PREDICTIONS OF THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA.
Seneca, in his Medea, Act ii, thus shadowed forth this event fifteen centuries before its occurrence:—
Venient annis Sæcula seris,
Quibus Oceanus vincula rerum
Laxet, et ingens pateat Tellus,
Tiphysque novos detegat orbes;
Nec sit terris Ultima Thule.
(After the lapse of years, ages will come in which Ocean shall relax his chains around the world, and a vast continent shall appear, and Tiphys—the pilot—shall explore new regions, and Thule shall be no longer the utmost verge of the earth.)
“A prediction,” says the commentator, “of the Spanish discovery of America.”
Before Seneca’s lines were written, Plato had narrated the Egyptian legend that, engulfed in the ocean, but sometimes visible, was the island of Atalantis, supposed to mean the Western world.
Pulci, the friend of Lorenzo de Medici, in his Morgante Maggiore, written before the voyage of Columbus and before the physical discoveries of Galileo and Copernicus, introduces this remarkable prophecy; (alluding to the vulgar belief that the Columns of Hercules were the limits of the earth.)
Know that this theory is false: his bark
The daring mariner shall urge far o’er
The western wave, a smooth and level plain,
Albeit the earth is fashioned like a wheel.
Man was in ancient days of grosser mould,
And Hercules might blush to learn how far
Beyond the limits he had vainly set,
The dullest sea-boat soon shall wing her way.
Men shall descry another hemisphere;
Since to one common centre all things tend,
So earth, by curious mystery divine,
Well balanced hangs amid the starry spheres.
At our antipodes are cities, states,
And thronged empires, ne’er divined of yore.
But see, the sun speeds on his western path
To glad the nations with expected light.
Dante, two centuries before, put this language into the mouth of Ulysses:—
The broad Atlantic first my keel impressed,
I saw the sinking barriers of the west,
And boldly thus addressed my hardy crew:—
While yet your blood is warm, my gallant train,
Explore with me the perils of the main
And find new worlds unknown to mortal view.
Inferno, Canto 26.
He then proceeds to mention the discovery of a mountainous island, after five months’ sailing.
The probability of a short western passage to India is mentioned by Aristotle, De Cœlo, ii., a view confirmed in stronger terms afterwards by Edrisi, the Arabian geographer, Strabo, Francis Bacon, Cardinal de Alliaco (Imago Mundi), and Toscanelli.