Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Editor's preface
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- PART I CITIES
- PART II PEASANTS
- PART III FOOD
- 11 Grain for Athens
- 12 The yield of the land in ancient Greece
- 13 The bean: substance and symbol
- 14 Mass diet and nutrition in the city of Rome
- 15 Child rearing in ancient Italy
- 16 Famine in history
- Bibliography
- Index
16 - Famine in history
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Editor's preface
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- PART I CITIES
- PART II PEASANTS
- PART III FOOD
- 11 Grain for Athens
- 12 The yield of the land in ancient Greece
- 13 The bean: substance and symbol
- 14 Mass diet and nutrition in the city of Rome
- 15 Child rearing in ancient Italy
- 16 Famine in history
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
‘Nothing is more shamelessly demanding
than an empty belly,
which commands attention,
even if the body is heavy with weariness,
the heart laden with grief.’
Homer (Odysseus)‘And waking early before the dawn was red
I heard my sons, who were with me, in their sleep
Weeping aloud and crying out for bread.’
Dante (Count Ugolino)Hunger has always been part and parcel of the human experience – in archaic Greece, late medieval Italy, Tudor England, Stalinist Russia, and present-day Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Indeed, hunger, undernourishment, malnutrition rather than famine, is the scourge of the developing nations today. In the Third World, hunger is endemic and universal. In the words of the famine theorist Amartya Sen:
Most often hunger does not take its toll in a dramatic way at all, with millions dying in a visible way (as happens with famines). Instead, endemic hunger kills in a more concealed manner. || People suffer from nutritional deficiency and from greater susceptibility to illness and disease. The insufficiency of food, along with the inadequacy of related commodities (such as health services, medical attention, clean water, etc.), enhances both morbidity and mortality. It all happens rather quietly without any clearly visible deaths from hunger. Indeed so quiet can this process be that it is easy to overlook that such a terrible sequence of deprivation, debilitation and decimation is taking place, covering – in different degrees – much of the population of the poorer countries in the world.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Cities, Peasants and Food in Classical AntiquityEssays in Social and Economic History, pp. 272 - 292Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1998