ABSTRACT
Desire for a permanent and assured food supply first led to cultivation of plants and then to domestication of animals, transforming itinerant hunter-gatherer societies into settled communities. Evolution of agricultural techniques also stimulated other technologies: domestication of animals transformed modes of transport; sowing, harvesting, and grinding and pressing demanded new agricultural tools; production of surplus food prompted an expansion of trade in raw materials and their products to satisfy the needs of growing urban populations, which had developed to administer the increasingly complex social and technological arrangements of an agrarian economy.
In antiquity, the great majority of the inhabitants of the Mediterranean world were dependent on agriculture for their livelihood, and our ancient sources provide more information about agricultural techniques than any other technology. The fullest sources are Roman (Cato, Varro, Columella, Pliny the Elder) and generally concern wealthy estate owners, but the texts indicate that farming procedures changed remarkably little between the time of Homer and Hesiod (eighth century bc) and late antiquity.
The selections record real and imaginary farms and rural estates, the criteria for a productive farmstead (including location, equipment, and labour and the suitability of soils), irrigation techniques, and fertilisers a well as a survey of common crops and their cultivation techniques (grains and legumes, vegetables, and the vine and olive). A section on animal husbandry explains the maintenance and breeding of most of the important domesticated species (cattle, donkeys, geese, bees, and fish). A final section on hunting, fishing, and sponge-diving is included as a reminder that untamed sources of food and supplies remained important.
