Olives and More Olives

 

  Olives and More Olives

The thing about olives is that there is no middle ground – you either love them or you hate them. One of the great joys that I have when travelling to any Mediterranean country is the opportunity to sample olives of all sorts in markets and restaurants. You are barely seated at a table in Spain or Portugal before a bowl of olives and a basket of bread are placed in front of you. Just give me a piece of cheese and a bottle of wine and I’m good for the night. The good doctor (PhD Classics) to whom I am married, has a very different opinion. She would surely gag if a small piece of olive happened to stray to her side of the pizza. It’s only been in the last couple of years that I have managed to convince her to use olive oil far salads. Yale Classics and History professor Donald Kagan calls olives disgusting and one online commentator even went so far as to say that he would rather eat crap on a stick. Chacun a son gout, as the French say.

Homer provides us with many examples in the Iliad and the Odyssey of how olives were used by the people of his Bronze Age. Interestingly enough, there is not a single reference to anyone eating one of the things, no doubt for the reason that an olive taken right from the tree indeed does taste like crap on a stick. We surmise that Guneus and Prothous were out fishing one day and snagged something on their hook. They thought they had caught a monster fish but soon realized that it wasn’t struggling and that they were just reeling in a dead weight from the salty sea. They knew that it wasn’t a car tire or a rubber boot, because those things would not be invented for thousands of years. A while later they hauled up a sack of olives that had fallen overboard a few months before when they were being transported to the press for the purpose of making oil. Guneus tried eating one and convinced Prothous that they were OK and that started the whole tradition of brining olives to make them edible. That must have been sometime after the Trojan War because no one was eating them in Homer’s epics.

The most common mention of olives in the epics has to do with their use for personal grooming and here we refer to the use of olive oil for cleansing purposes. We have to remember that the ancient Greeks did not have soap for personal hygiene or for washing clothes and instead used olive oil for bathing. This was a multi-step process and included first of all oiling the skin. Then they used a curved instrument called a strigil to scrape the oil and the dirt from the body. Then the body would be scrubbed with sand or pumice and then rinsed in water. Afterwards the Greeks would rub their bodies with olive oil that had been made aromatic by the addition of flowers, herbs, spices or resins, ingredients that were steeped in the oil to extract their fragrances.

A lack of soap made clothes washing a little difficult in ancient Greece as well. Urine was sometimes put on clothes as a cleaning agent because of its ammonia content. Most often clothing was beaten on rocks at the edge of a river and in addition to urine, substances like ashes, clay or sand were used as detergents to scrub fabrics clean. There is some evidence that olive oil was added to fabrics, as we are told in the description of a scene on the shield of Achilles that the maidens all wore fine linen and the youths wore finely woven tunics glistening with olive oil. Then in the Odyssey we are told that King Alcinous had fifty slave women constantly weaving and that from this closely-woven linen, the soft olive oil drips down.

So it seems that the ancient Greeks commonly used olive oil to cleanse their bodies and then were anointed with scented oil afterwards and donned clothing that had been treated with oil. There are also many references to well-oiled feet and sandals. Oil was also applied to the manes of horses. No wonder Homer referred to this precious olive oil as liquid gold and that in the palace of Odysseus, stores of sweet-scented oil were locked away in the royal treasury chamber. Having personally been treated in India to a full body massage with warm coconut oil infused with herbs, I can understand the appeal of oil being rubbed on one’s body. But that’s another story that we will skip for the moment.

In the Iliad and the Odyssey it seems that virtually everybody got in on the action. Perhaps it is the morality of the Judaeo-Christian tradition, or the Protestant ethic, or the Puritan restrictions of the Western world that are at play, but in any case, bath-time in ancient Greece sounded like much more than just scrub-a-dub-dub. I can recall visiting the homes of many young ladies during my youth, but not once did one of their fathers propose that I have a bath and that his teenage daughter would scrub me down. And yet that is exactly what King Nestor suggested when Telemachus visited his house in Pylos. The maidens at the palace of Menelaus in Sparta offered the young lad the same pleasure. Helen told the story of her giving Odysseus a bath when he slipped into Troy on a spying mission. Circe not only gave Odysseus a rubdown but also extended the service to his entire crew. Both Eurycleia and Eurynome anointed Odysseus with fragrant oil when he returned to Ithaca and even the old king Laertes was treated to a bath when he was being cleaned up for presentation back at the palace. To us the whole bath thing sounds a little sexually brazen, but comments from Odysseus to Nausicaa suggest that perhaps a sense of modesty was involved.

Thus she spoke and they all stopped and called to each other. Then they set down Odysseus in a sheltered place as Nausicaa the daughter of the great-hearted Alcinous had bidden them and beside him they laid a cloak and a tunic for clothing and gave him some gentle olive oil in a golden flask and urged him to bathe himself in the river. Then the godlike Odysseus spoke amongst the maidens. “Maidens, stand far off so that I may wash the brine from my shoulders and anoint myself with olive oil for it has been a long time since oil touched my skin. But I will not bathe in your presence, for I am ashamed to come naked in the midst of you fair-haired maidens.”

Olive wood itself is a very hard, highly dense and durable wood. It has a dramatic, distinctive and swirling grain pattern and is warm in colour with variations ranging from golden to dark brown with streaks or patches. Each piece has its own distinct and unique look to it. Olive wood is naturally resistant to bacteria, odours, stains and moisture. It is used for practical and functional utensil purposes as well for more decorative items. It has a pleasant earthy smell to it when it is worked with tools or sanded and the wood itself has a soft and often sweet or citrus-like aroma that can last for years. There are several references in Homer’s epics to olive wood being used for different purposes.

Calypso had an axe with an olive wood handle that she gave to Odysseus so that he could cut trees on her island and build a ship to take him back home to Ithaca. When the hero met the Cyclops Polyphemus, the monster was carrying a cudgel made of olive wood that he used against the crew. It is therefore ironical that the stake which Odysseus and his crew sharpened and hardened in the fire, and later used to drive into the brute’s eye and blind him, was also made of green olive wood. We are told very graphically that his eyeball hissed around the fiery stake. In addition to being used for practical wood-cutting purposes, it appears that axes were also used in battle, as we are told in the Iliad:

The son of Atreus drew his silver-studded sword and leaped at Peisander and he from under his shield drew out a good axe of fine bronze mounted on a well-polished handle of olive-wood and the two of them went at each other.

But by far the most famous use of olive wood found in the two epics was for the construction of the marriage bed of Odysseus and Penelope. In an attempt to test the claim of the beggar that he was indeed Odysseus, Penelope used the ruse of asking Eurycleia to move the marriage bed into the corridor so that the visitor could sleep. The bed had been made from a living tree and was an immovable part of the palace. Odysseus provided a full explanation of its construction.

So she spoke, trying to test her husband, but Odysseus got angry and spoke to his diligent wife. “O woman, what heart-grieving words you do utter! Who has placed my bed somewhere else? It would be difficult for anyone without great skill to do, unless he were a god who came and of his own will decided to move it somewhere else. But there is no man alive, even if he were young and strong, who could pry that bed from its place, for there is a secret sign built into it and I built it such and no other. A long-leaved olive tree bush was growing in the fenced courtyard and it was full-grown and thriving like a massive pillar. Round about it I built our inner chamber, until I was quite finished, and round it laid close-fitting stones and covered it over with a roof and installed closely-fitted doors, all well-jointed. Then I cut away the branches of the long-leafed olive tree and I shaved the root from the trunk with a bronze adze and made it straight as a carpenter’s line and built a bedpost out of it and bored the holes with a drill. Beginning with this, I carved out my bed until I was finished and then embellished it with silver and gold and ivory and stretched on ox-hide over it, dyed Phoenician red. So this is the secret of my bed, woman, and I do not know if it is still in its place or whether some man has cut the olive tree stump out from under it and has moved my bed to some other place.”

In addition to being cultivated in orchards and gardens, it would seem that olive trees also grew wild in ancient Greece. We are told of olives growing and flourishing in the gardens of Laertes in Ithaca and King Alcinous on the island of Scheria. When Odysseus was washed ashore in the land of the Phaeacians, he sought shelter by crawling under a bush and two intertwined olive trees growing near the coastline, one wild and one cultivated. When he arrived back in Ithaca, the Phaeacian crew hid Odysseus and stashed the treasures that he had been given by Alcinous under an olive tree growing by the pathway.

Olive oil was a component of various healing balms and medicines because of its restorative powers. Patroclus used an anointing balm to tend to the wounded Machaon. Olive oil was also used in funerary rites and in the preparation of the body for cremation. The body of the slain hero Patroclus was oiled to prepare it for the flames. On his funeral pyre Achilles placed large jars of honey and olive oil, likely as a way of intensifying the fire. Aphrodite anointed the corpse of Hector with rose-sweet ambrosial olive oil to keep the dogs away from his corpse and as a final gesture of goodwill, Achilles had Hector’s body washed and anointed before returning it to his father Priam.

After the handmaidens had washed the body and anointed it with oil, he wrapped it in a nice cloak and tunic and Achilles himself lifted it up and set it on a funeral couch and he and his companions lifted it into the wagon.

In Homer's epics, the olive tree serves primarily as a powerful metaphor for constancy, endurance and the deep-rooted nature of home and identity, particularly in the Odyssey. It also appears as a symbol of divine favor, resilience, and a valuable resource in daily life. Stefano Grego, in his work The Olive Tree: a Symbol (2022), summarizes nicely the importance of the olive tree and why Homer features it, both in practical terms and metaphorically: "The olive tree is not only the typical plant of the Mediterranean but it is also a tree that constitutes the only culture of global importance. From very old times through the centuries, the traditions of the great oil-growing areas of today were born and consolidated - Greece, Italy, and Spain. The olive tree and oil are an indispensable presence for our daily well-being, as well as a reminder of our oldest and truest history. The olive tree became a symbol of peace and value, an element of strength and purification, of resistance to the ravages of time and wars. The olive tree has always been a transcendent symbol of spirituality and sacredness."