Every great city has an origin story. Rome has Romulus and Remus. Constantinople had its eagle circling overhead. But Athens — the cradle of democracy, philosophy, and Western civilisation itself — owes its very name to a tree. Specifically, to an olive tree planted by a goddess on a limestone rock, in a contest that would echo through millennia. A King Who Was Half Serpent To understand the story, you need to meet Cecrops. According to Greek tradition, Cecrops was the first king of Attica — a figure so ancient that he predated the naming of the city he ruled. He was depicted as half-man, half-serpent: human from the waist up, coiling into a snake below. This was not mere fantasy. In the Greek imagination, autochthonous kings — those born from the earth itself — often carried the marks of the soil that produced them. Cecrops was the land made flesh. His city was young and unnamed, perched on a rocky plateau above a dry plain. It was promising territory, close to the sea but defensible, and two Olympian gods decided they wanted it. The resulting rivalry would become one of the most frequently depicted scenes in classical art, and one of the most consequential choices in Greek mythology. The Trident and the Spring Poseidon struck first. The god of the sea climbed the Acropolis, raised his great trident, and drove it into the bare rock. Where the three prongs bit stone, water surged forth — the Erechtheis spring, as it came to be known. It was a dramatic gesture, perfectly suite...
Unfiltered Cold-Pressed Olive Oil from Crete
Natural Koroneiki olive oil from our family grove in Crete
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