The decisive characteristic in the division of the country’s arable tracts into three climatic zones (the Jebel, the southern Jebel and the maritime plain including the Barka Plain), in each of which the harvest took place at a different time, enabled the farmer to prolong his growing season during most months of the year, if he owned land in all three zones. This fundamental fact made Cyrene an exporter of corn so long as grain-growing was in the hands of the big landowner. The peculiar character of the country’s climate was grasped by Herodotus, although he exaggerated the length of the harvest-season,[602] which lasts not eight but five months. It need not be doubted that there were then proprietors owning land in all three regions of the country. In the 4th century A.D. Synesius’ family held tracts near the coast (at Phykus) and also in the extreme south;[603] the name of the settlement of Ἀρίμμαντος Κώμη south-east of Cyrene,[604] can hardly be unconnected with the aristocratic family which appears in the poems of Callimachus[605] and also in inscriptions at Cyrene in the 4th and 1st centuries B.C.[606]
Access to the south slope of the Plateau was important to the farmer in search of winter grazing for his sheep, but when spring came the steppe dried up and the flock had to return north. This need both created and solved a problem; on the one hand, summer pasture had to be found in the north, where arable was restricted and valuable; on the other hand the seasonal transhumance made an important contribution to the fertility of the fields. In many areas of the Mediterranean lands summer pasture is confined to the hills, and the arable being restricted to the plain, does not benefit from the organic manure, a deficiency which caused a decline of agricultural production in the Mediterranean area in ancient times,[607] since in winter, when the livestock descended to the valleys, the fields had been sown and the grazing so restricted. The winter maintenance of cattle was further hampered in ancient times by ignorance of rootcrops, which restricted the quantity of manure accumulating in the byres and sheep pens. In Cyrenaica, the situation was different, since the livestock came north to the Plateau after the grain had been harvested on the Barka Plain, on the southern Plateau and in its northern district.
On the central Plateau grain was harvested between May and August and thus additional tracts were freed for grazing. Thus the livestock could invade the stubble at the end of cutting, also benefiting from the rough grazing about the arable. In such conditions it is unlikely that the Cyrenean farmer sowed his arable to summer grains, for half the area was needed for grazing. Sown hay was doubtless limited to the winter (since he seldom possessed sources for irrigation); what was left of it was needed for the livestock during the summer months, and new-mown hay had to be got in from the field before August, when grass seeds in Libya.
It was this important difference between Cyrene and the other regions of Greece, namely, the manuring of the summer fallow by the seasonal migration of livestock — as determined by the physiography of the country (the identity of arable lands with a plateau which is also the region of high rainfall), that determined the relatively high grain yields of Cyrene. Here the arable enjoyed a greater quantity of organic manure, and larger flocks and herds could be maintained throughout the year.
But this coordination of branches had its own dangers. Its success depended on a balance between stock and arable, and on the maintenance of security in the southern steppe, the grazing ground of the Libyan nomad tribes. An overdevelopment of herds and flocks on the one hand, or of arable and fodder crops on the other, was apt to lead to a sharp conflict between the pastora-list and the plateau farmer in the summer months, and this conflict might continue in the winter when the settled farmer wished to send his flock southward. This situation would become acuter in 3/ears of drought or low rainfall, when the nomads tend to concentrate in the neighbourhood of the springs and to sow wider areas.[608] The decline of security in the southern region would have made difficult the seasonal transhumance of flocks and thus have caused a fall in arable yields and the degeneration of the livestock. The loss of the early grains of the south would also have compelled the inhabitants of the plateau to resort to summer sowings of corn (especially if he was under pressure of taxation). To do this he faced the alternative of enlarging his plot in an already overcrowded area, or of adopting a three-course rotation not usually favoured by the climate, which meant the fragmentation and overworking of his plot.[609]
On the evidence discussed, then, the cropping plan of the Cyrenean farmer in the 4th century B.C. may be represented in approximately in the following table:
| PLATEAU | COAST S. PLATEAU | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| December Vege- HaytablesorLegumesploughedin | Wheat Barley | November Hay | Vegetables Legumesploughedin | Wheat | October-DecemberVege- HaytablesLegumes | WheatBarleyEmmer | |||||||||
| May-August | May-June | April | |||||||||||||
| 3 plough- Legumes | Sheep | 3 plough- | Legumes | Sheep | 3 plough- | Legumes | Sheep | ||||||||
| ings Cummin | mgs | ploughed | ings? | ploughed | |||||||||||
| Part Saffron | part | in | part | in | |||||||||||
| Legumes? | Legumes? Cummin | Legumes | Cummin | ||||||||||||
| Saffron | Saffron | ||||||||||||||
| December | November | October-November | |||||||||||||
| Wheat Hay | Vege | Wheat | Hay | Vege | Wheat | Hay | Vege | ||||||||
| Barley | tables | tables | Barley | tables | |||||||||||
| Legumes | Legumes | Emmer | Beans | ||||||||||||
| ploughed | ploughed | ||||||||||||||
| in | in | ||||||||||||||
| May-August | May-June | April | |||||||||||||
| Legumes | Legumes | Sheep | 3 plough- | Legumes | Sheep | 3 plough- | |||||||||
| Cummin | Vege | mgs | Vege | mgs | |||||||||||
| etc. | tables | tables | |||||||||||||
607
C. E. Stevens,
609
The closest parallel to the normal form of agriculture prevalent in ancient Cyrene, survives on the unmodernized farms of Cyprus (Keen,