[1331]. Dioscor. ii. 186.
[1332]. Athen. xv. 29.
[1333]. Demosth. in Callicl. § 1. 3, seq.
[1334]. Cf. Varro. i. 15. Magii Miscellan. lib. iv. p. 187. b. As the cotton-tree in modern times has been supposed not to thrive at a much greater distance than twenty miles from the sea; so, among the ancients, the olive was supposed not to flourish at a greater distance than three hundred stadia. Theoph. Hist. Plant. vi. 2. 4. Both opinions are probably erroneous, as the olive-tree is found in perfection in the Fayoum, and the cotton-plant in Upper Egypt.
[1335]. Vict. Var. Lect. p. 874. But the Scholiast (Aristoph. Ran. 1026) gives a different though less probable interpretation to the passage.
[1336]. Cf. Sibth. Flor. Græc. t. i. tab. 3.
[1337]. Cato. De Re Rusticâ 6. They were sometimes also grafted, we are told, on lentiscus stocks. Plut. Sympos. ii. 6. 1.
[1338]. In Syria and some other warm countries the olive was said to produce fruit in clusters. Theophrast. Hist. Plant. i. 11. 4. And when this fruit was found chiefly on the upper branches, they augured a productive year. id. i. 14. 2. Geop. ix. 2. 4. The ancients entertained extraordinary ideas concerning the purity of the olive, which they imagined bore more freely when cultivated by persons of chaste minds. Thus the olive-grounds of Anazarbos, in Cilicia, were thought to owe their extraordinary fertility to the reserved and modest manners of the youths who cultivated them. Id. ix. 2. 6.
[1339]. Geop. ix. 3. 1. Virg. Georg. ii. 179. The heads of olive-stocks when freshly planted were covered with clay, which was protected from the wet by a shell. Xenoph. Œconom. xix. 14. The pits for the planting of the olive and other fruit-trees were of considerable depth and dug long beforehand. Theoph. Hist. Plant. i. 6. 1.
[1340]. Cf. Hesiod. Opp. et Dies, 582, seq.