Self-sufficiency: a pursuit under the circumstances

Born in Macedonia but bred in Athens, Aristotle marks out the initial objective of the city, which is self-sufficiency. By this term the philosopher means not only the geographical and political independence, but mainly the economic development, so that the citizens can prosper and flourish in several aspects of personal and public life. The city of Athens – at the beginning of 5th century B. C. – couldn’t have been ignorant of this primal purpose, therefore great efforts had been made to ensure a variety of supplies for the city before and after the repulsion of the Persian attack (479 B. C.). Since Solon’s period the city of Athens had issued laws concerning land property, had taken care of the direct as well as the indirect supplying of grain, had introduced new laws and imposed mandates or even conditions to its allies about the taxes regarding the imported goods. What brought for the above actions was exactly the awareness that there was no abundance of goods to cover the needs of the Athenian citizens. The attempts reveal the conscience of the people in relation to their economical problems, through a different angle though from what is happening in modern life.

Nevertheless, the democratic Athens during the second year of the Peloponnesian civil war came up against the biggest challenge of its since then history. Was it prepared to face the shortage of goods (water, food e.t.c.), when the plague was spread and cost the life of 50.000 Athenians, including the young Myrtis? Could this shortage be considered as a subversive factor that caused the epidemic disease to spread? How could Athens manage to respond?

The athenian land: a vital area for the Athenians

The athenian economy was remaining mainly agricultural even in the classical period, when it reached its biggest economic development. More than the 2/3 of the population consumed its own production while living in the countryside . The nature of Attica was able to provide a lot of sources of wealth to its citizens, due to its mild climate . The bond between the cultivated land and the citizen was very strong, as we can see from the vow that the Athenian teenagers made, when they were about to join the army. The juveniles were invoking “the frontiers of the motherland, the cereals, the barleys, the vineyards, the olive and fig trees” . Since Solon’s years – around 594/593 B.C. -, the Athenians issued a series of property laws since land was the most important source of raw produce for their survival. This regulation secured the coexistence of the big landowners and those who owned even smaller lands in Attica, since it discouraged big agricultural cultivations from annexing the smaller ones and enslave the owners. The big landowners were cultivating their pieces of land under the assistance of either free laborers or slaves, while the rest usually with the help of their family or by their own, using one or two slaves maximum .

Thus, the Athenians were producing their own olive-oil and wine, both of which were also being exported. As far as the Athenian figs are concerned, although they were excellent, their exports were banned by Solon. Any serious gaps within the production should be supplemented with relevant imports and were related to grain and animal protein. According to given data, the grain trade maintained a unique position. In fact, the Athenians were producing the 40% of the grain needed for the population – a quantity that was being consumed directly by its producers. As a result, only a small quantity was released to the market and the other 60% of the needs was being covered by imports .

Protecting the wide Athenian area: measures about bread

Since the archaic years, Athenians started to seek for solutions to their vital problems, outside Attica. There was a great dependence on imported grain, which imposed measures that could supply unceasingly the market under the strict control of the state. The more the city was growing, the more this dependency was increasing.

The city’s needs seemed unlimited. Athenians without properties as well as their families, immigrants with their children and slaves working at Lavrio, who supplied the city with precious coins called tetradrachms, should feed themselves. Due to this 1) since Solon’s period grain export was banned – a regulation that remained valid for many years, 2) any loan related to grain trade was forbidden, unless the transferred cargo would serve the market of Athens, 3) any grain-cargo ships arriving to Piraeus were obliged to unload the 2/3 of their cargo there! New rules and regulations were enforced to control better the amount and the prices of imports. The grain trade was under the control of the so-called “grain guardians” , who were ten in number: 5 for Athens and 5 for Piraeus. The grain supply of the city was such an important political provision as the security of the city. It should be noted out that all these measures were effective only if the cargos reached Piraeus port undisturbed.

According to Demosthenes, Attica used to import 800.000 medimnous (unknown measure of ancient Greece, probably equivalent to 52 litres= 1,43 bushels) of wheat, half of which were imported from the Black Sea. Bosporus’ rulers were granting favorable terms to the Athenians in exchange for several rights and honors. Although there were 3,3% duties imposed to the exported grain for other cities, the grain exported to Athens was tax- free. Owing to this, the control of Black Sea, which was the biggest granary of that time, as well as sustaining their naval superiority used to constitute a great need for Athens generally and for the supplying of the poorer Athenians more specifically .

Alimentation habits

Apart from the grain the Athenians were importing large quantities of other kinds of food, i.e. vegetables, cheese, pigs, eels and salted fish. Athenian growth and power made Piraeus the most important port in eastern Mediterranean as well as the biggest economic centre of this period. Moreover, the prosperity and greatness of Athens attracted traders from throughout the world and the more the city was growing the more the needs for imported goods were increasing. The historical sources always stress the variety and abundance of foreign goods found in Athens.

Giving a brief picture of the everyday diet of the Athenians, we could say that they used to eat four times per day (breakfast, lunch, an evening meal and finally dinner). Bread and cereals constitute their basic food. According to Hippocrates, their aliments were vegetative and the dry figs the most adorable. Sardines from Faliro, lentils, milk, excellent thyme-honey from Hymettus, walnuts and rarely meat were forming their diet. The poor Athenians were being nourished by liquid paste (from cereals), olives, onions, olive-oil, wine, garlic, dry figs, vegetables, few animal proteins like salty fish and, more rarely, meat and fresh fish .

Athens facing the challenge of war, poverty and epidemic

Despite the growth of the city, the Athenians kept on living autonomous in the agricultural districts of Attica. Under these conditions Athens enjoyed its supremacy, when the Peloponnesian War started in 431 B. C. The Athenians’ efforts are now under the hazard of the Lacedaemons’ invasion in Attica. After Pericles’ exhortation the agricultural populations are forced to leave their farms, which had just yield some fruit after the Medean Wars, and move into the walls of Athens.

They take with them all their house equipment, but they sent the sheep and the big animals to Euboea and nearby islands . For their better protection from the Lacedaemons they settle inside the Long Walls- the defensive walls that join Athens with Piraeus port. By the time they arrive to the city, few of them have a place to stay (or they can stay at their friends or relatives, if any). Most of them camp in isolated parts of the city, even inside the temples apart from the Acropolis and Eleusinion. They inhabit even Pelasgicon, the cyclopean wall of the Acropolis, although they knew it should not be inhabited owing to an old oracle. Referring to that, Thucydides implies that if it was ever inhabited, this would never be for good . There was such pressure that makeshift dwellings were built even there, overcoming the ethical significance which the Athenians had for oracles as tenacious bonds between divine order and social life.

The Spartans invade the Athenian territory and start burning the fields around the city. Worried, the Athenians watch the destruction of their temples and crops, but they stay intent on Pericles’ plan. The city can rely on its fleet to survive, by importing basic goods from overseas such as Egypt, Libya and the Black Sea. Pericles cannot predict that the navy might constitute a bigger threat. In the course of the first year of the war the boats that supply the city with grain bring an additional cargo: the typhoid fever. It has been suggested that the first cases of the disease manifested in Piraeus, came from Libya and passed on to all social casts of Athens .

People gathered within the Walls of Themistocles: propitious condition for the epidemic

Typhoid fever epidemics also occurred in other places at the time. Athens though was extremely affected, as only in this province did the epidemic have such an extended and tragic impact.

“But before passing many days from the time they inserted? Attica, the pl ague began for the first time to show itself among Athenians. It is said, indeed, to have broken out before in many places, both in Lemnos and elsewhere, though no pestilence of such extent nor any scourge so destructive of human lives is on record anywhere. For neither were physicians able to cope with the disease, since they at first had to treat it without knowing its nature, the mortality among them being greatest because they were most exposed to it, nor did any other human art avail. And the supplications made at sanctuaries, or appeals to oracles and the like, were all futile, and at last men desisted from them, overcome by the calamity.”

After gathering into the Walls of the city the daily routine of the people became harder. Lack of space resulted to people packing in miserable sheds.

“But in addition to the trouble under which they already labored, the Athenians suffered further hardship owing to the crowding into the city of the people from the country districts; and this affected the new arrivals especially. For no houses were available for them and they had to live in huts that were stifling in the hot season, they perished in wild disorder.”

Athenian inhabitants experience the physical and also moral exhaustion, because they abandon their home as well as the activities, from which they were earning their living. The Athenian masses - already exhausted- enter a vicious circle: the bad conditions they live in favor the spreading of the disease and the more it’s getting spread the more degrading the conditions become. What we call generally “hygiene sanitary conditions” were literally non-existing. Naturally, the number of infected people increases geometrically.

“Bodies of dying men lay one upon another, and half-dead people rolled about in the streets and, in their longing for water, near all the fountains. The temples, too, in which they had quartered themselves were full of the corpses of those who had died in them; for the calamity which weighed upon them was so overpowering that men, not knowing what was to become of them, became careless of all law, sacred as well as profane. And the customs which they had issued regarding burial were all thrown into confusion, and they buried their dead each one as he could. And many resorted to shameless modes of burial because so many members of their households had already died that they lacked the proper funeral materials. Resorting to other people’s pyres, some, anticipating those who raised them, would put on their own dead and kindle the fire; others would throw the body they were carrying upon one which was already burning and go away.”

Thucydides refers to something worth noticing: the parameter of water. Fever made the people suffer and as a result they were seeking relief in cool water. For this purpose they were using the public fountains. Bearing this in mind it’s not difficult at all for someone to interpret the rapid and disastrous spreading of this disease. It is unquestionable that the bad hygiene conditions, the crowding as well as the exhaustion of the people due to all the above favor contagion, as in the case of typhoid fever . Especially, the bacterium S.enterica serovar typhi is transmitted through water and food or even the stools of the infected. When Hippocrates was asked for advice, he suggested the boiling of water -before its consumption- as well as the cremation of the dead. Those recommendations were based upon his observations concerning the smiths: he had noticed that because they worked under high temperatures the incidence of the infection upon them was impressively limited in comparison to the rest of the people.

Young Myrtis, as well as her peers, live in a besieged and congested city, since the agricultural population was forced to move inside the Walls. At the same time, people’s daily life has been reduced into a continuous agony: fresh memories of the Medean Wars spring up and the inhabitants of Athens experience the war once more. Although, the struggle for survival is considered as an adult case, the consequences influence the fragile and intuitional soul of a child. Could such days be carefree for Myrtis and the rest of Athens’ infants?

Poor diet, malnutrition and morbidity

Despite the systematic provision of the state, so that all inhabitants could have adequacy of the basic goods, we could claim that their diet was probably poor in proteins. The most important sources of protein were cereals and legumes, since it was not easy for the majority of the people to find meat. More possibly the siege and blockade of Athens degraded the quality of the diet in all social levels. 60% of the grains were imported, so the siege of Athens made the supply difficult for the city. Moreover, the domestic production practically vanished, because the agricultural population was gathered inside the Walls.

Generally speaking, the diet is closely connected with the immune system of the human body. Especially when there is a lack of proteins the defense mechanisms can easily debilitate . As a result both young and old Athenian inhabitants became extremely vulnerable to infectious agents. Thucydides reports that only a few managed to survive the infection. He also mentions that those who survived also became immune thus were capable of nursing patients of their environment.

“But still it was more often those who had recovered to show pity for the dying and the sick, because they had learnt what it meant and were themselves by this time confident of immunity; for the disease never attacked the same man a second time, at least not with fatal results. And they were not only congratulated by everybody else, but themselves, in the excess of their joy at the moment, cherished also a fond fancy with regard to the rest of their lives that they would never be carried off by any other disease.”

Myrtis: war and epidemic victim

Myrtis is a child - victim of humanitarian crisis. She probably lived her life under anguish for her personal destiny, as well as for her beloved people. Maybe she moved with her family from the Attica countryside into the Walls, in order to be protected from the war. She certainly had to bear very bad conditions caused by Athens’ blockade within the Long Walls, the lack of food and clean - potable- water. Myrtis faced the bright picture of her city being contorted due to the rapid contagion. Because of the extent of the destruction people grew indifferent about ethics, laws, even religion. Myrtis experienced the loss of kindness and virtue in people’s actions. Her death finalized her suffering like many other Athenians’ of that time.

Today, in the 21st century, millions of children live under similar conditions. They still die from numerous infections and diseases. They pass away helpless, being victims of extreme poverty. But Myrtis is a vibrant example, a succor, a true friend of the UN Millennium Development goals’ implementation . She awakens and sensitizes us in order to commit to work for the effacement of poverty and children’s mortality. She holds our hand when we fight against any diseases and epidemics. Coming from a long time ago, Myrtis connects past and present and advocates timelessness. She is a real friend of United Nations , protecting life, health and human dignity.