"Whatever the balance of power and social prestige within a comunity, and however they were expressed in its constitution, landed interests played a critical role in determining political relationships and economic activities. The answer found to the question 'Who labored on the land?' shaped as decisively as anything else the character of Greek society . . . .There can be little doubt that whenever a steady breeze got up about threshing time, most people in the Greek world would have remarked, 'Here was a fine day for winnowing.'" — from Land and Labor in the Greek World.