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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
The word 
is generally regarded as having two distinct and separate meanings: (1) threshing-floor, and (2) garden, orchard, or vineyard. Like the classical 
the word must originally have denoted a threshing-floor. How the second, and apparently incongruous, meaning became attached to it has never been explained. Both are found in Homer. In the Iliad the horses of Achilles trample down the dead like oxen treading the barley on the well-built threshing-floor; the arrow rebounds from the breastplate of Menelaos like beans or chickpeas flying off the blade of the winnowing shovel on the great threshing-floor; the dust of the conflict that lay white on the Achaeans is likened to the whitening heaps when the wind drives off the chaff on the holy threshing-floors when men are winnowing and Demeter separates the chaff from the grain.
page 225 note 1 For the philological evidence see Boisacq, , Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecqus, s.v.Google Scholar
page 225 note 2 20. 495 f.
page 225 note 3 13. 587 f.
page 225 note 4 5. 499f.
page 225 note 5 18. 561 f.
page 225 note 6 9. 533 f.
page 225 note 7 5. 87 f.
page 225 note 8 Odyssey 6. 293.
page 225 note 9 Ibid. 7. 122 f.
page 225 note 10 Liddell and Scott, s.v. Ameis-Hentze, Stanford, ad loc.
page 225 note 11 6. 169.
page 225 note 12 Translated in the Loeb edition ‘in this idneyard’, but this rendering misses the point.
page 226 note 1 e.g. St. Matthew iii. 12.
page 226 note 2 Compare the Latin area, threshing-floor, derived by Varro from arescere, to dry: ubi frumenta secta, ut terantur, arescunt, L.L. 5. 38. See also his R.R. 1. 54 where, immediately after his account of the threshing, he describes the grape harvest. Some clusters are specially selected for eating and are dealt with in various ways, including a primitive kind of refrigeration, the grapes being put in a jar coated with pitch and plunged into water. The treatment of the final batch is the one that is significant in this connexion: alia (sc. uva) quae in ara in camarium escendat. In ara is emended to in aream by Keil, who interprets it as locus in carnario ad uvas accipiendas foetus. Following Keil the Loeb editor translates ‘others go up to their place in the larder’. A variant is ‘to a shelf in the larder’ (Storr-Best). But area would be a curious word to use for a small space in an indoor store-room. It would surely be more satisfactory to give it its ordinary meaning and translate ‘others go up to the threshing-floor for the larder’, i.e. go to the threshing-floor to dry with a view to storing in the larder.
page 226 note 3 Cf. Hesiod, W. and D. 599, 
, and Varro on Italian threshing-floors, R.R. 1. 51.
page 226 note 4 O.C. 1591. Cf. Hesiod, , Theog. 811 f.Google Scholar
page 226 note 5 Odyssey 13. 163.
page 226 note 6 Kaibel, , Epigr. Gr. 1078. 7.Google Scholar
page 227 note 1 Cf. for Italian threshing-floors Varro, R.R. i. 51; Columella, R.R. I. 6. 23.
page 227 note 2 Iliad 20. 496, 31. 77.
page 227 note 3 Homer's Odyssey, p. 293.
page 227 note 4 Bechtel, Lexilogus zu Homer, s.v.; Hofmann, Etymologisches Wörterbuch, s.v.; Leumann, , Homerische Wörter, p. 44.Google Scholar
page 227 note 5 Iliad 13. 588 f.
page 227 note 6 See A. S. F. Gow on Theocritus 10. 49.
page 227 note 7 A little farm like this would closely resemble the neat compact 
that one sees in the neighbourhood of Athens today. A typical specimen of these smallholdings consists of a walled enclosure of about three acres, intensively cultivated. Near the house grow fruit trees, olives, and vines, and the rest is given over to corn crops. Unfortunately under the impact of the machine age the threshing-floor is beginning to disappear.
page 228 note 1 Odyssey II. 193.
page 228 note 2 Cf. Anth. Pal. 6. 169, quoted above.
page 228 note 3 Iliad 5. 500.
page 228 note 4 J.H.S. Ixix (1949), 18f.Google Scholar, figs. 2a, 3; lxxii (1952), 121; C.V., Reading i, pi. 16. 44, b, c.
page 228 note 5 For the two kinds of winnowing fan see Harrison, J. E., Jf.H.S. xxiii (1903), 292 f., xxiv (1904), 241 f.Google Scholar
page 228 note 6 The shovel and fork on the vase can both be matched by those in use in Crete today, except that the modern Cretan fork has a long handle, while that on the Reading vase apparently has none. Similarly the broom used in Greece for domestic purposes is sometimes provided with a broomstick, but more often has none.
page 228 note 7 P. Hibeh II 177, line 14. My thanks are due to Professor Turner for very kindly sending me information about this papyrus.
page 228 note 8 By the Brygos painter, Beazley, , A.R.V. 246Google Scholar, no. 6; Harrison, J. E., Prolegomena, fig. 149.Google Scholar
page 229 note 1 Hoorn, Van, Choes and Anthesteria, no 271, fig. 38.Google Scholar
page 229 note 2 Harrison, J. E., Prolegomena, figs. 146, 147, 150, 152Google Scholar; A.J.A., 1933, pll. xxxII, XXXIII.
page 229 note 3 For the most recent discussion of Litnites see Nilsson, M. P., Bull. Soc. Rqyale dei Lettres, Lund, 1951–1952, pp. 1 f.Google Scholar
page 229 note 4 s.v. 
.
page 229 note 5 5. 500.
page 229 note 6 13. 590.
page 229 note 7 The Chinese also apparently use the threshing-floor as a place of assembly. ‘There on the threshing ground before the assembled squatting peasants was laid out the topography of K'ang Chuang's economy’ (New Statesman, 11 Oct. 1952, p. 411).
page 229 note 8 Pindar, 01. 13. 25 f.: 
page 229 note 9 The verb 
is normally used of the animals employed in threshing, 
(sc. 
Xen. Oec. 18. 4. Cf. also Anth. Pal. 9. 301.
page 230 note 1 So Bury, , History of Greece, p. 201Google Scholar, and this seems to be the logical sequence. Professor Nilsson, on the other hand, regards the rustic Dionysia and the plays performed at them as borrowed from the city Dionysia, Oxford Class. Diet., s.v. Dionysia.
page 230 note 2 I am much indebted to Professor E. R. Dodds and to Professor C. J. Fordyce for very helpful criticism and suggestions
