The olive branch
Classical antiquity
The use of the olive as a symbol of peace in Western civilization dates at least to the 5th century BC. The olive tree represented plenty, but the ancient Greeks believed that it also drove away evil spirits. The olive branch was one of the attributes of Eirene, goddess of peace (whom the Romans called Pax), on Roman Imperial coins. For example, the reverse of a tetradrachm of Vespasian from Alexandria, 70–71 AD, shows Eirene standing holding a branch upward in her right hand.
The Roman poet Virgil (70–10 BC) associated "the plump olive" with Pax and he used the olive branch as a symbol of peace in his Aeneid:
High on the stern Aeneas his stand,
And held a branch of olive in his hand,
While thus he spoke: "The Phrygians' arms you see,
Expelled from Troy, provoked in Italy
By Latian foes, with war unjustly made;
At first affianced, and at last betrayed.
This message bear: The Trojans and their chief
Bring holy peace, and beg the king's relief."
The Romans believed there was an intimate relationship between war and peace. Mars, the god of war, had another aspect, Mars Pacifer, Mars the bringer of Peace, who is shown bearing an olive branch on coins of the later Roman Empire. Appian describes the use of the olive-branch as a gesture of peace by the enemies of the Roman general Scipio Aemilianus in the Numantine War and by Hasdrubal of Carthage.
Later representations
Poets of the 17th century associated the olive with peace. A Charles I gold coin of 1644 shows the monarch with sword and olive branch. Throughout the 18th century, English coins show Brittania with a spear and olive branch.
The Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich, contains an allegorical painting by James Thornhill, Peace and Liberty Triumphing Over Tyranny (1708–1716), in which the royals William and Mary accept an olive branch from Peace. In January 1775, the frontispiece of the London Magazine published an engraving of Peace descending on a cloud from the Temple of Commerce, bringing an olive branch to America and Britannia. In July that year, the American Continental Congress adopted the "Olive Branch Petition" in the hope of avoiding a full-blown war with Great Britain.
On the Great Seal of the United States (1782), the olive branch denotes peace, as explained by Charles Thomson, Secretary to Congress: "The Olive branch and arrows denote the power of peace & war which is exclusively vested in Congress."
The dove and olive branch
Christianity
The story of Noah in the Torah ends with a passage describing a dove bringing a freshly plucked olive leaf (Hebrew: עלה זית alay zayit),[Gen 8:11] a sign of life after the Flood and of God's bringing Noah, his family and the animals to land. Rabbinic literature interpreted the olive leaf as "the young shoots of the Land of Israel" or the dove's preference for bitter food in God's service, rather than sweet food in the service of men. Christians adopted Noah's dove and olive leaf as symbols of peace although Jews had never given them that meaning.
Early Christians portrayed baptism accompanied by a dove holding an olive branch in its beak and used the image on their sepulchres as an allegory of peace. The dove appears in many funerary inscriptions in the Roman catacombs, sometimes accompanied by the words in pace (Latin for "in peace"). For example, in the Catacomb of Callixtus, a dove and branch are drawn next to a Latin inscription NICELLA VIRCO DEI OVE VI XIT ANNOS P M XXXV DE POSITA XV KAL MAIAS BENE MERENTI IN PACE, meaning "Nicella, God’s virgin, who lived for more or less 35 years. She was placed [here] 15 days before the Kalends of May [17 April]. For the well deserving one in peace." In another example, a shallow relief sculpture shows a dove with a branch flying to a figure marked in Greek as ΕΙΡΗΝΗ (Eirene, or Peace). The symbol has also been found in the Christian catacombs of Sousse, Tunisia (ancient Carthage, which date from the end of the first century AD.
Christians derived the symbol of the dove and olive branch from two sources: Greek thought, including its use of the symbol of the olive branch, and the story of Noah and the Flood.
Written with full knowledge of the Jewish Bible, the New Testament has a comparison between a dove and the Spirit of God that descended on Jesus during his baptism.[Mt 3:16] The New Testament comparison has a parallel in the Talmud, which says that "the spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters like a dove." Early Christians drew parallels between baptism and Noah's flood, the First Epistle of Peter (composed around the end of the first century AD) comparing the salvation through water in baptism to Noah's salvation through water.[1Pt 3:20–21] The Carthaginian Tertullian (c.160 – c.220) compared Noah's dove, who "announced to the world the assaugement of divine wrath, when she had been sent out of the ark and returned with the olive branch" with the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove that descends in baptism, "bringing us the peace of God, sent out from the heavens". In the fourth century, St. Jerome's Latin Bible, possibly reflecting this Christian comparison between the peace brought by baptism and the ending of the Flood, rendered the Hebrew Bible's "olive leaf" in Noah as "olive branch" (Latin: ramum olivae). By the fifth century, St Augustine of Hippo confirmed the Christian adoption of the olive branch, writing that, "perpetual peace is indicated by the olive branch (Latin: oleae ramusculo) that the dove brought with it when it returned to the ark."
In the earliest Christian art, the dove represented the peace of the soul rather than civil peace. From the third century, the dove began to be shown in art that portrayed Biblical conflict from the Old Testament, such as Noah and the Ark, and the books of the Apocrypha (recognized as canon by early Christians and later Catholics, but excluded after the Protestant Reformation from Protestant translations): Daniel and the lions, the three young men in the furnace, and Susannah and the Elders.
Before the Peace of Constantine (313 AD), in which Rome ceased its persecution of Christians after Constantine's conversion, Noah is normally shown in an attitude of prayer, a dove with an olive branch nearly always flying toward him or alighting on his outstretched hand. According to Graydon Snyder, "The Noah story afforded the early Christian community an opportunity to express piety and peace in a vessel that withstood the threatening environment" of Roman persecution. For Ludwig Budde and Pierre Prigent, the dove refers to the descending of the Holy Spirit rather than the peace associated with Noah. After the Peace of Constantine, Noah appeared only occasionally in Christian art.
Medieval illuminated manuscripts, such as the Holkham Bible, showed the dove returning to Noah with a branch. Wycliffe's Bible, which translated the Vulgate into English in the 14th century, uses "a braunche of olyue tre with greene leeuys" ("a branch of olive tree with green leaves") in Gen. 8:11. In the Middle Ages, some Jewish illuminated manuscripts also showed Noah's dove with an olive branch, for example, the Golden Haggadah (about 1420).
English Bibles from the 17th-century King James Bible onwards, which translated the story of Noah direct from Hebrew, render the Hebrew alay zayit as "olive leaf" rather than "olive branch", but by this time the association of the dove with an olive branch as a symbol of peace in the story of Noah was firmly established.
Secular representations
- Late 15th century In the late 15th century, a dove with an olive branch was used on the seal of Dieci di Balia, the Florentine committee known as The Ten of Liberty and Peace, whose secretary was Machiavelli; it bore the motto, "Pax et Defencio Libertatis" (Peace and the Defence of Liberty).
- Late 18th century In 18th century America, a £2 note of North Carolina (1771) depicted the dove and olive with a motto meaning: "Peace restored". Georgia's $40 note of 1778 portrayed the dove and olive and a hand holding a dagger, with a motto meaning "Either war or peace, prepared for both."
- Early 19th century The Society for the Promotion of Permanent and Universal Peace, also known as The London Peace Society, formed on Quaker initiative in 1816, used the symbol of a dove and olive branch.
- Early 20th century A German war loan poster of 1917 (see Gallery below) showed the head of an eagle over a dove of peace in flight, with the text, "Subscribe to the War Loan".
- Mid 20th century Picasso's lithograph, La Colombe (The Dove), a traditional, realistic picture of a pigeon, without an olive branch, was chosen as the emblem for the World Peace Congress in Paris in April 1949. The dove became a symbol for the peace movement and the ideals of the Communist Party and was used in Communist demonstrations of the period. At the 1950 World Peace Congress in Sheffield, Picasso said that his father had taught him to paint doves, concluding, "I stand for life against death; I stand for peace against war." At the 1952 World Peace Congress in Berlin, Picasso's Dove was depicted in a banner above the stage. The dove symbol was used extensively in the post-war peace movement. Anti-communists had their own take on the peace dove: the group Paix et Liberté distributed posters titled La colombe qui fait BOUM (the dove that goes BOOM), showing the peace dove metamorphosing into a Soviet tank.
