Brandishing long sticks, three men knock olives from a tree and a fourth collects them in a basket in this scene on a sixth-century B.C. Greek black-figure amphora.
In ancient times, harvested olives were drenched in hot water, crushed and pressed. The lighter oil rose to the top of the vat while the water was drawn off through a spout at the bottom.
Olives have been cultivated on Crete since at least the mid-third millennium B.C. The many pithoi (large pottery jars) uncovered in the early second-millennium B.C. palace of Knossos—home of the legendary king Minos—attest to olive oil’s importance during Crete’s Minoan period. The precious commodity was exported to Greece, North Africa and Asia Minor. By the beginning of the first millennium B.C., olive production had spread to the Greek mainland.
The olive tree’s deep roots allow it to survive in dry climates with hot summers, when the fruit develops its oil content. Greece’s coastal regions and river valleys provide excellent conditions for olive production, free from the frosts of higher elevations and more northerly latitudes.
Legend has it that Greece’s olive trees resulted from a contest organized by Zeus, who decreed that the inhabitants of a newly founded city choose as their patron deity the god who bestowed upon them the most useful gift. Poseidon, the god of the sea, struck his trident on a rock and produced a well (in another version, Poseidon gives horses). Athena, goddess of wisdom, struck her own spear into the ground, causing an olive tree to spring forth. She was then proclaimed patron deity of the city, which was named Athens in her honor.
Olives, and especially olive oil, became so important to the ancient Greek economy that in the early sixth century B.C. the Athenian statesman Solon instituted reforms prohibiting the felling of olive trees. Indeed, olive oil fueled lamps, provided a staple of the Greek diet, and was made into ointments that protected the skin from the sun and medicines that cured stomach ulcers and constipation.
According to Aristotle, the wondrous substance even had contraceptive powers: “Anoint that part of the womb on which the seed falls with oil of cedar, ointment of lead, or frankincense commingled with olive oil” (History of Animals 7.3).
Greek colonists brought olives to Italy around the sixth century B.C., and the fruit eventually became established as far north as Tuscany (the northernmost point where olives flourished). Later, Roman ships transported olive oil in amphoras throughout the empire. As the novelist Lawrence Durrell wrote in Prospero’s Cell: A Guide to the Landscape and Manners of the Island of Corcyra (1975), “Only the sea itself seems as ancient a part of the [Mediterranean world] as the olive,” which has “shaped civilizations from remotest antiquity to the present.”
Brandishing long sticks, three men knock olives from a tree and a fourth collects them in a basket in this scene on a sixth-century B.C. Greek black-figure amphora. In ancient times, harvested olives were drenched in hot water, crushed and pressed. The lighter oil rose to the top of the vat while the water was drawn off through a spout at the bottom. Olives have been cultivated on Crete since at least the mid-third millennium B.C. The many pithoi (large pottery jars) uncovered in the early second-millennium B.C. palace of Knossos—home of the legendary king Minos—attest to olive oil’s […]
You have already read your free article for this month. Please join the BAS Library or become an All Access member of BAS to gain full access to this article and so much more.
