10 



THE OLIVE 



The olive was probably carried by Grecian colonists into Italy, 

 Sardinia, Sicily and Gaul, although it is possible that the Pheni- 

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

 quinius Prisons, 615 B. C, there were no olives in Italy, but five 

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

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

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

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

 ing there for sixty thousand sesterces. Ancient medicine was 

 certainly nasty if nothing else. These scrapings of oil and sweat of 

 athletes were supposed to be peculiarly endowed with curative prop- 

 erties and were largely used in plasters and emollients. 



Cato thought 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 was the one olive the birds would never touch. 

 This is in all probability the Italian variety known as the Leccino to- 

 day. 



The names of places in Palestine speak a language from which 

 one learns the extensiveness and beauty of the Hebrew olive planta- 

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

 the temple, on the east side of Jerusalem, was among the places 

 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 gives us various glimpses of the mode of treatment in 

 harvesting and gathering the olive in Palestine. 



When thou beatest thine olive tree thou shalt not go over the boughs again; it shall be 

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



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

 ries in the top of the uppermost bough, four or five in the outmost fruitful branches thereof. 



ISAIAH XVII. 0. 



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

 olive yard. exodus xxiii, 11. 



