Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil 



It might be thought that the trees were too 

 precious to be cut as timber, but Theophrastus 

 mentions some uses of it, one of them the fuel for 

 a furnace. Possibly, like the shepherd's staff, this 

 was the wood of the oleaster. It may be surmised 

 that the same explanation will hold of ' viridi ' as 

 applied to the wreath given to Mnestheus, as it 

 seems, for being second in the boat race {Ae. v. 493), 

 the winner's wreath being of bay. Virgil would 

 hardly apply the epithet to a wreath of the grey 

 olive, unless indeed he means that the spray had 

 a few green berries on it. Horace's allusion in 

 ' viridi Venafro ' is to the berry, not, as some editors 

 suppose, to the leaves. 



There was yet another part played by the olive in 

 a world too well acquainted with war. The Romans 

 adopted the legend that Athena was the inventor of 

 the olive (Ge. i. 18), but it hardly needed this associa- 

 tion with the queen of arts and crafts to make the 

 rich olive the emblem of peace. It is the envoy's 

 white flag (Ae. vii. 154, 751, viii. 116), and Aeneas 

 in the vain hope of a peaceful reception in Italy 

 crowns himself with olive leaves when on leaving 

 Sicily for the second time he makes his offering 

 of wine and entrails to the powers of the sea 

 {Ae. V. 774). 



Flower, July and August. 

 Italian names, Olivo and Ulivo. 



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