It was moreover the custom, both in Greece and Italy, to plant, on the boundary line of estates, rows of olives or other trees,[1334] which not only served to mark the limits of a man’s territory, but shed an air of beauty over the whole country. A proof of this practice prevailing in Attica, has with much ingenuity[1335] been brought forward from the “Frogs,” where Bacchos, addressing the poet Æschylus in the shades, observes “It will be all right provided your anger does not transport you beyond the olives.” It may likewise be remarked that in olive-grounds,[1336] the trees, excepting the sacred ones called _moriæ_, were always planted in straight lines, from twenty-five to thirty feet[1337] apart, because, in order to ripen the fruit,[1338] it is necessary that the wind should be able freely to play upon it from all sides. And further because they delight in a warm dry air like that of Libya, Cilicia,[1339] and Attica, the best olive-grounds were generally supposed to be those which occupied the rapid slopes of hills where the soil is naturally stony and light. The oil of the plains was commonly coarse and thick. ----- Footnote 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. Footnote 1335: Vict. Var. Lect. p. 874. But the Scholiast (Aristoph. Ran. 1026) gives a different though less probable interpretation to the passage. Footnote 1336: Cf. Sibth. Flor. Græc. t. i. tab. 3. Footnote 1337: Cato. De Re Rusticâ 6. They were sometimes also grafted, we are told, on lentiscus stocks. Plut. Sympos. ii. 6. 1. Footnote 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. Footnote 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. -----