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[541] For the scenes of country life see App. I, § 20. The first, ploughing, represents perhaps, as Ridgeway has suggested (J. H. S. vi. 336), the ploughing of the ‘common field.’ This was always begun by all the members of the community on the same day (commemorated in our ‘Plough Monday’); hence the “πολλοὶ ἀροτῆρες”. The field is a fallow, “νειός”, because no doubt primitive cultivation in Greece, as elsewhere, was on the ‘two-field’ system, half the land only being tilled at a time, the other half lying fallow in alternate years. τρίπολον probably means that it was ploughed thrice before being sown, the last ploughing probably taking place in early spring. But our information is very scanty. Hesiod Opp. 462-64 are very obscure lines and out of place, but they clearly speak of spring ploughing, “ἦρι πολεῖν”. They say nothing of more than one ploughing.

The Iliad, edited, with apparatus criticus, prolegomena, notes, and appendices. Walter Leaf. London. Macmillan. 1900.

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    • Hesiod, Works and Days, 462
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