Читать книгу Legendary Islands of the Atlantic: A Study of Medieval Geography онлайн

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We have said that all fiction has some root in reality. Even a myth is commonly an attempted explanation of some mysterious natural phenomenon or distorted narrative of obscure, nearly forgotten happenings. Intentional fiction, try as it may, cannot keep quite clear of facts. We turn, then, to those salient features of the above excerpts which may in a measure stand for real past events or puzzling conditions supposed to continue. Beside the prehistoric grandeur and triumph of Athens, already dealt with, these are to be noted: the Atlantean invasion of the Mediterranean; the vastness of the outer island which sent forth these armies; its submergence; and the alleged continued obstruction to navigation in that quarter.

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There seem to have been some rumors afloat of very early hostilities between dwellers on the shores of the Mediterranean and those beyond the Pillars of Hercules. That geographical name bears witness to the supposed exertion of Greek dominant power at the very gateway of the Atlantic, and the legend connecting this demigod with Cadiz carries his activities a little farther out on the veritable ocean front. The rationalizing Diodorus, writing in the first century before Christ but dealing freely with traditions from a very much earlier time, presents Hercules as a great military commander, who, having set up his memorial pillars, proceeded to overrun and conquer Iberia (the present Spain and Portugal), passing thence to Liguria and thence to Italy after the manner of Hannibal, much nearer to Diodorus and even better known.17 It is evident that the earlier part of this campaign must include warfare beyond the Pillars on at least the Lusitanian Atlantic front. Furthermore, we are introduced to the western Amazons, who had their center of power on the Island Hesperia between Mount Atlas and the ocean and invaded both the inland mountaineers and their seaboard neighbors, the Gorgons—also feminine, if no great beauties.18 The poor Gorgons were subjugated but long afterward developed power again under Queen Medusa, only to be disastrously overcome by the great Greek general, Perseus. Both the Gorgons and the western Amazons seem to have had their abodes on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean south of the Strait of Gibraltar, along the front of what we now call Morocco and the region south of it. We cannot say how much of these tales belongs to Diodorus; but he certainly did not invent the whole of them and is not likely to have contrived their most distinctive features. The myth of Perseus, like that of Theseus and the Minotaur, meant something dimly and distantly historic. We think we partly understand the latter after the excavations in Crete. Similarly, the flights and feats of Perseus, as given in mythology, may be another way of saying that he made swift voyages far afield and descended on his enemies with deadly execution.