Throughout Tuscany, flaming tongues of green cypress ignite the landscape, testifying to my descent into Hades and to the promise of my return.



[87]

In Egypt I was known as Osiris, brother and husband of the goddess Isis. As a mortal, I ruled over the people of Egypt giving them laws and instructing them in agriculture and viticulture. Then, leaving Isis in charge, I set out on a journey to spread the knowledge of the grain and the vine to other peoples of the world. On returning I was hailed as a god and a great feast of celebration was held. When festivities were well under way, my younger brother Set, produced an ornate coffer which he proposed to give to whoever fitted inside it exactly. As the guests took their turns to step inside, it became clear that it was destined for me. Once everyone else had had their turn I lowered the coffer into a horizontal position and lay down inside it. Thereupon Set and his confederates slammed down the lid, soldered it fast with lead and cast it into the Nile.
From the anguished memory of me lying in the coffin, Isis conceived Harpocrates, the god of silence who was born as his mother wandered disconsolately among the swamps of the Nile Delta, searching for me. The young child was entrusted to Buto, the goddess of the North, so that Isis could resume her search. By now the coffin had crossed the sea and drifted ashore at Byblus where an erica tree sprung up, enclosing the coffin within its trunk. The king of that country, admiring the growth of the tree, ordered it to be felled and used as a pillar in his palace. Word of this reached Isis and presently she revealed herself before the king and queen, asking for the pillar. They duly consented and once she had cut my coffin out of the trunk, Isis poured an ointment over the tree, wrapped it in linen and presented it to the royal couple as a gift for them to put in her temple.
Thereafter the goddess went to visit the young Harpocrates but while she was doing so, Set found the coffin and recognising my body, tore it into pieces, scattering them as far and wide as he could. Isis was thus forced to begin her search again, sailing over the waters of Egypt in a scallop made of papyrus. One by one she recovered the bits of my body, except for my virile member which the fishes had eaten. Then, together with her sister, Nephthys, she lamented;
"Come to thy house. Come to thy house. O god On! come to thy house, thou who has no foes. O fair youth, come to thy house, that thou mayest see me. I am thy sister, whom thou lovest; thou shalt not part from me. O fair boy, come to thy house... I see not, yet doth my heart yearn after thee and mine eyes desire thee. Come to her who loves thee, who loves thee, Unnefer, thou blessed one! Come to thy sister, come to thy wife, to thy wife, thou whose heart stands still. Come to thy housewife. I am thy sister by the same mother, thou shalt not be far from me. Gods and men have turned their faces towards thee and weep for thee together... I call after thee and weep, so that my cry is heard to heaven, but thou hearest not my voice; yet I am thy sister, whom thou didst love on earth; thou didst love none but me, my brother! my brother!"
Despite the fact that Set, Nephthys, Isis, Horus and I, were the illegitimate off-spring of his wife, the sun-god Ra felt sorry for Isis and Nephthys and sent Thoth and the jackel-headed Anubis to help piece together my broken body. To this end Isis prepared a balm flavoured with all the fruits of the world, by extracting an oil from the fruit of the olive tree. With this they anointed me, before swathing my body in linen bandages and laying me out in a coffin inscribed with magic formulas. As Isis fanned me with her wings, I was restored to life, becoming Lord of the Underworld, Lord of Eternity and Ruler of the Dead. From thenceforth all those who were lamented over, embalmed and buried as I had been, were to be saved from the anonymity of death and were referred to by the living as "Osiris so-and-so".



[88]

As I became ruler of the dead, Isis became "Mother of the Ears of Corn, Queen of the Wheat-field" and "She who has given birth to the fruits of the Earth." For though like Persephone in Greece, it was I who descended into the realm of the dead when the corn was cut, nevertheless it was the goddess Isis who grieved and brought about my resurrection. Accordingly, Egyptian corn-reapers would beat their chests and lament as the first sheaves of corn were cut. Then during the sowing season, priests would bury effigies of me, made of earth and corn. Throughout Egypt, mystery plays, not unlike those at Eleusis, were performed. In place of the balm with which Isis had revived me, the corn was rejuvenated by the waters of the Nile. In the Great Temple of Isis at Philae, a fresco shows a priest pouring water over my body causing stalks of corn to sprout. The accompanying inscription reads, "this is the form of him whom one may not name, Osiris of the mysteries, who springs from the returning waters."



[89]

In Tuscany, oil is traditionally extracted from olives by first crushing and then pressing. The crushing takes place on a large, circular block of granite, around the edge of which two granite wheels, joined together by an oak axle, are driven, either by a donkey or by an electric motor. The olives are contained by a sloping rim of steel so that the wheels are free to slip and slide to a certain extent, grinding as well as crushing the fruit.
After fifteen to twenty minutes these mollaze can reduce a few hundred kilos of olives to an oily pulp. Though hammers and rollers are quicker, they result in higher temperatures, which do not conserve the flavours and nutrients as well as the traditional granite blocks. Moreover the traces of ground silica that are produced, not only help in the extraction of the oil but also heighten its aroma.
Once reduced to a khaki to purple coloured pulp, the paste is then spread out onto round mats of woven hemp, each with a hole in the middle, so that they can be stacked onto a spindle to a height of around two metres. These fiacali are then placed under a press and over a period of an hour or so, the pressure is gradually increased so that the oil and water run down the outside of the column to be collected at the base. Metal disks inserted every fourth mat keep the column rigid as the pressure is applied. It is important that the pulp is not too coarse, otherwise the olive stones will impede the press, reducing the amount of oil extracted. If too fine however, the pulp will tend to clog the mats. As with wine, the oil extracted by the press at the beginning, is superior to that extracted at the end under great pressure.
After pressing, the blackish waste water must be separated from the oil, either by successively decanting or by centrifuge. Finally the dregs of sediment that settle out at the bottom after a few weeks must be removed before they impart stale odours to the oil. This can be done either by filtering or by decanting.
Unlike wine, olive oil does not improve with age; it simply mellows. After several months in a cellar, the pungent aroma and vivid taste of a freshly pressed oil will gradually soften to acquire a velvety texture as the lively green colour turns to a muted golden yellow. Nevertheless a good extra virgine should be able to remain reasonably fresh for a year or more if kept in a cool, dark place.



[90]

On the last full-moon of the Attic year, the thirteenth of Skirophorion, maidens would go out in the night to gather dew from the gardens in the precinct of Ourania on the Acropolis. The next day, at the festival known as the Bouphonia, "the murder of the ox", the maidens or "water-carriers" would carry the water to the altar of Zeus Polieus, where it was used to sharpen an axe and a knife. Barley cakes were then laid out on the altar and oxen lead in to the temple to be driven around the altar. Whichever ox was the first to begin eating the cakes, was immediately set upon by two men, the first of whom felled it with the axe so that the second could cut its throat with the knife. The "murderers" would then flee and the ox would be skinned and its flesh eaten. After the sacrificial meal, the ox skin was stuffed with straw, sown up and yoked to a plough. A trial was then held to establish who was responsible for the murder. The maidens who had brought the water to wet the axe and knife would blame the men who had sharpened them, the sharpeners would in turn blame the men who had handed the weapons to the butchers and the butchers would blame the weapons themselves, which were duly found guilty and thrown into the sea.
The dew-gathering rite of the Hersephonia, was designed to induce the fall of fertilising dew so that in the coming year, the sacred olive, representing all plants and crops, might blossom. The ritual of sharpening the axe and knife, representative of Zeus' thunder hammer, was designed to induce the thunder and lightening of a rain-storm, so that the parched earth might be relieved of the heat of summer. The murder of the ox, stood for the harvesting of the crops, while the trial with which the festival was concluded was to dispel the collective guilt that hung over the community after the harvest.
Though the corn would, by the time of the Bouphonia, have already been gathered in, the late harvesting crops such as the olive, fig and the vine, would be in need of rain. The olive, being the last crop to be harvested before winter, represented all plants and crops and was thought of in symbolic terms as being the product of a union between the earth and the sky. In his play The Danaides, Aeschylus makes Aphrodite declare;

Lo there is hunger in the holy sky
To pierce the body of Earth, and in Earth too
Hunger to meet his arms. So falls the rain
From Heaven that is her lover, making moist
The bosom of the Earth; and she brings forth to man
To trees no less there cometh their hour
Of marriage which the gleam of watery things
Makes fruitful - of all these the cause am I.

Though by the time of Aeschylus, few would remember that the Danaides were originally water-bearers, no-one would be ignorant of the final words of the Eleusian mysteries, when looking up to the sky, the assembled company would cry "Rain!" and then looking down on to the earth, "Be fruitful!"
It is here too, that the origins of my birth lie; in Greece when Zeus descended from on high to visit the earth nymph Semele, and in Egypt where I was the result of an intrigue between the earth god Seb and the sky goddess Nut. In both cases, following the union of earth and sky, the yearly cycle of the seasons was inaugurated. All this is encapsulated on a Cretean coin which depicts a woman, sitting in a leaf-less tree, about to be embraced by an eagle, while from among the branches of the tree the head of a bull peers out.
In Greece the olive was sacred to Athene, who, as the favourite daughter of Zeus was its guardian and protector. On the Acropolis, in the Erechtheion, the three most important tokens of divine presence were: an olive tree, a well and a trident mark in the ground. The trident marked the spot where one of Zeus' thunderbolts landed to produce, in the fullness of time, the well and the olive tree. Though later Athenians were to claim that the well contained sea-water and that the trident was Poseidon's, this does nothing to explain the specially made hole in the roof through which the thunder-bolt was imagined as having passed. Nor does it explain the lines in Sophocles' Oedipus Coloneus;

And this country for her own has what no Asian land has known,
Nor ever yet in the great Dorian Pelops's island has it grown,
The untended, the self-planted, self-defended from the foe,
Sea-grey children-nurturing olive tree that here delights to grow.
None may take nor touch nor harm it, headstrong youth nor age grown bold,
For the round of heaven of Morian Zeus has been its watcher from of old.
He beholds it and, Athene thy own sea-grey eyes behold.

The olive tree growing next to the Erechtheion was the first to appear in Greece and was the result of Zeus' lightning and not as Athenians hold, Athene's spear. Below the Acropolis, in the Academy, was the altar of Zeus Morios, where there was a second olive, descended from the first. All olives derived from these two trees were called Moriae, protected as they were by Zeus the rain-maker who had engendered them. As a goddess of wisdom, it was Athene who presided over the dew gathering ceremonies of the Hersephonia and it was her water-carriers who used to tend to the sacred olives growing on the Acropolis.
The wisdom of Athene is therefore based on her knowledge of the fertilising dew that helps inaugurate the spring, aiding and abetting the process that ends with the olive harvest. But gradually the dew and the power of the goddess' "water-bearers" to invoke the rain of the sky-god were forgotten and the olive was seen solely as a symbol of peace and achievement. Nevertheless the nurturing dew that had revived me in archaic times was still absorbed by the olive and its restorative power converted into oil.
Throughout the Ancient World olio oliva was used not only as a condiment and a means of cooking but also as a basis for medicines, soaps and cosmetics, as a lubricant for machines and as a fuel for lamps. Though many Greeks and Romans swore that oil revived their bodies just as wine rejuvenated their spirits, only I and the sphinx-like goddess Athene knew for certain.



[91]

Olives are best planted on hillsides, in calcareous soils that must be kept well drained as the trees need only small amounts of moisture. They should be well manured and require constant hoeing to prevent the growth of broom, heather, briars and brambles. This is traditionally done in Tuscany with a zappa, at the end of whose long chestnut handle is an axe-like blade of cast iron, which is used to break up the packed earth and stones and cut through the roots of the brush and briars. Breaking the soil's hard crust enables any rain that falls over the summer to soak in and be absorbed by the tree's roots. Even so, in a drought, young trees will require watering over the summer period.
After the exuberant growth of spring the trees must be pruned and unwanted suckers removed. Olive trees should be pruned so as to shape them like chalices, so that the sun's rays can reach all parts of the tree. Over the summer, the precious fruit will emerge from the yellow blossoms to fill out and expand to a size dictated by the variety of the tree. With autumn the green olives turn violet and then black. When some of the fruit is still firmly rounded and some just beginning to shrivel like the tree-ripened olives of Archestrateus, it is time for the harvest to begin.
Olives should be picked dry, as moisture causes them to become rancid. Traditionally each branch is tugged so that with each tug a few olives are cast into a basket which the picker has tied around his waist. Speed is of the essence as if left longer than a day or so, the olives will begin to ferment and oxidise. The avoidance of oxidisation and the resulting oleic acid is one of the crucial factors in the production of quality olive oil. The ideal is for an acid content of between 0.2 and 0.4% acid but any oil or blend of oil will qualify as extra virgine if its acidity is below 1%. Leaving the fruit on the trees until it is fully ripe and falls by itself into nets lying on the ground produces more oil but also results in a higher acidity and a loss in aroma and flavour. Harvesting by shaking the branches with poles or machines so that the olives fall into nets, though it causes bruising which may result in oxidation, usually results in a better oil with less acid than if the fruit is left on the trees until it falls to the ground under gravity. Leaves should not be included in the crop as their chlorophyll imparts an acrid taste. While greenness is not always an indicator of quality, opaqueness is. If an oil is of low acidity (less than 0.5%) then even as it turns from green to gold it should retain an elusive opaqueness that will continue to reflect the mysteries of its origins.



[92]

Prior to the birth of Athene, Olympus had suffered from a fundamental insecurity; the certainty that one day its ruler would meet and seduce a woman who would bear him a son stronger than he was. Though warned about this on numerous occasions, Zeus thought it was nothing more than a rumour put about by the jealous Hera in an endeavour to try and keep her husband exclusively to herself. But then it was confirmed by the oracle of Mother Earth and the more he thought about it the more my father realised that he was not only addicted to the fun of his amorous adventures but also to their danger. Finally Mother Earth could bear it no longer and prophesied that Metis, Zeus's then favourite, was pregnant with a daughter but that if she conceived again she would give birth to a son destined to overthrow his father. Summoning Metis to his bed chamber Zeus therefore decided to confound fate by swallowing his beloved. Some months later though, he began to suffer from headaches and Olympus became filled with the howls of his pain. The gods and goddesses looked on helplessly until finally Mercury returned from his errands and after a quick look at the suffering Zeus, went off to fetch Hephaistus. Returning together with Hephaistus's wedge and beetle, Mercury held the wedge over Zeus's head while Hephaistus struck it with his hammer. Thereupon, from out of the gaping crevice, sprang Athene, the unborn daughter of Metis and the cause of Zeus's discomfort. On reaching the ground she was immediately surrounded by a group of women and ran off with them to the sea, where she removed her blood stained clothes and armour and washed herself, protected from the eyes of us male deities by the ring of Heroines gathered around her.
Despite this modesty, it soon became clear that this female deity had many masculine characteristics, borrowed perhaps from her unconceived brother. Nevertheless in the fullness of time, she became Zeus' favourite daughter and was made patroness of mathematics, science and astronomy as well as receiving the gift of Zeus's sacred olives.



[93]

As anyone who has bitten into a fresh olive will know, untreated, the fruit of the olive tree, whether ripe or unripe, is unpalatable. Green olives are therefore gathered in September and October and are treated with an alkali solution to remove the bitter taste. Then they are rinsed and pickled in brine. Alternatively the bitter taste may be removed by blanching in water for ten minutes or by repeatedly soaking in water for a period of at least a week. Black olives are harvested in December and January and are either packed in salt or pickled in brine. Thereafter they may then be stored in oil. Black olives that are to be pickled in wine vinegar are treated first in a brine solution mixed with oil and vinegar.
The oil of the olive tree, containing as it does the dew of the morning, symbolises immortality, rejuvenation and the hidden wisdom of the Great Mother. But by incorporating within its golden green drops the aromas and fragrances of each god's fruits, it is also the perfect substance with which to begin rebuilding the fragmented soul. As Isis fanned my shattered limbs, her balm permeated its way into my body and the little globules of oil gradually restored the microcosm within my liver, easing me gently back to life. During the Renaissance, after the re-birth of Governo, it was once again the olive oil of Athene and Isis that invigorated me. For while the cork was not to be re-discovered for another three hundred years, what enabled Renaissance Italians to successfully seal and thus age their wines in the newly invented glass fiaschi, was the fact that between the stopper and the wine was an impermeable layer of olive oil.



[94]

After Hades had abducted her daughter, Demeter decreed that the earth would remain barren unless Core was returned to her. As the inevitable famine spread itself out over the kingdoms of the earth, Zeus searched in vain for a solution. Eventually he was forced to concede that there was none and I was sent to Hades with the simple message, "Return Core, else we are all done for."
By admitting that he could see no solution to the crisis caused by the abduction of Demeter's daughter, Zeus unwittingly stumbled upon the means which would enable him to remain ruler of the gods without being deposed in the manner of his forefathers. This was the strategy of distributing many of his powers out to the other gods in such a way that should he ever be deposed, no one god would be in a position of being able to take control. Thus politics and diplomacy were born and yet, though it is Zeus the politician and diplomat who rules Olympus, it is Athene, the sister of an unborn son, who is the lynch-pin. Consequently it is her statue that stands before the doors of many a country's parliament, just as it is Athene who ensures that the heavens turn in their appointed manner and that the seasons follow one another according to the indications of the stars and planets. Some months after the corn has been harvested, the grapes are gathered in and clutching a myrtle leaf, I make my way down to the Underworld. Then, the goddess' olives are picked and pressed to make the balm with which my shattered limbs are revived. As the new wine is tasted, the green shoots of the new year's corn begin to emerge and the return of Spring is celebrated. Core and Demeter are reunited and on Olympus a sigh of relief is breathed. It is then that I introduce to the assembled company, Semele, the mother who in bringing about the union of earth and sky was incinerated in the flames of a jealous trick.



[95]

Despite being able to invoke the power of Aphrodite, marriage, entailing as it did, a girl's being torn away from her companions, was as much a time of loss as of joy. Prior to being raped by her brother Zeus, Demeter had also been a maiden and it was therefore with her rather than Aphrodite that young women on the brink of marriage would identify themselves with. Just as the corn had to change from green to golden yellow as it ripened, so they would have to pass from maidenhood to motherhood. In the fullness of time they too would have to lose their daughters and to some extent themselves, just as Demeter lost Core and the ears of corn must at harvest time, be severed from their stalks. Even before she took on the role of Hecate, Demeter therefore contained within herself the three-fold aspect of maiden, mother and daughter, which with the birth of Core was to come to life. Demeter's gift to the world, celebrated at the Mysteries of Eleusis, was to silently agree to the eternal repetition of this cycle, ensuring the continuance of life for both gods and men.
Symbolised in the ear of corn which had been reaped in silence, are a maiden's loss, through rape and forced marriage, of her maidenhood and a mother's grief at the loss of her daughter; both however, being regained through the birth of the fair young child Iacchus, who by going down into hell, enables the daughter to return and the cycle to begin again. For Demeter and the initiates at Eleusis the universal principle of life is "to be pursued, robbed, raped, to fail to understand, to rage and grieve, but then to get everything back." The initiates (who included men) would identify themselves with the goddess and on being shown the ear of corn would see the means by which the goddess regained her daughter and thus herself, whilst at the same time, seeing themselves as fitting into the pattern of the continued existence of all things. "Happy he," Pindar writes, "who having witnessed such things, goes under the earth: he knows life's end and he knows its Zeus-given beginnings." The Zeus-given origins are of course, the original rape and the primal forces of desire that brought the world into being.
On the last day of the mysteries two vessels shaped like spinning tops were filled with water, one facing Eastwards, the other West. At the invocation, "Be fruitful!" they would be over-turned, symbolising the primal element flowing throughout creation. Similarly on the night of the nineteenth and twentieth Boedronion, Eurpides describes how, when the celebrants dance round "the fountain in the square of beautiful dances, the starry heaven of Zeus begins to dance also, the moon and the fifty daughters of Nerus, the goddesses of the sea and the everflowing rivers, all dance in honour of the golden crowned maiden and her holy mother." Yet all this is only made possible by Demeter's consenting to acquiesce in the great drama of life and maternity.



[96]

Only when the world of the psyche has been reborn in the world of nature can harmony be attained and a man's spirit rest secure on the foundations of the gods he worships.



[97]

Buried deep below the earth's surface, Hades is a place of death because it is the one place that is devoid of the life-giving dew of heaven. Though the shades of the dead crave blood, it is really the dew that the blood of living creatures contains in minute quantities for which they thirst. It was therefore up to Athene to give Mercury some of her olive's balm and send him down after me, that he might anoint me with it and I might be restored to life. But as I lay in the gloomy chambers of Hades, my skin flayed and my body cavity cut open so that my liver could be removed, blood trickled down one of my arms and dripped from my fingers tips onto the floor. From this pool of blood, a pomegranate plant grew and it was with the fruit of this plant that Hades tricked Persephone into remaining a full six months of each year in the darkness of his kingdom. And yet Persephone had to eat of the pomegranate as it is only when all possibilities of continuing and propagating life have been renounced that rebirth can take place. As she nibbled the seeds, eros and thanetos became eternally and intimately intertwined throughout the cosmos, finally completing the process begun in innocence by Zeus's amorous diversions.



[98]

Unearthed by a mezzadria farmer towards the end of September 1877, the bronze liver of Piacenza was eventually acquired by a Count Cacciolo, who realising its importance, made photographs and invited academics to study it. The first of these studies assumed the object to be some kind of model for the layout of a temple and were preoccupied primarily with the readings of the inscriptions and with relating it to accounts of Etruscan land surveying techniques described by Roman authors. By 1882 it was acknowledged as being a liver and subsequent work was concerned with the identities of the gods named and the relation between the inner and outer regions. By the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, the quadrants of sky, earth, underworld and destiny had been successfully discerned and after the ravages of Phylloxera the microcosm within me was to some extent restored. Subsequently, though il fegato di bronzo di Piacenza continued to occupy scholars until well into the nineteen-fifties, no new insights were offered concerning the nature of the world that lay behind the names engraved upon the bronze. And so, as the modern world lies poised between the naive but sincere enthusiasm of the Renaissance and the cynical superficialities of the late Sophists, we gods are once again relegated to waiting in the wings. Hence I have retired to the limestone hills of Etruria, to wait until the healing balm of Isis rejuvenates my spirit. For though my body lives and dies as before, my soul has yet to find its place in this new world. In the meantime, I, a god of revelation, not of learning, endeavour to weave together upon the page these threads of life that, over the centuries, have become separated and lost. As slowly as crystals of tannic acid build up on the inner surface of a wine barrel I deposit this, my testimony of a time that was.

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