Aratrum
Encyclopedia
Aratrum is the Latin word for plough
, and "arotron" (αροτρον) is the Greek
word. The Greeks
appear to have had diverse kinds of plough from the earliest historical records. Hesiod
advised the farmer to have always two ploughs, so that if one broke the other might be ready for use. These ploughs should be of two kinds, the one called "autoguos" (αυτογυος, "self-limbed"), in which the plough-tail was of the same piece of timber as the share-beam and the pole; and the other called "pekton" (πηκτον, "fixed"), because in it, three parts, which were of three kinds of timber, were adjusted to one another, and fastened together by nails.
The autoguos plough was made from a sapling with two branches growing from its trunk in opposite directions. In ploughing, the trunk served as the pole, one of the two branches stood upwards and became the tail, and the other penetrated the ground and, sometimes shod with bronze or iron, acted as the ploughshare
.
ἄρατρον
Plough
The plough or plow is a tool used in farming for initial cultivation of soil in preparation for sowing seed or planting. It has been a basic instrument for most of recorded history, and represents one of the major advances in agriculture...
, and "arotron" (αροτρον) is the Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
word. The Greeks
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
appear to have had diverse kinds of plough from the earliest historical records. Hesiod
Hesiod
Hesiod was a Greek oral poet generally thought by scholars to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. His is the first European poetry in which the poet regards himself as a topic, an individual with a distinctive role to play. Ancient authors credited him and...
advised the farmer to have always two ploughs, so that if one broke the other might be ready for use. These ploughs should be of two kinds, the one called "autoguos" (αυτογυος, "self-limbed"), in which the plough-tail was of the same piece of timber as the share-beam and the pole; and the other called "pekton" (πηκτον, "fixed"), because in it, three parts, which were of three kinds of timber, were adjusted to one another, and fastened together by nails.
The autoguos plough was made from a sapling with two branches growing from its trunk in opposite directions. In ploughing, the trunk served as the pole, one of the two branches stood upwards and became the tail, and the other penetrated the ground and, sometimes shod with bronze or iron, acted as the ploughshare
Ploughshare
A ploughshare or plowshare is a component of a plough or plow.Ploughshare or Plowshare may also refer to:* Operation Plowshare, United States project to use nuclear explosives for civilian purposes* vomer, facial bone in the human skull...
.
Sources
Based on an article from A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, John Murray, London, 1875.ἄρατρον
External links
- Smith's Dictionary article, with diagrams, further details, sources.