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The Ecology of the Ancient Greek World Robert Sallares Cornell University Press Ithaca, New York © 1991 by J.R. Sallares All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information address Cornell University Press. 124 Roberts Place, Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 1991 Cornell University Press Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sallares, Robert The ecology of the ancient Greek world /Robert Sallares. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8014-2615-4 (alk. paper) 1. Ecology-Greece-History. 2. Human ecology-Greece-History; 3. Agricultural ecology-Greece-History. I. Title. QH151.S24 1991 304.2'0938-dc20 90-55920 Printed in Great Britain Contents Preface vii Chronology ix I. Introduction 1 II. Demography 42 1. The state of the art 42 2. Population size, density and carrying capacity 50 3. Human bones, mortality and life expectancy 107 4. Natural fertility and family limitation 129 5. Age class systems 160 6. Social and economic aspects of family structures 193 7. Disease 221 III. Agriculture 294 1. Introduction 294 2. Patterns ofland use in Attica 295 3. Olive production in ancient Attica 304 4. The extent of the cultivated area of Attica 309 5. Shifts in the balance between different cereals 313 6. Previous views on the origin and spread of naked wheats 316 7. More problems relating to semidalis · 323 8. Sowing seasons and distribution patterns of naked wheats 326 9. Explanation of shifts in balance between cereals 333 10. Cereals other than naked wheats in Attica 361 11. Greece and Egypt 368 12. Cereal yields 372 IV. Conclusions 390 Notes 420 Bibliography 505 Supplementary bibliography 573 Index 576 Preface This is my first book. It is a synthesis of ancient history and biological or physical anthropology, two subjects which I first studied as an undergraduate. My main aim is to try to show that it is useful to combine subjects like these, which may seem to have little connection with each other. I hope that the reader will be convinced of this whatever he or she may think of any of the arguments employed on points of detail. Indeed the book covers such a wide range of intellectual problems and proposes so many controversial solutions to these problems that it would be unrealistic to expect anyone to agree with everything written here. Much more could be written about virtually every topic mentioned in this book than I have had space for, and I hope to discuss at greater length many of the issues raised here in future publications. Greek names have generally been transliterated, but in a few cases the more familiar anglicised forms have been retained. My chief debts are as follows. I am grateful to Colin Haycraft for accepting such a long manuscript from a new author, and to Deborah Blake for editing it efficiently. The initial stages of the research presented here were financed by a Department of Education and Science Studentship, and the ultimate stages by a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship. It could not have been started without Paul Cartledge as postgraduate supervisor. In these days of concern about Ph.D. completion rates, very few supervisors in any university would have given, as he did, a graduate student the latitude required to perform the kind of research contained in this book. John Davies and Peter Garnsey made helpful comments on the thesis which was the remote and exceedingly primitive ancestor of this book, and the latter has also given me a great deal of assistance subsequently. Steve Hodkinson commented on parts of the manuscript. I also wish to thank Geoffrey Lloyd for benevolence and support down the years. Needless to say none of these people is responsible for any of the views expressed. My greatest debt is to my parents, to whom the book is dedicated. Cambridge, August 1990 J.R.S. vii Chronology Date Period Authors etc. Personalities/events 2200BC EHII (end) Arrival ofproto-Indo-· Europeans in the Aegean 2000 EH III 1800 .MH 1628 Eruption of volcano on Santorini 1600 MM LinearA Minoan palaces on Crete 1400 LHIIIA-B LinearB Mycenaean palaces on mainland of Greece 1200 LHIIIC Collapse of.Mycenaea~ world 1100 Submycenaean Period of migrations 1000 Protogeometric Colonisation of Ionia Use of iron technology becomes widespread 900 Geometric 800 Homer Greek colonisation in Mediterranean begins 750 Late Geometric P<!pulation growth 700 Archaic Hesiod 'Hoplite revolution' 650 Protoattic Lyric poets Colonisation of Black Sea 600 Homeric Hymns Reforms of Solon at Athens 550 Black figure Persian empire Peisistratid tyranny at Athens 500 Red figure Pindar Reforms ofKleisthenes at Athens Classical Gortyn Lawcode 490, l\larathon, Miltiades Aiskhylos 480, Salamis, Themistokles 450 Herodotos Athenian empire, Kirnon Thucydides Peloponnesian Wars Hippokrates .430-427, epidemic at Athens Euripides Alkibiades, Lysander Aristophanes 403, Aigospotamoi 400 Xenophon Spartan empire, Agesilaos Lysias Corinthian War Plato 371, battle ofLeuktra Isaios Second Athenian League Isokrates Epameinondas Middle Comedy 362, battle ofMantinea 350 Aristotle Philip II of.Macedon Demosthenes Alexander the Great Aiskhines Lykourgos at Athens New Comedy Lamian War Theophrastos Demetrios of Phaleron 300 Hellenistic Menander Period of the Diadochoi ix x Chronology Epicureans & Stoics 280, Celtic invasion of Greece Zenon 'archive' Period of the Epigoni Theokritos Chremonidean War Philokhoros 262/1, Antigonos Gonatas conquers Athens 200 Second Punic War, Hannibal Achaian and Aitolian Leagues Macedonian Wars· 150 Cato, Polybios Greece under Roman rule Jugurtha, l\farius 100 Poseidonios Philodemos Athens revolts during Mithridatic Wars, Sulla Cicero Caesar, Crassus, Pompey Diodoros Siculus Antony & Cleopatra lAD Early Roman Strabo, Virgil Augustus Columella, Varro Tiberius, Claudius, Nero Pliny the Elder 79, Pompeii destroyed Dioskorides Vespasian 100 Plutarch Trajan Pausanias Hadrian 2nd Sophistic Epidemic in reign of Marcus Galen Aurelius strikes Athens 200 Athenaios Septimius Severus Elagabalus Late Roman SHA 267, Heruli sack Athens 300 Lactantius Diocletian Eusebios Constantine Ammianus Marcellinus Oribasios Julian the Apostate 378, battle ofA drianople 400 Alaric sacks Athens 500 Byzantine& mediaeval I Introduction Since many different strands of argument dealing with subject matter which may be rather unfamiliar to many readers have to be woven together in this book, it may be helpful to begin by indicating how it came to be written. I started work as a postgraduate student with the modest idea of producing a thesis to replace that of Gernet (1909) on the grain supply of classical Athens. Gernet's research was the standard treatment of its subject until the recent publication of Garnsey (1988), although Gernet's book is in many respects completely out of date by now. He believed that Attica could only feed a small proportion of its population and that the balance of the food requirements of the classical population came from external sources through trade. This thesis has exerted an influence on subsequent scholarship out of all proportion to the intrinsic merits of the arguments deployed by Gernet. !sager & Hansen (1975), Ste. Croix (1972) and Finley (1985a) are examples of more recent books which bear the imprint of Gernet's ideas. The main problem raised by Gernet's book is that of the relationship between the population and the land. This question urgently demands reappraisal, following Garnsey's lead. Gernet was writing before population studies in the shape of modern historical demography and population biology had developed as academic subjects. Furthermore his knowledge of agriculture and land economy was very limited even by the standards of the first quarter of the twentieth century. The other available synthetic works on these subjects, such as Jarde (1925), Gomme (1933), and Jasny (1944), although good by the standards of their own time, are also .a ll out of date to a greater or lesser extent. With the proliferation of academic publications in recent years, there have appeared many publications on various aspects of the population and agriculture of the ancient world. In my opinion, however, much of the recent output is only of mediocre value. The reason for this is that most ancient historians who have taken an interest in these matters have failed to appreciate fully that population studies and agriculture are subjects in their own right with a vast technical literature. It is only by fully exploiting these bodies of technical 1 2 I. Introduction literature that our understanding of the ancient world in these respects can be advanced far beyond the level attained by Gernet or Jarde, for example. It would be senseless to criticise scholars who lived and worked in the first half of the twentieth century for not exploiting research which had not yet been carried out in their time, but scholars working today have no such excuse. The desire to exploit fully relevant technical literature explains the occurrence in the bibliography to this book of many references to articles in periodicals such as Nature and Science whose pages are unfamiliar to the vast majority of students of classical antiquity. It is proposed here to carry out an inquiry into the main problem raised by Gernet in entirely new terms. At an early stage of research it became apparent that the idea that Attica in particular and more generally classical Greece as a whole may have been able to produce all or most of the food required to sustain the human population could not be dismissed as easily as Gernet dismissed it. From this point onwards the research presented in this book came to focus on the relationship bet\veen agricultural production and the human population within the boundaries of the mainland of ancient Greece in the first millennium BC. Considerations of space prevented extensive treatment here of the question of the significance of grain imports to Greece from other regions to which Gernet himself attached such great importance, although I may return to this question in future publications. However, in the course of this book a new model concerning the relationship between the population and the land in classical Greece will be put forward which is radically different from Gernet's. Progress in historiography may be made first by exploiting new sources of information and secondly by asking questions which did not occur to earlier scholars. The first avenue is relatively insignificant in ancient history, although in this book the results of the intensive archaeological surveys which have proliferated in .Greece recently will be used to reach conclusions concerning population dynamics in ancient Greece which were unattainable only twenty years ago. It will also be suggested that classical archaeologists could take much more interest than they have done so far in collecting plant remains and animal bones and other raw data for environmental history. However, the exploitation of a previously untouched database in the form of British parish registers has played a fundamental role in the development of historical demography as an academic subject. The results obtained therefrom furnish much food for thought for ancient historians, as will be seen later. On balance the second avenue plays a greater role in this book. Foucault (1970) showed brilliantly how the development of thought in early modern Europe revolved around the formulation of new ideas or concepts and their integration into new systems of thought in which ideas were related in new ways. A new concept entails analysis of a new network of causal relations. David Hume argued that necessity is in the