INTRODUCTION

To inquire into the yield of the land in ancient Greece is to pursue a phantom. We need to know, essentially, production totals, area under cultivation, sowing rate for the major crops, in the various regions of Greece, over an extended period of time – in the course of which the natural and social environment did not stand still.

The data do not exist. This is not only because of the disappearance of private records and public documents and the non-survival of treatises of agronomy – we have several such treatises from Italy and are not much wiser for that on the issues in question. The ancients were uninterested in assembling the data we require. Worse still, they lacked key economic concepts like productivity, that is, the ratio of output over input. Or so it would seem.

What can be done, given this evidential blackout? A study of yield-related concepts would have value, in introducing us to the mentality of landowners from antiquity. There is scattered information for farming practices bearing on yield. We can also ask how far comparative evidence can fill the information gap. These matters are discussed in reverse order below.

But I begin by considering one direct piece of ancient evidence for yield, the First Fruits inscription from Eleusis dated to 329/8, IG II2,1672. I have previously discussed this inscription without, however, facing possible objections to its use for the purposes in question.