Agriculture in ancient Greece
Attributed to Mago the Carthaginian, the agricultural treatise Rusticatio, originally written in Punic and later translated into Greek and Latin, is now lost.
Scholars speculate whether this text may have been an early source for agricultural traditions in the Near East and Classical world.
Bassus' Eclogae de re rustica was excerpted in the Geoponika, a surviving Byzantine text created during the reign of Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus and later translated into Arabic, Syriac and Armenian.
The "tightness" of the land (στενοχωρία / stenokhôría) also explains Greek colonization, and the importance Anatolian cleruchies would have for the Athenian empire in controlling grain provision.
Animal husbandry, seen as a sign of power and wealth in the works of Homer, was in fact not well developed in ancient Greece.
While the Mycenaean civilization was familiar with the rearing of cattle, the practice was restricted as a result of geographic expansion into less suitable terrain.
Goats and sheep quickly became the most common livestock; less difficult to raise and providers of meat, wool, and milk (usually in the form of cheese).
The Clouds, ancient Greek comedy by Aristophanes, illustrates the equestrian snobbery of Athenian aristocrats: Pheidippides, the son of the hero is addicted to race-horses and so ruins his father Strepsiades.
An inscription[4] also mentions a certain Eubolos of Elateia, in Phocis, the owner of 220 head of cattle and horses and at least 1000 sheep and goats.
Spring was the rainy season; farmers took advantage of this to bring fallow ground back into production.
[6] Attempts to introduce triennial crop rotation with legumes in the third year, ran into problems due to the poor Greek soil, lack of power, and absence of mechanization.
Wheat was threshed with animal power; it was trampled by oxen, donkeys or mules, and the grain stored.
In early autumn, they collected deadfall and prepared supplies of firewood; while winters were mild on the coast they could be brutal in the highlands.
To do this required three passes since the ard was wooden (metal shares were rare) and only scratched the uppermost subsoil without inverting it.
[citation needed] With the exception of Athens, and a few areas where aerial surveys have permitted analysis of historical land distribution, agricultural property allocation is not well known.
Nevertheless, land use varied regionally; in Attica domains were divided among smaller plots, whereas in Thessaly they had single tenants.
This can probably be explained by population growth brought on by reduced infant mortality, and aggravated by the practice of equally subdividing land amongst several inheritors each generation (attested to by both Homer and Hesiod).
In Sparta, the reforms of Lycurgus led to a drastic redistribution of land, with 10 to 18 hectare lots (kleroi) distributed to each citizen.
