Used in everything from cooking to medicine since ancient times, olives and olive oil have long been a major trading commodity. Shown here are workers at the Pompeian Olive Oil Company in the early twentieth century. (Library of Congress)
An important agricultural commodity in the ancient Mediterranean, particularly during the Greco-Roman period.
Used in everything from cooking to medicine since ancient times, olives and olive oil have long been a major trading commodity. Shown here are workers at the Pompeian Olive Oil Company in the early twentieth century. (Library of Congress)
While only a small part of contemporary world trade, in antiquity, olives and olive oil were a mainstay of trade in the Mediterranean world. Along with wine, they were one of the chief exports of mainland Greece to the many Greek colonies of Asia Minor, Italy, and points west. As Greek civilization spread inland in southwest Asia, so did the importance of the olive oil trade. This continued in the Roman era. In these periods, trade in olive oil greatly influenced the political, social, and economic life of the ancient Mediterranean peoples.
Olive cultivation began in prehistory in southwest Asia. Although some scholars contend that the wealth of the Minoan civilization of ancient Greece rested largely on the olive trade, it is really with classic Greek civilization that trade in olive oil is first noted as an important factor in history. Greek city-states on the Attic peninsula, such as Athens, were faced with a chronic problem of overpopulation because their soil and terrain were of limited productive value. To deal with the problem, they routinely sent some of their citizens abroad to establish colonies, creating a broader Greek civilization along much of the Mediterranean coast. In the early 500s B.C.E., Archon Solon began a policy of subsidizing the olive oil and wine industries to export to the colonies. Athens exported olive oil and wine to the colonies, and the colonies exported livestock and grains to Athens.
Olive groves and grape vineyards thrived in areas unsuited to large-scale grain cultivation and livestock herding. Solon saw that through trade in olive oil and wine, Athens could increase its food supply and lay the groundwork for future growth. The importance of the olive oil and wine trade to the rise of Athens cannot be overestimated. Since the trade relationship was started by Athens, the corollary industries that sprang up with it (ship construction, shipping, finance, and so on) were most developed in Athens. This laid the basis for Athens to be a prime exporter of even more sophisticated products to the larger Greek world in succeeding generations. Other mainland Greek city-states followed Athens’s lead; however, as the lead state, Athens remained the dominant economic powerhouse of Greek civilization until the Peloponnesian War (431–404 B.C.E.).
The Mediterranean economy grew more complex in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, yet olive oil remained an important commodity. Alexander the Great’s conquests ensured that the Greek-dominated olive trade would spread throughout Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations. There is even evidence that olive oil was routinely exported to India. Roman agricultural entrepreneurs spread olive oil production to the far reaches of the western Mediterranean, eventually eclipsing Greek producers. Even today, Italy and Spain are the largest producers of olive oil. Although its importance has faded since antiquity, trade in olive oil had important effects on the evolution of ancient Western civilization, and, in many respects, the contemporary trade continues patterns established in the Greco-Roman world.
David Price
See also: Greek City-States.
Garnsey, Peter, Keith Hopkins, and C.R. Whittaker, eds. Trade in the Ancient Economy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.