Note * — Chapter XIX · Country Life Around Athens

The great drawback to olive culture was the great length of time required to mature the trees—sixteen years. The destruction of the trees, e.g. in war by a ravaging invader, was an infinitely greater calamity than the burning of the standing grain or even of the farmhouses. Probably it was the ruin of their olive trees which the Athenians mourned most during the ravaging of Attica in the Peloponnesian War.