'Where the Lord of the Sea Grants Passage to Sailors through the Deep-Blue Mere No

More': The Greeks and the Western Seas

Authors(s): Heinz-Günther Nesselrath
Source: Greece & Rome, Vol. 52, No. 2 (Oct., 2005), pp. 153-171
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3567866
Accessed: 30-03-2016 03:04 UTC

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 Greece & Rome, Vol. 52, No. 2, (C The Classical Association, 2005. All rights reserved

doi: 10. 1093/gromej/cxiO03

'WHERE THE LORD OF THE SEA GRANTS

PASSAGE TO SAILORS THROUGH THE

DEEP-BLUE MERE NO MORE': THE GREEKS

AND THE WESTERN SEAS

By HEINZ-GUNTHER NESSELRATH

The fascination of the ancient Greeks with the vast seas to the west of

their areas of settlement already starts with Homer and lasts deep into

Imperial Roman times. The following remarks will try to highlight

some of the literary products of this fascination, tracing the development

from Okeanos as the home of mythical places (and dangers) to the

western ocean as the scarcely less mysterious abode of both Thule and

Atlantis.

Okeanos and the Atlantic Ocean

In the beginning, there was Okeanos: in the Iliad, Okeanos is twice intro-

duced as the begetter of the gods (14.201, 302, together with his divine

consort Tethys) and even as the origin of all things (14.246). This con-

ception, which reappears in later Orphic texts,1 has recognizable Near

Eastern precedents,2 something which also holds true for the idea of

Okeanos as a stream of water encircling all earth,3 as it is shown on

the famous shield of Achilles in Iliad book 18 and as it becomes import-

ant for Odysseus' fantastic journeys in the Odyssey. Okeanos is thus not

only a divine being of the highest importance, but also the absolute limit

beyond which no living human being can travel upon this earth. Earth is

more or less conceived as a well-rounded disc, in the middle of which

there is the Aegean with its adjacent lands (mainland Greece in the

west with the Ionic Isles and some vague hints about Sicily,4 Thrace in

the north, Asia Minor in the east, and Crete - as well as an inkling of

1 See Orphicorum Fragmenta 15. 16. 25. 107 Kern.

2 M. L. West, The east face of Helicon: West Asiatic elements in Greek poetry and myth (Oxford,

1997), 147.

3 West (n. 2), 144-6.

4 Od. 20.383, 24.211, 307 ('Sikanie'), 366, 389.

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 154 THE GREEKS AND THE WESTERN SEAS

Egypt - in the south). How soon beyond these lands the unknown

began, may be concluded from the description of the slain suitors' last

journey, as they are led by Hermes into Hades at the beginning of

Odyssey book 24 (Od. 24.11-13): 'And now they reach'd the earth's

remotest ends, / And now the gates where evening Sol descends,

/ And Leucas' rock, and Ocean's utmost streams, / And now pervade

the dusky land of dreams, / And rest at last, where souls unbodied

dwell / In ever-flowing meads of asphodel', as Alexander Pope trans-

lates.5 The only familiar-sounding geographical point they pass before

reaching the 'Gates of the Sun' and the 'People of Dreams' is the

'Leucadian Rock'. Though it has been argued6 that this too must be

taken as a mythical point already far in the West, it is difficult not to

be reminded of the island of Leucas, which lies not very far north of

Odysseus' own island, Ithaca.

When, however, we come across Okeanos in later Greek texts, its con-

ception has considerably changed. When Pytheas (of whom more later)

and Posidonius wrote works entitled HEpt Tov 'QKEavov, they were talking

about the great body of sea known today as the Atlantic Ocean.7 How

did this change come about? One of the major intermediate stations is

probably the work of Herodotus in the fifth century BC. In Herodotus'

time the notion of a circular Okeanos girding all the landmasses of the

earth was still current,8 but Herodotus made it very clear that he

regarded it as an invention by Homer or some other early poet (2.23;

cf. 4.36.2) and that geographical knowledge available by his own time

showed that no continuous bodies of seawater could be proven to exist

to the north and east of known lands (see 4.40.2, 45.1, 4). Herodotus

was also the first to state correctly that the Caspian was a landlocked

sea (1.202.4-203.1) and that to the east of it there stretched a limitless

5 Compared with the original text of Homer, Pope has inverted the geographical sequence some-

what, putting the 'Gates of the Sun' before the 'Leucadian Rock'; still, the close association between

the Leucadian Rock and 'Ocean's utmost streams' is preserved.

6 See A. Heubeck, A commentary on Homer's Odyssey (Oxford, 1992), 360, and also already Schol.

Horn. Od. 24.11 (where the 'Leucadian Rock' is situated near the regions of the underworld and its

name - 'White Rock' - is connected with the bloodless paleness of the dead) and Eustathius on Od.

24.11 p. 1951.51-3 (where the rock is located 'near Hades' or 'in the outermost reaches of the

earth').

7 See T. Braun, 'Hecataeus' knowledge of the Western Mediterranean', in K. Lomas (ed.), Greek

identity in the Eastern Mediterranean (Leiden, 2004), [287-347] 301: 'Ocean and Atlantic were first

fully equated when Pytheas in c. 330 gave the title On the Ocean to his account of his voyage.' When

Aristotle talked about the Outer Sea (Meteor. 1.13 p. 350a22; 2.5 p. 362bl8-30), he did not yet call

it Ocean.

8 See Braun (n. 7), 300: 'Hecataeus evidently retained the concept of Ocean [see Hdt. 2.21,

4.36.1] ... 5th-century poets saw no incongruity between the ancient concept of Ocean Stream

and the more recently discovered Outer Sea'; see Pind., Pyth. 4.26, 4.251, fr. 30 Snell.

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 THE GREEKS AND THE WESTERN SEAS 155

plain (1.204.1); he was the first as well - at least the first known to us -

to call the Atlantic ArAavrtl' OadAaaa9 and probably deliberately avoided

bringing in the notion of Okeanos (which he, as I have already said,

rejected). Later authors, however, returned to the name Okeanos, but

now applied it mainly to the Atlantic10 (and only much more rarely to

other seas which we today are used to calling Oceans also, as e.g. the

Indian Ocean, which - at least by the geographers - was rather consist-

ently called 'IvtKOv 7TreAayog). Thus it was the Atlantic, the great sea to

the west and north of the ancient world, which retained at least some

of the mystery that originally attached to the notion of Okeanos, as a

watery expanse which could never be fully fathomed and which

extended into the unknown, and possibly to the very limits of this earth.

Mythical journeys into the perilous Outer Sea

For the development outlined above there are a number of reasons. Early

Greek myth already tells of some famous journeys into the far and won-

drous West. The first prominent travellers into these regions were

Perseus and his great-grandson Heracles. Perseus had to fly (with the

help of winged shoes he had luckily acquired beforehand) into the furth-

est West to slay Medusa, the one mortal among the (otherwise immortal)

Gorgons, who dwelt 'beyond famous Okeanos on the fringe of the night'

(Hes., Theog. 274f.). As for Heracles,11 two of his famous labours

required him to boldly go where no Greek hero had ventured before:

his eleventh labour consisted in fetching the apples of the Hesperides,

who dwelt in the vicinity of the just-mentioned Gorgons (Hes., Theog.

215, 275, 518).12 In one version of this story,'3 Heracles even had to

enlist the help of Atlas, the Titan who sustained all heaven on his

9 Compare in Euripides, Hipp. 3 ('this side of the Sea and Atlantic boundaries', TEpvO6,v T'

'A4rAavTtKcv), 1053 ('beyond the sea and Atlantic regions', Tro6rwv TArAavrtKv), and Herc. 234f.

('beyond Atlantic limits', 'ATAaVTLKJV. . ..pwv).

10 E.g. Polyb. 16.29.6 ('the sea called by some "Okeanos", by others "Atlantic Sea"'); Ps.-Arist.,

De mundo 3, 393al6f. ('The sea on the outside of the Inhabited World is called "Atlantic" and

"Okeanos"'); Favorin. fr. 82 Barigazzi ('there the majority of the barbarians call the Outer Sea

"Okeanos", while the inhabitants of Asia call it "Great Sea" and the Greeks "Atlantic Sea"').

n On Heracles' travels in the West, see Braun (n. 7), 296-303.

12 For the far-out position of the Hesperides see also Mimn. fr. 12.8 West; Eur., Hipp. 742-9.

Heracles' venture to the Hesperides can also be found in the old epic Titanomachy (fr. 8-9

Bernab& = fr. 7, 10 Davies) and in Pisander of Camirus (Heracl. fr. 5 Bernab& = fr. 6 Davies); it

may have been treated by Hesiod as well, in lines now missing in the Theogony (see West on

Theog. 216).

13 Apollod., Bibl. 2.120 (=2.5.11).

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 156 THE GREEKS AND THE WESTERN SEAS

shoulders; apparently no mere mortal could reach the Hesperides'

garden. In his tenth labour Heracles had to carry out the most famous

cattle-robbery of Greek myth;14 to do this he was obliged to travel

ever west to the edge of modern southwest Spain and cross a stretch

of the outer sea to get to the island of Erytheia15 where the monstrous

Geryones and his famous cattle could be found. In this era before sea-

travel Heracles even had to enlist the help of the sun-god himself who

- after Heracles had threatened to shoot arrows at him - provided

him with his own vessel to accomplish this sea-journey.16 Taken

together, these myths show that travel into the outlying western

regions of the earth was regarded as something that was dangerous,

required extraordinary means, and could only be braved by the most

accomplished heroes.

The most famous traveller of Greek myth, Odysseus, can also be

found roaming extensively within a mysterious West. On his way

home after the destruction of Troy, a violent storm lasting unabated

for nine days blows him away into unknown waters where he first

reaches the dreamy Lotophagi, moving on to the monstrous Cyclopes

and then to Aeolus, the lord of the winds who dwells on a floating

island and who benignly sends him home by letting a steady west

wind blow - which well shows that Odysseus must by now have

deeply penetrated into the West, since otherwise a west wind could not

have got him home. Just when Ithaca can already be seen, however,

Odysseus' companions foolishly unleash the other winds Aeolus had

given to Odysseus sealed up in a bag, and they blow the fleet back to

Aeolus' island. Cursed by Aeolus for the stupidity of his companions,

Odysseus must now travel on without divine help. His next station is

the land of the murderous Laestrygonians who destroy all his ships

except one; with that he arrives at Aeaea, the island of the divine sorcer-

ess Circe. This, however, is no more in the West, but in the furthest

East, since the Odyssey explicitly states that Circe's island lies (as

Chapman's translation has it), 'where the palace stands / Of th' early

riser with the rosy hands / Active Aurora, where she loves to dance, /

And where the Sun doth his prime beams advance'.17 Having thus

moved from the extreme West into the extreme East in books 9 and

10, Odysseus accomplishes an even more marvellous feat in book 11.

14 For this venture, see already Hes., Theog. 287-94, 979-83.

15 In the earlier fifth century, Pherecydes (FGrHist 3 F 18a, b) identified Erytheia with Gadir.

16 See Pherecydes FGrHist 3 F 18a.

17 Hom., Od. 12.3-4; compare also 10.507f.

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 THE GREEKS AND THE WESTERN SEAS 157

Setting out from this easternmost spot, Odysseus' ship reaches earth-

girding Okeanos itself and, driven on by a magical wind, rushes along

Okeanos' stream for a whole day, until it reaches the northernmost

point of its circle where the Cimmerians dwell within thick, cloudy

mists never broken by the sun's rays and where there is the entrance

to Hades which Odysseus must reach to meet the seer Tiresias; and,

going back to Circe, Odysseus may even have completed a full circular

journey by following Okeanos around the outermost reaches of the

earth. His further travels after leaving Circe take him once again into

far outlying western parts; for to reach Scheria, the Phaeacians' island,

he has to complete a journey of eighteen days from Calypso's isle,

Ogygia, and the Odyssey indicates that this voyage is in a 'generally

easterly' direction.18 The Phaeacians' island itself is to be thought of

as somehow lying to the West or North-West of Ithaca (Hellanicus19

in the fifth century already identified it with Korfu, which early on

became the dominant tradition).

However, Greek myth did not know of adventurous travels into the

West alone (as some of Odysseus' just-mentioned voyages already

show): the most famous example of a venture east is surely the

expedition of the Argonauts. There have been speculations that this

journey originally went into the West as well;20 but it has to be recog-

nized that already in the Iliad the Hellespont is an often-mentioned geo-

graphical feature, and this narrow waterway is named, of course, after

Helle, the sister of young Phrixus who flew upon the ram with the

golden fleece to the fabulous land of Aia - while poor Helle during

this flight fell into the part of the sea which even today has kept her

name. The name Hellespont, therefore, already marks an easterly direc-

tion for Phrixus' flight from mainland Greece, and thus the Argonauts in

all known versions of the myth had to sail (or row) east in order to bring

the fleece of Phrixus' ram back.

When the poet Mimnermus sang about Jason's difficult and hazar-

dous journey to get at the 'mighty fleece' (fr. 11.1 West), probably

some time in the later seventh century (or early sixth), he still made

him travel to the easternmost part of the earth-encircling Okeanos

stream, next to the place 'where the rays of swift Helios (the Sun) lie

in a golden storeroom' (fr. 1 la. If.). Soon after, however, the picture

18 See Od. 5.270-80 and Hainsworth's commentary ad loc.

19 FGrHist 4 F 77 = Hellan. fr. 77 Fowler.

20 See C. Robert, Die griechische Heldensage, Buch 3: Die groj3en Heldenepen, Abt. 1: Die

Argonauten, der thebanische Kreis (Berlin, fourth edition, 1921), 759f.

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 158 THE GREEKS AND THE WESTERN SEAS

must have changed considerably, because during the latter part of the

seventh century and the earlier part of the sixth, new Greek colonies

spread all along the coasts of the Black Sea, and in the course of this

development it naturally became clear that this sea was shut off by

solid land in the East and gave no access to further seas beyond it. It

must have been at some time within this period, too, that an epic with

the title Corinthiaca ascribed to the poet Eumelus21 first came to identify

the Argonauts' destination with Colchis, the ancient predecessor of

modern Georgia, which then became the traditional place of residence

for grim king Aeetes and his formidable daughter Medea for all later

Argonautica.

From myth to exploration - and fiction

Thus the Greeks had to discover that in the East Okeanos was no more

to be found. What about the West? During the seventh or sixth centu-

ries, daring Greeks seem indeed to have made remarkable progress in

extending their western horizons. Herodotus tells us (4.152.2f.) that

the Samian seafarer Colaeus (who is variously dated from the middle

of the seventh until the early fifth century, which, however, seems too

late)22 was driven off his course (while trying to sail to Egypt) by a

strong easterly wind and then carried all the way westward through

the Mediterranean, until he even passed through the straits of

Gibraltar23 and landed in the marvellous city of Tartessus where a

benign king named Arganthonius ruled and provided him so lavishly

with goods that his journey turned from dangerous failure into resound-

ing economic success.

Other Greeks followed suit. Again according to Herodotus (1.163),

by the time of Cyrus' expansion into Ionia, the energetic inhabitants

of Phocaea (a city then threatened by Persian attack) had for quite

some time already enjoyed good relations with the king of Tartessus,

and he supported them so generously that they could build extensive for-

tifications against the Persians. In the middle decades of the sixth

21 Eumelus fr. 3 Bernabe = fr. 2A Davies = fr. 17 West (cf. Paus. 2.3.10). For the author of this

work (presumably not Eumelus) and for its dating (probably mid-sixth century) see now M. L.

West, "'Eumelus": A Corinthian Epic Cycle?', JHS 122 (2002), 109-33 at 130f.

22 Braun (n. 7), 298 n. 21 dates Colaeus' voyage 'to c.638 BC by its connection with the coloniza-

tion of Cyrene (Hdt. 4.151-3)'.

23 The first known references to them as 'Pillars of Heracles' are provided by Hecataeus (FGrHist

1 F 39, 41, 356); see Braun (n. 7), 301.

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 THE GREEKS AND THE WESTERN SEAS 159

century the Phocaeans strenuously pushed forward in the western

Mediterranean, but then met with mighty foes who curbed their

further advances. Between 540 and 535 sixty of their ships (setting

out from Alalia on Corsica, where they had established a colony some

years before) were either destroyed or severely damaged by a huge

fleet of 160 Carthaginian and Etruscan ships (Hdt. 1.166); the colony

at Alalia had to be evacuated, and there were serious repercussions of

the sea-battle further west. Greek knowledge of the coasts of Iberia

seems to have gone into decline after this event,24 as the Carthaginians

now effectively controlled the western parts of the Mediterranean and

the Straits of Gibraltar,25 preventing all Greek ships from passing

through for a very long time.26 As a result, the Straits - the 'Pillars of

Heracles', as they were called by the Greeks - became a potent

symbol of a limit not to be trespassed by human beings. In the fifth

century Pindar repeatedly used the image of the Pillars to signify the ulti-

mate limit to which human ambition could attain,27 and some decades

later a Euripidean chorus could sing of the lovely strand of the

Hesperides near the place where giant Atlas still upholds heaven, but

which is totally inaccessible, because the Pillars of Heracles were

blocked.28

So the Greeks of the high classical age were unable to leave the

Mediterranean at its western exit; they knew that there were things

24 A case in point: later Greek sources (Ps.-Scymnus 145-9; Strab. 3.4.2 p. 156 C. = p.

398.31-4 Radt) believed that there once had been a westernmost Phocaean colony named

Mainake (near modern-day Malaga), where in fact there only was a Phoenician colony that had

passed out of existence already in the mid-sixth century and the remains of which were centuries

later taken for Greek; see H. G. Niemeyer, 'Auf der Suche nach Mainake', Historia 28 (1980),

165-89, esp. 180 (where the progressive loss of Greek knowledge about the geography of the

Iberian peninsula is plausibly connected with the now unchallenged dominance of the

Carthaginians in the western Mediterranean).

25 Around 500, the Carthaginians seem also to have destroyed Tartessus and taken over its trade;

see Braun (n. 7), 302; for more on Tartessus see again Braun (n. 7), 303-9.

26 T. Braun, in his review of C. F C. Hawkes, Pytheas: Europe and the Greek explorers (Oxford,

1977), in CR 30 (1980), 127, has contested this by assuming that Massalia, by controlling the over-

land (Aude - Garonne) commercial route through the southwest of modern France, had 'leverage

to extract passage rights through the Straits ... at any time in the late fourth century' (see also his

2004 article [n. 7] 302, where he points out that Pindar nowhere says anything explicit 'about

Carthage blocking access to Gadir'). Braun's view, however, is only an assumption; the blocking

of the Straits by Carthage in the fifth and fourth centuries remains the best explanation for the

Greeks' curious views about the Atlantic during that time (see below with n. 34 and 35).

27 Pind., 01. 3.43-5, Nem. 3.20-3, Isthm. 4.11-13; see J. S. Romm, The edges of the earth in

ancient thought: Geography, exploration, and fiction (Princeton, 1992), 17f.

28 Eur. Hipp. 742-7: 'Would that I reached the promontory planted with apples of the singing

Hesperides, where the lord of the sea grants passage to sailors through the deep-blue mere no

more, fixing the solemn border-post of heaven held by Atlas' - whence the motto of the title of

this article. See also Pind., Nem. 4.69: 'The region towards darkness beyond Gadeira cannot be

crossed.'

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 160 THE GREEKS AND THE WESTERN SEAS

beyond this exit, and they were eager for more knowledge about them,29

but they had to rely on others to provide it. Thus Herodotus records the

travels of the Persian noble Sataspes who in the reign of Xerxes

attempted a circumnavigation of Africa (setting out, in fact, from

Gibraltar). Roughly the same route was tried out - probably some

time in the earlier fifth century or about 50030 - by the Carthaginian

admiral (or 'king') Hanno, who even left a written report which was

then translated into Greek (probably already in the fourth century);31

and there were other reports about Carthaginians finding wonderful

islands in the Atlantic which made their way into Greek hands and

minds.32 At about the same time Hanno's fellow countryman Himilco

was sent out (again from the Pillars) to explore the outer coasts of

Europe.33 Himilco's exploits are known to us only from a rather late

Latin text, namely Avienus' poem 'On the coasts of the sea' (De ora mar-

itima), which cites Himilco several times.34 In these quotes, Himilco

enumerates the dangers he encountered during his journey: shallow

waters, tenacious weeds, and dreadful monsters. There are other

sources as well who mention dangerous shoals in the waters beyond

the Pillars. The already-mentioned Sataspes claimed that at one point

he had not been able to sail on because he simply got stuck in the

water, and even for the great Aristotle it was a fact that the sea beyond

Gibraltar was shallow and muddy.35 It may even be that this extraordi-

nary misconception of the nature of the Atlantic was deliberately fos-

tered by the Carthaginians as an additional means to keep the

unwanted Greeks out of these waters.36

29 Thus the Greek seafarer Scylax of Caryanda, who was in the service of the Persian Great King

Darius (see Hdt. 4.44.1), is reputed to have written a 'Voyage round the parts outside the Pillars of

Heracles' (see the Suda Lexicon, a 710 = FGrHist 709 T 1); likewise, the historian Charon of

Lampsacus (Suda, X 136 = FGrHist 262 T 1) some time in the fifth century (for Charon's

dating, see R. Fowler, 'Herodotus and his contemporaries', JHS 116 (1996), 67).

30 Various dates for Hanno have been proposed, ranging from about 570 to about 450. If the

town Melitta founded by Hanno (Peripl. 5; see now Braun [n. 7], 336) is the same as the one men-

tioned by Hecataeus (FGrHist 1 F 357), this should prove that Hanno is to be dated around 500.

31 It is mentioned in Ps.-Arist., Mirab. ausc. 37 p. 833a9-12. The main parts of this work can be

dated to the third century BC; see H. Flashar, Aristoteles, Mirabilia [Aristoteles. Werke in deutscher

Ubersetzung, Teil II-III] (Darmstadt, 1972), 52.

32 Ps.-Arist., Mirab. Ausc. 84 p. 836b30-37a7; Diod. 5.19-20; a possible echo of these reports is

to be found in Plut., Sert. 8. 2-5.

33 Plin., NH 2.169: 'When the power of Carthage was at its height, Hanno travelled round from

Gades to the border of Arabia and left a written report of this voyage, just as Himilco was sent out at

the same time to acquire knowledge of the outer parts of Europe.'

34 Lines 114-29, 380-9, 404-15.

35 Arist., Meteor. 2.1 p. 354a22: 'The waters outside of the Pillars are shallow because of the mud.'

36 See already H. Herter, 'Platons Atlantis', Bonner Jahrbiicher 133 (1928), 35f.

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 THE GREEKS AND THE WESTERN SEAS 161

This misconception in turn probably gave rise to one of the most

remarkable pieces of fantasy ever invented with regard to the Atlantic

Ocean. When Plato wanted to demonstrate that the ideal state conceived

in his Republic would admirably hold out against a much stronger foe, he

used the lore about the shallow and muddy waters outside the Pillars of

Heracles to claim that once - or, to be more exact, nine thousand years

before the time of Solon - a huge island called Atlantis had existed there,

whose mighty kings at one point set out east to conquer all lands around

the Mediterranean and in fact succeeded in doing so until they met the

valiant force of primeval Athens (which, or so Plato's speaker Critias

claimed, was at that time organized just like the Republic's ideal state).

To paint this fantastic (though unfortunately unfinished) picture, Plato

drew upon various phenomena with which his own time and experience

provided him (for instance to describe the tremendous forces that

Atlantis would unleash against the brave Athenians, he simply combined

the terrestrial power of the Persian Empire and the naval power of

Carthage); but his starting-point must nevertheless be seen in the

strange conception which Greeks of his time held about a widely

shallow and muddy Atlantic.

Atlantis, Thule, and their literary offspring in Later Antiquity

Plato's Atlantis soon proved to be a very potent (and persuasive) feat of

human imagination; already in the second generation of his pupils there

were people, like Crantor, who earnestly wanted to believe that Atlantis

had been a real place and its attack on Athens a real war and who there-

fore set out to find further proof for this. I have followed the trail of that

discussion (which was lively already in Antiquity) elsewhere,37 and thus

will not do so now, but rather concentrate upon the remarkable traces

Plato's Atlantis left in more imaginative pieces of Greek literature.

Probably the first attempt to make use of elements of the Atlantis story

within a fictional context was made by - of all people - a historian,

Theopompus of Chios, who wrote in the second half of the fourth

century, that is, only a few decades after Plato had conceived Atlantis.

Being no friend of Plato and his Academy, Theopompus apparently ven-

tured to make fun of Plato's myths in one of the numerous digressions

37 See H.-G. Nesselrath, 'Atlantes und Atlantioi: Von Platon zu Dionysios Skytobrachion',

Philologus 145 (2001), 34-8; id., 'Atlantis auf agyptischen Stelen? Der Philosoph Krantor als

Epigraphiker', ZPE 135 (2001), 33-5.

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 162 THE GREEKS AND THE WESTERN SEAS

which his enormous History of Philip (in 58 books) contained:38 in the

eighth book of this Philippica, he let the drunken Silenus (a divine, but

usually inebriated companion of Dionysus) tell an extraordinary tale

about a large continent (called Meropis)39 beyond the ocean, where

human beings grow to double size compared with our world and

where, among other things, two remarkable cities of completely anti-

thetic nature can be found. One of them is called 'Eusebes'

('Piouston'), whose inhabitants live in close communion with the gods

and in hedonistic bliss at the same time; the other's name is

'Machimos' ('Fightington'), the innumerous people of which - they

can only be counted by the millions - are already born in arms; they

do nothing their whole life through but fight, attack their neighbours,

and conquer, and they cannot be killed by iron, but only by wood and

stone. It can be shown (and I have tried to do so elsewhere)40 that

such details were meant as parodic imitation and exaggeration of

famous elements of the Atlantis story.41

Thus Theopompus was the first to use Atlantis - though in a delib-

erately garbled form - in a purely fictional context. Already in

Antiquity, others would follow him; but before we turn to them, we

must first have a look at a second important person, still within the

fourth century BC who after Plato enriched Greek - and with that, all

later European - imagination with another place he claimed to have dis-

covered in the faraway waters of the northern or north-western Atlantic

(and this time we should probably be much less inclined to disbelieve

him than in the case of Plato): Pytheas of Massalia.

Pytheas may in fact have been the first Greek to see an Atlantic sea-

shore since the time when the Straits had been blocked by the

Carthaginians. There is still some uncertainty how he managed to do

this when he set out on his far-ranging journey into the seas to the

north and west of Europe some time between 350 and 320; but Barry

Cunliffe42 has built a plausible case that he first crossed southwestern

France by land and reached the sea somewhere around modern-day

Bordeaux, whence he went north along the coast (probably using local

vessels) up to Brittany, from where it was only a short way to the tin

mines of Cornwall. From here he still went on north, along the west

38 See H.-G. Nesselrath, 'Theopomps Meropis und Platon: Nachahmung und Parodie', Gottinger

Forum fiir Altertumswissenschaft 1 (1998), 1-8.

39 FGrHist 115 F 75, the main body of which is found in Aelian, VH 3.18.

40 See Nesselrath (n. 38), 4-8.

41 See already E. Rohde, 'Zum griechischen Roman', RhM 48 (1894), 9 = Kleine Schriften ii.9.

42 B. W. Cunliffe, The extraordinary voyage of Pytheas the Greek (London, 2001), 57-60.

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 THE GREEKS AND THE WESTERN SEAS 163

coast of Britain (possibly stopping in-between on the Isle of Man), until

he reached the northern coast of Scotland. He claims still to have carried

on and to have reached after six days of sea journey a land called 'Thule'

which thus makes its first entry into the knowledge (and even more into

the imagination) of Classical Antiquity. It is not necessary here to try to

identify exactly which location might square with what Pytheas tells us

about Thule, though it seems reasonably certain that Pytheas got at

least as far as the Shetlands (and I am again inclined to agree with

Cunliffe that Thule for Pytheas may in fact have been Iceland).43 In

any case, no Greek before had ventured so far into the unknown

North and come back with tales about a place that would henceforth

stay fixed within the imagination of Europeans. Pytheas' reports met

with sneering disbelief by Polybius and Strabo,44 but other, more scien-

tifically-minded Hellenistic scholars like Eratosthenes and Hipparchus

were prepared to believe him (not least because of the plausible-

looking scientific data he brought back with him); and, Polybius' and

Strabo's doubts notwithstanding, Thule was there to stay.

At the beginning of the Christian Era, when Rome already ruled over

a large part of the western and northwestern shores of continental

Europe and was about to cross over to Britain (thus annexing the first

part of a world that was actually separated by a narrow stretch of the

Outer Ocean from the rest of its dominions), classical imagination

about the western seas was fully developed. One now 'knew' (or

thought one knew) that these wide waters, still stretching out to

unknown limits, contained further chunks of land and that there was

'something out there' though one could not easily reach it. This intri-

guing interplay of knowledge and mystery, of scientific-looking reports

and abiding wonder now provided a welcome background for some mar-

vellous tales (sometimes written with philosophic intentions, sometimes

just for entertainment) that at least in some cases still make for some of

the most interesting Greek literature of Imperial times. I shall briefly

survey the most famous of these and finally at least hint at some

which once existed but which can now be glimpsed only in small and

tantalizing fragments. All of them, in any case, are proof of what a

fertile ground for Greek imagination those western seas remained,

down into Later Antiquity.

That serious philosophers can be attracted by the mysterious atmos-

phere in which the Outer Ocean remained enshrouded was already

43 Cunliffe (n. 42), 125-33.

44 Polybius 34.5.2 = Strabo 2.4.2 p. 104 C. = p. 254.19-21 Radt.

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 164 THE GREEKS AND THE WESTERN SEAS

shown by Plato and is shown again by Plutarch towards the end of the

first century AD. The final part of his long dialogue entitled

'Concerning the face which appears in the orb of the moon' contains a

mythical disquisition about the gods and spirits, by a man who actually

comes from beyond the northern ocean, namely from the shores of the

large and 'real' continent that Plato had already postulated in the first

part of his Timaeus (where he introduced Atlantis). To come into our

world, Plutarch's stranger had to pass along a whole string of mysterious

islands in the ocean, where on one of them he had first served as priest of

the forever sleeping god Cronus and where - while staying the required

time of thirty years - he had learned much lore concerning astronomy,

cosmology, and other such things.45

In this work of Plutarch, then, the northern Atlantic serves as conduit

for someone out of another world to convey higher knowledge into ours.

Some decades later, the same wide body of water and Pytheas' Thule

within it became the mainstay of one of the most ambitious tales of

adventures probably ever written: the 'Unbelievable tales of the

regions beyond Thule' ("ArTLaTa 7Trrep ov'Arv) in 24 books by

Antonius Diogenes. To get an idea of this once huge (but no longer

extant) work, we have to rely on the summary given by Photius in his

Bibliotheca, which in fact provides a rather detailed sketch of its contents.

These have a cardinal point in Thule itself where the male hero of the

story, Dinias, meets the woman Dercyllis, who is to become his lover,

and her brother Mantinias, and the three tell each other of the many

wanderings and adventures they had already had all over the world

before meeting at this northerly junction. To quote some passages

from Photius' summary (Bibl. Cod. 166): 'Dinias ... is introduced nar-

rating what he himself had seen during his wanderings or what he had

heard from others who saw it, and what he learned from Dercyllis,

when she told her tales in Thule, I mean her wanderings mentioned

before ... [p. 109b3-15]; (Dercyllis) found an unexpected solace in

her brother Mantinias, who, after many wanderings and after having

explained to her many most incredible sights regarding human and

other beings and sun and moon itself and plants and islands, provided

her with rich material for tales to relate to Dinias later on ... [p.

11 0a8-16]; all this and yet many more similar things, their burial and

their coming back from the grave, and the love-affairs of Mantinias ...

and other things of similar kind on the island of Thule, all this Dinias

45 Plut., Defacie 26. 941A - 942 C.

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 THE GREEKS AND THE WESTERN SEAS 165

is presented as weaving into a tale, having learned it from Dercyllis'

story-telling ... And (with all that) Antonius Diogenes has already com-

pleted the twenty-third book of his "Tales about the incredible things

beyond Thule", although his work has as yet provided nothing or only

very little about Thule at all ... [p. 110 b 11-23]; Dinias, together with

Carmanes and Meniscus, extended their wanderings into the regions

beyond Thule, after Azulis had left them ... [p. 110b35].'

The third major text, which again only a few decades later has as its

background the Atlantic Ocean, is the most famous one. Lucian's

'True Stories' have as their main story-line a daring voyage (seeking

knowledge about strange things) which started at the Pillars of

Heracles and then for the most part moved within the vast expanse of

the western ocean (with some excursions to the moon, the sun, even

the otherworldly Isle of the Blessed). The 'True Stories' clearly drew

upon Antonius Diogenes' tale and other similar romances (possibly on

Plutarch's 'On the Face of the Moon' as well)46 with the clear intention

of poking hilarious fun at them. How well Lucian succeeded is proven by

the numerous literary offspring the 'True Stories' had during and since

the Renaissance. Suffice it here to say that Lucian with marvellous dex-

terity employs the typical features which had by now become firmly con-

nected with the Atlantic Ocean in the Greek imagination: the various

strange islands located in it (and in several cases inhabited by miraculous

or monstrous peoples), the sea-monsters roaming its depths, and even

the mysterious other continent which looms on the other side of the

wide watery expanse and which the first-person narrator actually

reaches at the end of the second book.

In the proem of the 'True Stories' Lucian claimed that he had in fact

targeted many works with his parody. That there were indeed more than

we today know of can be demonstrated by looking at a number of mostly

short hints which take us back once more to Atlantis in both philosophi-

cal and merely entertaining contexts.

It is well-known that in the latter part of the third century AD a

remarkable revival of Plato's philosophy took place under the auspices

of Neo-Platonism. Not only did its founder, Plotinus himself, apparently

make an earnest attempt to bring a city called Platonopolis and ruled by

Plato's laws and institutions into real life in Campania,47 but one of

46 See now P. Walchli, Studien zu den literarischen Beziehungen zwischen Plutarch und Lukian

(Miinchen/Leipzig, 2003), 159-216.

47 Porphyrius, Vita Plotini 12 = 65f.: 'The emperor Gallienus and his wife Salonina honoured

and revered Plotinus to a high degree, and making use of their friendship he asked them to

rebuild *** [here the name seems to have fallen out], a city which was supposed to have existed

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 166 THE GREEKS AND THE WESTERN SEAS

Plotinus' disciples, Zoticus, actually tried to do what the great Athenian

lawgiver and poet Solon (according to Plato) had wanted but failed to

do: to convert the 'Story of Atlantis' into a poem.48 Unfortunately,

this statement itself is just about the only information we have about

this work; it would surely have been of interest - if only for curiosity's

sake - to see how a Neo-Platonist of the later third century AD tried

to convert Plato's unfinished tale into epic (?) verse. Did he, by the

way, supply the missing parts of the story? Alas, we shall probably

never know.

Aelian's 'sea-rams' and the kings and queens of Atlantis

Already some decades before Zoticus, we are provided with a piece of

information concerning Atlantis which at first sight might seem to be

an astonishing discovery. This really tantalizing piece of lore concerning

that once mighty place just in the location and general situation as Plato

describes it - namely, as a big island kingdom far out in the western

ocean - is preserved by another Greek writer of Imperial times. Late

in the second century AD, Aelian (who actually was an Italian writing

Greek) produced a work called 'On the nature of animals', an ample col-

lection of entertaining and sometimes even fascinating stories about a

wide range of animals which are found to be just as intelligent or sensi-

tive as human beings. In chapter 2 of book 15 Aelian relates some

remarkable tales about the OaAaTdrtos KptO6, the 'sea-ram' (or 'ram-

fish'), which - if we add some information given by other sources,

most notably Pliny the Elder49 - is probably to be identified with Orca

gladiator, the Grampus or Killer Whale. Aelian starts with indications

in Campania, but had long since gone to ruin, and to donate the surrounding countryside when it

was settled; those who would settle there were to live according to Plato's laws, and the settlement

was to be called Platonopolis, and he [Plotinus] promised to move there himself together with his

followers. And the philosopher would have accomplished his intention very easily, if some people

of the emperor's staff had not prevented it out of envy or resentment or some other bad motive.'

48 Porphyrius, Vita Plotini 7 = 35: 'One of his pupils was Zoticus, a critic and poet, who wrote

"Emendations of Antimachus" and who very skilfully converted the "Tale of Atlantis" into a

poem ...'

49 In NH 9.10, Pliny records, among other sea-animals stranded on the ocean shore, '(sea-)ele-

phants' and '(sea-)rams'; in 9.145 he describes the hunting habits of the sea-ram as those of a

devious robber, who, lurking in the shadows of big ships, waits for incautious swimmers, or who

stealthily creeps up to small fishing-boats to upset them and get at the humans in them. In

another chapter of Aelian's 'On the nature of animals' (9.49), the sea-ram is included among the

'biggest sea-creatures' and described as a 'mighty and dangerous beast' even from a distance,

because of the turbulence it creates in the sea. See also 0. Keller, Die antike Tierwelt Bd. I

(Leipzig, 1909), 412-14; D'A. W. Thompson, A Glossary of Greek Fishes (London, 1947), 132f.

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 THE GREEKS AND THE WESTERN SEAS 167

of where these creatures live (namely in the waters around Corsica and

Sardinia) and then gives some characteristic detail of their outward

appearance: 'the male sea-ram has a white band running round its fore-

head (you might describe it as the tiara of a Lysimachus or an Antigonus

or of some other king of Macedon), but the female has curls, just as

cocks have wattles, attached below its neck' (transl. by A. F

Scholfield). After this introductory information, we are presented with

a thrilling (and at the same time, chilling) story how such a sea-ram

with its malice and cunning may actually snare and kill a human

being; and after that comes the really interesting part, as far as our

subject is concerned: 'Those who live on the shores of the Oceanus

tell a tale of how the ancient kings of Atlantis, sprung from the seed of

Poseidon, wore upon their head the band from the male sea-ram, as a

sign of their authority, while their wives, the queens, wore the curls of

the females as a proof of theirs' (transl. by A. F. Scholfield, slightly

modified).

This is most interesting information (if 'information' it is), and one

may well wonder why modern Atlantologists - who are, after all, so

keen to find corroborating material to prove the historicity of their

beloved Atlantis - apparently have not yet pounced on this; for the

quite extraordinary feature of this (at first sight more or less innocent-

looking) detail is, of course, that it can not be found in Plato's two

accounts in Timaeus and Critias, but ostensibly presents additional

material about Atlantis. Add to this Aelian's remarkable source-

indication - 'those who live on the shores of the Oceanus tell a tale

...' - and you might actually be tempted to draw the following con-

clusion: it looks as if there is here in Aelian a piece of information

about Atlantis not found in Plato and ascribed to an apparently straight-

forward source different from Plato - wow, this could actually be the

first independent confirmation of Plato's tale which has been sought

for so long! So, Atlantis was historical, after all!?

Before our eager Atlantologists, however, start to rejoice too trium-

phantly, I am afraid I have to spoil their feast and propose another

and (in my opinion) much more simple and probable solution.

Aelian's detail about the head-bands of the kings and queens of

Atlantis is not really the remnant of an old and independent tradition

confirming Critias' tale in Plato, but rather a nicely elaborated detail

coming from a romance or novel after Plato which in some way

touched on Atlantis and its pseudo-history as it had earlier been

conceived by Plato; we would thus gain more evidence for Greek

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 168 THE GREEKS AND THE WESTERN SEAS

imaginative literary tinkering with the motif of strange things lurking in

the mysterious western seas. There are the following reasons for thinking

so.

First, let us consider the source-indication. Establishing the sources of

Aelian's extensive collection of animal stories is a notoriously tricky

business;50 but if we know one thing about him, it is that Aelian certainly

did not travel around (as Herodotus is at least reputed to have done) and

consult inhabitants of the westernmost shores of the Roman Empire

about the royal insignia of Atlantean kings; in fact he himself tells us

that he is most of all a widely-read collector of what other people have

written down in their books.51 Moreover, we seem to have reliable infor-

mation that he did not even once venture outside his native country,

Italy.52 This makes it quite certain that between those 'inhabitants of

the shores round the ocean' and Aelian himself has got to stand at

least one other book; and it may be worthwhile finding out what the

nature of that book may have been.

To find an answer to this question (or at least a plausible suggestion) I

would like to direct attention to another interesting passage in a rather

late author, which touches on our subject. In his massive commentary

on the Timaeus of Plato, the fifth-century Neo-Platonist Proclus,

while discussing the historicity of Atlantis, introduces an author who

at first glance seems to be very knowledgeable indeed about some

rather large islands out in the Atlantic Ocean. The passage runs like

this: 'That an island of such nature and size once existed is evident

from what is said by certain authors who investigated the things

around the outer sea. For according to them, there were seven islands

in that sea in their time, sacred to Persephone, and also three others

of enormous size, one of which was sacred to Pluto, another to

Ammon, and another one between them to Poseidon, the extent of

50 On the sources of Aelian's De natura animalium, see M. Wellmann, Hermes 26 (1891), 321-50

and 481-566; 27 (1892), 389-406; 30 (1895), 161-76; 31 (1896), 235-53; 51 (1916), 1-64; 52

(1917), 130-5; J. E Kindstrand, 'Claudius Aelianus und sein Werk', in ANRW 2.34.4 (Berlin/

New York, 1998), 2954-96, at 2971-7. Now in NA 15.4.9 and 19 (also 13.21) Aelian cites a

certain Demostratus (who wrote 'books on fisherman's lore'). Demostratus (or Damostratus, as

he is called in the Suda and in modem lexica) was a Roman and his work apparently teemed

with descriptions of marvellous and paradoxical phenomena. Wellmann (1895), 176 ascribes also

NA 15.2 (on our 'sea-ram') to him, but this seems not much more than guess-work.

51 In his prologue, he remarks: 'I know very well that others before me have taken pains with these

matters; but I am convinced that - by gathering these things as far as it was possible and by present-

ing them in a familiar style - I have produced a carefully worked-out gem of a book.'

52 See Philostratus, VS 2.31.3 p. 625: 'This man used to say that he had never travelled to any

part of the world beyond the confines of Italy, and had never set foot on a ship, or become

acquainted with the sea' (transl. W. C. Wright); cf. Kindstrand (n. 50), 2960.

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 THE GREEKS AND THE WESTERN SEAS
169

which was a thousand stadia; and the inhabitants of it - they add - pre-

served the remembrance from their ancestors of the immeasurably large

island of Atlantis which had really existed there and which for many ages

had reigned over all islands in the Atlantic sea and which itself had like-

wise been sacred to Poseidon. Now these things Marcellus has written in

his Aethiopica (Ev rotis AtlLoTrtKoso)' (transl. by Thomas Taylor,

modified).53

Who was this Marcellus who apparently knew so much about big

islands in the Atlantic? He is, in fact, so obscure to us that he has not

even got an article of his own in the famous Realenzyklopiidie, where

he is erroneously included under the heading 'Marcellinus'.54 He has,

however, got a number in Jacoby's Fragmente der Griechischen

Historiker (namely 671), but you will find there only two fragments

which are in fact the two quotations preserved in Proclus' commentary

(see n. 53). Jacoby tentatively dated Marcellus to Imperial times,

without, however, having any positive evidence.

One might perhaps even question whether we are dealing here with a

historian at all.55 Of course, in the earlier of the two passages Proclus

reckons Marcellus among 'authors who investigated the things around

the outer sea' (Trcv oaropovvrwv ra 7rept TrS 'cow OaAadrr-7s), and in the

latter he calls his work AiTO7TTKt) [taropta. But how much did he really

know of Marcellus? Interestingly, Marcellus' work in the earlier

passage is not called AltorrtnIKr [aropta, but simply AlOtoTrtKa, and this

might in fact be the title of a novel, as is easily shown by the famous

homonymous novel by Heliodorus (one might also compare the

BafvAcvitaKa of lamblichus, the POtVtKtKat of Lollianus, and others).

As, in fact, historical works use just the same kind of title (we may

compare, e.g., Ktesias' HIepotKa), this very circumstance might have

led Proclus (or already a predecessor from whom he took over the

Marcellus reference) astray to interpret A0LOrTLKa as AOLto7TrK7) crTopta.

It is, moreover, well-known that novels narrating adventure stories in

far-out places sometimes like to give themselves an aura of historical

or scientific foundation; a case in point is the already-mentioned work,

53 Procl., inPlat. Tim. comm. p. 177.10-30 (= FGrHist 671 F 1); see also p. 181.15 ( = FGrHist

671 F 2): 'Marcellus, the author of the Aethiopian Story/History' (Ma,pKeAAogs o ri-v ALOtort-LKrv ypdabas

laroptav).

54 W. Kroll, 'Marcellinus (52)', RE 14.2 (1930), 1489.43-53. See H. Gartner, 'Marcellus (13)',

Der kleine Pauly 3 (1969), 993.

55 In fact, this question is already asked by Kroll (above, n. 54): 'Ob es sich wirklich um ein

Geschichtswerk handelt?'; 'Fabelhafte Geographie, Roman?' is the assumption of Wilamowitz,

'Marcellus von Side', SB Ak Berlin, 1928, 8 = Kleine Schriften ii. 199 n. 2.

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 170 THE GREEKS AND THE WESTERN SEAS

'Unbelievable tales of the regions beyond Thule' by Antonius Diogenes,

whose author (probably in a kind of proem, clad in the form of a dedi-

catory letter) claimed to provide factual sources for each and every out-

landish phenomenon he depicted.56 And there is a third point, which

may be relevant in our case: it is a fact that such authors - presenting

an exciting story in the guise of apparent fact - often actually succeeded

in getting their works accepted as serious contributions to historical lore.

A number of examples can be found in Diodorus, who not only accepted

the mythological romances of Dionysius Scytobrachion,57 but also the

utopian travel narratives of Euhemerus and lambulus58 as serious histor-

iographic literature and included them in his sources.

If we keep all this in mind, we might argue that it is at the very least

possible (and I would say, even plausible and probable) that

Marcellus' AtO0oTrLKa was not really a work of serious historiographical

purpose, but a novel or romance filled with long-distance travel and

perhaps breath-taking adventures in marvellous far-off regions in the

southern and western parts of the world. Again a comparison with

Antonius Diogenes' 'Unbelievable tales of the regions beyond Thule'

may be instructive. I have already referred to Photius' summary which

abundantly shows how Antonius Diogenes included a great wealth of

marvellous material that in some parts seems to have been only tenu-

ously connected with the - at times rather complicated and twisted -

story-lines of his novel, and Marcellus might have proceeeded similarly.

Just as Antonius had his heroes relate their manifold adventures while

stranded in a far-outlying place like Thule, Marcellus might have intro-

duced tales about the long-lost Atlantis, as told to one of his heroes by

the inhabitants of the large island of Poseidon far out in the Atlantic

Ocean to which this hero (or heroine) during his travels might

somehow have come.59

There is even the possibility that Aelian's surprising tale about the

Atlantean kings and queens wearing head-bands made from the hide

of the dreaded sea-rams actually originated in no other work than

56 Photios (Bibl., cod. 166) p. 11 a30-b31: 'Now, Antonius Diogenes ... writes to Faustinus ...

He claims that even though he invents incredible and false things he has evidence about most of the

fables told by him from older authors, from whom he collected these things with much effort; he

even places the men who earlier documented such things in front of every of his books so that

his incredible tales should not lack testimony.'

57 Diod. 3.52.3; 3.66.5f.

58 Euhemerus: Diod. 6.1.1, 3, 4; lambulus: Diod. 2.55.2, 60.1, 2, 4.

59 In the latter part his long dialogue 'On the face of the moon', Plutarch tells a similar tale about

someone venturing into the Ocean to the west of Britain and finding large islands there: ch. 26,

941AB.

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 THE GREEKS AND THE WESTERN SEAS 171

Marcellus' Aethiopica. This, of course, cannot be proved; but that it

came at least out of a work similar in character to these Aethiopica

seems rather probable to me. This is, in any case, a much more plausible

assumption than to think that Aelian had laid his hands upon material

from an old and independent tradition about Atlantis. If my reconstruc-

tion of the probable character and partial content of Marcellus'

Aethiopica is not totally absurd, we may have lost with this work

another ancient predecessor of the likes of Marion Zimmer Bradley

and her 'Mists of Avalon'.

These Aethiopica, then, and Aelian's hints about the exotic headbands

of once-mighty Atlantean kings conclude this collection of material indi-

cating how Greek imagination was abidingly intrigued by the western

seas, which it had tried to penetrate since the hoary days of Greek

myths, and which it came to explore more deeply only after Pytheas'

travels, but which even then never ceased to arouse interest and

wonder to the end of Antiquity.60

60 This text is a slightly modified version of the 2003 Gaisford Lecture in the University of

Oxford. I am grateful to Peter Parsons, (now Emeritus) Regius Professor of Greek, for inviting

me to present this lecture to an illustrious audience. Many thanks, too, to Dr. Martin West for check-

ing and improving my English.

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