Bret Devereaux

"Don't negatively affect" or "Doesn't do permanent, high cost damage"? It's honestly been so long since I had to read the agricultural devastation debate that I don't recall which argument gets made.

From my editor's comments, it appears to be more leaning towards a question of scale. I think given the tenuous nature of crop yields, even a little goes a long way.

Hm, possibly true, but note Erdkamp, The Grain Market in the Roman Empire (2005), particularly the first two chapters on the structural resilience of peasant subsistence even in the face of narrow margins of subsistence.

Ah great, thanks for this. I just need some material for a footnote. It appears he just wants me to include some counterarguments for sections that I mention specific targeting of crops by generals.

I mean, in any event, contra a certain scholar, there is no question that ancient generals thought agricultural devastation worked and were really surprised that one time it didn't against Athens. Which suggests to me that it worked most of the time.

One wonders if the entire debate is merely the product of the fact that the two best attested sets of Greek wars - Persian and Peloponnesian - are by far the most unusual, as our sources flatly tell us. We're stuck reasoning from the exceptions.

Also, Roman armies explicitly 'trample down' grain as a strategy of agricultural destruction, so if that's the point at issue, the sources seem pretty clear. Trampling is explicit Liv. 34.26.8, implied in places like Liv. 34.9.13 or App. Iber. 87.

Yes! I'm tackling Hellenistic Greece for this chapter and Kleomenes III employed wooden shafts to more efficiently flatten fields.