Pillars of Hercules - SpeedyLook encyclopedia

The Pillars of Hercules is the name which one gave in the Roman Antiquité to the cliffs which bordered the Straits of Gibraltar on both sides. It is of Gibraltar ( Calpe in Latin) in north on the European coast and about the Mont Abyle ( Mons Abyla ), today Djebel Musa on the side of Ceuta in the south on the African coast.

Formation

The Columns received their name of one of the twelve Travaux of Héraclès, and more particularly that of the Pommes of gold of the garden of Hespérides .

An erratic localization

The localization of the Columns of Héraclès then of Hercules in antiquity will be varied, erratic, according to the formidable expansion of the world gréco-Roman. In spite of these varied localizations, the significance of the columns remained stable: they marked, where that they are, the border of the civilized world and an unknown or dangerous world. Thus Homère speaks about the Black Sea like " Apeiron ", a space without definite limits. Apollonios of Rhodos spoke about " the sea which freezes effroi" to speak about the sea beyond the columns, and the Greeks called the Black Sea " Pontos Axinos " (unfriendly sea).

The antiquated situation of the Columns: the Bosphorus

Héraclès the antiquated hero Héraclès is initially a purely Greek hero and especially dorien. The Doriens, invaders of the Peloponnese arrived of the edges of the Black Sea towards -1100 front J. - C., are often called Héraclides, “wire of Héraclès”. In Iliade (8° front S.J-C.), Héraclès is presented like a historical character of last times; Ulysses, speaking about him in the Odyssey, qualifies it " hero ancien": thus, Héraclès comes from the oldest memory of Greece. A whole of traditions attach Héraclès to the Black Sea: Pindare (-520; -445 front. J. - C) indicates that Héraclès saw itself the day in Hyperborée, in other words to north of the ancient Cimmérie, i.e. in the middle of the current Ukraine. Héraclès is also that which delivered Prométhée, connected on the mount the Caucasus on the order of Zeus. We are well still here with the accesses of the Black Sea. The Greeks based the Héraclée Pontique as of VIIe front S.J. - C. on southern banks of the Black Sea. In antiquated Greece, the columns are located at the the Bosphorus: According to Strabon, (I-2-10 Geography), the Greeks at the time of Homère considered that those which sailed on the Euxine Sea had crossed the columns of Héraclès: " Simply one Greek of the time of Homère imagined then the sea Pontique like another Océan, and one believed that those which sailed there moved away from any inhabited ground, but also which they advanced well beyond the Columns of Héraclès. It is true that she was regarded as largest of the known seas of nous."

The Geography of the World according to Hésiode

The extension of the known world of the Greeks to the 8° century is readable at Hésiode, (8° - 7° century) in its Théogonie, where he reports the creation of the world:

“Téthys with Océan gave birth to the whirling rivers: the Nile, Alphée, Éridan with the deep swirls, Strymon, Meander, Istros with beautiful running water, Phase, Rhésos, Achéloos with the money swirls, Nessos, Rhodios, Halliacmon, Heptaporos, Grénicos, Aisepos, divine the Simoïs, Pennate, Hermos, and Caïque with the beautiful course, large the Sangarios, Ladon, Parthénios, Événos, Ardescos and divine the Scamandre.”

Among these 25 rivers and put aside the the Nile:

7 rivers are Greek: Alphée, Strymon, Acheloos, Halliacmon, Pennate, Ladon, Evenos;
7 rivers are Troyens: Rhesos, Rhodios, Heptaporos, Grenicos, Aisepos, Simoïs, Scamandre, (they go down from the Mont Ida, indicates Homère in the Iliade);
5 other rivers are them also in Asia Mineure: the Meander, Hermos, Sangarios, Caïque, Parthenios;
2 rivers are thrown in the Pont Euxin: the Phase (with the foot of the the Caucasus), and the Istros (the Danube);
2 is of more dubious localization: the Eridan (according to Virgile, close to the Tyrrhenian Sea and the the Alps, usually identified like the Po) and the Nessos (can be close to the river Acheloos);
the localization of one at least seems to be lost: Ardescos.

This text shows how much the known world Greeks before the 8° century was limited to the Eastern Mediterranean basin and with the Black Sea. We are in all the cases well far from Gibraltar and of the modern Pillars of Hercules.

If the essence of the activity of Héraclès even proceeds in Greece (series of the first 6 work, known as of the Peloponnese), three others could proceed side of the Black Sea:

Regularly, at least 8° and 9° work: mares of Diomède in Thrace, and gold belt of the queen of the Amazones on the southern part of the Black Sea.
But the 10° also, if one believes of it Palaiphatos, which in its Extraordinary Stories - 24, indicates towards -330 front J. - C. that Geryon lived a city of the Euxine Sea called Tricarénie, (whereas the Roman tradition of Work of Hercules locates finally Geryon in Andalusia).
As well as the 11° of Work if one believes of it Pseudo-Apollodore.

Hérodote and columns of Héraclès

To Ve century before J.C, the Greek world extended until in Cyrénaïque and Sicily; beyond as Masters on the Western basin of the Mediterranean the large enemies of the Greeks reigned, the Carthaginians; and Hérodote, which travelled at that time in all is Mediterranean basin could not travel beyond Sicily; and with him, the columns of Héraclès migrated to the west of Carthage. Hérodote (-484, -425 front J.C.) in its Stories IV 9, IV-42-43 and 185, watch cohabitation at its time of two geographical versions of the Columns: Pontique and Lybienne.

According to the version Pontique (Stories IV-9), which seems the antiquated version, the Ocean is yet neither Atlantic, nor Western; it is still the ring which encircles the universe: “The Greeks who live the Bridge present the things as it follows: Héraclès, pushing in front of him the cows of Géryon, would have arrived on this ground, deserted then, that the Scythes live today. Géryon, says, lived out of the Bridge, it had its residence in the island which the Greeks call Erythée, island located very against Gadeira, apart from the Columns of Héraclès, close to banks of the Ocean. Which Ocean, claim, but without showing it by realities, its source with the places would have where the sun rises, and would run around the very whole ground.”
In its lybian version, the Columns are with the West, all at least in the west of Carthage. Hérodote watch at the same time the extension to the West of the Greek culture and described the assimilation at its time of different let us panthéons people of the Mediterranean, and in particular the assimilation of the Greek Héraclès to the Merkath Phénicien and to the Khonsou Egyptien.

Plato and columns of Héraclès

Plato (- 427, -347 front J.C.) thus knew, at least through the texts of Hérodote, the two traditions, antiquated and Western, of the Columns of Héraclès. Familiar of the texts of Hérodote, it was to it also antiquated myths, which then constituted the educational base of the Greeks and of which it defended the importance ardently. Plato, in Timée, thus described the site of the columns of Héraklès as seen by an Egyptian priest: " Our books tell how Athens destroyed a powerful army which, left the Atlantic Ocean, invaded insolently and Europe and Asia. Because, then, one could cross this ocean. It was there indeed an island, located opposite the strait which you call in your language The Ocean became Atlantique here, but 2 authors attach the " root; Atlas" in the North of Greece: Pseudo-Apollodore reports in its Library, (II-5 - 11) how “Eurysthée/…/still imposed a work on Héraclès, eleventh: the hero should bring to him gold apples of the garden of Hespérides. This last was, not as some said, in Libya, but of course the Atlas mount, with the country of the Hyperborean ones.” and in Library, 2.119-120 “When Héraclès joined Atlas at the Hyperborean ones,…” Apollonios of Rhodos, (Alexandria, v. 295 - v. 230 av. J. - C.) in its Argonautiques (Ch.I, 914-917), indicates that Argonautes, on the way for the Crimea where the Golden Fleece was, and before at sea penetrating Noire, “the evening, on the order of Orphée, approached in the island of Atlantis Electra to know, by astonishing initiations, the rites which would enable them to sail with safety on the sea which freezes fear.” Timée thus probably returns the columns of Héraclès to its positioning of the Pontique tradition, in the Bosphorus, and not yet with the modern site of Gibraltar, still unknown to the Greeks of the time of Plato.

Gibraltar and Pillars of Hercules

The Carthaginois prohibit a long time the western basin of the the Mediterranean: they hold the coast of the Maghreb, the coasts of the south of the Spain and the islands Balearic Islands. It is only well after Hérodote, that the Greeks will be able to discover the Gibraltar strait and will cross it: the first Greek maritime forwarding beyond Gibraltar reported by Greek texts, that of Pythéas, proceeds only towards -330 front J. - C, after the death of Plato. The glory of the Héraclès hero was spread in the Greek world then Roman, where named cities Héraclée are localized on the Black Sea, in Sicily, in Thrace, Cilicie, Ionie, Palestine. The columns of Héraclès, become of Hercules with the Roman , position at the borders of the Roman world, Gibraltar.

Modern columns and myths

Apart from the geographical reality mentioned by the old authors, the localization of the Pillars of Hercules also raises of the Mythe and could be located according to different Tradition S, often esoteric S, in various places according to the Mythe S which they join. They nourished imaginary modern populations. Many theories flowered, like that making of the known as columns of immense pressure pipes, intended to produce electrical energy necessary to the manufacture of the Orichalque (Aluminum), making the richness of the Telamones. Some allotted to them an origin hittite, other Assyrian. One imagined them in Calais and Dover, as of many sites sought to adapt the prestige of the Greek hero and his work. An important monument also called, pillars of Hercules or Héraclès was located at the northern extrème of the Denmark, with the entry of the the Baltic. "

Evolution

Before the Arab conquest, the Rock of Gibraltar was called Mont Calpé.

The name of Gibraltar appears only as from 711; it comes from Arabic Jebel Tariq , the mountain of Tariq, name of the first Moslem conqueror having put foot on the rock as from the Moslem Conquête of Spain.

External bonds

The Library the Pseudoone: http://ugo.bratelli.free.fr/Apollodore/DetailsLivres.htm

Incredible stories of Palaïphatos: http://ugo.bratelli.free.fr/Palaiphatos/PalaiphatosHistoiresIncroyables.htm

Internal bonds

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