The Other Greeks: The Family Farm and the Agrarian Roots of Western Civilization / Edition 1

by Victor Davis Hanson

Overview

For generations, scholars have focused on the rise of the Greek city-state and its brilliant cosmopolitan culture as the ultimate source of the Western tradition in literature, philosophy, and politics. This passionate book leads us outside the city walls to the countryside, where the vast majority of the Greek citizenry lived, to find the true source of the cultural wealth of Greek civilization. Victor Hanson shows that the real "Greek revolution" was not merely the rise of a free and democratic urban culture, but rather the historic innovation of the independent family farm.

The farmers, vinegrowers, and herdsmen of ancient Greece are "the other Greeks," who formed the backbone of Hellenic civilization. It was these tough-minded, practical, and fiercely independent agrarians, Hanson contends, who gave Greek culture its distinctive emphasis on private property, constitutional government, contractual agreements, infantry warfare, and individual rights. Hanson's reconstruction of ancient Greek farm life, informed by hands-on knowledge of the subject (he is a fifth-generation California vine- and fruit-grower) is fresh, comprehensive, and absorbing. His detailed chronicle of the rise and tragic fall of the Greek city-state also helps us to grasp the implications of what may be the single most significant trend in American life today—the imminent extinction of the family farm.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520209350
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	12/22/1999
Edition description:	First Edition, With a new preface and bibliographic essay
Pages:	596
Sales rank:	245,968
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Victor Davis Hanson is Professor of Classics at California State University, Fresno, and author of Warfare and Agriculture in Classical Greece (Revised edition, California 1998),The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece (1986), and Fields Without Dreams: Defending the Agrarian Idea (1996).

Table of Contents

Preface to the 1999 edition
Acknowledgments
Author's Note

Introduction: Agrarianism, Ancient and Modem: The
Origin of Western Values and the Price of Their Decline

PART ONE: THE RISE OF SMALL FARMERS IN ANCIENT GREECE
1. The Liberation of Agriculture
2. Laertes' Farm: The Rise of Intensive Greek Agriculture
3· Hesiod's Works and Days: The Privilege of the Struggle
4· The Ways of Farmers

PART TWO: THE PRESERVATION OF AGRARIANISM
5· Before Democracy: Agricultural Egalitarianism and the Ideology
Behind Greek Constitutional Government
6. The Ways of Fighters
7· The Economy of Agrarian Warfare

PART THREE: TO LOSE A CULTURE
8. Hoplites as Dinosaurs
9· The Erosion of the Agrarian Polis
10. Epilogue: World Beneath Our Feet

Appendix: Farming Words

Notes
Bibliography of Works Cited
Supplementary Bibliography
Index
Index Locorum