ONE economic consequence of the colonial expansion of the Greeks was that the area of land, tilled or otherwise exploited by them, was very greatly increased. The new territories were among the most fertile in the Mediterranean region— the greater part of Sicily, the best parts of southern Italy, the plateau of Cyrenaica, the plains and low-lying valleys of western Asia Minor, the seaboard of Thrace, and the shores from the Hellespont to the Bosphorus.
Agriculture also benefited by another characteristic process which was going on. The forests, which had once been very big, dwindled in extent. The Greeks had a great need of wood, for building, carpentry, and shipbuilding. Deforestation left hill-sides free for cultivation. Like the forests, the pastures also gave place in many parts to ploughland. The turning of prairies and underwood where herds used to graze into arable had the same effect as deforestation.
Colonial expansion, deforestation, and reclamation of hitherto untilled soil—these three facts helped to determine the chief features of agriculture and agricultural life in the Greek world from the sixth to the fourth century B.C.
The consequent extension of cultivable land was not used solely, nor even chiefly, for the benefit of corn-growing. At an early date the Greeks preferred to develop the growing of trees, and first and foremost of the vine and olive. Lawgivers and heads of states, Solon,1 Peisistratos,2 Gelon of Syracuse,3 recommended and encouraged the planting of vineyards and orchards. This action on the part of individuals and some governments is commonly attributed to a desire for gain, on the ground that the profit made from exporting wine and oil was larger than the cost of importing corn. There may have been another reason, in the climatic conditions which prevailed in the Greek world as a whole. All round the Mediterranean, the rain falls seldom, but when it does it comes in torrents, and is followed by a heavy flow of water on the surface of the ground. On treeless slopes this surface flow, not being checked or slowed down by any obstacle, sometimes carries everything away with it. The presence of trees lessens the violence of atmospheric precipitations, and the humus collected round their roots, increased every year by the fall of the leaves, absorbs part of the rain-water and reduces the erosion of the soil. Tree-growing, therefore, is a remedy for the disadvantages of the Mediterranean climate, and the development of it may have been regarded by experienced men as a compensation for the loss of the forests.
However this may be, and whatever the real reasons may have been, vineyards and orchards were of very great importance in the agricultural economy of ancient Greece. Lease contracts sometimes stipulated that the lessee should plant a given part of the estate in question with fruit-trees.1
The Greeks looked to the earth for three kinds of vegetable food—corn, fruit, and vegetables.
The kinds of corn far the most cultivated were barley and wheat. The Greeks do not appear to have known rye or oats. They grew a little millet.2
The trees most extensively grown were the vine, olive, and fig. The manufacture of wine and oil and the drying of figs took up a large part of the Greek peasant's time if the harvest was good. The other trees of our own regions, bearing fruit with stones or pips, were also known to the Greeks, but none of them had the importance of the fie, olive, and vine.
There were many and various vegetables; a list of them will be found in Daremberg and Saglio's Dictionnaire des Antiquités grecques et romaines, in the article "Cibaria."1 Textile plants, except perhaps flax, seem to have had no place in Greek agriculture.
Special mention should be made of a plant which still remains a mystery, in spite of all efforts to identify it—the famous silphium of Cyrenaica. It is certain that the Greeks cultivated it, but at the end of ancient times it had almost disappeared from Cyrenaica, and it had to be sought far south, not without danger. It was used for food, medicine, and perfumery.2
Of all these products, only the corn was not grown in a sufficient quantity for the needs of the Greeks. The importation of wheat was in many Greek cities, and especially in Athens, a necessity of the first order. Wine and oil, on the other hand, were exported largely.
The various regions of the Hellenic world were not all equally favourable to these different crops. Corn, vines, and fruit-trees all grew together in some parts—in Greece Proper, in the alluvial plains of Thessaly and Bœotia and in the valleys of the Eurotas in Laconia, the Pamisos in Messenia, and the Alpheios in Elis, which opened widely towards the sea; in Asia Minor, in the lower valleys of the Hermos and M{eander; in Cyrenaica, in the parts of the plateau nearest the sea; and in the west, in Sicily and the plains surrounding the Gulf of Taras and a few small districts on the Tyrrhenian shore south-west of Cyme (Cumæ). Attica, though poor in wheat, was renowned for its wine and oil. Phocis, Ætolia, Acarnania, and Arcadia, being chiefly mountainous, allowed of little cultivation, but abounded in forests and pastures. The islands of the Ælgean and the coasts of Caria, Æolis, and the straits leading to the Euxine had no ground suitable for corn-growing, but the conditions were better for olives and vines.
In spite of the progress of agriculture and the conversion of pasture-land into arable, stock-breeding, without having the importance which it had once enjoyed, none the less continued to be prosperous. From Asia Minor to Great Greece, from Thessaly and Epeiros to Cyrenaica, the plains and valleys supported horses, asses, mules, oxen, sheep, and goats. The horses of Thessaly, the asses of Arcadia, the mules of the Peloponnese, the oxen and cows of Epeiros, the sheep of Attica, the Mæander, and the neighbourhood of Taras, and the goats of Scyros were especially celebrated. No farm was so humble that it did not support at least a pig. The poultryyard contained hens, ducks, geese, guinea-fowl, pigeons. Bees were kept almost everywhere. The honeys of Ilymettos in Attica, of the Cyclades, of Cyprus, and of Hyblsea in Sicily were regarded as the best and having the most flavour.
Many regions of the Greek world produced both corn and livestock—for example, Thessaly, Bœotia, Messenia, Elis, the valleys of Asia Minor, Cyrenaica, the neighbourhood of Taras, and that of Leontion in Sicily. Elsewhere the breeding of sheep and, still more, of goats was the chief resource of rugged, mountainous districts, in Ætolia, Aearnania, Arcadia, and most of the islands.
Like the ground devoted to stock-breeding, the wooded areas had been diminished. They were still, however, considerable. The chief mountain masses were clad in deep forest. Macedonia and Thrace furnished much timber for carpentry, and the cities of Great Greece took their supplies from the southern Apennines and the hills of Lucania and Bruttium. Crete, Rhodes, and Lesbos had vast forests. Those of Mysian Ida were famous. The chief species to be found in these woods were the oak, elm, poplar, plane, ash, beech, maple, pine, fir, cypress, yew, and laurel.
These forests, luce the copses which abounded in all Greek lands, were not merely stores of wood for fuel and building. They were also hunting-grounds, full of game, and there the Greeks would hunt bears, boars, wolves, foxes, deer, hares, and rabbits, taking them in traps or nets, running them down, or attacking them with large and small spears, javelins, or axes.
Fishing, of which there is little mention in the Homeric and Hesiodic poems, afterwards became important in Greek life. It became the occupation and habitual source of food of many shore-dwelling populations, not only in Greece Proper but on the Gulf of Taras and on the Sicilian coasts in the west and on the Hellespont, Propontis, and Bosphorus in the north-east. Together with vegetable foods and meat furnished by stock-breeding, fish, fresh, dried, or salted, became one of the usual and favourite dishes of the Greeks.
So, from one end of the Hellenic world to the other, land and sea were exploited by the Greeks in the many forms in which men at that time practised agriculture, stock-breeding, hunting, and fishing. Corn, fruit, and vegetables, beasts of land and sea, wild and tame, wood for burning and wood for working, all played an active part in the economic life of the Hellenes.
Great as was the extension of the ground cultivated and otherwise turned to account by the Greeks, there was no corresponding change or perceptible progress in the equipment or even in the methods of agriculture. Ploughing, sowing, harvest, and threshing, vine-dressing and vintage, are much the same in Xenophon and Theophrastos as in the Homeric poems and Hesiod. The plough was not improved in any way; wheat and barley were still mown with the sickle; the grain was still separated from the ear by the treading of oxen or mules.
But it would be going too far to say that the working of the land had not profited at all by the experience of centuries.
The Greeks strove to adapt their crops to the nature of the soil or to climatic conditions. They distinguished, no doubt by empirical and still superficial methods, the various kinds of soil—fat soil and meagre soil, black soil, sandy soil and clayey soil, dry soil and wet soil. Practice had taught them what crop grew best on such-and-such a soil. So, too, they took into account the rainfall, the wind, the aspect, and the temperature, and knew their influence on vegetation in general and on each of the chief crops in particular.
They saw the imperative necessity of submitting themselves to nature, but they also corrected nature so far as it was possible. They dealt with too steep slopes by terracing them. They made damp, unhealthy plains wholesome by skilful drainage-works, and led water to dry land by irrigation channels. They cleared ground of stones. They altered and improved the quality of certain lands by mixing in other soils in a manner which M. Gniraud compares to the operations which we call marling, liming, and manuring with plaster.1
The employment of manures, which had been practised in Homeric times, became more rational. The respective value of various manures, human and animal manure and night-soil, was appreciated, and an attempt was made to determine what sort of manure suited each crop. It is not impossible that the Greeks were acquainted with mineral manures, at least nitre. They also knew that the straw, grass, and vegetable débris left over from certain operations enriched the soil, and that wood-ash, when mixed into the soil of an exhausted piece of land, gave it a little fertility.
The system of fallow was no longer the only method by which the soil was given the rest which it needed. It had been observed that a like result could be obtained by the rotation of crops. The method was still quite rudimentary, and consisted simply in putting down vegetables and cereals in turn. But it was a great advance, all the same, for fallow was at least partly abolished, and it was no longer necessary, for the sake of the future, to leave half the area of arable land idle every year.
So, although in the main there had been no radical change in agricultural equipment and methods in the Greek world, real progress had been made in details. This progress was chiefly inspired by practical experience and daily observation; we cannot yet speak of a science of agriculture. In stockbreeding, no development had taken place. It lost ground in favour of agriculture, but neither its methods nor its organization seems to have been modified.
How was rural property distributed in the Greece of historical times? In our documents we find this distribution varying according to districts and periods. Large estates were the rule in Thessaly and Great Greece, and existed, but less generally, in Bceotia, Attica, and Elis. Medium-sized and small properties prevailed chiefly in the territory of cities with democratic institutions. In Attica there were a few fairly big estates, such as that of Phænippos, estimated at about 740 acres, but most of the landed properties of which we know the value and can roughly reckon the area were of medium size (from 15 to 125 acres) and far more often quite small (under 15 acres).1 The land was probably divided into Similar small parcels in the hilly parts of Bceotia and those of the Peloponnesian seaboard—Achsea, Elis, and northern Argolis. We have several inscriptions showing that in the islands of the Ægean, such as Tenos and Chios, and in many cities of Asiatic Greece, such as Iasos and Halicarnassos, it was the same.2 Therefore, eVen in cases where several of these portions belonged to the same landowner, they were probably exploited as so many small estates.
In Laconia we witness a development in the course of which the big estate supplanted the original small croft among the Spartans. At the beginning, " the soil of Laconia was divided into a great number of portions, the average area of which cannot have been over 17 or 20 acres."3 According to Plutarch, these allotments were 9,000 in number, and each bore about 80 medimni of corn and fruit (about 165 bushels); this would correspond, so far as such calculations can give any exact result, to an average area of 15 acres. Now, by the time of Aristotle, the land at Sparta was in the hands of a few owners, and about the middle of the third century B.C. their number was down to a hundred. Whatever the legal or social causes of this evolution may have been, the fact is important economically, and its effects on the constitution and political life of Sparta were considerable.4
It is true that a development in the same direction took place in the other cities of Greece in the Hellenistic period, but that development was due, among other things, to the conquest of the East, and it is later, in the second part of this work, that we must speak of it. Before the third century, according to the evidence of Aristotle, nobody in Greece was in utter distress, because the land was divided among a great number of holders.5 In spite of the important place already held by trade and industry in Greek economic life, land still represented the normal source of wealth.6
That wealth was exploited by those who possessed it, either directly or indirectly.
The small crofter cultivated his fields, orchard, and garden himself, with the help of his family and sometimes a slave or two. The " workers of the land " (georgoi), so often mentioned and rather chaffed by Aristophanes, were peasant proprietors. The law required the Athenian cleruchs, except in a few very rare cases, to work the land allotted to them in person. At Syracuse, Gelon made every effort to convince his fellow-countrymen who owned land to till it themselves,1 and Xenophon declares in his (Economicus: "The exercise to which agriculture compcls those who cultivate the land with their hands gives them strength."2
This direct, personal working of the soil was possible only if the man who owned it lived regularly on his estate and was a practical farmer. Now, many owners of country properties, in Attica and elsewhere, lived in town, and many of them would have made a poor job of driving a plough, handling a scythe or sickle, making wine or oil, and looking after beasts. These had resort to a working staff varying in size, composed chiefly of slaves but also of free day-workers. The supervision of these labourers was entrusted to a bailiff or foreman, usually a slave. There were very large numbers of slaves employed on the land in all Greek cities.3
In several regions of Greece, the movements of peoples—invasions, migrations, conquests—which took place at the beginning of the historical period led to a special system of exploiting the soil. Those of the old inhabitants who would not or could not flee before the new-comers were reduced to a condition which is often described as serfdom. This was the fate of the Messenians when conquered by Sparta, and of many peoples on whose land Greek colonies had been founded, for example Pontic Heracleia and Syracuse. The Helots of Laconia and the Penestse of Thessaly are the best-known instances of these " serfs bound to the soil." The land which they tilled did not belong to them, or rather it no longer belonged to them; before the invaders came they had had full ownership of it, and the result of the invasion and conquest was to dispossess them. But they were kept on the soil to till it for the benefit of the conquerors, who now owned it.
Every year they had to deliver a large part of the harvest to the new masters of the land. The latter could not put them to death or sell them out of the country. Relations between landowners and serfs were, moreover, governed by laws or conventions which the masters could not alter; our ancient documents say this definitely of the Penestæ,1 the Helots,2 and the Mariandynians of Pontic Heracleia.3 We do not know exactly how much of the harvest had to be given up by the serfs to the landlords. Plutarch relates that the Helots had to supply, for each lot or kleros which they cultivated, 82 medimni of grain and about the same amount of liquid produce (oil and wine), that is, about 165 bushels of each kind. But he does not tell us what proportion of the total harvest these quantities represent. The Messenians, who were conquered and reduced to the same legal and social condition as the Helots, had to furnish the Spartans with half of all the fruits of the earth, and the poet Tyrtæos, who gives us the information, compares them to asses laden with heavy burdens:
We also know that the Helots and Penestee could acquire movable property, and sometimes much.5 It therefore seems that the serfs were treated differently in different parts. In any case, serfdom was marked by the same characteristic features in Laconia, in Thessaly, and wherever else it was practised. Of these features, the most definite was the absolute inseparability of the soil and the man who worked it. That union the master could not break by driving or selling the serf away from the lot on which he lived, nor the serf by leaving that lot.
Farming in person, farming by slave and free labourers, and farming by serfs attached to the soil—these were the three methods by which the landlord remained in direct contact with the ground which he owned. The Greeks also knew and practised indirect exploitation, by leasing land to tenants in return for a proportion of the harvest (métayage) or for a fixed rent.
The system of métayage does not seem to have been practised much in Greece. Usually only one instance is cited, and it is still a matter of controversy—the case of the client hectemors 
of Attica before the time of Solon. Some regard these as serfs, something like the Helots of Laconia, others as tenants sharing the harvest with the landlord, like the Roman partiarii. Does the word " hectemor " mean that they kept only a sixth of the harvest for themselves, or that they handed only a sixth to the landlord? Although Plutarch gives it the latter sense, most modern historians prefer the former interpretation, for the ancient evidence is unanimous in representing the situation of these men as very hard, and this would certainly not have been the case if they had had the use of five-sixths of their crop. M. Guiraud has shown, on the authority of Aristotle, that they were true métayers, farming the land on condition that they paid over a portion of the produce. In any case, we hear no more of them after Solon. We do not know how or why the system of métayage disappeared.1
The leasing of farms for a fixed rent, paid in nature or coin, was very usual in the Hellenic world. There are numerous inscriptions, by which we can determine its methods and conditions. It is true that most of this evidence refers to public or sacred estates, the property of a city or temple, leased to individuals; but we also know of a few such contracts made between private persons, and there seems to be no reason for supposing that the two kinds of agreement were different. The contract of hire was just like a true lease. The term varied; it might be for five years, or for ten years, or even for twenty or forty years. Sometimes a lease was even concluded in perpetuity. Ten years seems to have been a fairly usual term.2 The rent was paid either in kind or in coin, in measures of corn or in drachmas.
The payment of this rent was not the only condition laid upon the lessee. Many leases specified obligations which certainly had an economic purpose. At Heracleia in Great Greece the tenants of the sacred land of Dionysos were obliged to plant so many vines and so many olives in their portions, were explicitly forbidden to fell, cut, or saw any tree, and had to replace any vines or fruit-trees which should die of old age during the term of their lease.1 This desire to safeguard and even to develop tree-growing appears in many contracts. We have seen above that the reason for these special stipulations must be sought in the climate of the Mediterranean region. Penalties were provided for any failure to observe the clauses of the lease on the part of the lessee.2 In all contracts concerning sacred or public domains, it is mentioned that the lessee provides bail, and that this bail must be approved beforehand by the representatives of the city or god owning the estate.3 The relations between lessor and lessee were, therefore, very exactly laid down. The lessee was not allowed to cultivate the land just as he liked; its future was not left in his hands without reservation or safeguard.
So there were in the Hellenic world, down to about the end of the fourth century B.C., various ways in which landed property was exploited. Some were better suited to the big estate, others to medium-sized and small properties. Some had their origin in extraordinary events, such as invasion, immigration, conquest, or the repression of revolts, while others were the result of agreements between private individuals. In all cases, the object of the Greeks was to secure the best possible treatment for the soil and not, if one may use the expression, to endanger the health and stability of their land by blindly rushing at immediate profits.
There is no doubt, and no one denies, that in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. land in Greece was owned by individuals. Plato says definitely that the law allowed every citizen to dispose of his goods just as he pleased.4 Aristotle states that a man's property was divided among his children, whatever their number.1 This division is ordered in the law of Gortyn, which belongs to the sixth century at the latest.2
But it is thought in general that in earlier times the land, at least each of the old allotments (kleroi) originally distributed among the citizens of any one city, the 
or 
, belonged to the whole family, the genos, and not to the head of the family personally; that it remained "the collective property of the whole genos."3 The passages on which this theory is based do not appear to justify such a hard-and-fast conclusion. Some of these passages tell us that in many Greek cities the law forbade the sale of the original allotments; others mention measures or precautions taken to keep the number and size of these allotments the same and so to prevent estates becoming too unequal.4 Plutarch relates that before the time of Solon the Athenians were not allowed to make wills, the land and house having to remain in the famiiy of the deceased; and that Solon gave every Athenian who had no children the right to dispose of his goods as he pleased, so making those goods the property of those who held them.5 The same author tells us how and why, at Sparta, the law of Epitadeus gave every father of a family full power to make over his property by deed of gift or will, whereas previously the father had had to leave his kleros to his son, whereby the size and number of landed estates had been kept the same.6
What do we learn from these various documents? Merely that the right of the father of the family over the early kleros was limited by the law, for economic and social reasons, chiefly because the lawgiver wanted to prevent the land from becoming concentrated in too few hands and to save families whose kleros had been sold, given, or bequeathed to others than the natural heirs from falling into destitution. What happened at Sparta when the law of Epitadeus was put into force justified those fears. Inequality of fortune became excessive, for very soon there were a hundred very wealthy citizens as against a multitude who were extremely poor.1
It was perhaps to remedy similar consequences that bolon, while allowing the Athenians to dispose of their goods freely, provided that they had no children, made a law limiting the purchase of land.2 Thereby he tried to prevent the formation of over-large estates. In other cities this limitation of the right of individual ownership over the original kleros was inspired by a wish to give people a liking for agriculture, or to prevent them from losing it.
" To give a people a liking for agriculture," Aristotle says, " there are among the ancient laws of many cities certain most useful dispositions, such as that which forbids the possession of too great an area of land. . . . Originally, the sale of the original kleros was in many cities forbidden by law."3
Here Aristotle shows clearly, by the manner in which he gives the information, that the whole object of a law of the kind was to protect agriculture. Nowhere is there any question of family or collective property; that is an idea which is not found in the ancient texts and has been introduced into them by modern interpreters.
So, too, the interpretation often given to the case of the epikleros, the sole daughter, goes much too far beyond the evidence. The epikleros daughter could not herself inherit her father's property. The heir to that property was the son to whom she gave birth, provided that she had married in her father's lifetime, or her future husband had been named by her father in his will, or she had married her father's nearest kinsman, the lawful heir. In any of these three cases, if the inheritance included land, that land sooner or later became the property of the son born of her. After setting forth these rules, Fustel de Coulanges adds: "Rules like these, which doubtless date from a very early time and survived only in fragments in Attic law, are the surest evidence of the principle of family ownership."4 No. There is nothing in them which derives from that principle. The case of the epikleros daughter was governed by quite a different idea—the idea that daughters had no right to the patrimony at all. Will it be said that landed property in England belongs to the family, because daughters are almost wholly disinherited, chiefly in favour of the eldest son, who gets the landed estate and part of the movable goods?1
That these limitations of the right of individual ownership had economic effects, no one will deny. The circulation of land, as a merchandise, was slowed down by them. For a long time, the small and the medium-sized property were better able to hold their own against the big estate. Rural families remained attached to the soil, since the original allotments which formed the core of their estates could not be sold or given or bequeathed outside the genos. A philosopher —Plato—might say that in his view a property belonged, not to the individual who held it, but to his whole family, dead and unborn; but that is the expression of a moral idea, and does not at all imply that the notion of family ownership prevailed. So; too, when Plato adds that every family with its goods belongs to the State, we cannot conclude that in Greece, even in primitive Greece, the property-system was communistic.
In the Greek world, land was everywhere owned by individuals. There is not a text which authorizes us to suppose that a piece of land belonging to the head of a family was regarded as belonging at the same time to the other members of the family. All that we know is that the right of property was not unrestricted in earlier times. The making over, whatever form it might take, of the original lots could not be effected at complete liberty, without any guarantee for the economic and social equilibrium of the citizen-body. What, in the eyes of the ancient philosophers, justifies these limitations of individual right is the public good, the interest of the city, not concern for the family. The object of the lawgivers who made these restrictions seems to have been a somewhat chimerical equality of wealth. Aristotle has no difficulty in showing the futility of such a policy. At all events, the notion of family ownership, from the legal or from the economic point of view, does not appear in any of our documents.
1 Plut., Solon, 23.
2 Dion Chrys., Or., xxv, 3.
3 Plut., Apophth., Gelon, ii.
1 III, no. xiii bis (pp. 239 ff.), §§ 1, 4.
2 XLVIII, passim.
1 E. Saglio, in XVII, vol. i, pp. 1144 ff.
2 A. Rainaud, in XVII, s.v. " Silphium."
1 XLV, p. 465.
1 Ibid., pp. 392 ff.
2 Ibid., pp. 396 ff.
3 XXXVIII, pp. 99 ff.
4 Ibid., loc. cit.; XLV, pp. 402 ff.
5 Pol., ii, 3, 6.
6 XXXVI, p. 84.
1 XLV, pp. 448 ff.
2 v.
3 XLV, pp. 452 ff.
1 Archemachos, in Athen., vi, 85, p. 264; F.H.G., iv, pp. 314 ff.
2 Plut., Lycurg., 24; Myron of Priene, in Athen., xiv, 74.
3 Strabo, xii, 3, 4; Atlien., vi, 84, p. 264.
4 Paus., iv,, 14, 4-5.
5 XXXVIII, pp. 48 ff., 67.
1 XLV, pp. 421 ff.
2 Ibid., p. 425.
1 III, no. xii (pp. 193 ff.), tit. ii, §§ 5-7, 10, 13, 20.
2 Ibid., §§ 9, 11, etc.
3 Ibid., tit. 1, § 2; cf. § 4; tit. ii, §§ 17-19.
4 Laws, xi, 923 ff.
1 Pol., ii, 3, 6.
2 Law. of Gortyn, cd. by Dareste, v, 22 ff.
3 XXXVIII, p. 35; XLV, pp. 53 ff.
4 Aristot., Pol., vi (vii), 2, 5. Sparta: ibid., ii, 6, 10; Heracleides, 
, ii, 7, in F.H.G., vol. ii, p. 211, 7. Locri: Aristot., Pol., ii, 4, 4.
5 Solon, 21 . . . 
.
6 Agis and Cleom., 5; cf. Aristot., Pol., ii, 6, 10.
1 Plut., op. cit., 5; cf. Aristot., loc. cit., 10 ff.
2 Ibid., ii, 4, 4.
3 Pol., Vi (Vii), 2, 5.
4 XXXVIII, p. 42.
1 Boutmy, Psychologic politique du peuple anglais, pp. 300 ff.