Bret Devereaux

Problem: modern subsistence farmers do tend to suffer regular bouts of malnutrition which often leaves lasting negative health effects (esp. in childhood). Demographically, we see evidence for the same (via seasonal mortality) among ancient subsistence farmers.

Which leads me to conclude that - whatever the skills of John Q Public - ancient farming methods appear to regularly have been performed by individuals whose nutrition was, at times, borderline.

Now, many hoplites - especially in front-rank or ekdromoi capacity - were not these marginal farmers. They were well-to-do, we know, because they had expensive armor & weapons. But we know those marginal farmers existed.

I think we can be pretty sure, for instance, that the enslaved laborers who yoked Cato the Elder's animals were not in optimal nutritional health, given what he tells us about how he fed, supplied and clothed them.

You're jumping all over the place here! We can't lump together modern ethnography, a Roman villa & classical hoplites Nutritional evidence from Rome by Killgrove shows huge disparities in diet b/t elite & poor. But Lagia shows much less nutritional inequality in classical athens

I'm trying to respond to a bunch of different points; hard to be clear w/ twitter. @NeolithicSheep is talking about basic farming tasks and suggesting they demand a high level of athleticism. I am point out that we know these were done by people in bad nutritional health.

Sure but I'm saying that yes, that might be more true on a Roman villa, but less so in the classical Greek chora

Fair enough. But if the Roman villa is not relevant to our discussion of hoplites, neither is neolithic yoking techniques. Neither has any probative bearing, which was my point - the apparently demanding physical task can be done by malnourished people, which means it cannot...