Olive-wood was the favourite material for axe-handles and clubs; and the bed of Odysseus was carved by himself out of an olive-tree still rooted within a chamber of his palace.[[221]] In the modern Ithaca, the olive alone of all the trees that once flourished there has resisted extirpation, and everywhere in the Ionian Islands attains a size entitling its assemblages to rank as forests, rather than as mere groves.[[222]] Thus, the olive planted at the head of the bay where Odysseus landed after his long wanderings, was ‘wide-spreading’ in point of simple fact, needing no poetical licence to make it so. Olive-oil does not appear to have been then in culinary employment; its chief use was for anointing the body after bathing. This indispensable luxury was provided for, in opulent establishments, by laying up a goodly stock of oil among such household treasures as were entrusted by Penelope to the care of Eurycleia.[[223]]
[221]. Odyssey, xxiii. 190.
[222]. Schliemann, quoted in Hayman’s Odyssey, vol. iii. p. 15.
[223]. Odyssey, ii. 339.
The Homeric poems contain no allusion to the perfume of either flowers or fruit. This is the more surprising from the extreme sensitiveness betrayed in them to olfactory impressions of other kinds. We hear of ‘scented apartments,’ ‘sweet-smelling garments,’ of the aromatic quality of the cypress, of the spicy air wafted through Calypso’s island from the juniper and citron-logs serving her for fuel, even of the barely appreciable fragrance of olive-oil. Offensive odours excite corresponding horror. Menelaus and his comrades were utterly unable to endure, without the solace of an ambrosial antidote, the ‘ancient and fish-like smell’ of the sealskins disguised in which they lay in wait for Proteus, under the tutelary guidance of the sea-nymph Eidothea, his scarcely dutiful daughter. The Spartan king, relating the incident to Telemachus, was confident of meeting with fellow-feeling when he said:
There would our ambush have been most terrible, for the deadly stench of the sea-bred seals distressed us sore; nay, who would lay him down by a beast of the sea? But herself she wrought deliverance, and devised a great comfort. She took ambrosia of a very sweet savour, and set it beneath each man’s nostril, and did away with the stench of the beast.[[224]]
[224]. Odyssey, iv. 441-46, and Hayman’s notes.
As we read, the tradition that Homer’s last days were prolonged by the perfume of an apple, grows intelligible. And yet the balmy breath of Pierian violets and Cilician crocuses drew no comment from him!
The flowers distinctively noticed by him are: poppies, hyacinths, crocuses, violets, and, by implication, roses and white lilies. And it is somewhat remarkable that, while all the items of this not very long list can be collected from the Iliad, only two of them recur in any shape in the Odyssey. The former poem recognises the artificial cultivation of the poppy, probably, as we shall see, for gastronomic purposes, since there could be no question at that epoch, in Greece or Asia Minor, of the preparation of opium. The death, by an arrow-shot from the bow of Teucrus, of the youthful Gorgythion, son of Priam and Castianeira, is thus described.
Even as in a garden a poppy droopeth its head aside, being heavy with fruit and the showers of spring, so bowed he aside his head laden with his helm.[[225]]