When the course of that Empire was run, and barbarism had spread over the land, she fitted up new and beautiful things upon her shores; nurtured Amalphi and Venice and Pisa, and built up Genoa and Barcelona. Then opened a new order. Seamanship, by magnetic touch endowed with wings, dared to lose sight of earth: issuing from these portals, it gave to the princes of the Peninsula the knowledge of a new world, and the title of lords of the eastern and western hemispheres.
Maritime power, now no longer pent up within the land, was successively competed for and attained by Holland and by England: it conferred upon the one independence at home—upon the other, dominion in the remotest regions of the earth. Here are connected the first enterprizes of man and his last struggles. Hence was the path sought to Britain. Here now floats Britain’s standard. The ruins of the Temple of Hercules saw Trafalgar’s fight. Here the hero of the Phœnix, prince, navigator, trader, conqueror of monsters, fertilizer of lands, found again the tides of his early home in the Indian ocean,[7] and set up his Pillars. His mighty shade has its resting place on the spot which is honoured with his name.
The next stage of discovery brings us to Columbus and Gama: this was the goal of the enterprise of the Phœnician—it was the starting-post of the Ligurian. In the unexplored waste a second Thule succeeded, and a new Peru supplied the exhausted one of old. “The stone of Hercules” and the “cup of Apollo”[8] showed the way to the regions towards which the one had travelled and where the other set. But the modern adventurers had the problem solved for them, not in the reasonings only, but in the poetry of the ancients.[9] They had divided the earth, by degrees—fixed their number and measure—they knew the length of the day—they knew how many hours the sun spent over the regions they were acquainted with. Fifteen twenty-fourths of his time they could account for. Nine hours remained unexplored to complete the circle.[10]
But whilst Don Henry was daily gazing over the unmeasured expanse to the west, the use of the globes and the rationale of geography were being taught in Italy in verse. The sun must be expected, Pulci sings, there whither he hastens; where he sets, it cannot be night: space is not useless because to us unknown, nor that ocean without shores beyond which washes ours. Then there are continents bordering the deep, and islands studding its bosom; nor are these barren of herbs, nor are herbs and fruits given in vain: there, too, there must be men, who have gods like us, the work of their hands, and sorrows the fruit of their will. Read his vaticination.
“Passato il fiume Bagrade ch’io dico,
Presso a lo stretto son di Gibilterra,
Dove pose i suoi segni il Greco antico
Abila e Calpe, a dimostrar ch’egli erra
Non per iscogli o per vento nimico,
Ma perchè il globo cala de la terra
Chi va più oltre, e non trova poi fondo,
Tanto che cade giu nel basso mondo.
“Rinaldo allor riconosciuto il loco,
Perche altra volta I’aveva veduto,
Dicea con Astarotte: dimmi un poco.
A quel che questo segno ha proveduto?
Disse Astarotte: un error lungo e fioco
Per molti secol non ben conosciuto,
Fa che si dice d’Ercol le colonne,
E che più là molti periti sonne.
“Sappi che questa opinione è vana;
Perchè più oltre navicar si puote
Però che l’acqua in ogni parte è piana,
Benchè la terra abbi forma di ruote:
Era più grossa allor la gente umana:
Tal che potrebbe arrossirne le gote
Ercole ancor d’aver posti que segni,
Perchè più oltre passerano i legni.
“E puossi andar qui ne l’altro emisperio,
Però che al centro ogni cosa reprime;
Si che la terra per divin misterio
Sospesa sta fra le stelle sublime,
E là giù son città, castella e imperio,
Ma nol cognobbon quelle genti prime:
Vedi che il sol di camminar s’affretta,
Dove io ti dico che là giù s’aspetta.
“E come un segno surge in oriente,
Un altro cade con mirabil’ arte,
Come si vede qua ne l’occidente,
Però che il ciel giustamente comparte;
Antipodi appellata è quella gente;
Adora il sole e Juppiterra e Marte
E piante e animal come voi hanno,
E spesso insieme gran battaglie fanno.”[11]
This remarkable passage has been esteemed a prognostication of the discovery of America; it should rather be called directions to find it out.[12]
But what were the Pillars of Hercules, and where are we to look for them? Are they really the rocks which frown or smile across the Straits, such as it has pleased the imagination of poets to picture them? If so, then might the fable be deemed an extravagance. As Jacob set up his stone at Bethel, and called it the house of God;[13] as Joshua set up in Jordan pillars for the tribes of Israel, so did Hercules set up his altars, when he had reached the ocean. Over them in subsequent times the temple which bore his name was raised, but there was no image;[14] none of the child-sacrifices of Baal; none of the lasciviousness[15] of Bætica, and of the worship of Astaraoth. They worshipped, indeed, deities unknown, or consecrated thoughts, and services contemned elsewhere. Three altars were there to Art, Old Age, and Poverty. From a Greek tourist, who, thaumaturgist as he was, comprehended very little of what he saw, I quote the following:—
“In this temple, two Herculeses are worshipped without having statues erected to them. The Egyptian Hercules has two brazen altars without inscriptions, the Theban but one. Here we saw engraved in stone the Hydra, and Diomedes’ mares, and the twelve labours of Hercules, together with the golden olive of Pygmalion, wrought with exquisite skill, and placed here no less on account of the beauty of its branches, than on that of its fruit, of emeralds, which appeared as if real. Besides the above, the golden belt of the Telamonian Teucer was shown to us.... The Pillars in the temple were composed of gold and silver; and so nicely blended were the metals as to form but one colour. They were more than a cubit high, of a quadrangular form, like anvils, whose capitals were inscribed with characters neither Egyptian, nor Indian, nor such as could be deciphered. These Pillars are the chains which bind together the earth and sea. The inscriptions on them were executed by Hercules in the house of the Parcæ, to prevent discord arising among the elements, and that friendship being interrupted which they have for each other.”[16]
There was no Hercules, but the Tyrian worshipped here. The temple was Tyrian, the rites were Tyrian, and the Tyrians did not borrow from the Greeks. What I say is but the repetition of what Appian, Arrian[17] and others have said. In fact, there was but one Hercules. The writing could only be Phœnician. By the testimony of Greek travellers, the pillars were square stones; and the tradition of their being the links which bind together the earth and the sea, again connects these with the occasion upon which they were erected: they were both in Europe.[18]
To call Calpe and Abyla “The Pillars of Hercules” was a license, and might be a poetic one; but to assume these mountains to be so geographically, was to withdraw the license by destroying the poetry. This solecism modern philosophy has adopted![19]