Aratrum is the Latin word for plough, and "arotron" (αροτρον) is the Greek word. The Greeks appear to have had diverse kinds of plough from the earliest historical records. Hesiod advised the farmer to have always two ploughs, so that if one broke the other might be ready for use. These ploughs should be of two kinds, the one called "autoguos" (αυτογυος, "self-limbed"), in which the plough-tail was of the same piece of timber as the share-beam and the pole; and the other called "pekton" (πηκτον, "fixed"), because in it these three parts, which were of three kinds of timber, were adjusted to one another, and fastened together by nails.
The autoguos plough was made from a sapling with two branches growing from its trunk in opposite directions. In ploughing, the trunk served as the pole, one of the two branches stood upwards and became the tail, and the other penetrated the ground and, sometimes shod with bronze or iron, acted as the ploughshare.
Sources
Based on an article from A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, John Murray, London, 1875.
