Theophrastus says[1403] that the olive was much grown, and the harvest of oil considerable in Cyrenaica, but he does not say that the species was wild there, and the quantity of oil mentioned seems to point to a cultivated variety. The low-lying, very hot country between Egypt and the Atlas is little favourable to a naturalization of the olive outside the plantations. Kralik, a very accurate botanist, did not anywhere see on his journey to Tunis and into Egypt the olive growing wild,[1404] although it is cultivated in the oases. In Egypt it is only cultivated, according to Schweinfurth and Ascherson,[1405] in their _resumé_ of the Flora of the Nile Valley. Its prehistoric area probably extended from Syria towards Greece, for the wild olive is very common along the southern coast of Asia Minor, where it forms regular woods.[1406] It is doubtless here and in the archipelago that the Greeks early knew the tree. If they had not known it on their own territory, had received it from the Semites, they would not have given it a special name, _elaia_, whence the Latin _olea_. The _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ mention the hardness of the olive wood and the practice of anointing the body with olive oil. The latter was in constant use for food and lighting. Mythology attributed to Minerva the planting of the olive in Attica, which probably signifies the introduction of cultivated varieties and suitable processes for extracting the oil. Aristæus introduced or perfected the manner of pressing the fruit. The same mythical personage carried, it was said, the olive tree from the north of Greece into Sicily and Sardinia. It seems that this may have been early done by the Phœnicians, but in support of the idea that the species, or a perfected variety of it, was introduced by the Greeks, I may mention that the Semitic name _seit_ has left no trace in the islands of the Mediterranean. We find the Græco-Latin name here as in Italy,[1407] while upon the neighbouring coast of Africa, and in Spain, the names are Egyptian or Arabic, as I shall explain directly. The Romans knew the olive later than the Greeks. According to Pliny,[1408] it was only at the time of Tarquin the Ancient, 627 B.C., but the species probably existed already in Great Greece, as in Greece and Sicily. Besides, Pliny was speaking of the cultivated olive.