Greek agriculture changed little in the course of antiquity. Knowing nothing of crop rotation, the Greeks sowed their fields in one-year-harvest, next-year-fallow cycles. They persisted in reaping wheat with a sickle for want of a scythe and threshing grain by driving cattle over it, but they did learn how to drain swamps and terrace hillsides. Never was the Greek farmer able to feed all of Greece, but he produced things (wine and olive oil and wool) that, added to the manufacture of the cities (pottery and jewelry), could be traded all around the Mediterranean and Black Sea areas. Greek merchants wandered from the Crimea in the east to France and Ireland in the west. Besides the grains that were always needed, they brought back many good things: cheese and pork from Sicily, rugs from Carthage, ivory from Ethiopia, glass from Egypt and perfumes from far Araby.
AT THE START OF A PARTY, guests recline on couches, sing the Paean to Dionysus, giver of wine, and listen to a flute-girl play. Later the guests will sing more frivolous songs to the flute.
AT THE END OF A PARTY. « wine-laden husband comes home. He is hammering at the doorway with the butt end of his torch, while his young wife, lamp in hand, fearfully trembles within.
World History
