In its technical aspects, ancient agriculture remained in much the same state throughout the whole of antiquity as it occupied in the heroic age, and probably this was the common inheritance of the Indo-Germanic race. In Homer, we find the custom, which always prevailed afterwards, of alternating only between harvest and fallow; even the succeeding ages seem to have known nothing of the rotation of crops. The implements used for the necessary farming occupations were of the simplest kind, in particular the primitive plough, which was not sufficient to tear up the earth, so that they had to use the mattock in addition; they had no harrow or scythe, in place of which they used the sickle, and their threshing arrangements were most unsatisfactory, since they simply drove oxen, horses, or mules over the threshing floor, and beat out the ears with their hoofs, by which means a great part of the harvest was lost. It was only the large number of labourers at the disposal of the farmers, in consequence of the numerous slaves, to which at times, when there was a press of work, they added hired labourers, and the great care taken in manuring and improving the ground, etc., that enabled them to earn a living at all. Great wealth was never attained in ancient Greece by agriculture, certainly not by growing corn; vines and olives supplied better profits, though here too the instruments used were of the simplest, but the ground was especially favourable to their cultivation. Oil, in particular, could be supplied by Greece to foreign countries, but corn did not grow in a quantity sufficient to provide their own population, and consequently they had to import a great deal from foreign countries, especially from the Black Sea, and afterwards too from Egypt. [Illustration: FIG. 196.] Greek writers give us very little information about the life of the country people; a few simple pictures taken from vase paintings afford some little notion of it. Fig. 196 represents three countrymen surrounded by a variety of animals: deer, lizards, a tortoise, a strange bird, and another creature, perhaps meant to represent a locust; each of the men is directing a plough drawn by two oxen, holding the handle in one hand, and in the other the goad-stick for urging on the beasts. Behind one of the ploughmen walks a man with a large basket on his left arm, in which, no doubt, there are supposed to be seeds, which he is about to strew with his right hand. Fig. 197 represents a scene from the olive harvest. On the right and left of an olive tree sit two men, before them on the ground stand jars; one of them holds a little flask in his left hand, and appears to be squeezing the juice of an olive into it through a funnel, in order to test the quality of the harvest. The inscription on the picture is, “O, Father Zeus, would that I might grow rich!” The reverse side of the vessel, not represented here, shows the fulfilment of this simple prayer in the picture and inscription.