Grazing

A major force of environmental degradation was the grazing of domestic animals. Every uncultivated tract, as well as fallow land, was used as pasture. The worst effects of grazing were making deforestation permanent and exacerbating erosion. Grazing animals by themselves will not destroy a mature high forest, although goats will climb into trees to eat foliage. But they can make a disturbed situation worse by eating the young trees before they can develop.

The four major grazing species were cattle, sheep, goats, and swine. Each has its own dietary preferences, and together they form a synergistic partnership that is destructive to virtually all vegetation within reach. Cattle prefer grass and leaves, so herders cut tree branches or whole trees to let them graze. Swine especially like acorns, chestnuts, and beechnuts, so swineherds drove them into the forest where they destroyed the means of reproduction of the trees. Sheep eat grass right down to the soil and also pull up the roots of all but the hardiest plants. Shepherds set fires to encourage the growth of grass. Goats are most destructive, and their ability to eat almost anything is proverbial, but given the choice they prefer woody plants such as bushes and young trees. Numerous herds of goats browsed almost everywhere in Greece, and they were adaptable, prolific, and easy to care for. Goats and sheep together can strip a hillside bare, opening it to erosion, driving away competing wildlife, and forcing the ecosystem to regress down the scale ofsuccession and energy. Limitation of numbers could have prevented this, but was almost never practiced. If one herder left any vegetation untouched, others would no doubt have used it the same season.

The ancients observed that goats could damage plant cover. Plato (Laws 639A) knew how controversial the goat was, proposing an argument between a man who thought it a valuable animal and another who regarded it as a destructive nuisance. The comic poet Eupolis wrote a play with a chorus of goats, and had them bleat a list of their favorite foods:

We feed on all manner of shrubs, browsing on the tender shoots Of pine, ilex, and arbutus, and on spurge, clover, and fragrant Sage, and many-leaved bindweed as well, wild olive, and lentisk,

And ash, fir, sea oak, ivy, and heather, willow, thorn, mullein,

And asphodel, cistus, oak, thyme, and savory.

(Eupolis F 13 Kassel-Austin = Macrobius Saturnalia. 7.5-9)

This could serve as a botanical list of the most typical plants of the maquis, and it should be noted that a number of timber trees, consumed while young and small, are included on the goats’ bill of fare. The effect of goats may be judged from the following statement (Greig & Turner 1974: 188): ‘‘In a place not far from Kopais we saw woody plants regenerating vigorously in a goat-proof enclosure, effectively demonstrating that the present sparse vegetation is due to grazing.’’ The grazing of sheep, goats, and cattle often involved transhumance, the annual shift to moister pastures with a later growing season in the mountains during the dry summer. As a result, mountain vegetation was consumed at the time it was growing, and with the prevalent overgrazing, erosion was always a danger. In addition, manure was lost to the farms during the summer months.