Owing to a rise in temperature in southern Europe and a reduction in rainfall, the production of olive oil this year may drop by nearly 40 per cent. For the Romans, who ensured that the olive spread all around the Mediterranean, it would have been disastrous.
Olives were a food, and in its liquid form as oil it was used to light lamps, form a base for medicines and cosmetics, and as a skin moisturiser, cleansing agent, lubricant and contraceptive (Marie Stopes used it in trials and found it 100 per cent successful, whether virgin or extra virgin is not recorded). As an evergreen, it had great spiritual importance as holy anointing oil.
Further, it could be extensively exploited, requiring little work – the tree is as tough as old boots – except in winter when it was harvested. This gave it prime importance for another reason: Romans required revenue to run their empire, primarily to fund their army, and olive production, being so straightforward and olives so much in demand, was extremely profitable.
All this is well illustrated in Lepcis Magna (in modern Libya, part of the Roman province of [north] Africa). The olive presses there were some of the biggest in the ancient world, each one able to produce about 10,000 litres of olive oil in a good year. Since the area seems to have contained around 1,500 such presses (many grouped together), Lepcis alone could in principle produce 15 million litres a year (Rome alone probably needed about 30 million litres p.a.). The problem of destructive rainfall, often dumped in enormous storms, was met with complex systems of flood control walls, terraces, dams, sluices and spillways.
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