Another fun aspect here: The Italian growing season is in the winter, not the summer. In July-September, it's really too hot and dry to grow much in the Mediter

Another fun aspect here: The Italian growing season is in the winter, not the summer. In July-September, it's really too hot and dry to grow much in the Mediterranean, but it's much cooler and wetter in December-February, hence when a lot of the grain is grown [0]. And that leads into why March is the for Mars, because that is when the campaigning season starts, because that is when a lot of the harvest has been taken in, so now you can pillage your way across the countryside with all the food for your consular armies already packed up, so you don't need huge baggage trains to move quickly across the landscape. This is likely true for Greece as well. So the old myth about Penelope and the pomegranate seeds is actually talking about July-September, not the winter months. For the ancient Greeks and Romans, the 'dead' season was the hot part of the year, not the cold part. [0] I'm talking in general here. The specifics of a particular field, region, species, etc are very important to the ancient peoples and vary a lot over the whole region.