The pre-Julian calendar was lunar with a total of 355 days. To keep the months in line with the seasons it had been the practice to add (intercalate) an extra month-during February every few years, but the Romans, like the Greeks, never did this with regularity. Each month was divided into three parts by means of special days called the Kalends, Nones, and Ides. Since the frame of reference was always one of looking forward to the arrival of these days, each of the other days was given a number reflecting how many days had to pass before they did arrive. The Kalends were always the first day of each month, the Nones were either the seventh day (of March, May, July, and October) or the fifth (of all the rest), while the Ides were either the fifteenth day (of March, May, July, and October) or the thirteenth (of all the rest). The Roman method of counting these days was inclusive. Thus, e.g., the Roman date ‘on the third day before the Ides of January’ is by our method of counting actually the second day before the Ides of that month (January 11).

This calendar was changed by Julius Caesar in 45 BC to one based on the sun, following the Egyptian model, but with proper intercalation. Thereafter the number of days in the months were: September, April, June, and November had 30 days; February had 28; all the rest had 31.

Rescript of Hadrian on social status in legal penalties.

Callistratus in the Digest 47.21.2.

P. Garnsey, Social Status and Legal Privilege in the Roman Empire (Oxford 1970) Ch. 5.

The deified Hadrian issued the following rescript: It cannot be doubted that most mischievous is the action of those who have moved boundary markers, which have been positioned for the sake of indicating borders. Nevertheless, concerning the penalty a limit can be instituted based on the status of the individual and the motive for his action: for if they are individuals of the higher (social) order who are convicted, without a doubt they did it for the sake of occupying someone else's, land, and they can be banished for a length of time, as the age of each one permits, i.e. a younger man for a longer time, an older man for a reduced period. However, if other men did the deed and performed it as a service, they ought to be punished and given over to hard labor for two years. If they stole the stone markers out of ignorance or by chance, it will be sufficient to decide the matter by a beating.

A Roman jurist on medicines and abortifacients.

A: Paulus, Sententiae 5.23.19. On the Cornelian Law on murderers and poisoners.

With the victory of the Caesarian faction the old Republican politics were dead, replaced by the cult of personality in the figure of the emperor. Men of ambition and talent looked in new directions for the realization of their hopes, and Caesar Augustus showed them the way: careers in service to the state in a variety of positions. The Empire was something totally new, a synthesis of the past but at the same time a new beginning, a melting-pot of nations and peoples. Its sheer mass can be overwhelming when one attempts to describe it from top to bottom, from its beginning to the final transformation. The literary sources, of course, remain the bedrock on which our knowledge of it stands: Tacitus, Dio Cassius, Suetonius, Velleius Paterculus, Plutarch, Josephus, and others for the early Principate. Every student and historian must estimate their respective values and use their contents. Other writers like Juvenal, Martial, Pliny, Fronto, Aelius Aristeides and many others add much of historical importance. Knowledge of Greek and Latin is vital for penetrating the spirit of the Greco-Roman world or unlocking the exact meaning of certain passages or phrases of the extant literature. Of course, all the major figures of that literature have been translated into English and most other European languages to make their information more readily available.

Factors in the extent of participation

In the course of the years from the introduction of jury pay in the middle of the fifth century to the overthrow of democracy in 322, participation became one of the hallmarks of Athenian democracy. It is, however, important to consider not only the degree but also the cost and the consequences of participation. Some factors encouraged the participation of citizens, others impeded it. And there was a cost; indeed, the Athenians have been charged with financing their own participation by exploiting their slaves and the subject states of the Athenian empire. Further, the consequences of participation have been viewed differently by the critics of Athenian democracy. Participation, for example, encouraged citizens, according to some, to be meddlesome; others have seen it as promoting a generally stable society.

‘The majority of you do not exercise your right to speak.’ This criticism was levelled not only against members of the Boule but also against citizens in the assembly, even though many ordinary Athenians, as we have seen, did accept the herald's invitation: ‘Who wishes to speak?’ Not all citizens were eager to play an active role in public life at the level of the polis, nor even a passive role.

FAMINE AT EDESSA

The Council of 500: active participation or manipulation?

Democracy (dēmokratia) in Athens rested on the power or sovereignty (kratos) of the Demos. This sovereignty was exercised, as we have seen, in the making of policy decisions and administrative decisions in the Ekklesia which all citizens were entitled to attend, while at least in the fourth century matters of an ongoing or universal kind were discussed in the Ekklesia but finally determined by the process of nomothesia. In the dispensing of justice, decisions rested with citizen juries which, by their size and the use of the Lot in their selection, might be expected to represent a cross-section of the sovereign people. Similarly, size, use of the Lot and recruitment from all the demes provided grounds for applying the description ‘the polis in miniature’ to the Boule – the council which played a vital role not only in the decision-making process, but also in the supervision of the implementation of the assembly's decisions. Finally, apart from the few officials who were elected (by the Demos), the use of the Lot, rotation and limited tenure provided the citizens with enhanced opportunities for serving as officials and for engaging in the ruling of the polis.

The very structure and the leading features of Athenian institutions therefore worked strongly in favour of involving large numbers of citizens; but did the citizens avail themselves of their opportunities?

INTRODUCTION

When did Athens become dependent on foreign grain? At what stage did imports become inevitable, no matter how good the harvest was? As with most aspects of early Greek history, the data that throw light on this issue are scanty. They consist of brief notices, often in late literary works, of various foreign adventures undertaken by Athenians and of shadowy regulations issued by Solon; of coin and pottery finds in Egypt and the Black Sea respectively, difficult to date and interpret; and of some funerary evidence from Attica which might or might not have significance for demographic trends.

On the basis of such unpromising material, the doctrine has evolved that the population of Attica had outrun its resources and was dependent on imports by the late archaic age. A prohibition on the export of agricultural products apart from olive oil, attributed to Solon by Plutarch, has been taken to imply an absolute shortage of cereals. Athenian activity abroad has been interpreted as similar in origin and purpose to the earlier colonisations in which Athens did not participate, that is, as essentially designed to reduce the number of domestic consumers and facilitate the import of grain. Recently this general argument from the nature of the colonisation movement has been complemented by the claim that the pattern of burials indicates very fast population growth in eighth-century Attica.

Recent reference works and textbooks reflect the impressive consensus that has grown up around this issue. Rhodes states in his substantial commentary on Aristotle's Constitution of the Athenians that Athens already relied on imported corn to supplement the local crop by the end of the seventh century and the beginning of the sixth.

In the period from the middle of the fifth century to 322 b.c. the affairs of Athens were determined by a system of direct democracy involving thousands of citizens in the assembly, the courts and other institutions. The idea of participation or sharing is central to Greek thought and writing about citizenship and political life. Aristotle identified the distinguishing feature of a citizen as the possession of the right to participate in the exercise of power – in the courts, in the assembly, and in the offices of state. That definition of a citizen, he argued, applied especially to citizenship in a democracy.

The centrality of participation in the concept of citizenship is reflected in the lofty rhetoric of Perikles (as reported by Thucydides):

Yet even Perikles' words imply that some Athenians were ‘useless’. Three generations later, Demosthenes painted a very different picture from Perikles' vision.

INTRODUCTION

Early Rome is notoriously hard to approach. The main access-route is through the annalistic tradition, which is full of fiction. The food crises of the regal period, specifically of the reigns of Romulus and Tarquin the Proud, cannot be given credence, plausible though they may appear to be. I take those recorded for the early period of the Republic rather more seriously. In this I am influenced by a passage from the Origines of the elder Cato, indicating that there was a tradition of systematically recording food shortages or their symptoms (among other things) in the annales maximi:

A critic might argue that Cato's statement is evidence only for the early second century BC, that later writers did not consult any original tabulae or an edition of them, and in general that there is nothing in the accounts of the early shortages which could not have been invented by a Roman (or Greek) writer of the second or first century BC. My position, to which I cannot hope to convert a determined sceptic, is that the basic fact of food crisis where it is mentioned in the annalistic record can be accepted as authentic, and that the historian in confronting the ‘famine narratives’ can legitimately concern himself with the problem of identifying contamination by later writers and separating it off from the ‘naked’ annalistic accounts.

INTRODUCTION

The Graeco-Roman world was a relatively highly urbanised society sustained for the most part by the labour of small farmers, owners or tenants. The pattern and extent of urbanisation, the condition of particular cities and their relation to one another were constantly changing. Individual peasant households survived, were extinguished, migrated and were subjected to varying degrees of exploitation. But the essential structure of Mediterranean society and the character of its economic base remained relatively stable through the period of classical antiquity.

In this chapter and the next, I consider the problem of the food supply from the viewpoints of subsistence or near-subsistence producers and urban residents. The survival of the peasantry depended upon their success in following a low-risk production strategy, and in establishing and making the most of social and economic links with their equals and superiors in society.

As for cities, there was little regulation of the food supply by local governments. Fourth-century BC Athens and late Republican and Imperial Rome were exceptional in this respect. In most states the civic authorities intervened only in times of crisis, and their involvement lasted only as long as the emergency itself. Moreover, government or other public response to food crisis was rarely radical. Property redistribution was not entertained as a possibility, and such permanent institutions as were devised for dealing with food crisis were rudimentary. It was left very much to members of the elite acting in a private capacity to protect ordinary citizens against a breakdown of the food supply system.

Athenian views of developments to c. 500 b.c.

At some time about the 460s an Athenian boy was given the name Demokrates, which would seem to signify approval of the kratos (rule or power) of the dēmos (the people). This is the earliest known occurrence of the name. The choice might appear somewhat surprising, for the father Lysis belonged to a propertied family wealthy enough to engage in horse-breeding and chariotracing. Whatever the precise significance of Lysis' choice, the name at least suggests that the political role of the Demos in Athens was a matter of interest or perhaps of much debate at the time. To some the notion of the rule of the Demos was anathema. But the playwright Aeschylus probably reflected more accurately the attitudes of most Athenians in his play The Suppliants (produced c. 463). In anachronistic fashion not unknown in Attic tragedy he depicted – with evident approval – the need and the propriety for the king of ancient Argos to consult the people in assembly and win their support before giving refuge to the fugitive daughters of Danaos. Certainly by the mid-fifth century the power of the Demos was recognised in the public life of the Athenian state.

Athenians of the later fifth century and the fourth century had differing views about the beginnings of democracy. Some even traced the origins back to their legendary king Theseus, but for most, Solon, the lawgiver of the late 590s, was a key figure.

The accountability of officials to the Demos

While the citizen (politēs) shared in all the facets of the life of the polis, his citizenship (politeia), his membership of the community of citizens, was most distinctively worked out in what we have called the political–judicial area. Attention may therefore be focussed on various political–judicial institutions and, in particular, on the question of how they were related to the central feature of Athenian democracy, the sovereignty of the Demos. These institutions were not static throughout our period and some were directly affected by the developments that have already been discussed. Quite apart from actual changes in the constitutional structure and procedures, developments such as the tendency to specialisation in the fourth century or shifts in the character of the strategia affect any evaluation of the structure of Athenian democracy. Changes in the socio-economic origins of leaders and other changes also had an impact on the actual operation of democratic institutions. Yet despite all the changes which affected, directly or indirectly, the supreme authority of the Demos, certain devices or factors contributed more or less constantly to the maintenance of that sovereignty in our period.

Rotation and other factors worked strongly, as we have seen, in encouraging the involvement of large numbers of citizens. These factors combined with the involvement of large numbers of citizens to make it more difficult for men from aristocratic families to retain their pre-eminence and for powerful individuals or groups to emerge that might challenge the control of the Demos.