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Notes

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[1] See Odysseus's boasts, "Odyssey," XVIII. 360 et passim. The gentility of farming is emphasized by a hundred precepts from Hesiod.

[2] The Ilissus, unlike its sturdier rival, the Cephisus, ran dry during the summer heats; but there was enough water along its bed to create a dense vegetation.

[3] Jewett, translator; slightly altered.

[4] I.e. the end of the Peloponnesian War, which compelled the farming population to remove inside the walls.

[5] Athenians loved to dwell on the "divine gift" of the olive. Thus Euripides sang ("Troades," 799).

[6] Murray, translator.

[7] For an exhaustive list of names for Greek dogs, see Xenophon's curious "Essay on Hunting," ch. VII, § 5.

[8] Mules were sometimes used for drawing the plow, but horses, it would seem, never.

[9] The great drawback to olive culture was the great length of time required to mature the trees—sixteen years. The destruction of the trees, e.g. in war by a ravaging invader, was an infinitely greater calamity than the burning of the standing grain or even of the farmhouses. Probably it was the ruin of their olive trees which the Athenians mourned most during the ravaging of Attica in the Peloponnesian War.

[10] For the description of a very beautiful and elaborate country estate, with a temple thereon to Artemis, see Xenophon's "Anabasis," bk. V. 3.

A Day in Old Athens

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