Oleaster, or Olea Silvestris 



Italy. It has shorter and stiffer leaves than the 

 cultivated variety, and their under-surfaces soon 

 lose the heaviness which in the other is permanent. 

 The berry is small and worthless. 



Virgil finds a use for the tree as a shade for a 

 beehive, and as a tree of grazing ground it was 

 sometimes, as in our second passage, consecrated 

 to Faunus, whom the Roman poets identified with 

 Pan. Mr. Fowler, however, views Faunus as essen- 

 tially a god of the wild. 



The oleaster was used as a stock on which to 

 graft the olive. To this practice Virgil objects 

 (Ge. ii. 302-314) on the ground that, if there be a 

 fire in the oliveyard, the trees will be burnt below 

 the grafting point, and as the olives are not on their 

 own roots, ' non a stirpe valent,' only the oleaster 

 will remain. Palladius meets this objection by 

 saying that the graft must be made below the sur- 

 face of the ground, in which case the olive will 

 survive the fire. Our gardeners practise this sub- 

 terranean grafting with the clematis, the Moutan 

 peony, and other plants. 



Unfortunately, in this passage either Virgil was 

 careless in his arrangement or, more probably, there 

 has been some dislocation in his text. The lines, 

 as they stand in the manuscripts, come in the middle 

 of his account of the vine. Hence some editors 

 have supposed him to mean that oleasters should 

 not be planted in a vineyard. This interpretation 

 agrees neither with the Latin, for 'insere' must 

 mean graft, nor with reason, for the fire would be 



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