While shepherds watched, civilisation was born

‘And lo, there were shepherds in the fields, watching over their flocks by night…’
 
Reading recently that it was the 25th anniversary of the invention of the world wide web, I reflected (yet again) on the difficulty of creating in any of our minds that sense of the world as experienced by the Greeks and Romans. So the ancients did not have Xboxes, Y-fronts, or a ‘knowledge’ economy? Or a civil service, a banking industry, or any industry? Or any institutions like universities, the BBC or the FA? Well, well.

In his Works and Days (c. 680 bc), the Greek farmer-poet Hesiod gives us some sense of the unrelenting peasant life which was the lot of most ancients — that daily wrestling with nature for simple survival. Hesiod’s advice makes clear what survival entailed. ‘Do not put things off till tomorrow and the next day. That man never fills his granary. It is application that produces increase.