News From Amphipolis 23/6/26

Whenever one of my lectures covers the topic of Greco-Roman agriculture, I always include the ‘Aristophanes the Astrologer’ passage from Agathias Scholasticus – it may be 6th century CE, but it expresses a timeless reality that speaks to the countless generations of Norfolk tenant farmers in my paternal line as well as to the facts of life in the classical Mediterranean. Will my harvest be successful this year? the client asks. If you carry out all the necessary tasks at the appropriate time, replies the astrologer, and you’re lucky with the weather, and the deer don’t eat your crops, and nothing else goes wrong, then you will cut the ears with success. Only beware locusts. There are so many things that can be drawn from this. Obviously it’s intended to mock unfalsifiable prophecies: if everything goes right, then it’ll probably be fine, unless it isn’t. But the joke works because of the realistic context. You get a sense of the risk and uncertainty inherent in agriculture, the source…