i9i4" I 9 I 5-] The Olive Tree. 155 



— the olive branches referred to by David. The tree is also 

 a symbol of beauty — " His beauty shall be as the olive tree." 

 The trunk is rent into many divisions like separate stems, 

 but the extremities are exquisitely graceful, especially in the 

 setting on of the leaves. The veneration of the olive at one 

 time was so great that only virgins and pure men were 

 employed to cultivate it. 



All round about Jerusalem at the present day the general 

 aspect is blighted and barren, and the only olive trees now 

 standing there grow near the foot of the mount in the 

 Garden of Gethsemane. Their gnarled trunks and scanty 

 foliage are regarded as the most sacred memorials. These 

 venerable trees, eight in number, their " delicate foliage sub- 

 dued and faint of hue, as if the ashes of the Gethsemane 

 agony had been cast upon them for ever," are believed to 

 have been living when Christ was on earth. Italians point 

 to trees which they say date back to Republican Rome ; and 

 at Shechem and Gaza the natives say that not a single tree 

 has been planted since the Moslem conquest. The oldest is 

 referred to the time of Alexander the Great, and the name 

 ' Greek,' sometimes applied to the olive tree, appears to be 

 connected with this tradition. The olive is fabled by the 

 poets to have been planted by Minerva. It was consecrated 

 to that goddess by the Athenians, who regarded its cultivation 

 and protection as a religious duty. The olive is frequently 

 represented on medals as a symbol of Minerva, particularly 

 on that of Olympus, where the owl, the bird of Minerva, is 

 depicted standing on a branch of the olive. It was in a 

 peculiar manner the emblem of peace, although it was also 

 worn as a token of victory. The crown in the Olympic 

 Games sacred to Jupiter was of wild olives. The dead were 

 crowned with olives because they had overcome the battle of 

 life, and when a boy was born at Athens a crown of olives 

 was hung at the door as a symbol of agriculture to. which 

 man is destined. The poems of Homer, which were as sacred 

 to the Greeks as the books of the Old Testament were to the 

 Jews, describe the olive, the wild as well as the cultivated 

 kinds, and some of the finest verses depict the tree with the 

 blue foliage. Herodotus mentions the olive as common in 

 Palestine but unknown in Babylon. Virgil acquaints us with 



