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Victor Davis Hanson
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Other Greeks: The Family Farm and the Agrarian Roots of Western Kindle Edition

by Victor Davis Hanson (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 38 ratings
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Everyone has been taught that the Greek city-state is the ultimate source of the Western tradition in literature, philosophy, and politics. For generations, scholars have focused on the rise of the city-state and its brilliant cosmopolitan culture. Now Victor Hanson, the author of several studies of ancient warfare and agriculture, has written a book that will completely change our view of Greek society. For Hanson shows that the real "Greek revolution" was not the rise of a free and democratic urban culture, remarkable as this was, but the historic innovation of the independent family farm. The heroes of his book, therefore, are what he calls "the other Greeks" - the neglected freehold farmers, vinegrowers and herdsmen of ancient Greece who formed the backbone of Hellenic civilization. It was these tough-minded, pracitcal, and fiercely independent agrarians, Hanson contends, who gave Greek culture its distinctive emphasis on private property, constitutional government, contractual agreements, infantry warfare, and individual rights.

Hanson's reconstruction of ancient Greek farm life, informed by the hands-on knowledge of the subject (he is a fifth-generation California vine and fruit-grower), is fresh, comprehensive, and totally absorbing. But his detailed chronicle of the rise and tragic fall of the Greek city-state also helps us to grasp the implications of what may be the single most significant trend in American life today - namely, the imminent extinction of the family farm.

Since Thomas Jefferson Hanson points out, American democracy has been though to depend on the virtues that have traditionally been bred on the farm: self-reliance, honesty, skepticism, a healthy suspicion of urban sophistication, and a stern ethic of accountability, which, as the Greeks teach us, have always been the core values of democratic citizenship. Hanson rightly fears the consequences for American democracy when the family farm disappears, taking with it our last links to the agrarian roots of Western civilization.
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  1. ISBN-13
    978-0029137512
  2. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  3. Publisher
    Free Press
  4. Publication date
    June 1, 1995
  5. Language
    English
  6. File size
    911 KB
  7. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

From The New Yorker

"Exhaustively documented and developed, beautifully reasoned, clearly and--for the most part--calmly stated."

Review

"Brilliant and moving. . . . Hanson's informed exploration of the crucial role of the small farmer in the creation of Greek civilization is a much-needed reminder that the artistic and intellectual splendor of Athens' great age did not spring to life fully formed, like Athena from the head of Zeus; it has its base in the countryside."--Bernard Knox, "Washington Times

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B002YFC1II
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Free Press (June 1, 1995)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ June 1, 1995
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 911 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 570 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 38 ratings

About the author

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Victor Davis Hanson

Victor Davis Hanson

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Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow in military history and classics at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a professor emeritus of classics at California State University, Fresno. He is the author of over two dozen books, including The Second World Wars, The Dying Citizen, and The End of Everything. He lives in Selma, California.

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
38 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

hgdffrtgyusdoifu
5.0 out of 5 stars Read It
Reviewed in the United States on June 8, 2018
Verified Purchase
Essential reading, while free-choice reading in English is still permitted. Yes, the coils are tightening. Disarm the rural populace, pay-off the large land owners (just as they are being paid-off today through Socialist agriculture (cf. Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942)), and bingo! The United States of America will have been fundamentally transformed.
VDH is an accomplished historian, a Classicist, an orchardist himself, and a fine writer. (My tiny complaint is that I am old enough to recall books that were not written with a word-processor, and I can tell the difference. I prefer pen, ink, and paper: less automated, more authored.)
Good price, timely delivery, great book.
12 people found this helpful
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Althusius
5.0 out of 5 stars The Prophet is a Farmer
Reviewed in the United States on March 17, 2015
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Brilliant argument for private property and individual responsibility. My suggestion is that these same values and decline happened several centuries before in the Hebrew Republic, when every man did what was right in his own eyes -- these were independent farmers who benefited from the freedom of the Hebrew Republic. They also lost their agrarian egalitarianism, but for different reasons.
8 people found this helpful
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Clark H Smith
5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating piece of historical research and an amazing treatise on why capitalism and private ownership of property ...
Reviewed in the United States on December 9, 2014
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A fascinating piece of historical research and an amazing treatise on why capitalism and private ownership of property is the only rational economic system.
9 people found this helpful
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Aaa
5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent analysis of agriculture, warfare, and society in ancient Greece
Reviewed in the United States on May 7, 2014
Although I've read some of Victor Davis Hanson's other books and found them to be quite good (in particular  A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War  and  Who Killed Homer: The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom ), I think this one is much more important for anyone interested in ancient history. The reason for this is because Hanson's thesis goes beyond a narrative of events; it explains an entire social system for hundreds of years.

The system is the Archaic and Classical Greek polis, which existed from roughly 700 BC to 300 BC. In "The Other Greeks", Hanson uses evidence from literature, archaeology, and epigraphy to support a number of points. To summarize:

1. The Greeks before the polis period had a palatial/feudal system in most cities. This consisted of a few wealthy landowners who owned estates of hundreds of acres and many peasants who worked the estates as wage earners.
2. The nature of Greece made it possible for middle-class ownership of land to come about, which meant that a new, third class came to dominate social life. They were the mesoi, or middle farmers.
3. The middle farmers were the source of hoplite warfare, oligarchic government, and the relative peacefulness of Archaic Greek history.
4. A combination of factors, including the expansion of voting rights to landless peasants, caused the polis system to slowly weaken and eventually return to a palatial/feudal system in Hellenistic times.

The book goes into much more detail about the evidence for each of the above points to thoroughly convince the reader of their accuracy. He also uses examples from his own life as a farmer in California to elucidate how the lives of ancient Greek farmers might have been.

I recommend this book as a must-read for anyone seriously interested in ancient Greek history. It is half-way between popular and academic history; the writing is accessible, but the scholarship is still unimpeachable.
16 people found this helpful
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Janell M. Ramos
5.0 out of 5 stars Enlightened Pages into Greek World
Reviewed in the United States on January 10, 2010
At first glance, this book looks overwhelming. But, is in fact an excellent and quite smooth read. Currently, I am using this book as my main research tool for fleshing out the real life of ancient Greece for a fiction novel: The Olive Tree. Thank you VDH for once again providing the inspiration and information necessary to envision life thousands of years ago.

The book is well organized and thoughtfully presented. If you are looking for a peek into what Greek culture was--apart from the literary and infamous or famous components--how they lived, then this is for you. Just think that if two thousand years from now the West was evaluated on our military campaigns and what remnants they found of George Lucus, Spielberg, and Andy Warhol and Vogue magazine. How would they see our world? VDH allows a deeper more thorough look--a view passed the open window for us to gaze upon. Thank you!
7 people found this helpful
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D. Kimball
3.0 out of 5 stars The Greeks weren't red-state Republicans: they were curious about ...
Reviewed in the United States on February 19, 2017
Verified Purchase
The Greeks weren't red-state Republicans: they were curious about the world, for example, and they acknowledged that their gods might not share their own priorities. (No assumption that God created just enough coal to last until the Last Judgement.) Does VDH know this? Probably not. The joke's on me for being curious enough about Greek farming to buy the book.

There's a lot of interesting historical information here, but in order to get to it, you have to wade through the author frequently praising Socrates for watching Fox News.
4 people found this helpful
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Enrique Fuentes
4.0 out of 5 stars Aleccionador
Reviewed in Spain on June 14, 2024
Verified Purchase
El libro plantea una teoría muy plausible sobre el agro y la sociedad griega entre los siglos VIII-IV A.C. Pero introduce similitudes con la forma agraria actual en EEUU que no es tan convincente. De todas formas un buen estudio del origen de Grecia y su sistema socio político
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