Flora Unveiled

248 i Flora Unveiled

spring the bitter issue of the wild olive, into a wild olive tree; and inasmuch as his sin

was so great, that by it his nature became commensurately changed for the worse, he

converted the entire race of man into a wild olive stock. The effect of this change we

see illustrated, as has been said above, in the instance of these very trees. Whenever

God’s grace converts a sapling into a good olive, so that the fault of the first birth (that

original sin which had been derived and contracted from the concupiscence of the

flesh) is remitted, covered, and not imputed, there is still inherent in it that nature

from which is born a wild olive, unless it, too, by the same grace, is by the second birth

changed into a good olive.^41

The idea that Adam, rather than Eve, was responsible for condemning all future genera-
tions of Christians to original sin can be traced to Aristotelian notions about conception,
according to which the male seed provides the embryo’s “psyche,” or soul, while the female
seed contributes only the physical matter. Since original sin is an affliction of the soul, it was
Adam’s immaterial essence, not Eve’s egg, that passed on the taint of original sin to future
generations.

Notes

1. Greeks from the north- central part of the Peloponnese.


2. The current consensus is that the language spoken by the historical Trojans was probably
   Luwian, an Anatolian branch of the Indo- European language family.


3. Forsythe, G.  (2006), A Critical History of Early Rome:  From Prehistory to the First Punic
   Wa r. University of California Press.


4. Scullard, H. H. (1981), Festivals and Ceremonies of the Roman Republic. Cornell University
   Press. First U. K. Edition.
   5. Ibid.


5. Ovid, Fasti IV, trans. James G. Frazer.
   7. Ibid.


6. Ovid (2000), Fasti V, trans. A. J. Boyd and R. D. Woodard.
   9. Ibid.


7. Olenus was an ancient Greek city in Achaea, located on the northwest corner of the
   Peloponnese peninsula. Olenus is mentioned in a tragedy by Sophocles known only in frag-
   ments. The story concerns Periboea, the daughter of the King of Olenus, who is captured by
   Oeneus, the King of Calydon. In the fragment, Periboea says, “For I  am being brought from
   the rich land of Olenus.” Sophocles (1996). Fragments, trans. H.  Lloyd- Jones, Vol. III, Loeb
   Classical Library, Harvard University Press, p. 137.


8. Ovid, Fasti  V.


9. Recall from Chapter 7 that Dionysus had been borne from a slit in Zeus’s thigh. Jealous
   of Zeus’s giving birth to a mortal woman’s child, Hera is touched by a magic herb and becomes
   pregnant with Ares.


10. Roller, L. E. (1999), In Search of God the Mother: The Cult of Anatolian Cybele. University
    of California Press.
    14. Ibid.