I’m currently reading Thucydides’s history for a class (precise book is The Landmark Thucydides) and one thing I’ve noticed is that there are several references to ‘corn’, especially in defining time. (E.g. “The next summer, just as the corn was getting ripe, the Peloponnesians and their allies invaded Attica.” ) I get the point trying to be made, but the use of the word corn confuses me.
Corn is a New World crop, so whatever is being referred to hear can’t be corn as is commonly thought of. So, what kind of crop is Thucydides referring to here? Is this just a translation issue, or is he referring to a distinct crop from wheat, barley, or some other Old World crop?
Thank you for any answers this gets! I know it seems a silly question, but this is really getting to me.
This is, believe it or not, a fairly common question on AskHistorians.
In modern American English "corn" has come to mean almost exclusively "maize". In other English variants, including the original British, "corn" it is a term the refers to the grain of any cereal crop. This includes, but is not limited to, all common variants of wheat, barley, oats and rye.
The English word has proto-Germanic origins, and is used in modern Germanic variants ("korn/koren") to mean "grain/cereal" in much the same way as traditional British English.
As I'm no Latinist, I do not have easy access to the original Thucydides. Your English translation is nevertheless almost certainly using "corn" in the sense of "cereal crop", and not "maize" (which, as you rightly point out, would have been completely unknown to the ancient Greeks).
OED, definition II.5.a:
Wheat, rye, barley, oats, etc. are in U.S. called collectively grain. Corn- in combinations, in American usage, must therefore be understood to mean maize, whereas in English usage it may mean any cereal; e.g. a cornfield in England is a field of any cereal that is grown in the country, in U.S. one of maize.
Without knowing specifically what passage you're referring to, the word is probably σίτος (Latin lettering: sitos). This means something like 'staple' or 'grain'. This is sometimes translated as corn by non-American authors. Outside America, corn means grain more generically.
The word σίτος most often referred to barley, which was the majority of the Ancient Greek cereal diet. Wheat was also common, especially farrow wheat. Common wheat was produced, but a relative luxury.