8 HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE. Part I. 



ject of agriculture, all of which were ancient Greeks, excepting Mago the Carthaginian. 

 Among them he includes Democritus, Xenophon, Aristotle, Theophrastus, and Hesiod. 

 The works of the other writers he enumerates, have been lost ; and indeed all that remains 

 of Democritus are only a few extracts preserved in the Geoponika, an agricultural 

 treatise published at Constantinople by the Greeks of the fourth or fifth centuries of our 

 sera. Xenophon, Aristotle, Homer, and others, touch on our subject but very slightly. 

 Xenophon, after his banishment to Scillus, is said to have spent his time in literary pur- 

 suits, and in improving and decorating his estate ; he wrote a treatise expressly on rural 

 and domestic affairs, the third book of which is devoted to agriculture, entitled Q^cono- 

 mics^ in the form of a dialogue, and is even said to have given lessons on the subject. 

 Of his treatise, Harte {Essays, p. 201.) says, " I take it to be one of the plainest and 

 most sensible performances amongst the writings of the ancients." Theophrastus, a 

 disciple of Aristotle, wrote on natural history, and his history of plants possesses an as- 

 tonishing degree of merit, for the age in which it was written. He is justly considered 

 the father of botany, and his work contains some curious observations on soils and 

 manures, and on various parts of agriculture and gardening. 



1 9. But the writings of Hesiod are the chief resource for details as to Grecian agri- 

 culture. This author flourished in the tenth century B. C., and was therefore contem- 

 porary with Homer. He lived at Askra, a village at the foot of Mount Helicon, in 

 Boeotia. There he kept a flock, and cultivated a soil, which he describes as " bad in 

 winter, hard in summer, and never good," probably a stiff clay. As a poet who had 

 written on various subjects, Hesiod was held in great veneration ; and Aristotle states, 

 that when the Thesprotians destroyed the village of Askra, and the Orchomenians re- 

 ceived the fugitives who escaped, the oracle ordered them to send for the remains of the 

 poet who had given celebrity to the place. 



20. The works of Hesiod, which constitute the first parts of his Poem, are not 

 merely details of agricultural labors, but comprise directions for the whole business of 

 family economy in the country. The poem sets out by describing the state of the world, 

 past and present, for the purpose of exemplifying the condition of human nature. This 

 condition entails on man the necessity of exertion to preserve the goods of life, and 

 leaves him no alternative but honest industry or unjust violence ; of which the good and 

 evil consequences are respectively illustrated. Dissension and emulation are repre- 

 sented as two principles actively at work : much is said of the corruption of judges, and 

 the evils of litigation : contentment is apostrophised as the true secret of happiness ; 

 virtue and industry strongly recommended. The poet now proceeds to describe the 

 prognostics of the seasons of agricultural labor, and gives directions for providing a 

 house, wife, slaves, and two steers : how and when to cut down timber ; to construct 

 carts and ploughs, and make clothes and shoes; when to sow, reap, dress the vine, 

 and make wine. He then treats of navigation, and gives cautions against risking 

 every thing in one voyage : he describes the fit seasons for the coasting trade, and ad- 

 vises taking great care of the vessel at such time as she is not in use, and hanging up the 

 rudder and other tackle in the smoke of the chimney. He concludes the " works" with 

 some desultory precepts of religion, personal propriety, and decorum ; and enjoins some, 

 curious superstitious observances relative to family matters. The Days contains a 

 division of the lunar month into holy, auspicious, and inauspicious, mixed and inter- 

 mediary days, the latter being such as are entitled to no particular observance. 



21. Property in land, among the Greeks, seems to have been absolute in the owner, or 

 what we would term freehold. The manner of inheritance seems to have been that of 

 gavel-kind ; the sons dividing the patrimony in equal portions. One of Solon's laws 

 forbade that men should purchase as much land as they desired. An estate containing 

 water, either in springs or otherwise, was highly valued, especially in Attica : and there 

 a law existed relating to the depth of wells ; the distance they were to be dug from 

 other men's grounds; what was to be done when no water was found; and other 

 matters to prevent contentions as to water. Lands were enclosed, probably with a 

 ring-fence, or boundary-mark ; or, most likely the enclosed lands were such as sur- 

 rounded the villages, and were in constant cultivation ; the great breadth of country 

 being, it may be presumed, in common pasture. Solon decrees, that " he who digs a 

 ditch, or makes a trench nigh another's land, shall leave so much distance from his 

 neighbor, as the ditch or trench is deep. If any one makes a hedge near his neigh- 

 bor's ground, let him not pass his neighbor's land-mark ; if he builds a wall, he is to 

 leave one foot between him and his neighbor ; if a house, two feet. A man building 

 a house in his field must place it a bow-shot from his neighbor's." (Potter's Antiq.) 



22. The surface of Greece was, and is, irregular and hilly, with rich vales, and some 

 rocky places and mountains : the soil is various ; clayey in some places, but most gene- 

 rally light and sandy, on a calcareous subsoil. 



23. The operations of culture, as appears by Hesiod, required to be adapted to the 

 season : summer fallows were in Use, and the ground received three plougliings, one in 



