KEPEIA: THE MARKET GARDENS OF CLASSICAL ATTICA 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
A Thesis 
Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School 
of Cornell University 
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of 
Master of Arts in Archaeology 
  
 
 
 
by 
Jane Ellen Millar 
August 2021
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
© 2021 Jane Ellen Millar 
 
 
 
ABSTRACT 
 
This thesis concerns market gardening in classical Attica (5th and 4th centuries BCE), 
investigating the socioeconomic and environmental dimensions of small-scale intensive 
cultivation. Blurring the boundary between city and countryside, gardens provided an important 
economic outlet to city dwellers and essential variety to urban diets, but Greek gardens have 
been little studied by historians or archaeologists. Neglecting them not only misses a key 
component of food production and distribution, but also overlooks a meaningful feature of the 
cultivated landscape. I will examine the literary and epigraphic evidence for market gardens, 
framing them in explicitly economic terms, before suggesting some archaeological approaches 
based on two case studies.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
Jane graduated from The University of the South in 2014 with a BA in Anthropology 
(summa cum laude) and received her MA in Classical Languages from the University of Texas at 
Austin in 2018. She comes to Cornell on leave from a PhD in Classical Archaeology at the same 
institution. Jane has participated in archaeological surveys and excavations in Italy, Belize, and 
the southeastern United States. She spent 2019-20 at the American School of Classical Studies at 
Athens, returning in 2021-22 as a Fulbright Fellow in Greece. 
 
  
 iii 
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 
 
I gratefully acknowledge the support of the Cornell Institute of Archaeology and Material 
Studies, whose CIAMS fellowships partially supported my two semesters at Cornell. My thanks 
go especially to the DGS, Prof. Lori Khatchadourian, and the members of my committee, Prof. 
Sturt Manning, Prof. Kathryn Gleason, and Prof. Astrid Van Oyen, for their continued generosity 
in teaching and mentorship during the challenging circumstances of 2020-2021.   
  
 iv 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
Biographical Sketch ....................................................................................................................... iii 
Acknowledgments .......................................................................................................................... iv 
Table of Contents ............................................................................................................................ v 
Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 
Background: Gardens without markets, markets without gardens ................................................. 2 
Temporal dimensions: risk, opportunity, seasonality ..................................................................... 3 
Spatial dimensions: margins, scale, extent ................................................................................... 10 
Case Study: Piraeus ....................................................................................................................... 14 
Case Study: Halai Aixionides ....................................................................................................... 18 
Future directions: Archaeological approaches .............................................................................. 20 
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 21 
Bibliography ................................................................................................................................. 25 
 v 
Introduction 
There is no evidence of a meaningful distinction between utilitarian and ornamental 
gardens in Greek antiquity.1 Nevertheless, most garden scholarship has focused on themes of 
luxury, privilege, and symbolic value at the expense of their economic aspects.2 This is 
beginning to change. Recent and growing appreciation for the economic importance of Greek 
and (especially) Roman gardens can be seen in the updates to their OCD entry made earlier this 
year (April 2021).3 But more work is needed in the eastern Mediterranean, even the well-
ploughed field of classical Attica, where gardens and gardeners remain seriously understudied.4 
From the framework of historical political ecology, economic histories and market opportunities 
shape local conceptions of natural resources, their uses and perceived value.5 This is especially 
true of so-called marginal landscapes, like the dry hills, narrow streams, and marshland that 
surrounded classical Athens.  With this thesis, I want to position Athenian market gardens in the 
agricultural economy and unique environment of fifth- and fourth-century Attica. Rather than 
attempting to tease out environmental aspects from economic factors, I organize this discussion 
according to the temporal and spatial dimensions of gardens. The following case studies, 
Mounychia in Piraeus and the deme center of Halai Aixionides, offer a combination of literary, 
epigraphic, and archaeological evidence. From here, we can begin to ask what gardens meant to 
 
1 Gros de Beler et al. 2008, 11, date this distinction to the northern European Renaissance. 
2 e.g., von Stackelberg 2009; Coleman 2014; Hilditch 2015; Pagán 2016. On Homeric gardens, see Ferriolo 1989; 
Giesecke 2007; Bouvier 2010. On gardens and power more generally, Stronach 1990; Giesecke 2015. 
3 von Stackelburg 2021, previously Purcell 2015.  
4  Carroll-Spillecke 1989 is the only monograph on Greek gardens, with an English summary published as Carroll 
1992, partly reprised in her 2003 book. See also Osborne 1992; Karakoli-Moskofidou 1997; Reber 2010; and 
most recently the unpublished DPhil thesis by Hilditch 2015. 
5 Offen 2004, 35. 
 1 
the diverse populations living in democratic and climatically marginal Athens, how meanings 
varied along the lines of status and gender, and whether those meanings changed over time.6 
 
Background: Gardens without markets, markets without gardens 
Like the English “garden,” kepos (pl. kepoi) is a word with a wide semantic range, 
encompassing market gardens along with temple groves, private parks, and kitchen plots.7 Rather 
than size, structures, or characteristic plants, gardens are best defined by the intensive labor 
involved in their establishment and maintenance, as “places that are carefully set apart from their 
surrounding environment and where a highly specialized ecology is maintained through constant 
human monitoring… according to a specific cultural view.”8 In all their shapes and sizes, the 
common denominators are boundedness, intensive cultivation, and cultural specificity, to which I 
would add a degree of liminality. Robin Osborne situated the classical Greek garden “between 
farm and paradise,” and it also fills in spaces between polis and chora, private and public, luxury 
and utility.9  
Recent writings on ancient Greek economies and agriculture contain only a few brief 
references to market gardening.10 If mentioned at all, kepoi usually appear as home gardens 
 
6 Osborne 1992, 377 set out with these questions of classical Greek gardens but did not cover market gardening. 
7 Nielsen 2013, 41-74; Hardy and Totelin 2015, 163-166. 
8 Malek 2013, 15. 
9  Osborne 1992, 373. On Pompeiian gardens as liminal spaces see Barrett 2019, 20, n. 50.  
10 Kron 2015, 169-72; Bresson 2016, 129-31, which also covers honey production. On Greek agriculture generally, 
the basic texts are Amouretti 1986 (on the Mediterranean triad); Isager and Skydsgard 1992 (on tools, buildings, 
economic aspects); Burford 1993 (on land and labor). Conference proceedings published as Wells 1992 add 
archaeological evidence to these primarily text-based accounts. Contributions in Hollander and Howe 2021, not 
yet available at the time of writing, promise some much-needed updates. 
 2 
attached to rural dwellings and cultivated for family subsistence.11 Such an emphasis on self-
sufficiency is symptomatic of the preference for autarchy and primitivism that continues to loom 
large over studies of the ancient Greek economy, but publications in the last twenty years are 
also highlighting the importance of markets and labor specialization.12 Small urban and peri-
urban gardens could be a vital food source for poor families (in Roman contexts see Columella, 
Rust. 10. pref. 1-3; Pliny, HN 19.52) but also offered opportunities to participate in the local 
economy through the sale of fresh or preserved produce, garlands, and medicinal herbs.13 In 
recent history, market gardens have been studied a key feature in rural to urban population 
movements,14 analogous to demographic growth in the late sixth and into the fifth century BCE. 
From a development persepective, they represent a form of urban agriculture, defined by their 
close association with the economic, social, and cultural life of the city.15 
 
Temporal dimensions: risk, opportunity, seasonality   
Different types of gardens were cultivated on vastly different temporal scales, which 
affected the amounts of investment required. Ten-year leases for the temple estates on Hellenistic 
Delos record elite kepoi containing the same number of olive and fig trees over decades.16 At the 
other end of the spectrum, with potsherds and a little soil, Athenian women sprouted lettuce, 
 
11 e.g., Burford 1993, 135-7; Krasilnikoff 2000, 178-9; on Greek farmsteads see McHugh 2017.  
12 Garnsey et al. 1983, xi-iv on New Orthodoxy; Horden and Purcell 2000, 112-5, 146; critiquing Finley 1982. On 
markets, see especially Bresson 2016; Harris et al. 2016; Manning 2018. 
13 Linderski 2001, 305-308; Henderson 2004, 110-133. 
14 For modern comparanda see, e.g., Friesen 1998; Andres and Lebally 2011.  
15 Lohrberg et al. 2016, 21. 
16 Kent 1948.  
 3 
fennel, wheat, and barley as “gardens of Adonis” that quickly wilted in the summer sun.17 Such 
rites and associated values made kepoi proverbial in literary sources for ephemeral things and 
vanities (Thuc. 2.62). But neither of these are what we would call market gardens, and usual 
turnover rates would usually have lain somewhere between sacred fig trees and ritual 
microgreens, with significant labor inputs along the way. Celery (σέλινον), for example, took six 
or seven weeks to germinate, and rather than freely sowing, Theophrastus (ca. 371-287) 
recommends an elaborate form of dibbling (Hist. pl. 7.1.3, 7.3.5). At the long end of the temporal 
scale, olives might take decades to produce a good crop, but established trees could significantly 
raise the value of land over time.18 When trees were cultivated in gardens, it might only be as 
young shoots or propagates prior to transplanting (Hist. pl. 2.4.1, 6.6.6, 6.7.4, 7.3.5, 7.4.8; Caus. 
pl. 2.16.5, 5.7.1). Athenian gardeners cultivated a mix of long-lived fruit trees and fast-growing 
annuals in vegetable beds, some of which were expected to be left fallow at the conclusion of a 
lease (IG II2 2494).19  
The Greek agricultural calendar typically follows winter sowing through the fall olive 
harvest, but garden tasks were interspersed throughout.20 In contrast with grain cultivation and 
arboriculture, which require cooperative labor and shared capital (draft animals, storage, 
infrastructure) for sowing, harvesting, and processing, gardens require continuous inputs of 
relatively low-impact interventions (hoeing, manuring, weeding, hand-watering, as opposed to 
plowing and large-scale irrigation).21 Theophrastus (Hist. pl. 7.1) lists garden crops (λάχανα) 
 
17 Detienne 1972; Oakley and Reitzammer 2005. See also depictions on an Attic red-figure lekythos (Badisches 
Landesmuseum Inv. B 39) and a more recently published terracotta from Myrina (Louvre Inv. Myr. 233). 
18 Burford 1993, 79-80, n. 82, 130; Krasilnikoff 2000; id. 2008. 
19 For other temple leases, see IG II2 2492; Jameson 1982, 60-74; Walbank 1983, 100-35, 177-231. 
20 Isager and Skydsgaard 1992, 19-43. 
21 See Grey 2018, reviewing Halstead 2014 and other recent works on agricultural labor and its cooperative aspects. 
 4 
sown in September for winter harvest, spring gardens sown in January, and summer crops sown 
in April, as well as a cornucopia of “secondary crops” which might be sown throughout the year 
in addition to the main seasonal crop (Table 1). Because some of these could be seeded and sold 
in a matter of weeks, they offered flexible opportunities outside the longer cycles of large-scale 
grain crops.22 In addition to Theophrastus, Aristophanes and his contemporaries mention a wide 
variety of produce in the Athenian agora: vegetables, aromatic herbs, and flowers for garlands, 
wreaths, and medicinal ingredients.23 Because so many familiar flowers and aromatic herbs are 
among the native flora of Greece, their waxy leaves well-adapted to arid climates, many of these 
are as likely to have come from the maquis as the garden plot.24 
On the consumer end, it is not known whether there was a difference between gathered 
and grown varieties, whether they were indistinguishable, or one more desirable than the other, 
but important qualities appear to have been their freshness and place of origin. That many garden 
products could also be gathered wild creates opportunities for opportunistic gathering alongside 
routine tasks with little to no (capital) investment. Some varieties deteriorated under cultivation 
and had to be gathered: Theophrastus mentions capers and lupine (Theophr. Hist. pl. 1.4.1). 
Gathering required almost no investment beyond knowledge and attention, while growing 
required renting or otherwise accessing land, investing in seeds, irrigation, and if references to 
theft are not greatly exaggerated, some form of security. There is in fact very little evidence for 
privately owned gardens, mostly known from horos inscriptions, but leases of temple property in 
the fifth and fourth century BCE attest to a healthy rental market for garden plots. Attic 
 
22 For a more flexible and forward-looking conception of rural time, and its economic implications, see Van Oyen 
2019. 
23 Lewis 2016, 382-4. 
24 On Mediterranean biodiversity see Grove and Rackham 2001; Blondel et al. 2010. 
 5 
sanctuaries like the one in IG II2 2494 rented out gardens at anywhere from 20 to 250 drachmae a 
year.25 Figuring one drachma as a good daily wage for a skilled laborer at the end of the fifth 
century, the cost of leasing a small garden plot would have been within the reach of many. The 
greatest investment, for gardens, was labor. 
Intensification—relatively high labor inputs per unit area—and crop diversification are 
well-studied risk management strategies which developed in the unique spatial and temporal 
landscape of the Mediterranean, with its combination of diverse microregions and interannual 
variability in rainfall.26 Risk management strategies are usually framed in opposition to market-
oriented behavior, but in the case of market gardens, that need not be the case. At least as 
depicted in Old Comedy, Athenian vegetable sellers diversified ambitiously, in combinations 
that did not always follow the rules of the seasons. Aristophanes satirizes the profession in a 
surviving fragment of Seasons (frag. 581, Ath. 9.372B):  
 
(Α.) ὄψει δὲ χειμῶνος μέσου σικυούς, βότρυς, ὀπώραν, 
στεφάνους ἴων, < (Β) οἶμαι δὲ καὶ > κονιορτὸν ἐκτυφλοῦντα. 
(Α) αὑτὸς δ’ἀνὴρ πλωλεῖ κίχλας, ἀπίους, σχαδόνας, ἐλάας, 
πύον, χόρια, χελιδόνας, τέττιγας, ἐμβρύεια. 
ὑρίσους δ’ ἴδοις ἂν νειφομένους σύκων ὁμοῦ τε μύρτων· 
(Β) ἔπειτα κολοκύντας ὁμοῦ ταῖς γογγυλίσιν ἀροῦσιν. 
ὥστ’ οὐκετ’ οὐδεἷς οἶδ’ ὁπηνίκ’ ἐστι τοὐνιαυτοῦ. 
 
 
25 Osborne 1992. 
26 Halstead 1987 and passim; Horden and Purcell 2000; on risk see especially Gallant 1991; Hanson 1995; Scheidel, 
Morris, and Saller 2007, also referring to fragmented landholdings and trading or storing surpluses. 
 6 
(Α) In midwinter you’ll see cucumbers and the fruit of the vine 
and crowns of violets. 
(B) And blinding clouds of dust I think. 
(A) One and the same man sells thrushes, pears, honeycombs, olives, 
beestings, haggis, swallows, crickets, fetal meat; 
and you’d see baskets with figs and myrtle-sprays even when it snows. 
(B) Then they sow the pumpkins together with the turnips, 
so that no one knows what time of year it is. 
 
The speaker describes what seems like a reckless disregard of the seasons on the part of the 
growers and sellers, who spend winter hawking spring (violets), summer (cucumbers, myrtle), 
and fall (figs, grapes) produce, sowing cool-season brassicas alongside summer melons or 
gourds.27 In the context of a play which satirized immigrant gods and their cults, the gardeners in 
question may be foreigners— the first speaker goes on to decry the unnatural variety as luxury, 
turning Athens into Egypt (Αἴγυπτον αὐτῶν τὴν πόλιν πεποίηκας ντ’ Ἀθηνῶν, Ath. 9.372B). The 
critique is a familiar one, based in the ideals of traditional self-sufficient farming and mistrust of 
luxuries (Theophr. Char. 20.9, Isae. 5.11), but this is more likely moralistic discourse than the 
realistic assessment of the market for garden products. In the context of the Athenian democracy, 
simple fare was more ideologically desirable. Fruits and even vegetables could be a sign of 
luxury, classed as relish (ὂψον) and a source of overindulgence (Pl. Rep. 2.372a-e; Xen. Mem. 
 
27 Ιn the above translation by Henderson (2008, 379) κολοκύνθη is familiarly translated “pumpkin,” but obviously 
does not refer to winter squashes domesticated in North America (Cucurbita maxima, C. pepo). There are several 
gourds native to North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean, including the bitter watermelon lookalike Citrullus 
colocynthis (Chomicki et al. 2020). 
 7 
3.14.2-6).28 Rhetoric aside, there is good reason to believe that figs, for example, were more 
important in the Attic economy than generally credited (Ath. 14.652b-653b), growing and 
producing much more quickly than the iconic olive.29  
Another element of garden cultivation that can be appreciated from this passage was 
experimentation, which Theophrastus discusses as a facet of garden cultivation, listing several 
wild plants that have been coaxed out of garden soil (Theophr. Hist. pl. 7.7.2).30 A market 
gardener might allow profitable weed species to self-seed in part of a plot or supplement their 
wares with gathered herbs.31 It made sense to plant certain high-value taxa for access and 
convenience, so that like the chorus in Aristophanes’ Birds, one could “enjoy in the garden the 
white sesame and myrtle berries, the poppy and bergamot mint” (159-60). Most garden products 
add more to taste than calories, and the economy of seasonings and senses in Greek (sub)urban 
life remains to be explored.32 Plant foods, especially the inexpensive calories from cereals and 
legumes, formed the daily subsistence base of the non-elite majority in classical Athens, but 
seasonings would have been essential components in turning raw ingredients into food.33 
Diversification is a valid risk management strategy,34 and experimentation with different crops in 
a single plot could have captured high demand on the market. 
 
28 Davidson 1997, 20-26; Hilditch 2015, 118. 
29 Studies of the ancient agricultural economy overwhelmingly focus on the “Mediterranean triad” of grain, grapes, 
and olives, though exceptions prove the rule, e.g. Sarpaki 1992, arguing for a quartet to include legumes, and 
Amouretti 1999, focused on other overlooked plant resources. See also brief articles by Andrews 1949, id. 1956, 
id. 1958. 
30 For gardens as venues for experimentation with reference to medieval Arabic horticulture, see Watson 1983.  
31 Halstead 2014. 
32 cf. in Herculaneum, Rowan 2017 on the contents on a sewer in a non-elite neighborhood, which indicated a 
relatively wider access to so-called exotic spices (e.g., Piper nigrum) than previously believed. 
33 Foxhall and Forbes 1982, 44-6 estimate that cereals made up ca. 65–70% of the ancient diet; but cf. Gallant 1991, 
60–92; Kron 2015, 161. 
34 e.g., Marston 2011. 
 8 
The temporal dimensions of market gardens—short-term, low-investment—appears to 
have made their cultivation available to economically marginal populations including women 
and foreigners. There is no direct evidence of a gendered division of labor in classical Greece 
gardens, nor between enslaved and free laborers, but most epigraphic mentions refer to freed 
slaves.35 The female vegetable seller appears not infrequently in Old Comedy, including the 
mother of Euripedes (λαχανοπωλητρία, Arist. Them. 387), but usually in the context of 
misogynistic mockery (Arist. Wasps, 497, Lysis. 457, 564, Achar. 478, Τhesmo. 446-58).36 In the 
long passage above, Aristophanes mentions selling and sowing in the same breath, and though 
most scholars tend to accept the distinction made by Plato (Rep. 371 c-d), that vendors (κάπηλοι) 
remained in the agora, where farmers could sell to them and more quickly return to their fields, it 
seems likely that female vendors sold produce grown or gathered in plots around the city, 
engaging in the low-value transactions to which women were legally restricted.37 Epigraphic 
evidence supports the mentions in Old Comedy which cannot be taken at face value: among the 
roughly 200 epigraphically attested professions in classical Athens (ca. 500-250 BCE) are sellers 
of garlic (γελγοπώλης), onions (κρομμυπώλης), sesame seeds (σησαμοπώλης), and cumin 
(κυμινοπώλης), while roots (ῥιζοπώλης, presumably medicinal) and laurels (δαφνοπώλης) could 
have been gathered wild or cultivated to meet urban demand.38 Several are women, named in 
Attic manumissions: Onesime and Soteris sold sesame seeds, Atta pulses, and Mania was a 
 
35 Osborne 1992, n. 32, 384; on agricultural labor see Scheidel 1995-1996.  
36 For better or worse, the most popular image is a Hellenistic statue nicknamed (probably not appropriately) the Old 
Market Woman (MMA 09.39), on which see Stewart 2014, 233-5, fig. 140. Images of gardens themselves, like all 
natural features in classical Greek art, are relatively few and far between (Burn 1987, 18-21, 29-30, 83-4; Hilditch 
2015, 22-67.) 
37 Saller in Scheidel, Morris, and Saller 2007, 102; Hilditch 2015, 158. 
38 Harris et al. 2016, 24, n. 123; Lewis 2016, 382-4.  
 9 
female grocer living near a spring (IG II2 1561, 22-23, 26-27; IG III3 87, 8).39 Of course, not all 
the retail professions need to have been mutually exclusive, and they were likely interchangeable 
with the seasons as different produce became available. This brings us to the spatial dimensions 
of Athenian market gardens, starting with the agora and moving out to the city margins for the 
gardens themselves.  
 
Spatial dimensions: margins, scale, extent 
We should probably imagine garden produce in a particular area of the Athenian agora, 
large enough to contain several specialized sections. The Old Comedy playwright Eupolis 
describes a character going “round to the garlic and the onions and the incense and straight to the 
perfume” (fr. 327). In Pherecrates (fr. 2), there are stalls for bergamot, mint, larkspur, and 
wreaths; Aristophanes notes a particular area of the agora for vegetables and pots (Lys. 557). 
Specialists in marketing specific products probably accepted produce from several market-
gardeners, rather than the gardeners remaining in the agora to sell their own miscellaneous 
harvests, though this could certainly have been the case in smaller markets outside Athens. There 
is epigraphic evidence for markets all over Attica, from secondary centers at Sounion and 
Piraeus to temporary and periodic markets all over the peninsula, such that most Attic farmers 
and gardeners would have had somewhere to sell within three or four hours’ walk.40 This would 
have been particularly important for gardeners, since unlike products amenable to long-term 
storage like grain, wine, olive oil, and honey, fresh vegetables and fruit had to be sold quickly 
 
39 Lewis 1959: 214, 223; Hilditch 2015, 158.  
40 Harris et al. 2016, 13-22. 
 10 
Figure 1: Places 
mentioned in text, 
with gardens and 
groves along rivers in 
the Athenian suburbs 
after Carroll-Spillecke 
1992, 93, fig. 13, and 
attested roads after 
McHugh 2019. Map 
by the author. 
 
and close to the place of production.41 The city also drew in an unusually dense population not 
engaged in farming, particularly during the Peloponnesian War, a condition which allowed “the 
market [to replace] the usual function of storage,” making way for a shift to specialized 
gardeners and gatherers while putting pressure on the production of a ready supply.42 
 
Epigraphic evidence suggests that market gardens existed on the margins of classical 
Athens, creating a valuable suburban “green belt” (Fig. 1) not unlike the better-studied Roman 
 
41 There is also some evidence of gardeners maintaining their own shop. One horos (no. 92A) lists a house, a shop 
and a garden on the property it marks, suggesting that the owner grew produce in his garden and sold it there 
(Harris in Cartledge et al. 2002, 69, n. 2). 
42 Horden and Purcell 2000, 205. On the rural/urban dynamic in earlier periods see Manning and Fisher 2018; 
García et al. 2019. 
 11 
suburbium.43 I have said that market gardens occupy marginal land, which I use in its spatial 
sense – on the physical margins of the city, between densely inhabited urban space and the chora 
proper– and in terms of productivity and desirability. Attica is usually portrayed as on the 
margins of agricultural sustainability, part of a low-precipitation zone that encircles the Saronic 
Gulf and Cyclades which is arid even for the Aegean.44 Only a fraction of Attic soil lay in flat 
valleys well suited to extensive grain agriculture, so the landscape is often characterized in terms 
of poverty but, through elite investment and intensive labor inputs, supported a variety of 
cultivation strategies including gardens.45 Still, the productivity of the Attic hinterland and its 
reliance on imports is still hotly debated.46  
Looking more closely at the margins, there is an assumption in need of revision that 
garden space only existed outside the walls of crowded Greek cities.47 It is hard to estimate the 
value of urban land, but limited sources suggest it was at least relatively high in large cities like 
Athens (Xen. Ways 4.50). Of course, the agora itself was planted with shade and fruit trees, and 
groves stood around sanctuaries and gymnasia, and though public works and sacred space are 
usually considered separately from food production there is no direct evidence to contradict the 
sale of produce from sanctuary land. Planting pits and pots around the Hephaestion, dated to the 
3rd to 1st centuries BCE, have been restored with pomegranate and myrtle trees, both of which, 
appropriately, also have economic functions.48 I am not ready to dismiss the possibility of 
 
43 Carroll 1992, 86-89; Kron 2015, 169-72. On the suburbium see Morley 1996; Frass 2006, 163-73; Purcell 2007. 
44 Bintliff 2012, fig. 1.3. Under this precipitation regime wheat would have failed often, but barley was a reasonably 
safe choice, the odds of failure two years in a row at only a fraction of a percent (Garnsey 1988, 10-17). 
45 Krasilnikoff 2000; id. 2008; Foxhall 2007. 
46 Garnsey 1988, 89-106; Davies 2007, 343; O’Halloran 2018, 59-60. 
47 Carroll-Spillecke 1989, 82; echoed by Farrar 1998, 6-8; Reber 2010. 
48 Thompson 1937, also mentioning planting pots in the agora excavations; Delorme 1960, 33-51; Carroll 1992, 86-
90; id. 2003, 22-23. Planting pots were also noted at Olynthus, on which see Robinson 1950. 
 12 
household or even profitable garden cultivation in the city, if not alongside houses (as in Dem. 
47.53), in their courtyards. Greek domestic archaeologists tend to dismiss the courtyard as too 
small for the cultivation of a garden, and argue that plantings would block valuable light, though 
they might also play a screening role in the interest of female seclusion.49 An often quoted 
Hellenistic law from Pergamon (SEG 13.521.158-161) forbids plantings near houses to prevent 
root damage to the walls, but this need not preclude container gardening, and possible flowerpots 
(ollae perforatae) have been widely identified in both Greek and Roman contexts.50 A useful 
ethnographic comparison can be found in the gardens (usually in recycled containers) of 
traditional Mexican-American barrio houses, which faced around an interior court like the Greek 
oikos, and have been studied as arenas of female expression and agency.51  
The seemingly harsh and unnatural conditions of an urban courtyard actually mirror the 
rocky outcrops that characterize much of the Attic landscape, where plants have adapted to long 
droughts, intense sunlight, and small pockets of soil. But conditions on the urban periphery 
would have been more amendable to irrigated gardens, especially the well-watered areas around 
the Kephissos, Eridanos, and Ilissos, the shady setting of Plato’s Phaedrus and where Pausanias 
observed a garden zone centuries later (1.19.2). The Academy too was still known for its 
plantings by the Romans (Plin. HN, 12.5, Plut. Sull. 12.3), but in the fifth century included not 
only planes but reeds, smilax, poplar, and elms and olives (Ar. Clouds, 1005-1008), evoking the 
kind of resilient edible landscaping popular in current permaculture design rather than a 
rigorously formal garden. For the other inputs of nutrients and labor, gardens in or near the city 
 
49 Carroll 1992, 86.  
50 Farrar 1998, 5-8; Macaulay-Lewis 2006. For images of excavated pots see Foxhall 2007, fig. 7.16. 
51 Waldenberger 2000, 233-6; for Athens cf. Nevett 2011. 
 13 
would have been enriched by a ready supply of human manure (kopros), whose collection and 
distribution were overseen by koprologoi.52  
 
Case Study: Piraeus 
Epigraphic evidence from fourth-century Piraeus extends the Athenian green belt towards 
the sea. Planned in the mid- fifth century BCE and the only surviving project of Hippodamus of 
Miletus (Arist. Pol. 2.5.1267b22-1268a14), classical Piraeus was surrounded by a marshy zone 
which limited opportunities for settlement and agriculture in the immediate suburbs (Fig. 2).53 
This may have encouraged creative exploitation of higher ground. The urban grid petered out on 
the slopes of Mounychia Hill, but an eclectic variety of wells, cisterns, and channels attest to  
 
 
 
 
 
Figure 2: Late 
19th-c. Piraeus 
and the 
surrounding 
marshy 
landscape prior 
to modern 
drainage works 
(Curtius and 
Kaupert 1882).  
 
 
52 Burford 1993, 123, n. 137; Owens 1983.  
53 Hoepfner and Schwandner 1985; Chiotis 2019, 337. 
 14 
dense occupation, puncturing the rocky hill with such frequency that an early traveler remarked 
that they made it “dangerous to walk about the ruins.”54 Irrigation was an important prerequisite 
to successful garden cultivation (Theophr. Caus. pl. 2.5.6; Diog. Laert. 7.168-9; Arist. fr. 679; Pl. 
Leg. 845c), and Mounychia features the most favorable hydrological conditions at Piraeus. The 
peninsula is generally described as one of the “least hospitable regions in all Attica,”55 but here, 
the thickly bedded limestone sits atop impermeable marl, sloping off to the south, creating 
perfect conditions for springs around the 40 m contour line.56 Porous limestone would have had 
the capacity to absorb winter rains rather than causing runoff and erosion, good news for ancient 
gardeners. Though often overlooked in a city that handled so much imported grain, agricultural 
production was among the many occupations of demesmen, metics, visitors, and slaves who 
lived and worked in the Piraeus.57 A lease record for property dedicated to an unknown deity in 
the third quarter of the fourth century (338-326 BCE) records nine gardens along the road to 
Mounychia, with renters from Piraeus and Kerameikos (SEG 33.168b).58 The records use the 
diminutive κηπεῖον, suggestive of “small, tightly packed patches to be intensively exploited for 
vegetable production, aimed at the voracious Athenian market.”59 Piraeus had its own agora, of 
course, marked by several surviving horoi (IG I2 896; SEG x, 383; IG I3 1115) near the 
 
54 Dodwell 1819, 426. 
55 Garland 2001, 7. 
56 Lepsius 1893, 6; Chiotis 2019, 334-335, 346-347. The waterholding capacity of the Mounychia bedrock was 
preserved to stunning effect in the so-called Cave of Arethousa, a stepped gallery tunnelling into the hill as a 
stepped gallery explored to a depth of 65 m. 
57 Garland (2001, 74) interpreted attestations to the celebration of the plowing festival Plerosia (IG II2 1177) and 
references to pasture (IG II2 2498) as evidence of arable land within the boundaries of Piraeus. 
58 Walbank 1983, 179, 185. 
59 Hilditch 2015, 224-5. 
 15 
southwest slope of Mounychia hill (Xen. Hell. 2.4.11) and by extension, near these small 
gardens.60 
At first glance, intensive cultivation for local consumption and trade—market 
gardening—seems unlikely on the densely inhabited and inhospitable peninsula, though it is 
attested for nearby Phaleron, whose cabbage (ῥάφανος) was highly regarded.61 Today’s cabbage 
and the many other cultivated forms of Brassica oleracea (kale, kohlrabi, Brussels sprouts, etc.) 
are rated as moderately salt-tolerant, but wild B. oleracea continues to flourish on seaside 
limestone cliffs around the Mediterranean with few competitors,62 so we should probably 
imagine something closer to this hardy ancestor in fourth-century gardens. Cabbage was 
recommended by Theophrastus alongside radishes (ῥαφανίς) and turnips (γογγυλίς) for winter 
cultivation (Hist. pl. 7.1), when Attica receives most of its annual precipitation. The Piraeus 
gardens may have been winter affairs, taking advantage of winter rain with cool-season 
brassicas, then lying fallow when gardeners returned to other occupations when the weather 
turned dry and good for sailing. The lease for one plot also mentions a mulberry tree (ἡ 
συ[κάμινος, l.10).63 Between entries 8 and 9 in SEG 33.168b is a record of a marsh being rented 
(ἕλος, l.19), indicating that the wetland usually portrayed as limiting opportunities around the 
city had its uses, potentially as pasture.64 Local landscapes of cultivation have received little 
attention in Piraeus, where ancient authors describe the diversity of goods flowing in from 
 
60 Gill 2006, 6-7.  
61 Garland 2001, 69. 
62 Shannon and Grieve 1999, 22-24; POWO 2021. 
63 This would have been the black mulberry (Morus nigra) brought from southwest Asia by the fifth century BCE 
(Theophr. Hist. pl. 1.12.1, 5.6.1-3), and not the white mulberry (Morus alba) later imported from China, widely 
cultivated for silkworms in medieval Peloponnese and the source of its official name (Morea) from the 10th 
through 19th century. 
64 Krasilnikoff 2000, 179-80; Hilditch 2015, 223-225. 
 16 
everywhere (Ath. L27e-f). But there do appear to have been issues with the grain supply, 
especially ca. 330-327 BCE (IG II2 408; IG II2 342; Plut. Vit. Dec. 851B; Tod 1948, no. 196).65 
Fourth-century grain shortages could have encouraged Piraeus residents new and old to bring 
previously inhospitable land into cultivation as small urban gardens, and indeed, the Mounychia 
inscriptions date between Chaeronea in 338 and the Athenian defeats of 322 BCE, a period that 
saw a brief but significant growth in population. Lycurgus sponsored infrastructure and 
encouraged settlement in Piraeus, especially by Egyptian and Cypriot merchants, who almost 
certainly brought their foodways along with their gods, perhaps their garden traditions as well.66 
From a cultural rather than purely economic perspective, seeds and shoots brought from one 
garden to another could maintain connection with family and home, and in the case of exotic 
cultivars, required constant maintenance to survive, creating an iterative engagement with their 
current place and remembered origin.67  
Figure 3. Halai Aixionides, plan of 
the settlement excavated at the 
Kalampokas plot in 1974-75 
(Travlos 1988, Fig. 597) and view to 
the west (Fig. 596). Green shading 
indicates unpaved enclosures, 
possible garden space. 
 
 
65 On fourth-century grain shortages, for which there are ample sociopolitical explanations in addition to yet 
unproven climatic factors, see Camp 1982, 14-15; Garnsey 1988, 134-164.  
66 Garland 2001, 44-45.  
67 cf. Waldenberger 2000, 241-2. 
 17 
Case Study: Halai Aixionides 
Leaving Piraeus and moving farther down the western coast of Attica, just 12 km to the 
south, are the only (tentatively) archaeologically identified gardens in Attica. Halai Aixionides 
lies 15 km away from the Athenian agora, about a 3-hour walk along modern roads. It is one of 
the only Classical villages (κώμαι) excavated in Attica, studied in 1974/75 by P. Themelis when 
modern construction began in the area.68 Rescue excavations did not include systematic sampling 
or soil testing, but we can make some inferences from the standing architecture. The buildings 
are loosely connected, with streets of varying widths (2.5 – 4 m) and extensive unbuilt areas 
enclosed by irregular stone walls, “apparently gardens,” totaling roughly 2050 m2 (Fig. 3).69 Like 
the arrangement suggested by an inscription from Tegea (Tod. No. 202.9-21), gardens appear to 
be interspersed among houses and cult-buildings along the road. One group of enclosures, in the 
southeast, contains a one-room structure tentatively identified as a banquet-hall (λέσχη) like 
those marked by horoi on the western Akte peninsula in Piraeus (IG I2 888). The enclosure 
around it is partitioned into smaller spaces of 27 m2, 30 m2, 50 m2, 52 m2, and 179 m2 along its 
northern edge bordering the road.70 Immediately to the north, Lohmann interpreted hydraulic 
fixtures around village’s tower as baths, drawing comparisons with fragments of clay bathtubs 
found near the tower at Atene,71 but I wonder if the arrangement might include irrigation works. 
The enclosed spaces are adequate for one or two trees and several rows of vegetable beds each, 
since just 15 cm of soil is enough to establish perennial herbaceous plants, while small trees need 
 
68 Travlos 1988, 467, figs. 595-7. 
69 Lohmann 1992, 35-9. 
70 Approximate measurements from the plan by Travlos. Salviat and Vatin 1971, 22, record one kepos in Thessaly 
measuring over five plethra, enough for a small farm. But we should probably imagine the gardens around Athens 
being considerably smaller. 
71 Lohmann 1992, 35. 
 18 
about four times that, given enough horizontal space.72 Taking a comparative view, gardens 
appear to have been part of the city fabric at Zelea in the Troad and Tegea in Arcadia (Tod. No. 
202.9-21), where they were included in urban land allotments in 334/3 and 342 BCE 
respectively.73 In the northern Peloponnese, the acropolis at Phleius was cultivated with grain.74 
For a deme center like Halai Aixionides, cultivation among buildings is entirely possible, and 
Athens was close enough that market cultivation could have been a profitable endeavor for its 
people. Produce could and did travel much farther to market: fourth-century documents mention 
gardens in several Attic demes including Myrrhinous (IG I3 430, frag. a, 17), Pallene (IG II2 
1596 b, 1) Oion (IG II2 1579, 35-36), and Agrai (IG II2 1591).75 Without tighter dates, however, 
it is not possible to say whether the use or meaning of garden space at Halai Aixionides changed 
over time.  
 
Figure 4. Seeds of common garden taxa—from top 
to bottom, fig (Ficus carica), cabbage (Brassica 
oleracea), and cress (Lepidium sativum)— alongside 
wheat (Triticum aestivum), grape (Vitis vinifera), 
and olive (Olea europaea) with 1 mm scale. 
Illustration by the author. 
 
 
 
72 Rainer and West 2016. 
73 See Osborne 1992, 377-8, n. 15; Burford 1993, 61-2, n. 26. 
74 Burford 1993, 74. Only in later literary sources does cultivation within the city walls later becomes an example of 
civic deterioration and resulting desolation (Dio Chrys. 7.38-9, cf. Phot. Bibl. 446b 27; Lycurg. Leoc. 147; Isoc. 
Plat. 31 on pastoralism). 
75 Walbank 1983; Williams 2011; Hilditch 2015, 214, 223-6; cf. early modern examples in Beavington 1975. 
 19 
Future directions: Archaeological approaches  
So far, short-term and small-scale garden food production, with its liminal position on the 
margins of cities, has largely escaped the notice of archaeologists devoted either to urban 
excavations or rural surveys.76 Two classes of material culture have defined archaeological 
approaches to agricultural activity in cities— structures for storage (individual or centralized) 
and processing (presses, mills, threshing floors). As relatively subtle features in the landscape, 
productive spaces like gardens are also difficult to identify archaeologically, and standardized 
methods for their excavation and interpretation have emerged only in the last few years.77 The 
archaeology of Roman gardens, starting with the unique preservation conditions at Pompeii but 
now spanning sites across the empire, is far more advanced than their Greek counterparts.78 
While developments in Greek domestic archaeology have greatly expanded scholarly 
understanding of household economies, these are mostly architectural and to a lesser extent 
artefactual studies, limited to houses excavated prior to systematic techniques.79 Investigating the 
possibility of courtyard gardens, viewing the household as a dynamic ecosystem, approaches the 
developing theoretical field of multispecies archaeology, studying the impact of phenomena like 
urbanism not solely for its impacts human society, but also on ecological networks and 
environmental systems.80 It is a promising avenue, but requires new excavations with greater 
attention to environmental remains than is currently the norm. 
 
76 Some have attempted to bridge the two, see e.g., work relating to the manuring hypothesis, Morris et al. 1994; 
Ault 1999; Forbes 2013. In the Roman world, see e.g., Bowes et al. 2015 for the possibilities of integrating survey 
and excavation of nonelite houses. 
77 Miller and Gleason 1994; Malek 2013; Van Ossel and Guimier-Sorbets 2014.. 
78 Malek 2013; Jashemski et al. 2018, with a digital catalog (currently Beta release) at https://roman-
gardens.github.io. See previously Grimal 1943; Vatin 1974. 
79 Nevett 1999 and Cahill 2002 (on Olynthus) led the way; see also Ault and Nevett 2005; Ault 2007; Nevett 2010. 
80 e.g., Lucas 2018. For environmental techniques in garden archaeology see Malek 2013, 321-420. 
 20 
In the coming year, I will begin the archaeobotanical analysis of the remains from Piraeus 
wells to shed further light on the relationship between local water supply, food choices, and the 
possibility of urban gardens. Carefully excavated to their full depth, the wells have yielded 
waterlogged leaves and branches that may indicate the presence of shade trees or small courtyard 
gardens as well as numerous seeds and fruits.81 Macrobotanical analysis has been practiced on 
prehistoric excavations for decades, but until recently limited to specialized deposits in 
sanctuaries for classical and later periods in Greece.82 Seeds of most garden cultivars are 
considerably smaller than members of the standard Mediterranean triad, which makes them 
unlikely to be spotted with unsystematic hand-collection (Fig. 4). While macroremains yield 
evidence of food consumption and fertilizer, for primary evidence of plants growing in a garden 
space, one of the most promising avenues is pollen analysis from archaeological sediments and 
wall plaster.83  
 
Conclusion 
What did market gardens mean to the citizens of classical Athens? To the authors of 
preserved texts, perhaps little more than a symptom of excess, botanical curiosity, or the source 
of an amusing turn of phrase. But to the women, metics, and indeed some male citizens engaged 
in a dynamic and multilocal labor economy, market gardens meant a readily accessible and 
seasonally flexible livelihood, one which responded to changing tastes and fashions as well as 
 
81 Chrysoulaki et al. 2017. On the potential of wells for garden archaeology, see Dietrich in Van Ossel and Guimier-
Sorbets 2014, 131-138. 
82 Megaloudi 2006; Voutsaki and Valamoti 2013; Livarda 2014; on the paleoethnobotany of garden cultivation in 
earlier periods, see Bogaard 2005; Jones 2005; van der Veen 2005. 
83 Grüger in Malek 2013; see most recently Langgut and Gleason 2020. 
 21 
subsistence needs and cultural preferences. Gardens offer the opportunity to study Greek 
agriculture in microcosm, defined by diversification in labor and crops. According to Horden and 
Purcell, “The Mediterranean garden is a more typical image of primary production than the 
wheat field or grazed hillside. Diversity of labor, technique or intensity, as well as of the quality 
and quantity of what is tended on the small scale, are structural features of Mediterranean 
history.”84 A more nuanced understanding of Attic market gardens, grounded in the 
archaeological investigation of previously unstudied contexts, stands to greatly illuminate our 
understanding of the ways in which ancient economies and landscapes were mutually 
constitutive.  
  
 
84 Horden and Purcell 2000, 220-224. 
 22 
Table 1: Garden products sold in the Athenian agora (Lewis in Harris et al. 2016, 382-4), with 
approximate seasonal availability based on Theophrastus (Hist. pl. 7.1.1.    , 7.3.4, 7.7.2, 7.9.1-3; 
Caus. pl. 4.8.1, 5.6.5-6) for cultivated taxa, field guides and species profiles for wild taxa 
(Papiomytoglou 2006; Gardner and Gardner 2020; greekflora.gr, powo.science.kew.org). English 
translations of Greek plant names can be problematic, including the original glossary in the LSJ, 
so I relied on the 1916 translation of Theophrastus by botanist Sir Arthur Hort. For binomial 
names, obsolete synonyms were updated to accepted names according to the International Plant 
Names Index (ipni.org).  
 
Scientific name Common nm. Greek name (ancient) Spring Sum/Fa Winter 
Allium cepa onion γήθυον, κρόμυον, σχιστόν greens  bulb 
Allium porrum leek πράσον    
Allium sativum garlic σκόρδον    
Amaranthus blitum blite βλίτον    
Anemone coronaria poppy ἀνεμώνη ἡ λειμωνία    
anemone 
Anethum graveolens dill ἄνηθον, ἅννητος    
Apium graveolens celery (ἑλειο)σέλινον    
Arbutus andrachne strawberry tree ἀνδράχλη, κόμαρος, μιμαίκυλον    
Asparagus officinalis asparagus ἀσφάραγος    
Asphodelus sp. asphodel ἀσφοδελός, ἀνθέρικος    
Atriplex hortensis (garden) ἀδράφαξυν    
orache 
Beta vulgaris beet τεῦτλον    
Brassica oleracea cabbage κράμβη, καυλίον, ῥάφανος    
Brassica rapa turnip γογγυλίς    
Cichorium intybus chicory κιχόριον    
Coriandrum sativum cilantro κορίαννον    
Crocus sativus saffron crocus κρόκος (ὁ εὔοσμος)    
Cucumis sativus cucumber σίκυος    
Delphinium sp. larkspur σταφίς ἄγρια, κοσμοσάνδαλον    
Eruca vesicaria arugula εὔζωμον    
Euphorbia sp. spurge τιθύμαλλος    
Ficus carica fig σῦκον, ἰσχάς (dried)    
Filipendula vulgaris dropwort οἰνάνθη    
Foeniculum vulgare fennel μάραθον greens  bulb 
Helichrysum italicum goldflower ἑλίχρυσος    
Helleborus sp. hellebore ἐλλέβορος    
Lactuca sativa, L. lettuce θρίδαξ, θριδακίνη    
scariola 
Lagenaria siceraria bottle gourd κολόκυνθα, σικύα    
Laurus nobilis bay laurel δάφνη    
Lavandula stoechas lavender στοιχάς, λεβάντα    
Leopoldia comosa tassel hyacinth βολβός    
Lepidum sativum garden cress κάρδαμον    
Lilium candidum Madonna lily κρίνον, λείριον, κρινωνία    
Lilium martagon Martagon lily ἡμεροκαλλές    
Malva sylvestris mallow μαλάχη    
 23 
Mentha aquatica mint, bergamot σισύμβριον, ἡδύοσμον, μίνθη (-    
α) 
Mentha pulegium pennyroyal βληχών, γλήχων    
Myrtus communis myrtle μυρσίνη, μυρρίνη, μύρτα flowers berries  
(berries) 
Narcissus tazetta paperwhite λείριον     
Ocimum basilicum basil ὤκιμον    
Origanum majorana marjoram ἀμάρακος    
Origanum vulgare oregano ὀρίγανον    
Pimpinella anisum anise ἄννησον    
Pistacia lentiscus* mastic, lentisk σχῖνος    
Portulaca oleracea purslane ἀνδράχνη    
Prunus domestica common plum κοκκυμηλέα    
Punica granatum pomegranate ῥο(ι)ά    
Pyrus communis pear ἄπιον, ἀχράς    
Raphanus radish ῥάφανις    
raphanistrum 
Rosa sp. rose ῥόδον    
Rumex patientia monk's rhubarb λάπαθον    
Salvia pomifera subsp. sage-apple σφάκος    
calycina  
Satureja thymbra savory θύμβρα    
Scandix pecten-veneris  wild chervil σκάνδιξ    
Sinapis alba white mustard νᾶπυ    
Smyrnium olusatrum alexanders ἱπποσέλινον    
Thymus vulgaris thyme θύμος, ἕρπυλλος    
Trigonella graeca honey clover μελίλωτον    
Verbascum sinuatum mullein φλόμος (ἡ μέλαινα)    
Viola odorata violet ἴον τὸ μέλαν, ἰωνία ἡ μέλαινα    
 
  
 24 
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