The olive comes from a distant land …it was a twig of olive that the dove brought to Noa to announce the end of the floods… . But perhaps the most famous legend is the battle between Athena and Poseidon. Zeus had decreed that the city of Athens and the region of Attica should be given to the God who provided the most useful gift for the people. At the end the two gods still in the competition were Athena and Poseidon. The latter made a stunning horse gallop out from the forest, whilst Athena made the earth give birth to a new tree: the olive. Zeus pronounced the goddess, his daughter, as the winner, declaring that the horse represented war whilst the olive represented peace.

History seems to confirm that the culture of the olive was introduced to Italy by the Greeks, who considered it to be a gift from the goddess Athena. Olive oil was one of the most important components of food for the Romans, and was classified in five categories:

— "Ex albis ulivis" the more esteemed oil achieved from light green olives;
— "Viride " produced by fruits that were blackening;
— "Maturum " yield from mature olives;
— "Caducum " produced by fruits collected from the ground;
— "Cibarium " squeezed from rotten olives and given to the slaves.

The olive was also used for cosmetic, medicine and lighting purposes, but its place of honour was already in the kitchen, in recipes that were very similar to those we use today on a "Mediterranean diet ". There are legendary essays by Apicus to testify these facts, one of the first gastronomists in history, who already in the first century AD gave the oil an ubiquitous status in his recipes with regards to preservation, seasoning, and cooking.