10 THir OLIVE 



The olive Avas probably carried by Grecian colonists into Italy, 

 Sardinia, Sicily and Ganl, altliongli it is possible that the Pheni- 

 cians anticipated them. According to Pliny, in the time of Tar- 

 qninins Priscns, 615 B. C, there were no olives in Italy, bnt five 

 hundred years later Italy was able to export oil to the provinces. 

 The Greeks, those ministers to luxury, taught the Romans its use 

 in the gymnasium, and Pliny complains that the directors of those 

 institutions in Rome had sold the scrapings of the citizens exercis- 

 inir there for sixtv thousand sesterces. Ancient medicine was 

 certainly nasty if nothing else. These scrapings of oil and s\Yeat of 

 athletes were supposed to be peculiarly endowed with curative prop- 

 erties and were larwlv used in i^lasters and emollients. 



Cato thoui>dit that the more bitter the olive the better the oil, 

 but at that time the olive in greatest favor in Italy was the 

 Licinian which Avas the one oliA^e the birds would never touch. 

 This is in all probabilitv the Italian varietv known as the'Leccino to- 

 dav. 



The names of places in Palestine speak a language from which 

 one learns the extensiveness and Ijcauty .of the Hebrew olive planta- 

 tions. The Mount of Olives situated some three thousand paces from 

 the temple, on the east side of fJerusalem, was among the })laces 

 best cultivated. On its slopes was the plantation called Gethse- 

 mane (that is Gath-Semen which means the ''oil press") because 

 of the olives with which it was covered and those of the mountain 

 above where they pressed out and made oil in great abundance. 



The Bible oives us vaiious olimpj^es of the mode of treatment in 

 harvesting: and <>:athering the olive in Palestine. 



When thou beatest thine olive tree tluni shalt not go over tlie houghs again ; it shall he 

 for tiie stranger, for tlie fatherless, and for the widow. Deuteronomy xxiv, 20. 



Yet gleaning grapes shall he left in it, as the shaking of an olive tree, two or three her- 

 ries in the top of the upj^ermost hough, four or five in the outmost fruitful branches thereof. 



ISAIAH XVII, 6. 



Rest in the seventh year. In like manner thou shalt deal with thy vineyard and with thy 

 olive vard. exodus xxiit, 11. 



