10 HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE. Part I. 



consequences sa^e respectively illustrated. Dissension and emulation are represented 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 labour, 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 advises 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 ob- 

 servances relative to family matters. The JDut/s contain a division of the lunar month 

 into holy, auspicious, and inauspicious, mixed and intermediary days, the latter being 

 such as are entitled to no particular observance. 



28. 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 

 gavelkind ; 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 surrounded the vil- 

 lages, 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 neighbour, as the ditch 

 or trench is deep. If any one makes a hedge near his neighbour's ground, let liim not 

 pass his neighbour's landmark : if he builds a wall, he is to leave one foot between him 

 and liis neighbour ; if a house, two feet. A man building a house in his field, must place 

 it a bowshot from his neighbour's." (Potter s Antiq.) 



29. 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. 



30. 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 ploughings, one in 

 autumn, another in spring, and a third immediately before sowing the seed. Manures 

 were applied : in Homer, an old king is found manuring his fields with his own hands ; 

 and the invention of manures is ascribed by Pliny to the Grecian king Augeas. The- 

 ophrastus enumerates six different species of manures ; and adds, that a mixture of soils 

 produces the same effects as manure. Clay, he says, should be mixed with sand, and 

 sand with clay. The seed was sown by hand, and covered with a rake. Corn was reaped 

 with a sickle ; bound in sheaves ; carted to a well-prepared threshing-floor, in an airy 

 situation, where it might be threshed and fanned by the wind, as is still practised in 

 modern Greece, Italy, and other countries of the Continent. Afterwards it was laid up 

 in bins, chests, or granaries, and taken out as wanted by the family, to be pounded in 

 mortars or quern-mills, into meal. Thorns and other plants for hedges were procured 

 from the woods, as we find from a passage in Homer, in which he represents Ulysses as 

 finding Laertes digging and preparing to plant a row of quicksets. {Odyss., lib. xxiv.) 



31. The implements Qn\nxieYa.iQA.hy Hesiod are, a plough, of which he recommends 

 two to be provided in case of accident ; and a cart ten spans (seven feet six inches) 

 in width, with two low wheels. The plough consisted of tliree parts ; the share-beam, 

 tlie draught-pole, and the plough-tail. The share-beam is to be made of oak, and the 

 other parts of elm or bay: they are to 

 be joined firmly with nails. Antiquarians 

 are not agreed as to the exact form of 

 this implement. Gouguet conjectures 

 it may not have been unlike one still 

 in use in the same countries, and in the 

 south of France ; others, with greater 

 probability, refer to the more simple 

 plough still in use in Magna Graecia and 

 Sicily {Jig. 9. ), originally Greek colonies. 

 The rake, sickle, and ox-goad are men- 

 tioned ; but nothing said of their construction, or of spades or other manual implements. 



32. The beasts of labour mentioned are oxen and mules : the former were more common ; 

 and it would appear, from a passage in Homer (/A, lib. xiii. v. 704.), were yoked by the 



