Geoponica

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Geoponica (also Geoponica , analogously "agricultural work") is a collective term for ancient Latin and Greek as well as medieval Greek specialist literature on agriculture .

From antiquity these include works by the Greek authors Xenophon ( Oikonomikos ), Aristotle , Nicandros and Menekratos , as well as the Roman authors (including) Cato ( de agricultura ), Varro ( De re rustica ), Virgil ( Georgica ) and Columella ( De re rustica) ).

Some of the original Greek works written before the 10th century have not survived in their original form, but some of them can be reconstructed using later literature and translations into other languages.

What has been preserved is a collection of 20 books on agriculture called Geoponica , which was produced in Constantinople in the 10th century for the Byzantine ruler Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus . The collection is complex in portrayal; many individual questions still require clarification. It is based on an older compilation of the specialist writer Cassianus Bassus (Kassianos Bassos, 6th century) with the Greek title Eklogai peri georgias ("Collection on Agriculture") from 30 - partly preserved and partly lost - ancient authors. Bassus used two Greek works by authors from the 4th century AD. They have been translated into Syriac , Middle Persian , Arabic and Armenian . The Persian version Varznama was created in the 7th century at the latest and is the oldest text on agriculture in this language.

In Chapter 1, four seasons of equal length are mentioned, which are not linked to the points of the course of the sun .

  • Spring : February 7th to May 7th
  • Summer : May 8th to August 7th
  • Autumn : August 8th to November 9th
  • Winter : November 10th to February 6th

In the further course a further rough division into two annual periods is made, which are determined by the heliacal rising and setting of the Pleiades . The additional division only plays a subordinate role.

  • 1. Period: June 10th - November 3rd
  • 2. Period: November 4th - June 9th

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Jürgen Jakobi: Agriculture between literary Tradition and firsthand experience: The Irshād al-Zirāʿa of Qasim b. Yusuf Abu Nasri Haravi. In: Lisa Golombek, Maria Subtelny (Ed.): Timurid Art and Culture. Iran and Central Asia in the Fifteenth Century. EJ Brill, Leiden 1992, p. 202