History

Olives have been produced in Syria and Palestine from prehistoric times. By 2000 BCE, olive oil was being exported to Egypt and Phoenicia; records of the Mesopotamian Third dynasty of Ur empire (21st to 20th century BC), indicate olive oil as one of the exports from the region presently known as Syria. Clearly some form of the olive press was in use by that time; descriptions of such presses are to be found in ancient Greece.

However, olives are not mentioned among items in the regular diet in ancient Mesopotamia

possibly, only the oil was used primarily for grooming.

The records of Assurnasirpal II (883-859 BCE), mention olives being planted

Olive production reached Asia Minor (present day Turkey) most likely around the middle of the first millennium BCE. It reached the eastern shores of the Mediterranean subsequently. In the centuries following Christ, Olive oil became a staple in the Roman diet.

Olives in Ancient Greece

At the time of the Iliad (dated between the 6th to the 8th c. BC), olive oil was a luxury import (there is no mention of cultivation), used by Patroclus for grooming after bathing. The Odyssey, composed in present-day Turkey possibly a century later, refers to the tree in the garden of Alcinous.

Tradition points to the limestone hills of Attica as the seat of its first cultivation on the Hellenic peninsula. One greek myth attributes the founding of Athens to an olive tree that sprung from barren rock at the bidding of Athena, during her battle with Poseidon. Herodotus also tells of the magic property of statues carved from olive wood. A sacred tree of the goddess long stood on the Acropolis, and, though destroyed in the Persian invasion, sprouted again from the root.

By the time of Solon the olive had spread so much that he found it necessary to enact laws to regulate the cultivation of the tree in Attica. From here it gradually spread to all the Athenian allies and tributary states. Phoenician vessels may have taken olive cuttings to the Ionian coast, where it abounded in the time of Thales; the olives of the Sporades, Rhodes and Crete perhaps had a similar origin. Samos, if we may judge from the epithet of Aeschylus, must have had the plant long before the Persian Wars.

Olives became an emblem of wealth and plenty; the branches borne in the Panathenaea, the wild olive spray of the Olympic Games victor, the olive crown of the Roman Emperor, all signal its wide emblematic acceptance in ancient times.

Olives in Rome

Pliny describes fifteen varieties of olive cultivated in his day, the Licinian being most esteemed, and the oil of the Venafrum in Campania. The produce of Istria and Baetica was then regarded as second only to that of the Italian peninsula. Pickled olives, retaining their characteristic flavor, have been found among the buried stores of Pompeii.