‘Strew thrice nine olive boughs On either hand; and offer up thy prayer,’[112] counselled the Greeks when conscious that the deities were offended. The olive was the gift of Pallas. The tale ran that in the reign of Cecrops both Poseidon and Athena contended for the possession of Athens. The gods resolved that whichever of them produced the gift most useful to mortals should have possession of the land. Poseidon struck the ground with his trident and straightway a horse appeared. But Athena planted the olive and the gods thereupon decreed that the olive was more useful to man than the horse, and gave the city to the goddess, from whom it was called Athenæ.[113] But the symbolism of the olive, founded upon its healing qualities and its oil’s well-known property of calming roughened water, was not only Grecian: it was wide-spread, and the Romans used it politically as well as religiously. Their heralds carried olive on an embassy of peace, and the custom lingered in Italy through the Middle Ages; Dante describing how the multitude ‘Flock round the herald sent with olive branch.’ In Christian art the olive also invariably represents peace or reconciliation, and it is first found in the Catacombs, where there is a curious painting of the mystic fish which swims towards the Cross with a sprig of olive in its mouth. The fish, by the well-known anagram, represents Christ, who, through the Cross, brings peace on earth. A dove with an olive twig in its beak is also found upon early Christian tombs. And then, as Tertullian says, ‘it is a symbol of peace even older than Christianity itself’[114]--the herald of the peace of God from the very beginning. Sometimes the word itself, ‘Pax,’[115] is added, thereby marking the sense beyond all possibility of dispute; viz., that it is meant to assert of the soul of the deceased that it has departed in the peace of God and of his Church.[116] Tertullian refers, of course, to the dove sent forth by Noah which returned across the waters, and ‘Lo! in her mouth was an olive leaf plucked off,’ sign that the wrath of God was appeased. The dove, bearing the twig of olive, executed in coloured marbles, occurs repeatedly in the decoration of Saint Peter’s. Here the dove represents the Church bearing the Gospel message of peace to the world. The same emblem is found in the decoration of St John Lateran, and Pope Innocent X. incorporated it with his coat of arms.