Read Online Sicilian Carousel by Lawrence Durrell - Free Book Online Page B

the Greeks came men were terrified of rapacious nature, its excesses and its unpredictability. No evolution was possible—man stayed crouched in fear under the threat of extinction. Then something happens. Hope is born. But how? And for what reason? Nobody can tell us, but with the Greeks men began to see Nature not as hostile and dangerous, but as a wife and even Muse—for her cultivation made leisure (with all its arts) possible. What we mean when we use the word Mediterranean starts there, starts at that first vital point when Athens enthrones the olive as its reigning queen and Greek husbandry draws its first breath.…
    Scholars will rush in at this point with their warnings against too simplified a picture—and indeed my choice of turning point in the consciousness of man is rather arbitrary; it is more probable than certain. But there certainly was such a point and the election of the olive in Attica will do as well as any other. Of course there were Gods and beliefs of all sorts circulating at the same time—local as well as imported ones; this is what makes the case of the scholar unenviably full of contradictions and suppositions. Yet there is a case to be made for the election of the olive for it was mysteriously bound up with the fate of the whole Greek people. The sacred olive tree in the Academy was an offshoot of the original tree in the Acropolis; and throughout Attica all olive trees reported to be of thesame provenance were called mortal or seeded trees. They were state property and their religious sanctity helped to conserve a great national source of wealth. They were under the immediate care of the Areopagus and were inspected once a month. To uproot such a tree made the offender liable to banishment and the total confiscation of his worldly goods. They were under the special protection of Zeus Morios, whose shrine was near that of Athens. One of his attributes was the launching of thunderbolts upon the heads of such offenders.
    But even the provenance of the olive is something of an open question. Where did it come from—Egypt? We cannot be sure. Yet of the qualities which made it valuable enough to become the Muse and Goddess of the Athenian we can speak with the authority of someone who has spent more than one winter in Greece, even modern Greece. The hardiness of the tree is proverbial; it seems to live without water, though it responds readily to moisture and to fertilizer when available. But it will stand heat to an astonishing degree and keep the beauty of its grey-silver leaf. The root of the tree is a huge grenade—its proportions astonish those who see dead trees being extracted like huge molars. Quite small specimens have roots the size of pianos. Then the trimmings make excellent kindling and the wood burns so swiftly and so ardently that bakers like to start up their ovens with it. It has other virtues also; it can be worked and has a beautiful grainwhen carved and oiled. Of the fruit it is useless to speak unless it be to extol its properties, and the Greek poets have not faulted on the job. It’s a thrifty tree and a hardy one. It has a delicate moment during the brief flowering period when a sudden turn of wind or snow can prejudice the blossom and thus the fruit. But it is a tree which grows on you when you live with it, and when the north wind turns it inside out—from grey green to silver—one can imagine with accuracy the exact shade of Athena’s smiling eyes.
    All this, and the human attitude which flowered from it, was brought to Sicily in the long boats and planted here in the thoroughly Greek cities of Syracuse, Agrigento, and Gela. To be sure, thinking of Zeus as a watcher over the olive one feels that he belonged to an older religious culture of which the oak and the other mountain trees were perhaps fitter symbols. As for the olive, it was left as a simple phenomenon, accepted as a free gift from Athena after she won the contest with