Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/823

O L I O L I 763 At what remote period of human progress the wild oleaster passed under the care of the husbandman and became the fruitful garden olive it is impossible to conjecture ; history and tradition are alike silent regarding the origin of most of the more valued plants of cultivation, and we know little more of the later evolution of the olive than of the remoter genealogies of our present wheat and maize. The frequent reference in the Bible to the plant and its produce, its implied abundance in the land of Canaan, the import ant place it has always held in the economy of the inhabitants of Syria, lead us to consider that country the birthplace of the culti vated olive. An improved variety, possessed at first by some small Semitic sept, it was probably slowly distributed to adjacent tribes ; and, yielding profusely, with little labour, that oily matter so essen tial to healthy life in the dry hot climates of the East, the gift of the fruitful tree became in that primitive age a symbol of peace and goodwill among the warlike barbarians. At a later period, with the development of maritime enterprise, the oil was conveyed, as an article of trade, to the neighbouring Pelasgic and Ionian nations, and the plant, doubtless, soon followed, Hehn remarks that in the Homeric world, as depicted in the Iliad, olive oil is known only as a luxury of the wealthy, an exotic pro duct, prized chiefly for its value in the heroic toilet ; the warriors anoint themselves with it after the bath, and the body of Patro- clus is similarly sprinkled ; but no mention of the culture of the plant is made, nor does it find any place on the Achillean shield, on which a vineyard is represented. But, although no reference to the cultivation of the olive occurs in the Iliad, the presence of the tree in the garden of Alcinous and other familiar allusions show it to have been known when the Odyssey was written. Whenever the introduction may have taken place, all tradition points to the limestone hills of Attica as the seat of its first cultivation on the Hellenic peninsula. When Poseidon and Athene contended for the future city, an olive sprang from the barren rock at the bidding of the goddess, the patron of those arts that were to bring undying influence to the rising state. That this myth has some relation to the first planting of the olive in Greece seems certain from the remarkable story told by Herodotus of the Epidaurians, who, on their crops failing, applied for counsel to the Delphic oracle, and were enjoined to erect statues to Damia and Auxesia (symbols of fertility) carved from the wood of the true garden olive, then possessed only by the Athenians, who granted their request for a tree on condition of their making an annual sacrifice to Athene, its patron ; they thus obeyed the command of the Pythian, and their lands became again fertile. The sacred tree of the goddess long stood on the Acropolis, and, though destroyed in the Persian invasion, sprouted again from the root, some suckers of which were said to have produced those olive trees of the Academy in an after age no less revered. By the time of Solon the olive had so spread that he found it necessary to enact laws to regulate the cultivation of the tree in Attica, from which country it was probably distributed gradually to all the Athenian allies and tributary states. To the Ionian coast, where it abounded in the time of Thales, it may have been in an earlier age brought by Phoenician vessels ; some of the Sporades may have received it from the same source ; the olives of Rhodes and Crete had perhaps a similar origin. Samos, if we may judge from the epithet of yEschylus (Acu60uros), must have had the fruitful plant long be fore the Persian wars. It is not unlikely that the valued tree was taken to Magna Grsecia by the first Achrean colonists, and the asser tion of Pliny (quoted from Fenestella), that no olives existed in Italy in the reign of Tarquinius Priscus, must be received with the caution due to many statements of that industrious compiler. In Latin Italy the cultivation seems to have spread slowly, for it was not until the consulship of Pompey that the production of oil be came sufficient to permit of its exportation. In Pliny s time it was already grown abundantly in the two Gallic provinces and in Spain ; indeed, in the earlier days of Strabo the Ligurians sup plied the Alpine barbarians with oil, in exchange for the wild produce of their mountains ; the plant may have been introduced into those districts by Greek settlers in a previous age. Africa was indebted for the olive mainly to Semitic agencies. In Egypt the culture never seems to have made much progress ; the oil found in Theban tombs was probably imported from Syria. Along the southern shore of the great inland sea the tree was carried by the Phoenicians, at a remote period, to their numerous colonies in Africa, though the abundant olives of Cyrene, to which allusion is made by Theophrastus, and the glaucous foliage of whose descend ants still clothes the rocks of the deserted Cyrenaica, may have been the offspring of Greek plants brought by the first settlers. The tree was most likely introduced into southern Spain, and per haps into Sardinia and the Balearic Islands, by Phoenician mer chants ; and, if it be true that old olive trees were found in the Canaries on their rediscovery by mediaeval navigators, the vener able trees probably owed their origin to the same enterprising pioneers of the ancient world. Do Candolle says that the means by which the olive was distributed to the two opposite shores of the Mediterranean are indicated by the names given to the plant by their respective inhabitants, the Greek Acu a passing into the Latin olea and oliva, that in its turn becoming the ulivo of the modern Italian, the olivo of the Spaniard, and the olive, olivier, of the French, while in Africa and southern Spain the olive retains appellatives derived from the Semitic zait or seit ; but the complete subjugation of Barbary by the Saracens sufficiently accounts for the prevalence of Semitic forms in that region ; and accytuno (Arab. zcit&n), the Andalusian name of the fruit, locally given to the tree itself, is but a vestige of the Moorish conquest. Yielding a grate ful substitute for the butter and animal fats consumed by the races of the north, the olive, among the southern nations of antiquity, became an emblem not only of peace but of national wealth and domestic plenty ; the branches borne in the Panathenaea, the wild olive spray of the Olympic victor, the olive crown of the Roman conqueror at ovation, and those of the equites at their imperial review alike typified gifts of peace that, in a barbarous age, could be secured by victory alone. Among the Greeks the oil was valued as an important article of diet, as well as for its external use. The Roman people employed it largely in food and cookery, the wealthy as an indispensable adjunct to the toilet; and in the luxurious days of the later empire it became a favourite axiom that long and plea sant life depended on two fluids, wine within and oil without." Pliny vaguely describes fifteen varieties of olive cultivated in his day, that called the Licinian" being held in most esteem, and the oil obtained from it at Venafrum in Campania the finest known to Roman connoisseurs ; the produce of Istria and Baetica was regarded as second only to- that of the Italian peninsula. The gourmet of the empire valued the unripe fruit, steeped in brine, as a provocative to the palate, no less than his modern representative ; and pickled olives, retaining their characteristic flavour, have been found among the buried stores of Pompeii. The bitter juice or refuse deposited during expression of the oil (called amurca), and the astringent leaves of the tree have many virtues attributed to them by ancient authors. The oil of the bitter wild olive was employed by the Roman physicians in medicine, but does not appear ever to have been used as food or in the culinary art. In modern times the olive has been spread widely over the world ; and, though the Mediterranean lands that were its ancient home still yield the chief supply of the oil, the tree is now culti vated successfully in many regions unknown to its early distributors. Soon after the discovery of the American continent it was conveyed thither by the Spanish settlers. In Chili it flourishes as luxu riantly as in its native land, the trunk sometimes becoming of large girth, while oil of fair quality is yielded by the fruit. To Peru it was carried at a later date, but has not there been equally successful. Introduced into Mexico by the Jesuit missionaries of the 17th century, it was planted by similar agency in Upper California, where it has prospered latterly under the more careful management of the Anglo-Saxon conqueror. Its cultivation has also been attempted in the south-eastern States, especially in Carolina, Florida, and Mississippi. In the eastern hemisphere the olive has been established in many inland districts, which would have been anciently considered ill adapted for its culture. To Armenia and Persia it was known at a comparatively early period of history, and many olive-yards now exist in Upper Egypt, where the cultivation is said to be increasing. The tree has lately been introduced into Chinese agriculture, while in the present genera tion it promises to become an important addition to the resources of the Australian planter, In Queensland the olive has found a climate specially suited to its wants ; in South Australia, near Adelaide, it also grows vigorously ; and there are probably few coast districts of the vast island-continent where the tree would not flourish. It has likewise been successfully introduced into some parts of the Cape Colony. (C. P. J. ) OLIVES, MOUNT OF, or MOUNT OLIVET (6 pos e Acuwvos or rwv eAaiwv, in Mishna and Midrash DTMH "in or nn^ran in, now Jebel al-Tur), is the hill facing the Temple Mount on the east, and separated from it by the Kidron (see vol. xiii. p. 636 sq.). Here our Lord sat when He delivered His great eschatological address (Mark xiii. 3). That the ascension took place from the summit of the Mount of Olives is not necessarily implied in Acts i. 12, and appears to be excluded by Luke xxiv. 50, for Bethany lies at the back of the hill and almost a mile from the top. But since Constantino erected the basilica of the ascension on the spot marked by a certain sacred cave (Euseb., V. Const., iii. 41) the site of the ascen sion has been placed here and marked by a succession of churches. The present building is quite modern. Close to the chapel of the ascension is the vault of St Pelagia, and a little way down the hill is the labyrinth of rock-hewn sepulchral chambers now called the " Tombs of the Pro-