repetition and a reverence for tradition. Agriculture and its practitioners are—must be—conservative. Experimentation in life-style, work ethic, and daily routine can, if proved to be unwise or unsound, cause famine and disaster. “Farmers as a class,” K. D. White concludes of agriculture in antiquity, “tend to be conservative in their outlook, suspicious of new methods, and generally adverse to experiment” (1970a: 48-49).
The safest course was simply to follow, religiously and without question, the example of previous farmers, that is, of one’s father and grandfather. Much of Hesiod’s emphasis on time and the calendar (i.e., his Days), on unswerving attention to detail, derive from thefear inherent in farming. In the chapters to follow, we see that it is just these characteristics of intensive, property-owning farmers—discipline, bonds to family and friends, affinity for hard work, steadiness in the midst of disaster—that explain the undeniable courage and military prowess of the Greek phalanx of the polis.
Even in the modern mind of the farmer, replete though it be with knowledge of pollenization, fertilization, and plant physiology and pathology, an irrational terror of crop failure (cf. Plato’s “the fears of farmers” [Pl. Leg. 10.906E]) always remains: in the case of the perennial cereals, fruit, and vegetables, that the seeds will not sprout, not germinate, not mature, not be fertile, not produce normal fruit. With permanent crops that fear only intensifies, fear not merely over a year’s work, a season’s harvest, but rather over a life’s investment in orchards and vineyards.
The life of the intensive agriculturalist is one of unending fretting over disease and threats to the very life of the tree and vine. I have seen an entire plum orchard, six years of meticulous care invested in its establishment, felled by bacterial cancer in the space of a few weeks, verdant young trees transformed into hideous scorched sticks (cf. Theophr. CP 5.11.1-2). There is no palliative treatment other than to tear out the stumps, burn the wood, fumigate the ground, and then plant new stock, preferably a different species that will not similarly fail.
On an intellectual level this gnawing, ever-present concern over total destruction is absurd. The likelihood especially in modern times—with fumigants, fungicides, fertilizers, herbicides, and insecticides—is greater that harvests will appear, not fail, that orchards and vineyards will thrive, not die. But emotionally, spiritually the anxiety has an undeniable logic. Most farmers, both ancient and contemporary, are a season or two away from oblivion—financial ruin in the case of the modern grower, for the geôrgos of antiquity starvation. Plato, for example, speaks of the farmer made “helpless” by one bad season (geôrgon chalepê hôra epelthousa amêchanon theiê, Prot. 344D).
Even more important, the growing of food in a Mediterranean climate involves a transformation of the most radical kind, materially, aesthetically, substantively. From bare ground to a solid carpet of grain, from barren, sickly wood to an enormous canopy of leaves and fruit, the changes over the course of a season are startling. A visitor in January once asked as he looked out my kitchen window at sixty acres of vines where the grapes were. He nodded in disbelief when assured that the short, gnarled, and paltry-looking naked stumps would in a mere nine months’ time each produce fifty pounds of quality grapes fresh, ten pounds of raisins dry, and provide seven-foot high, quarter-mile long continuous canopies of green foliage.
The more I explained to the guest the marvelous step-by-step changes that would soon take place in the vineyard, the more I too wondered, doubted, worried whether it was still possible, whether the eighty-year-old vines were this year at last too enfeebled to produce yet another crop. By the end of our conversation, I began despairing—praying to Demeter or Dionysos as it were—that we would have anything to harvest, any crop at all to pay off bills and accumulated debt, to provide food and shelter, so unimpressive to me too were the barren vine stumps of five generations of men seen in the midst of winter. No wonder Xenophon remarked on the uncertainty in agriculture: “You might plant a field well, but you will not know who shall harvest the fruit” (Mem.1.1.8). Similarly, the Attic dramatist Philemon has his character say, “The farmer always is rich—the coming year” (Philemon fr. 82 Kock). Menander simply concludes, “The life of the farmers has pleasure in soothing over the pain with hopes” (Men. fr. 641 Kock).
The only solution to this agricultural anxiety, as Hesiod knew, was fidelity to things that worked in the past, precise attention to dates and repetition, avoidance of anything novel that might bring on disruption of past success. What else can explain the notebooks my grandfather kept for nearly half a century, detailing the weather, stage of fruit development, prices, and work being done on that particular day on his farm, despite the presence of modern weather forecasts and innumerable published guides on everything from farm management to plant pathology? Terrified that the great chain of agricultural knowledge accumulated over generations might be broken (he had three daughters, but no son), daily he left an account of the yearly farming cycle—all in hopes of preserving his expertise should one of his ignorant progeny ever take his place. A typical diary entry in his sixty-sixth year on a July day in 1956 reads:
Tuesday, July 31, 1956
Clear, mild, about normal
Manuel is using the Laikham weed-cutter in vineyards. Vernon is picking Hale-peaches with Otis, Delmas, J. D. Pinner, and Joe Carey. Barr Packing Co. sent seven men to strip Late Santa Rosa plum trees. Homer is irrigating eight acres of girdled vines every other middle. I am irrigating short Thompson vine rows between the ponds, and the short North and South rows. It has been a month of very uneven temperatures, very hot and sultry and very cool. Pests have been very bad, especially red-spider. For Gower nectarines: vapotone by aeroplane, then Orthotran by sprayer. For vines: Malathion 4% plus Aramite 4%. Mildew has been very bad all over the county. Our place is comparatively clean. I am going to change to Anchor Brand sulfur in hot weather.
If a vine is pruned correctly, then that process must be repeated constantly, on an ancient farm as many as two thousand times per acre. This is completely alien to the modern urban gardener or backyard fruit grower, this concept of scale (cf. Plato’s comments on farming versus the fantasy of farming, Pl. Phaedr. 276B). Most clever and experienced horticulturists can devise creative and organic strategies to produce a tree full of peaches or a few boxes of tomatoes for the summertime table. To apply that strategy to even five acres of peaches (anywhere from six hundred to two thousand trees depending upon the spacing), to two to three acres of tomatoes (six to eight thousand plants), when production of fruit or vegetables involves one’s survival on the land, is a different matter altogether.
Duplication of traditional technique on a large scale without alteration assures the farmer uniformity of result throughout the field. By the same token, herein lies potential catastrophe as well! The agrarian is no weekend gardener, who can afford to err on a few sickly tomato plants or a weak stand of corn. A single initial mistake will be repeated throughout the farmer’s field, ensuring that the problem must affect all his harvest—and thus his very livelihood.
As an example, after deciding a weak Santa Rosa plum orchard needed nitrogen (it is the most sensitive of all plum species; cf. HP. 2.7.4: “Manure does not suit all trees the same”), I foolishly opted for the cheapest formulation, ammonium sulfate, rather than calcium or even ammonium nitrate. After carefully working in a pound around a tree on the one-acre orchard, I repeated the process on all 121 trees to guarantee that all would receive exactly the same, “proper” amount of nitrogen. A week later, each Santa Rosa sapling shriveled and burned, the orchard in its entirety exterminated through excess nitrogen, the process of fertilization killing, not saving, the trees in methodical order (cf., Theophr. CP 5.15.3: “destruction through an excess of food [huperbolê trophês]).” All the trees died in an identical manner, all because of the mistaken activity of a mere two hours.8
Throughout Greek literature we hear constantly of the glories of the old family estate, of the precariousness of an old fig tree, of the wisdom of the patriarch. These paeans originate in the farmers’ need for conservatism and ritual repetition, strategies and ideologies possible only when a man owns his own land and seeks to pass it on improved to his own kin. Often an individual history of a family farm emerges quite as important as that of the nearby community. Thucydides describes the displeasure that the rural folk of Attica felt on being herded into the walls of Athens at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, suggesting that many had viewed the famous fifty years of Athenian expansion and imperialism since the Persian Wars (i.e., 480-431 B.C.) quite narrowly, solely as it affected the rural prosperity of their farms, not as it influenced the building program of Pericles or the subjugation of errant subject states in the Aegean. Thucydides (2.14-16; cf. Hell. Oxy. 12.3-5) further elaborates that the farmers of Attica were angry at abandoning their homes and adopting new habits of life in the city in 431 B.C., especially since they had only recently become reestablished after the evacuation of Attica during the Persian Wars (480/479 B.C.).
That same close identification with the ancestral estate is illustrated in Aristophanes’ Peace. The protagonist, Trygaios, yearns to see his small farm and the fig tree that he had planted as a young boy (557-63), an event in his own life far more memorable than the contemporary rise of the sophists inside the walls of Athens. Why would this not be so, when these are men and women who preferred not to sell or move, but had every intention of dying where they were born, who would rather have farmed the poor land of their fathers than the better ground of some stranger? Frequently there is reference not merely to the bounty of the farm, but to the aesthetics of groves, vineyards, and flowers (e.g., Ar. Pax. 577; Ach. 996-99). That suggests the ancestral plot could be a thing of beauty in addition to a means of survival.
From the omnipresence of danger, the consequent fear of disaster, and the response of conservatism and repetition, ultimately there emerges in the farmer’s mind the realization that all his efforts are aimed at equilibrium, at some type of counteraction to an original action. He needs to react to disequilibrium, natural or man-made, while ensuring that he does nothing to upset the fragile symmetry crucial to agriculture. The notion of the “golden mean” (“nothing too much,” “nothing in excess”) is a hackneyed enough theme in Greek literature. But its roots surely are, like nearly every other element of Greek culture, agrarian. They derive out of the necessities of intensive Greek agriculture of the polis. The philosopher and agronomist Theophrastus wrote of the uncertainty and nuance inherent in farming: “Many things are in dispute; in some, the dispute is a simple question of yes or no; in others it is a question of better or worse” (CP 3.2.4). Similarly, Xenophon’s Ischomachos says: “The God does not regulate the year on a fixed schedule: so, in one year it is best to sow early, in another very late, in another at mid-season” (Oec. 17.4).
Rather than searching out this trait of moderation and flexibility inherent in every aspect of Greek rural life, a vivid sense of the need for “balance,” for the “middle” (to meson; to metrion), for a perfect harmony (cf. Pl. Amat. 134E; Symp. 187A), can be gained by looking carefully at the actual production technique of a single crop, such as grapes. “The farming of the vine,” Columella (who wrote more about viticulture than any other extant Greek or Roman agronomist) reminds us, was “more complicated than that of any other tree” (Rust. 5.7.1). The early Greek poet Alcaeus more bluntly wrote: “Plant no other tree before the vine” (fr. 342 [Z18 Page]). Perhaps the time and attention required in the Greek vineyard explains the Aristophanic description of the small farmer as “vine-loving” and Peace herself as “giver of grapes” (Ach. 495). So axiomatic was the connection between the polis and viticulture that the Greeks often saw the absence of the vine in other places as a confirmation of barbarity (cf. Diog. Laert. 1.104-7; Antiphanes fr. 56 Kock; Hom. Od. 9.133).
The Greeks of the polis saw the world about them as a series of cultivated rings, concentric circles of civilization. Those peoples (mostly Greek) who cultivated grains, trees, and vines in a stable setting belonged at the core of all civilization and culture; those without fruit-bearing, cultivated lands were regarded as little more than satellite barbarians at the outer orbits of human habitation. These marginal peoples obviously lacked the prerequisite agricultural environment for the creation of polis values. So viticulture, in a manner not characteristic of either cereals or even olives, sharpened the identity of the grower and helped to spawn the new agrarian ideology of the ancient Greek countryside in the time of the polis.9
A brief review of the vine’s cultivation will demonstrate why this was true. I will describe the pragmatic challenges involved in ancient Greek viticulture to illustrate the inherent difficulty in production and the expertise required to ensure a crop. The successful propagation of the vine demanded moderation and harmony—the mean that appears categorically at the source of Greek political thought and culture throughout the life of the city-state. The mesoi were the middle people of the polis; they took on that role and adopted that outlook because they and they alone were also those who sought daily just that balance in the growing of food. When they trudged into the city it was their experience as farmers, as small but permanent growers of trees and vines, as yeomen combatants against nature—not their knowledge of literary texts or philosophical paradigms—that they drew on to craft laws, fight wars, and manage the community: in effect, to create what we now call Western civilization.
Given a choice in location,* the ancient Greek small viticulturist had to consider the vagaries of temperature, exposure, altitude, available moisture, and soil conditions. The geôrgos knew well enough that vines theoretically survived almost anywhere in Greece (e.g., Weaver 207-8, fig. 1). But the key was to plant his vineyard where natural factors tended to maximize production and quality while minimizing risks and expenditures (e.g., Pliny HN 17.19; Varro Rust. 1.25-27).
Those Greek farmers whose hereditary plots were blessed with greater natural advantages—all other factors being equal—enjoyed greater success (“success” being defined as consistently higher yields at less labor and cost). We should never underestimate the role that inheritance plays in farming, ancient or modern. Often a man is stuck, for good or ill, with the land he inherits, which can determine the degree of his family’s future agricultural success for generations. An anonymous comic fragment sometimes attributed to Philemon realistically urges: “It is better to lend to the land than to the man” (Philemon fr. 216 Kock). Unfortunately, modern lending agencies often feel the same way, concluding that the clever raisin farmer on a sand hill is a worse risk than the talentless grape grower on deep loam. Logically, Plutarch listed good land as the primary ingredient to farming success, followed by the skill of the cultivator and the quality of his seed (Plut. Mor. 2B).
Exposure to dry summer winds (e.g., Theophr. HP 4.14.2, 10; Colum. Rust. 5.5.15) depleted soil moisture and increased water requirements; hot gusts occasionally burned off leaves and tender clusters. On the other hand, the farmer had to be just as chary of low ground. Unusually depressed terrain, although sheltered from wind, drew in cold heavy air and decreased nighttime temperatures and so allowed otherwise tolerable frosts (Theophr. HP 4.14.6, 13) to devastate an entire year’s crop. Flatland or gullies also caused problems of drainage—crucial for all vinifera grapes—during unusually wet years (Theophr. HP 4.14.8; CP 3.6.3-4; 3.12.1; cf. McDonald and Rapp 55).
In addition, the ancient Greek viticulturalist had to contend with a complex of decisions beyond mere questions of elevation and exposure. Soil quality in relationship to vine variety was crucial for successful grape growing: “It is very important to consider the variety and characteristics of the vine in consideration with the area you wish to plant” (Colum. Rust. 3.1.4). Deeper, fertile soils on the plains, such as sandy and clay loams, produced the heaviest crops. But that was not always preferable for wine varieties. Unlike raisin or fresh grape production, where greater cluster size and quantity were preferred, wine grapes often produced superior vintages on rocky, sandy (e.g., Virg. Georg. 2.346; Colum. Arbor. 3.6), or even infertile soils, which tended to check productivity and overall vine vigor. Harvested yields were low there, but proper sugar and acidity levels (depending on the type of wine desired) were more easily obtainable. There is a general mean in grape farming between quantity and quality of production; unfortunately, one is usually at the expense of the other.
For a modern parallel, nothing is as frustrating as the current predicament of the wine grower of the central San Joaquin valley in California. Nowhere is land richer, the growing season longer, irrigation more plentiful, the continual heat more predictable. Vineyards tower on seven-foot stakes and produce huge crops of over fifteen tons of fresh grapes per acre. Yet often that massive vintage goes without a buyer. Even in good times prices scarcely cover production costs. More often, the grape harvests of most wine varieties are used as juice or sweeteners, and for blending purposes in jug wines.
Instead, fine wineries prefer that the identical species be grown near the coast, especially to the north in the Napa Valley of California. Cooler temperatures, poorer soils, rugged terrain, and the absence of frequent irrigation all work to produce a scrawny vineyard—pathetic to the trained eye—which produces a crop of between one and six tons per acre, less than half the tonnage possible in the hotter, more fertile Central Valley. Nevertheless, these grapes are eagerly purchased by connoisseurs and sell for premium prices, because the more stressful environment on the hillsides actually produces far finer taste.
Similarly, growers in early Greece must have soon learned that once-barren hillsides, unwanted and uncultivated by Dark-Age aristocratic landowners, actually offered an ideal opportunity for skilled vine growers (e.g., Colum. Rust. 3.11.1-3). In fact, as pointed out earlier, such eschatiai were more suitable for grape production than previously prized plains. The key was that the initial planting of the vineyard involved a delicate balance. The farmer had to be careful not to opt for either extreme, and instead to be aware that conditions adverse to full production ironically could prove hospitable. So the growing practice of viticulture in the early polis—much more so than livestock raising or grain growing—must have reordered Greek values and contributed to the peculiar Greek notion of harmony and moderation: fertile bottom-land could produce too many leaves, too few sweet grapes. Excessive fertilizer, overabundant leaves and clusters were to be avoided. Hard work, not natural bounty was to be lionized. The vintage should be large enough to produce a reasonable amount of wine for the next year, but not so large as to delay maturity or ruin wine quality.
Because farms were extremely small, because land, at least initially, was not frequently exchanged and sold, and because grape production was less sensitive to radical market fluctuations, most Greek farmers were tied to their ancestral estate. That is,geôrgoiworked the same ground, their klêros that had been passed down within their families since the early years of the polis. Because the Greek viticulturist could not, as the modern agribusinessman can, easily liquidate holdings and transfer capital to more favorable sites, success depended on one’s skill in overcoming intrinsic natural disadvantages, often varying within the confines of the small ancestral plot. “There is no advantage in fighting against the god,” Xenophon makes Ischomachos say in theOeconomicus, “one is not likely to obtain a better yield from the land by planting trees and vines and sowing grain of the type he wishes, rather than those crops which the land itself prefers (ho ti hê gê hêdoito) to bring forth and support” (Oec. 16.4).
Lacking choice of location, the layout of the vineyard was a crucial expression of vine expertise. Labor expenditure and costs were directly proportional to the number of vines, not the size of the acreage planted. As a general rule of viticulture, the most desirable spacing scheme was one that required the least number of vines per acre (and hence the least number of vine rootings and stakes at planting, and, later, mature vines for pruning) without reducing the size of the potential crop. The great diversity in vine spacing that existed in antiquity must illustrate the absence of any uniform practice.* Divergences show significant regionalism (e.g., Theophr. CP 3.11.2-4) and reflect farmers’ attempts to discover the optimum ratio between vine density and maximum production, given the specific grape variety and soil conditions of each individual vineyard. Balance and harmony between the soil and the number of vines planted per acre were crucial.
In general, poorer soils required more vines per acre (and thus more work), richer ground, fewer vines, to achieve identical crop production—an indication of how the fertility of the ancestral estate might affect generations to come. Grape vines on poorer soils achieved smaller trunk size, and thus more stock had to be planted per acre to produce adequate canes, leaves, and grapes (Theophr. CP 3.7.2). Even in contemporary agricultural practice, it is poignant to see families on poor soils struggle constantly in their fields, while a few miles distant, the less industrious prosper on the inheritance of their deep loams. Modern experience demonstrates that density of plantings can be reduced substantially on extremely rich soils without crop loss, and at a saving of labor and management.
An alternative strategy mentioned by some of the ancient agronomists was to plant closely on rich soils and sparsely on weaker soils (e.g., Theophr. HP 2.4.6; 2.5.6). Apparently this was an effort to maximize capital and labor where returns were greater and to minimize costs on inherently unproductive ground, not “to throw good money after bad.” Mastery of the nuances in viticulture is a far more complicated proposition than cereal or livestock production, and could have been accomplished only by men who were independent property owners, responsible for their own success or failure, plying their craft over generations of success and failure.
Other important factors besides soil quality affected vineyard layout and initial planting. The occasional desire to cultivate with oxen between vine rows (probably rare in Greece with the advent of available slave labor) mandated wider spacing and thus a smaller number of vines per acre (e.g., Colum. Rust. 5.5.3). At times grapes were probably interplanted with grain and other annual crops (e.g., Theophr. CP 3.10.3-8), and thus allowances for ploughing would reduce vine density. Another consideration was the choice of nursery stock (e.g., Theophr. HP 2.2.4; 2.5.3; CP 3.5.1-5; Xen. Oec. 19.8-14). Rootings (the prior year’s grape cuttings that had developed a root system during the year in the nursery) were more expensive (Colum. Rust. 3.3.12), but guaranteed a much lower rate of failure at transplantation than cuttings planted right from dormant canes (Theophr. HP 2.2.4; CP 3.5.3). Mere cuttings, however, which saved time and expense, were occasionally preferred for planting on deep, rich soils, and resulted in a tolerable rate of success (Colum. Rust. 5.5.7-10; Arbor 3.1-4; Theophr. HP 2.5.3; CP 3.2.7; 3.3.1; 3.4.2; 3.5.3). Layering, the burying of a dormant cane (e.g., Colum. Rust. 4.15; Pliny NH 17.96; Theophr, HP 2.1.3; CP 3.5.1, 3.11.5), was the quickest, surest way to propagate new vines (bearing in the second year). But it was possible only to replace missing vines in a mature vineyard, because layering requires the presence of established vines nearby.
Much can be lost in the falsely economical effort to save expenses in the new vineyard by using cuttings instead of more established one-year grape rootings. It is an enticing choice that the wise farmer should shun. A neighbor in February 1990 planted a forty-acre vineyard in cuttings (about 24,000 rootless vine canes). He avoided the nearly $10,000 cost of nursery rootings by spending a few hundred dollars in the labor of putting into the ground foot-long lengths of dormant vine canes cut from his nearby mature vineyard. But when the hot temperatures of May arrived, the whole enterprise turned into disaster. Forty percent of his parched rootless sticks had failed to leaf out, making the cultivation, irrigation, and fertilization of the nearly half dead vineyard pointless. He lost the whole year—his entire investment of labor and capital. An embarrassment to his neighbors, he disked up the abject field and began the process all over with rootings in winter 1991.
The ancient Greek viticulturalist had to choose the proper grape varieties and had to know widely diverse soil, temperature, moisture, wind, and altitude variants. At planting, the farmer decided between cuttings or rootings and then selected a vine density that best suited his conditions to achieve the highest returns at the lowest expenditure. Ancient leases, which required tenants to plant vines at prescribed distances (e.g., SIG3 963), probably reflected the wisdom of the lessor concerning the precise nature of the land (e.g., Xen. Oec. 16.3-5). Such regulations were aimed at ensuring adequate production over the long term by demanding closer plantings on weaker soils—a strategy that required more time and expense on the part of the tenant.
As a general rule, larger crops resulted in poorer quality grapes (Theophr. HP 2.7.2);* and greater susceptibility to insect damage—factors rarely identified in any of our sources. The key again, as with vineyard site selection and planting, must have been proper balance: the viticulturalist always desired the largest crop possible without loss of quality. Precise equilibrium was, as in modern times, always sought but rarely found, given the vicissitudes of weather conditions and incomplete understanding of vine physiology. The “right” strategy can be approximated only in hindsight, in careful retrospection once the crop year is over. Yet long experience in principles of dormant cane pruning (e.g., Colum. Rust. 4.9-23; 11.2.16; Theophr HP 2.7.2; 4.19.6; Cato Rust. 32;Geopontica 5.23; Brumfield 38-40) and later spring cluster, leaf, and shoot thinning (Colum. Rust. 5.5.14; Varro Rust. 1.31.2), must have succeeded in modifying crop size and quality to a significant degree.
The more buds that were left on dormant vine wood (as evidenced by the number and length of remaining canes/spurs after pruning), the more fruit clusters emerged. But light pruning also increased the chances that the large crop would fail to achieve maturity before autumn rains (e.g., Colum. Rust. 11.2.61), if ever, and at the expense of weakening the vine itself (Theophr. CP 3.15.5). That had negative repercussions for future crops: poor fruit-bud formation the next year. On the other hand, severe pruning or later overthinning of fruit clusters unnecessarily reduced the size of the crop and spurred rank vegetative growth (Theophr. CP 3.15.5), as the vine overcompensated for reduced fruit demands.
Nothing, I think, is as disappointing or as embarrassing to the grower as a lush, vigorous leafy vineyard with little fruit. In 1982 a proud neighbor overpruned, overwatered, overfertilized, overtrellised, and overthinned his grape crop. At harvest, local farmers came by to marvel at the beautiful vineyard with no fruit (cf. “luxuriant tendrils” [Colum. Arbor. 3.2]). When a raisin grower places his harvested grapes on the ground to dry into raisins, for all around it is an instantaneous referendum on his entire skill as a farmer (e.g., Xen. Oec. 15.11-12). One simply looks down the row and sees—or does not see—trays of drying grapes. There is in farming, unlike many modern professions, no recompense “for growing canes and leaves”—no livelihood in elegance masking unproductiveness.
Dormant winter pruning required real expertise. Although pruners normally left the same number of buds as the year before on mature vines, the more skillful vine dressers occasionally were able to tailor cuts to individual vine needs (e.g., sick or weakened vines demanded more severe pruning; hardy stumps, suggesting tolerance for more clusters and canes, needed less cutting. They also sought to anticipate upcoming crop size. Cognizant of a prior short yield (and vine tendency to bear robustly when a past crop has been unusually light), the experienced pruner expected greater fertility in that year’s dormant buds. He left either fewer or shorter canes to avoid overcropping (which could harm the vine itself, cf. Theophr. CP 2.11.3) and thus poor quality grapes. “When the vine is pruned with equal regard for its own condition and for the year’s production of fruit,” Theophrastus advises, “it will have long life and will always be fruitful” (CP 3.14.5).
By contrast, the past year?s large harvest suggested reduced vine fruitfulness the next season: the exhausted vineyard takes a “rest” for a year. This cycle presented the opportunity for the skilled pruner to leave more buds than usual via longer or more numerous canes. He expects that the vineyard will react to last year’s bounty by producing a greater ratio of sterile buds (which would bear leaves only).
Should the pruner have erred in anticipating crop size (common enough, since the grape was not as predictable as the olive in its cyclical pattern of fruitfulness), and discovered that by late spring too many of his extra buds formed clusters, a return trip through the vineyard to snip off young bunches and pull leaves could still adjust crop size (e.g., Varro Rust. 1.31.2). After a heavy vintage, the vine dresser leaves a larger number of canes the next winter: if he guesses right, he has a good crop; if too many grapes appear, he can simply pull them off. The best way to spot a poor pruner after the fact is simply to watch his rows nine months later during harvest: they either have too few grapes or too many of poor quality. But, then, of course, the damage has already been done.
Too-severe pruning could obviously not be remedied by later thinning. The fear of destroying his own crop (much worse than natural disaster for his psyche) often led the viticulturalist to cut canes conservatively, especially given the prospect of spring frosts or hail that might diminish crop size. Conservative pruning accompanied by corrective spring thinning of grapes required greater labor expenditure and distinguished intensive, small-scale viticulture. It also signified a larger ideology of viticulture, a way of thinking that stressed the permanence of the vines, the need for proper balance in their cultivation, and the recognition that deviance from past practice might disrupt the natural process of growth and renewal—all traits, as we will see, that left a large (and conservative) imprint on the character of the farmer, and thus of the entire Greek polis itself.
Timing of dormant vine pruning was also vital, and illustrated the need to achieve a critical equilibrium between two extremes (e.g., Theophr. CP 3.2.3, 3.15.1-5). The agricultural writers list various ideal periods, ranging from October to March. In this connection it was important to understand that the earlier the pruning, the earlier also the subsequent spring bud-break. Late pruning (February-March) could have been advantageous where spring frosts were frequent, and where vines had little difficulty reaching maturity in the fall. In other words, the presence of unpruned canes during much of the fall and winter caused the vine to delay spring budding until safer warmer temperatures were more likely.
Early pruning (November-December) to achieve an early harvest was advantageous only if spring frosts were rare and the farmer expected fall ripening to be difficult or weather uncertain. The fear of late-maturing grapes was nearly proverbial (Alcaeus fr. 11a). In any case, the early-pruning viticulturalist had to wait until late October or early November when the first fall frosts brought on vine dormancy. Only then could he be sure that his selected canes or spurs were “winterized” and were not among the few that died back over the dormant months. The wait for fall frosts and rains that stripped leaves also made the pruner’s task far easier. On two occasions I have seen an overeager farmer struggle with the bothersome task of pruning leafy canes in November, only to have a sudden frost destroy many of those still green—taking away the source of his upcoming crop in a matter of hours.
There is, do not forget, always a diametrically opposite alternative in farming, the optimum choice elusively in between: pruning had to be completed before the twentieth or so of March, when buds began to swell and leaf out, when contact with the canes could have bruised or injured new growth (cf. Colum. Rust. 11.2.16). Cuts in late March also could ooze when the vine broke dormancy, increasing susceptibility to grape pathogens (Theophr. CP 3.15.1-2). Tasks that normally were to be accomplished after pruning butbefore bud-break (i.e., replacement of stakes, tying canes to supports, cultivation) could not be delayed. The picture that emerges from even a small Greek vineyard is clear: constant decisions, endless searching for the precise but always elusive equilibrium between multifarious choices, the need for constant attention and labor, and reverence for ancestral practice. Much different from cereal or livestock production, these complexities in viticulture and arboriculture help explain the new intensified Greek agriculture of homestead residencies, slave labor, incorporation of rough terrain, and mastery and control of food processing.
Time and capital invested in vine staking and trellising, digging and cultivation, thinning, suckering, and girdling, fertilization, windbreaks, and occasional irrigation improved both crop size and quality, and thus kept the farmer busy all year long.* Letting the vine simply sprawl unchecked over the ground (as is common in Greece today), or propped on short sticks required little capital, and provided leaf exposure as effective as more complex support systems. But that way bunches also came into contact with the earth, ensuring rot and easy access to fruit for rodents and other pests (Varro Rust. 1.8.1, 5-7; Theocr. Id. 1.4).
Trellising eliminated that problem. The horizontal training of vine canes on cross-arms, trees, ropes, wicker, or other supports also increased yields through greater leaf exposure to sunlight and ventilation of mature clusters, and made harvest earlier as well (Hom. Il.23.564-65; Varro Rust. 1.8.3-5; Pliny HN 14.3; 18.35; cf. Amouretti 1988: 12-14, 15, fig. 1). Pliny observes of the advantages of trellising, “The vine does not overshadow itself and is ripened by constant sunshine; also, it is more exposed to currents of air, and so more rapidly rids itself of dew; trimming and other operations are also carried out more easily” (Pliny HN 18.165). Trellising, of course, also required much more capital, labor, and maintenance than mere staking.
Digging, besides improving penetration and collection of water and stimulating new root growth (Colum. Rust. 2.2), aided nitrogen fixation through greater aeration around the roots. In addition, cultivation of the vineyard deprived overwintering insects and worm larvae of easy access to the stump and destroyed perennial, noxious weeds. Depending on the variety (i.e., table or raisin), girdling (which must have been known to the ancients, despite the tradition that it was “discovered” in 1833 by accident on the Greek island of Zante [e.g., Weaver 213]) augmented fruit-set and enlarged berry size. But girdling cuts—stripping the bark and cambium layer off in a ring around either the canes or stump—must not penetrate beyond the cambium layer if vine injury is to be prevented. Timing is crucial. Girdling at the wrong cycle of vine growth had little effect on size or quality, and could occasionally have had harmful results (e.g., Weaver 213).
Thinning of leaves (rather than the more radical and difficult additional summer pruning of canes and spurs) would have improved grape color and maturity, and was of value in mold and rot prevention (Colum. Rust. 11.2.61). Suckering removed unwanted shoots from the stumps, kept roots below the surface, and preserved the original vine shape. Irrigation, never as rare as usually assumed in ancient Greece, must have produced dramatically higher yields and lessened overall temperature and insect stresses. In turn, the application of water created new problems of weed control, excessive humidity, vastly increased labor and capital costs, and could be detrimental to grape quality (e.g., Theophr. CP 3.8.4, 3.15.1). But addition of water was critical for the establishment of new vineyards, where young vines did not have the root capacity to find and tap existing soil moisture.
Applications of nitrogen (through legumes or manures) produced markedly higher yields. However, fertilizer use must have been properly timed (i.e., in the fall or winter) so that nutrients were absorbed at bud-break rather than later in the summer when a sudden uptake of nitrogen might have caused rapid vegetative growth at the expense of berry ripening. “With the vine in any case,” observed Theophrastus, “manure is to be put on every three years—or even at greater intervals—because the vine cannot take more frequent manure; and water is no help as it is with trees, but the vine burns and then dies” (Theophr. CP 3.9.5). Manures had to be incorporated quickly into the soil upon spreading to prevent nitrogen loss. They also usually increased unwanted weed growth.
The Greek farmer strived to discover the point at which vineyard expenditures resulted in optimum yields, to avoid both neglect, which impairs returns, and “overfarming,”* which brought no economic benefit for the additional time, labor, and capital investment. In ancient Greece of the polis, however, for a variety of reasons formal economic theory was not always followed by the homestead farmer. First, labor was usually provided by either family or slaves. Hours spent in vineyard tasks did not necessarily “cost” the farmer anything. In fact, continuous activity in the fields was probably preferable to idling, which in the farmer’s eyes was a source of discontent and trouble. Second, because the viticulturalist usually lived on his farm, his land was essentially an extension of his house and home. Effort spent, for example, to ensure absolutely weed-free fields or to replace old props (beyond what was necessary for successful grape production) was no different from whitewashing the home or tending the garden.
In other words, the well-being and even the appearance of the vineyard reflected the social status of its owner, justifying additional labor and expense not directly commensurate with increases in grape quality or production. Social pressures may have induced the intensive-farming geôrgos to keep busy in the vineyard—fertilizing, propping, digging—in a manner not seen previously in the Greek countryside and surely not typical of market-oriented vineyards of imperial Italy. No wonder that the individualism, self-reliance, and pragmatism of the viticulturalist distinguished all of Greek culture, itself fundamentally an agrarian society of small proprietors, not of nomadic shepherds, indentured serfs, or extensions of a central palace.
This cursory description of ancient Greek grape growing reveals sophisticated agricultural technique, complex knowledge of viticulture, and ongoing debate about soil science, pruning, grafting, species improvement, trellising, and plant and animal pests. Their insight into and philosophical contemplation of agriculture strengthens the picture of the geôrgoi who built the polis : they were not subsistence peasants but an independent keen-eyed yeomanry constantly intent to improve their small plots, and pass on to the next generation greater value than they had themselves received. Once their agrarian outlook is understood, their peculiar approach to military and political life makes perfect sense.
*See Guiraud 548-551; for the idea of a general uniformity in ancient intensive agriculture, see Halstead 1987: 78.
*For slave desertions, see Thuc. 8.40.2; Ar. Eq. 20ff.; Nub. 7; Pax 451; cf. [Arist.] Oec. 1.1344B15-22; Hanson 1992: 227-28. On public interest in the welfare of slaves, see the examples at Dem. 55. 32-34; Pl. Euthyp. 4c; Xen. Hell. 5.3.7; Oec. 5.15-16.
**On the 20,000 agricultural slaves, see Hanson 1992: 225-28, and Hanson 1983: 142-43, for the effect of the Peloponnesian War on Attic agriculture.
*Galt 193. See Brown 71-74, for the rarity of women in the fields, and cf. the apparently exceptional passages at Dem. 57.30, 45; Ar. fr. 339 Kock. Plato (Leg. 7.805E) seems to consider barbarous the Thracian custom of women in the fields..
*See Weaver 210. For ancient spikes among the crops, see Poll. On. 1.225, 10.131; Plut. Mor. 94E; Strato (Ant. Pal. 12.205.4); cf. Ar. Vesp. 449.
*On fences, see Hanson 1983: 37-38. On transhumance, cf. Osborne 1987: 48-52; Shipley 17-19.
*See Richter 80-83; Walcott 1970: 97-98; Halstead and Jones 44; Burford 1993: 119.
*Op. 504-60; Walcott 1970: 26-27. On the life-cycle of the farm, see Gallant 1991: 11-34; 17-21.
*For all the glorification of the farm’s solitude (“How sweet for the man who hates worthless ways is solitude, and for that man wishing no evil, a good-producing farm is all that he needs” [Men. fr. 466 Kock]), the isolation took a toll. Cf. the example of the despondent farmer who lost his animals and so hanged himself on a wild pear tree (Anth. Pal. 9.149). In my own locale, suicide among agrarians is not uncommon.
*See Gallant 1991: 121; cf. Plato on the more Utopian idea of a specialized agricultural implement industry (Resp. 2.370C).
*Gallant (1991: 113-42) has devoted a great deal of discussion to ancient agrarian responses to natural crises: the collecting of wild flora, hunting, fishing, selling and slaughtering livestock, the relinquishment of slaves and property, marrying off or sending away a daughter, or embarking on military service or other outside employment.
*E.g., Hes. Op. 448-50; Arist. HA 597a23; cf. Brumfield 21-23 and especially the story of Thales’ forecast of the size of the next year’s olive crop in Arist. Pol. 1.1259a7-20.
*Alciphr. 1.24. On ancient attempts to prevent weather damage to crops, see Bintliff and Snodgrass 154; cf. Theophr. CP 5.13.7; 5.12.2-13.2; HP 4.14.5-6; and the bizarre practice at Paus. 2.34.3.
*E.g., Mickwitz 588-89. See instead Engels 24-25, 135-142.
**[Dem.] 42.20-31; Diod. 16.83.1; Xen. Hell. 6.1.11; Oec. 1.5-8; Vect. 4.6-7; [Arist.] Oec. 2.1347a25-35; see too Pritchett War 5.471-73; Skydsgaard 1992: 11; Jameson 1978: 91; Kent 308-12; Pritchett 1956: 190-91; Osborne 1991: 133-42; and cf. especially Engels 24-25; 135-42.
*The site of the vineyard was limited originally to the rugged terrain of one’s own small farm and thus further reduced by rocks (e.g., Theophr. CP 3.6.5) or stumps (Lys. 7.14).
*Up to two thousand vines per acre; e.g., Kent 291 n. 173. See also White 1970a: 236-37; Pecírka and Dufkova 161; Guiraud 482-84; cf. Weaver 207-8; Colum. Arbor. 4.2-5. Amouretti (1988: 12-13) discusses the importance of local conditions.
*Poor grape quality usually entails less sugar, lower acid, smaller berries, more failed bunches at mid-season (i.e., “water berries” or drying of the tips of the clusters).
*On these tasks, see Colum. Rust. 4.12; Pliny NH 18.16.5; Varro Rust. 1.8.1; Plut. Mor. 4C; Colum. Rust. 4.8.1; Pliny NH 17.140; SIG3 963; Ar. Pax 1148, Aves 1432; Varro Rust. 1.31.2; Colum. Rust. 5.5.14; Men. Dys. 584-85; SIG3 963; Xen. Oec. 16.12. On the modern Greek practice, cf. Weaver 209.
*Cf. the Roman proverb: nihil minus expedire quam agrum optime colere: “nothing is less efficient than to take care of a farm too well” (Pliny HN 18.38).