Latin Texts & Translations

THEOPHRASTUS, ^[Note] one of the most famous among the Greek writers, who flourished about the year 440 of the City of Rome, has asserted that the olive ^[Note] does not grow at a distance of more than forty ^[Note] miles from the sea. Fenestella tells us that in the year of Rome 173, being the reign of Tarquinius Priscus, it did not exist in Italy, Spain, or Africa; ^[Note] 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 Rome 505, Appius Claudius, grandson of Appius Claudius Cæcus, 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 ædile, regulated the price of olive oil at Rome, 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, ^[Note] who looked upon an acquaintance with agriculture

as conducive in the very highest degree to the comforts of life, has declared that there was no one who had ever gathered fruit from the olive-tree that had been sown by his own hands, so slow was it in reaching maturity in those times; whereas, now at the present day, it is sown in nurseries even, and if transplanted will bear fruit the following year.