4) that the lands suitable for permanent cultivation extended over a wider area than that estimated by the Italians and by the authors of surveys carried out since the Second World War;
5) that a land-shortage prevailed among the citizens and other inhabitants of Cyrene in the second half of the 4th century B.C., due to population growth and perhaps to the concentration of considerable tracts in the hands of a restricted group of proprietors;
6) that the consignments of grain, under Alexander continued for a period longer than two years;
7) that part of the consignments of the Cereal Stele were derived from previous years’ crops stored in the granaries.
As to the first possibility, it finds no basis in the Ptolemaic constitution. The only clause which might suggest a city federation is that defining the area outside which the sons of mixed marriages might not obtain citizenship, but this cannot substantiate the existence of a federal organization, for the detailed arrangements of the constitution contain no regulation to ensure representation of the other cities of the country; there is here no trace of a κοινόν, and examination of the legal form of the Greek city federations of the period shows that their existence was based, not on the supremacy of one city but on equality of rights and on common institutions.[660]
The second possibility breaks down on the face of evidence furnished by the Ptolemaic constitution itself, which expresses a pronounced prejudice against craftsmen and merchants; its outlook is conservative in the spirit of Aristotle and his school, and obliges us to conclude that the ownership of land was the chief basis for guaranteeing the franchise in the regime of the ten thousand.[661] Even if this principle was not completely applied, the reality discernible in the spirit of this constitution obliges the assumption that the percentage of landed proprietors in the ten thousand was a high one.[662] Nevertheless, there is no absolute certainty that the percentage of landowners was not declining among the citizens of Cyrene, and we shall presently notice signs that this was the case.
The third possibility, that we have underestimated the grain yields of ancient times, is also unlikely. If the Italian farms could not raise their output beyond 10 hectolitres per hectare before the British occupation, we certainly cannot put the ancient Greek yields at more than 20 hectolitres in good years. This estimate can only be reduced if we enlarge the agricultural areas at the disposal of the Greek population, meaning that possibly the ancient areas of permanent cultivation have not been estimated at their true extent (Possibility 4). But we have seen that even the highest estimate, that of the Italians in 1931, amounted to no more than 220,000 has., and the survey of 1953, which assumed cultivable areas at 645,000 has., stated that 145,000 has. were fit for permanent tillage and the remainder only for shifting cultivation. The modern estimates could be enlarged by taking into account tracts today eroded of their soil-cover, but their area may well be offset by the wider previous area of woodlands which have been destroyed by indiscriminate felling and by the depredations of the goat. The seventh possibility, that part of the consignments of the Cereal Stele was derived from the crops of previous years, is the least disputable, and, indeed, highly probable. Yet it can only serve to reduce the 21,000 has. estimated to be additional to the minimum required to feed the existing Cyrenean population. It can do nothing to reduce the minimum cultivated area needed by some 85 percent, of the enfranchised 10,000 of the Ptolemaic constitution (225,000 has.).
This being the case, if we believe in the existence of, say, 8,500 landowners within the Cyrenean regime of the ten thousand, we shall be obliged to conclude that a considerable percentage of Cyrenean citizens were forced to be content with restricted plots (perhaps also divided and scattered), and with farms on inferior soil on the southern, eastern and western fringes of the Plateau. The conclusion also presents itself, that the Greek settlement area had reached its maximum expansion in this period, at the expense of the Libyan natives. In the course of this study we shall see that the Demiurgi Steles provide actual evidence of this possibility.
This situation does not, however, contradict the fifth possibility, that there was a dearth of land and that a considerable part of the Greek population of Cyrene could not find an independent livelihood. There are in fact some indications that such a situation existed at the end of the 4th century B.C. and at the beginning of the Ptolemaic period; the readiness of a large number of Cyreneans to follow Ophelias in search of new lands in Africa; the new settlement of Cyrenean citizens (who possessed incomes of 20 minae or more!) outside the city territories at Thinis; the growing emigration from Cyrene to Egypt in the 3rd century — and the possible mention of Cyreneans joining Ptolemy’s colonies, if this reference did really appear in the Ptolemaic constitution of Cyrene.[663] If there was insufficient land for elements among the possessors of 20 minae or more, the situation among the remaining disenfranchised inhabitants of Cyrene is likely to have been even worse in this respect. If this was the case, the sixth possibility, that the grain consignments lasted more than two years, might lower the extent of the cultivated area reflected, but would not alter the minimal area required for the population of Cyrene.
Another important factor may provide the key to an understanding of the situation, namely, the considerable difference between the prices of grain at Cyrene and its prices in the rest of the contemporary Greek world. A medimnus of wheat at Cyrene in the later 4th century cost 1,4/5-2,2/5 drachmas, and a medimnus of barley 1-1,2/5 drachmas; in mainland Greece the price of wheat was 3-5 drachmas the medimnus, that of barley 1.5-2.5 drachmas.[664] This difference would have induced the Cyrenean farmer to export his grain, especially his wheat, overseas. The well-to-do proprietor would have sought to expand his property in order to enlarge his profit in the export trade, and the owner of a small farm would have seen in the increased price obtainable for his grain abroad the only way to make ends meet. But the instability of the Cyrenean climate would have been apt to ruin the small man in a year of drought, if he had invested all his efforts in sowing wheat at the expense of other crops, and he possessed no reserve to support himself in a difficult year. In such a year he would have fallen into debt, and would have been forced to restrict his fallow so that his over-exploited land would in the end have passed to the wealthy estate-owner. The situation of the farmer who owned land in each of the three climatic zones of the country would have been easier, for the distribution of his land over these three regions could maintain production and export for four or five months of the year, from April to August.[665] If therefore we take into account the country’s physiography and natural conditions against the economic background of the time, we shall see that they were favourable to the owner of large estates, and were such as to bring about a concentration of lands in the hands of the wealthy, and the transformation of many of the small peasants into debtors and landless proletarians.
The timocratic regime of Cyrene in the time of Ptolemy Lagos reflects the city’s situation after the destructive war against Thimbron and the uprisings and class conflicts that took place on the appearance of the first hellenistic rulers. These struggles must have led to a fall in the population and to the ravaging of the country and in fact we may perceive in the land-shortage and pushing out of the smallholding peasant by the big proprietor, the social background of the oligarchic reaction which took place at Cyrene in the second half of the 4th century, and of the revolutionary storms which swept the state after the death of Alexander the Great.
660
Tarn, Griffiths,
661
662
Cf. again Xen.,
665
Cf. p. 95, above, on Synesius’ estates at Phycus, near the coast, and in the south of the Plateau (