Nobody disputes the dominance of agriculture within the Archaic Greek economy. The Works and Days presumes an audience for which agriculture was the principal means of subsistence and Phocylides (fr. 6) regards a rich farm as a prerequisite for great wealth. The probability that there was a property qualification for citizenship in many Greek poleis (pp. 214-15) only serves to underscore further the centrality of cultivation to economic activity. That a commercial or industrial class was of relatively negligible importance in most Greek cities even in the Classical period is indicated by the estimate that no more than ten to fifteen vase-painters were active in Athens at any one time. Where disagreement arises is over the nature of agricultural activity and, in particular, whether most households were engaged primarily in subsistence agriculture or whether they engaged in a concerted effort to produce surpluses that could be exchanged for other goods.
The term “peasant” is regularly used in descriptions of the ancient Greek world although definitions - most of which are derived from studies of peasant societies in very different times and places - vary widely. It may, therefore, be useful to begin by defining what a peasant is not. At the lower end, a peasant is not a slave or the legal property of another, although he may be a serf - a status between free and slave where limited contracted services are expected in return for a relative degree of personal freedom, including the right to marry. At the upper end, the admittedly fuzzy boundary between peasant and farmer depends on the basis of a cultivator’s attachment to the soil. Peasants typically produce at least some agricultural surplus which is used to support, through rents or taxes, other economic classes, but their economic production is geared primarily towards subsistence. Farmers, by contrast, view land as a commodity and expect regularly to derive financial gain from their labor. The distinction is important because, in a peasant economy, cultivators tend to subordinate the temptation to maximize profits to the need to minimize the risk of production failures. Within these limits, the following characteristics are common to many peasant economies: (i) the peasantry occupies just one sector within a complex, stratified society; (ii) peasants tend to possess, even if they do not own, the land they cultivate, meaning that they may be freeholders but can also be tenants or lessees; (iii) although peasants normally utilize the resources of their own household, they may occasionally employ restricted slave - or wage-labor; (iv) they tend to reside in village communities where they maintain links with other households; and (v) they typically owe obligations to the state even if they do not enjoy full political or civic rights.
It should be clear that dependent populations such as the helots of Laconia and Messenia or the Penestai of Thessaly (p. 188) qualify under this definition of peasantry. Although these populations were often described by ancient authors (e. g. Thucydides 1.101.2, 5.23.3; Antiochus fr. 13; Theopompus fr. 122) as douloi, a word that blurs any distinction between their position and that of a chattel slave, the second-century CE rhetorician Iulius Pollux (Onomastikon 3.83) described their status as between free men and slaves - i. e. as what we would now term a serf. Certainly, the helots were allowed to marry (e. g. Tyr-taeus fr. 7) and it would appear that most of the plots of land that the helots cultivated in Laconia and Messenia were worked by family units. Beyond meeting their own subsistence needs, the helots were required to contribute either a proportion (Tyrtaeus fr. 6) or a fixed amount (Plutarch, Lyc. 8.7) of their agricultural production to their Spartan masters and they enjoyed no political or legal rights or protection. Furthermore, although there is no unambiguous literary testimony one way or another, the results of the Pylos Regional Archaeological Project suggest that the helots of western Messenia at least resided in concentrated settlements or villages.
Populations of a similar status to the helots and Penestai are mentioned in connection with Sicyon, Argos, Syracuse, Byzantium, Heraclea Pontica, West Locris, Megara, and Crete, and it is sometimes hypothesized that this system of exploitation was once relatively widespread throughout Greece. What is more controversial is whether areas that did not rely on the labor of dependent populations can fairly be defined as peasant economies. It has, for example, been argued that the majority of rural residents in the Archaic Greek world were yeoman farmers rather than peasants because: (i) they geared their production not only towards subsistence but also with a view to the market; (ii) they did not owe excessive financial burdens, be it in rents or taxes, to the wealthy from whom they were not sharply economically differentiated; and (iii) many of them could afford to employ slaves. Unlike peasants, it is argued, most smallholders lived on isolated homesteads where they engaged in intensive agricultural practices - e. g. irrigation, crop rotation, and manuring - aimed at maximizing production. Furthermore, they played a full role in political affairs. This view of the Archaic Greek smallholder as a yeoman farmer is based in large part on a belief in an early ideology of egalitarianism that we have already had cause to question in earlier chapters. But it also relies heavily on two literary examples
That may be far from representative - namely, the description of Laertes’ farm in Book 24 of the Odyssey and Hesiod’s depiction of rural life in Works and Days.
After slaughtering Penelope’s suitors, Odysseus sets out from the polis of Ithaca for the fields of his father, Laertes, which the latter had “brought into cultivation through toil” (24.206-7). We are told that Laertes’ house is located on the property together with buildings in which his indentured servants took their meals, sat, and slept (208-10). The farm is also home to an old Sicilian woman whose precise status is not specified though she is described as tending to Laertes (211-12, 365-7). When Odysseus finds his father, he is digging around a tree in an adjoining vineyard, dressed in a shabby, patched tunic, and wearing leggings and gloves to protect himself from the brambles (226-30). We are also told that the estate includes fig, olive, and pear trees in addition to the vines (246-7).
Laertes’ farm is characterized by a diversity of crops. There is no specific mention of cereals, though the vines and fruit trees were presumably cultivated for more than simple subsistence and the intensive care that arboriculture and viticulture require explains the necessity of slave labor on the estate. Laertes’ farm also appears to be isolated though, contrary to what is sometimes written, there is no evidence that it lies in marginal territory: it is simply described as being “outside” the polis (212) and Odysseus is said to have “quickly” reached it from the urban center (205). It is true that the property conforms poorly to standard definitions of a peasant smallholding but why should we assume that Laertes is the representative for an entire class of smallholders? His shabby attire offers little support, since Odysseus is surprised by what he perceives as a mismatch between Laertes’ appearance and the manner in which the farm is being maintained (244-55) and later, after he has taken a bath, Laertes regains a form that is likened to the “immortal gods” (371). He may have retired from political life, but the fact remains that Laertes was the former chieftain of the island, the consort of a goddess, and the father of the rightful basileus of Ithaca. Similarities between his property and that of other basileis such as Meleager (Il. 9.579-80) or Tydeus (14.122-24) only serve further to distinguish farms such as these from the smallholdings of most rural residents.
Much of the advice that Hesiod purports to give to his brother, Perses, is concerned with the cultivation of cereals, but he too engages in mixed farming. So, for example, we hear about viticulture (WD 571-3) and the herding of sheep and goats for both wool and dairy products (234, 516, 543, 585, 590), as well as beekeeping (233). For the purposes of ploughing, Hesiod has access to oxen (405, 452) and there is also mention of mules (607). His household, in addition to a wife and at least one son (376-7), includes an unspecified number of slaves (469-71, 502-3, 573, 597), one of whom is an unmarried woman who works in the fields and keeps his house in order (405-6). He also hires casual labor from time to time, including a forty-year-old man to assist with ploughing (441-6), a this, or wage laborer, and a childless maidservant (602).
In terms of resources, Hesiod is far from impoverished. His household would seem to number between eight and twelve people and to support them
He would probably have needed a farm of between six and eight hectares - somewhat larger than the average landholding of 3.6-5.4 hectares that has been estimated for the Classical period. Those who would see in him a comfortably-off yeoman farmer point to his advice to load a boat with the sort of cargo that would ensure a handsome profit (631-2), his comment about procuring more flocks and wealth from hard work (308), and his tendency to drink wine imported from Thrace (589). And yet, the reason he gives for engaging in overseas trade is to ward off debts and hunger (647) and his insistence on the necessity of storing up a year’s supply of grain to keep hunger from the door (31-2, 299-300, 363) is more indicative of the peasant’s concern to minimize risks than the farmer’s desire to maximize profits. Indeed, he seems to imply that those who produce enough for subsistence do not need to take to boats (236-7). While Hesiod is self-reliant on household production for tools and implements, including his plough (407-8, 420-36), there is no hint that his farm is isolated like that of Laertes: if anything, one has the impression that he belongs to a village community (e. g. 493-5). Furthermore, his employment of fallowing (463-4) is a far cry from the intensive farming practices that would be required to maximize production. The picture is, in other words, inconsistent and perhaps this is not, in the end, all that surprising. Hesiod assumes the persona of a peasant but the poet himself was a participant in aristocratic competitions and was clearly well connected enough to have been influenced by concepts and ideas originating in Near Eastern wisdom literature. Under such circumstances, it might be unrealistic to expect systematic consistency in the values and experiences that are expressed but that only serves further to highlight how problematic the Hesiodic evidence is for the question of the peasant economy in Archaic Greece.
Questions of residence patterns and their connection to agricultural practices have recently become the topic of lively discussion. The traditional view was that partible inheritance and the acquisition of additional property through marriage led to fragmented landholdings and that practical considerations therefore prompted farmers to reside in village bases and travel out to their scattered landholdings. Biennial bare fallowing, by which certain fields are left uncultivated in alternate years to allow the soil to recover its fertility, was a natural consequence since it requires little input of labor. Although it tends to result in low yields, the very fragmentation of landholdings in different microzones acts to cushion the cultivator against the unpredictability of crop failures. It is easy to see how this system of agriculture fits well with the priority peasants are supposed to attribute to minimizing risks over maximizing returns. Nevertheless, it has recently been argued that this “traditional” picture of Greek agriculture is based on ethnographic studies of modern Mediterranean farming practices and, more importantly, on the erroneous assumption that there is an essential continuity between antiquity and the present in this regard. According to this revisionist viewpoint, Greek agriculture was more intensive than has previously been recognized. Irrigation, crop rotation - particularly the cultivation of pulses, which replenishes nitrogen in the soil - and manuring would have required a greater investment of labor but would also have resulted in higher yields, producing surpluses that could be traded. Since the demand for labor input is high, farmers in intensive agricultural regimes tend to live on their land rather than in nucleated settlements at a distance from their property.
How can we decide between these alternative viewpoints? For what it is worth and bearing in mind the provisos expressed above, Hesiod appears to sketch a picture of fallow cropping and residence in nucleated communities that accords more with an extensive than an intensive regime of agriculture. By contrast, inscriptions and speeches written for the law courts in the Classical period offer an alternative representation of rural farmsteads and concerns with irrigation and the production of cash crops that fits better a more intensive model of cultivation. It is, of course, entirely likely that agricultural regimes would have varied from region to region but the evidence of archaeological survey (see p. 28) suggests that there may also have been a chronological development, whereby extensive agricultural practices gradually yielded to more intensive ones.
Although archaeological survey techniques have witnessed enormous advances in recent years, there is still some uncertainty as to the precise relationship between subterranean features and the sherd and tile scatters that appear on the surface of the soil. There is even considerable controversy as to what constitutes a “site.” Tiled structures found in the countryside, for example, need not necessarily be residential units, especially since there is later evidence (e. g. IG XII.5.872) that towers - once assumed to be the unmistakable index of a rural farmstead - may have been used primarily for storage purposes. What the data from various regional surveys do reveal, however, is that small isolated rural sites that might be identified with farmsteads are not common in the Archaic period until the later sixth century, with more intensive rural settlement peaking in the fifth and fourth centuries. Interesting in this respect are the results of intensive survey in the hinterland of Metapontum. From the middle of the sixth century, farmsteads seem to proliferate throughout the territory: in a survey area of 31.5 square kilometers, the number of rural sites increases from five in the first half of the sixth century to sixty-six in the second half. In subsequent decades the land was divided into parallel strips, covering an area of 20,000 hectares in extent and adopting the same orientation as the urban plan, which suggests a simultaneous reorganization of the city and its territory. Furthermore, palaeobotanical analysis of olive pollen shows a marked increase in oleoculture in the same period.
It is tempting to associate the archaeologically attested intensification of agricultural practices with the agrarian unrest in Attica that literary sources report for the early sixth century (pp. 217-19). For all the diversity of opinion concerning the crisis that faced Solon, most are agreed that the wealthy were bringing new land into cultivation for which they required more labor and that this was supplied by a mixture of impoverished wage-laborers, exploited sharecroppers, and slaves. The objection that it takes at least another two generations for an increase in rural habitation to appear in the archaeological record of
Attica is not entirely compelling. Firstly, the very few archaeological surveys that have been conducted in Attica are in zones such as the deme of Atene and the Skourta Plain that are largely agreed to have been somewhat atypical for the region as a whole. Secondly, the earlier stages of agricultural intensification may not have required residence on the landholding itself - especially if many of the tasks were undertaken by dependent laborers rather than freeholders themselves.
Whether or not these dependent laborers were quite as numerous as the author of the Aristotelian Athenian Constitution (2.2) implies, it is clear that they can be characterized as peasants. But freeholders of modest properties also meet the definition to the extent that such evidence as we possess suggests that subsistence was of primary concern even if smallholders occasionally employed unfree labor and even if they regularly generated modest surpluses. Indeed, as we have seen, a common characteristic of peasants is that such surpluses are normally extracted to support other sectors of society. It is, then, interesting to hear that Pisistratus is supposed to have levied a tax of either 10 percent (Aristotle, AC 16.4) or 5 percent (Thucydides 6.54) on agricultural produce and one recent interpretation of the hektemoroi (p. 195) suggests that, even prior to the tyranny, the poor of Attica were expected to pay one sixth of their proceeds to the wealthy as “protection money.”
In short, it seems reasonable to talk about “peasant societies” in the Archaic Greek world. Whether it is accurate to talk about a “peasant economy” is less clear cut. It has been argued that the Greek world was rather a “slave economy” because, while peasants may have constituted the majority of the population, the propertied classes derived the bulk of their surplus from the exploitation of unfree labor. Nevertheless, while that may be a fair characterization of the Classical Greek world, it is less self-evident for the earlier period. The concept of a slave economy depends on a sharp definition of chattel slavery that seems not to have existed for much of the Archaic period (p. 219). The ancients believed that the institution of chattel slavery originated on Chios (Theopompus fr. 122) - probably as a consequence of the intensive viticulture for which the island was famous - but at Athens, chattel slavery only appears to assume greater importance after the legislation of Solon.
We should not, however, make the mistake of assuming that, just because a peasant economy existed in Archaic Greece, trade and the market were of no significance at all. Although subsistence was of primary concern to peasant households, they did produce modest surpluses that would need to be exchanged for goods that could not be manufactured at home. Among the propertied class, engagement with markets would have been even more pronounced. Based on information concerning the eisphora (property tax) that was levied in Athens in 378/7, it has been estimated that one third of the land was in the hands of the richest 10 percent of the population and it is unlikely that the figures would have been vastly different for the earlier period. If the Solonian law (Plutarch, Sol. 24), banning the exportation of all products except olive oil, is genuine then the implication would be that the wealthy landowners of Attica were intensifying production to generate a surplus that could be exchanged via long distance trade. There were also, however, entire regions of the Greek world that had little choice but to enter into market transactions. The population of Aegina in the early fifth century has been estimated at around 40,000 but calculations of available land and crop yields suggest that only 4,000 of these could have been supported at basic subsistence level. One option was to engage in piracy and the story of the theft of the statues of Damia and Auxesia from Epidaurus (Herodotus 5.83) might suggest that this was an activity in which several Aegi-netans engaged. But simple necessity also dictated that the population of the island must have subsisted on imported foodstuffs, paid for by non-agricultural production. It is, then, little surprise that the Aeginetans seem to have engaged in long-distance trade from an early period.
World History
