277 
BOOK XV- 
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE FRUIT-TREES. 
CHAP. 1 . (1.) THE OLIVE» HOW LOIS^G IT EXISTED ONLY IN GREECE. 
AT WHAT PEEIOD IT WAS FIKST INTRODUCED INTO ITALY, SPAIN, 
AND AFRICA. 
Theophrastus,^ one of the most famous among the Greek 
writers, who flourished about the year 440 of the City of 
Eome, has asserted that the olive^* does not grow at a distance 
of more than forty ^ miles from the sea. Eenestella tells us 
that in the year of Eome 1 73, being the reign of Tarquinius 
Priscus, it did not exist in Italy, Spain, or Africa ; ^ whereas 
at the present day it has crossed the Alps even, and has been 
introduced into the two provinces of Gaul and the middle of 
Spain. In the year of Eome 505, Appius Claudius, grandson 
of Appius Claudius Caecus, and L. Junius being consuls, twelve 
pounds of oil sold for an as ; and at a later period, in the year 
680, M. Seius, son of Lucius, the curule sedile, regulated the 
price of olive oil at Eome, at the rate of ten pounds for the as, 
for the whole year. A person will be the less surprised at 
this, when he learns that twenty-two years after, in the third 
consulship of Cn. Pompeius, Italy was able to export olive oil 
to the provinces. 
Hesiod,^ who looked upon an acquaintance with agriculture 
1 Hist. Plant, iv. c. 
^* The Olea Europsea of Linnaeus. See B. xxi. c. 31. 
2 This has not been observed to be the fact. It has been known to 
grow in ancient Mesopotamia, more than one hundred leagues from the sea. 
^ It is supposed that it is indigenous to Asia, whence it was introduced 
into Africa and the South of Europe. There is little doubt that long 
before the period mentioned by Pliny, it was grown in Africa by the Car- 
thaginians, and in the South of Gaul, at the colony of Massilia. 
This work of Hesiod is no longer in existence ; but the assertion is 
exaggerated, even if he alludes to the growth of the tree from seed. Fee 
remarks that a man who has sown the olive at twenty, may gather excel- 
lent fruit before he arrives at old age. It is more generally propagated 
by slips or sets. If the trunk is destroyed by accident, the roots will throw 
out fresh suckers. 
