Our acquaintance was pushed no further that evening for the Count’s wife appeared with a sheaf of letters for him to address and stamp; and he took his leave, once more with the same exquisite courtesy.
I spent a while longer in the garden, taking the temperature of Syracuse, so to speak; sniffing the warm night like a hound, to divine (or imagine) the faint smell of brine from the invisible sea. The place gave off a feeling of peace and plenitude, and the late moon would rise long after I had drifted into sleep to touch the graceful flowering bushes of hibiscus and oleander which lined the streets. It was in a sense the real beginning of our trip, the first great city whose antiquities we were to visit in any detail; up to now we had been mobilizing ourselves, getting to know one another, improvising. But now the ice had been broken and we were a distinct party. As I came back into the hotel to go to bed I saw the Microscopes sitting in the lounge, the man with his head buried in L’Equipe (The Team) — a weekly sports paper which he had hardly left out of his sight throughout the trip. Either he had a number of copies or he was reading one special issue over and over again. But his concentration was quite ferocious and proof against any other pleasure one might offer him in the way of ruins or landscapes, even food and drink — for at meals he read at table. Well, as I passed them I saw his wife put her hand on his arm and say with real feeling, “Eric, si tu continue comme ça je sens que je perderai l’oriflamme.” It was so ridiculous as a remark that it took my breath away.
“I remember you saying once that there was something very slightly suspect about our Mediterranean raptures — I mean the islomania we invented in Cyprus and which characterized all your previous poetic transactions with Rhodes and Corfu. I suddenly recalled this remark on a sunny afternoon when I was sitting in the Greek theater of Syracuse, knitting, and reading while the children foraged for stalks of grass to chew.”
She had forgotten the provenance of the remark, but I recalled it quite distinctly. It had suddenly occurred to me that we had given very little thought to what these islands, Cyprus or Sicily, must have been like before the extraordinary efflorescence of temples and statues had taken place — all the paraphernalia of a fully-fashioned and self-confident culture which had created plenty out of barrenness, beauty out of the incoherence of a nature run wild; piety, literacy, art. It is sufficient to cast an eye over the leavings of earlier cultures to be aware of the sweeping definitive-ness of the Greek thrust — its glorious freedom from self-doubt, hesitation. But it was as much due to what they planted in the ground as to what they erected upon it in the way of cities, temples, and harbors. In a sense all our thinking about the Mediterranean crystallized around the images planted here by the Greeks — in this Greater Greece, so aptly named. In Sicily one sees that the Mediterranean evolved at the same rhythm as man, they both evolved together. One interpreted itself to the other, and out of the interaction Greek culture was first born. If it becomes clearer in Sicily than elsewhere it is because when the Greeks arrived their homegrown culture was at meridian, and the similarity of landscape and climate did not impose upon them any modifications, either of worship or of jurisprudence or of politics. Athens evolved as piously and rigorously here as it did in Greece proper. I use the name loosely for the first settlers came from various places; but the cultural problems, even to their bitter differences and disputes, were first broached in Athens and by Athens. In a sense the word Greek and the word Athens are interchangeable except for purists and historians.
Comparing site for site — Neolithic and Greek in Sicily — one stumbles upon the fact that before the Greeks came men were terrified of rapacious nature, its excesses and its unpredictability. No evolution was possible — man stayed crouched in fear under the threat of extinction. Then something happens. Hope is born. But how? And for what reason? Nobody can tell us, but with the Greeks men began to see Nature not as hostile and dangerous, but as a wife and even Muse — for her cultivation made leisure (with all its arts) possible. What we mean when we use the word Mediterranean starts there, starts at that first vital point when Athens enthrones the olive as its reigning queen and Greek husbandry draws its first breath.…
Scholars will rush in at this point with their warnings against too simplified a picture — and indeed my choice of turning point in the consciousness of man is rather arbitrary; it is more probable than certain. But there certainly was such a point and the election of the olive in Attica will do as well as any other. Of course there were Gods and beliefs of all sorts circulating at the same time — local as well as imported ones; this is what makes the case of the scholar unenviably full of contradictions and suppositions. Yet there is a case to be made for the election of the olive for it was mysteriously bound up with the fate of the whole Greek people. The sacred olive tree in the Academy was an offshoot of the original tree in the Acropolis; and throughout Attica all olive trees reported to be of the same provenance were called mortal or seeded trees. They were state property and their religious sanctity helped to conserve a great national source of wealth. They were under the immediate care of the Areopagus and were inspected once a month. To uproot such a tree made the offender liable to banishment and the total confiscation of his worldly goods. They were under the special protection of Zeus Morios, whose shrine was near that of Athens. One of his attributes was the launching of thunderbolts upon the heads of such offenders.
But even the provenance of the olive is something of an open question. Where did it come from — Egypt? We cannot be sure. Yet of the qualities which made it valuable enough to become the Muse and Goddess of the Athenian we can speak with the authority of someone who has spent more than one winter in Greece, even modern Greece. The hardiness of the tree is proverbial; it seems to live without water, though it responds readily to moisture and to fertilizer when available. But it will stand heat to an astonishing degree and keep the beauty of its grey-silver leaf. The root of the tree is a huge grenade — its proportions astonish those who see dead trees being extracted like huge molars. Quite small specimens have roots the size of pianos. Then the trimmings make excellent kindling and the wood burns so swiftly and so ardently that bakers like to start up their ovens with it. It has other virtues also; it can be worked and has a beautiful grain when carved and oiled. Of the fruit it is useless to speak unless it be to extol its properties, and the Greek poets have not faulted on the job. It’s a thrifty tree and a hardy one. It has a delicate moment during the brief flowering period when a sudden turn of wind or snow can prejudice the blossom and thus the fruit. But it is a tree which grows on you when you live with it, and when the north wind turns it inside out — from grey green to silver — one can imagine with accuracy the exact shade of Athena’s smiling eyes.