🏛️ Athena and the olive

“Athena and the olive” is an ancient Greek myth about the contest between the goddess Athena and Poseidon for dominion over Attica, a contest won by the olive. According to the legend, that is when the city was named Athens.

The myth is told most fully in Apollodorus' Library. In the reign of the first king, Cecrops, the gods decided to choose cities for themselves. Poseidon reached Attica first and, striking the middle of the Acropolis with his trident, brought forth a “sea” — a spring of salt water. Athena came after him: calling Cecrops as witness, she planted an olive tree which, according to Apollodorus, was still shown in the Pandroseion in his day. To settle it, Zeus appointed the twelve gods as judges. Cecrops testified that Athena had planted the tree first, and the land was awarded to her. The goddess named the city after herself, and the enraged Poseidon flooded the Thriasian plain.

The sacred olive was shown on the Acropolis back in antiquity. Herodotus writes that the shrine of Erechtheus held an olive tree and a salt spring — the “tokens” of the two gods. When the Persians captured Athens and burned the shrine together with the tree, the very next day the Athenians saw a new shoot a cubit long on the stump. Pausanias, centuries later, relates that the olive grew back two cubits on the same day.

Athena's olive also had a practical side. According to Aristotle's Constitution of the Athenians, oil was collected for the state from every trunk of the sacred olives. It was stored on the Acropolis and, at the Panathenaic Games, given to the winners of the athletic contests and horse races. Damaging a sacred tree was once a crime: offenders were tried by the Areopagus and put to death.