“North of Ortygia, towards the region where the sun sets;
Rich in oxen and sheep, and clothed with vines and wheat,”
where the people live free from want and sickness. These are the same ideas which were afterwards transferred to the legend of the Hyperboreans (cf. [pp. 15 ff.]).[328] It is natural that among the Greeks wine and the vine took a prominent place in these descriptions. In post-Homeric times the “Isles of the Blest” (Μακάρων νῆσοι) are described by Hesiod (and subsequently by Pindar) as lying in the western ocean—
“there they live free from care in the Isles of the Blest, by the deep-flowing Ocean, the fortunate heroes to whom the earth gives honey-sweet fruits three times a year.”
It is these ideas—perhaps originally derived from the Orient—that have developed into the Insulæ Fortunatæ.
These islands are described by many writers of later antiquity. Pliny says [Nat. Hist., vi. 32 (37)] that according to some authors there lie to the west of Africa
“the Fortunate Isles and many others, whose number and distance are likewise given by Sebosus. According to him the distance of the island of Junonia from Gades is 750,000 paces; it is an equal distance from this island westward to Pluvialia and Capraria. In Pluvialia there is said to be no water but that which the rain brings. 250,000 paces south-west of it and over against the left side of Mauritania [Morocco] lie the Fortunate Isles, of which one is called Invallis on account of its elevated form, the other Planaria on account of its flatness. Invallis has a circumference of 300,000 paces, and the trees on it are said to attain a height of 140 feet.”
But as usual Pliny uncritically confuses statements from various sources, and he here adds information collected by the African king Juba about the Fortunate Isles. According to this they were six in number: Ombrios, two islands of Junonia, besides Capraria, Nivaria, and Canaria, so called from the many large dogs there, of which two were brought to Juba. Solinus mentions in one place [c. 23, 10] that there are three Fortunatæ Insulæ, but in another place [c. 56] he gives Juba’s statement from Pliny. That these islands were located to the west of Africa is certainly due to the Phœnicians’ and Carthaginians’ knowledge of the Canary Islands, and Ptolemy also places them here (see above, [p. 117]). Strabo [i. 3] thinks that the Isles of the Blest lay west of the extremity of Maurusia (Morocco), in the region where the ends of Maurusia and Iberia meet. Their name shows that they lie near to the holy region (i.e., the Elysian Fields).
In his biography of the eminent Roman general Sertorius (“imperator” in Spain for several years, died in 72 B.C.), Plutarch also mentions the Isles of the Blest. He tells us that when Sertorius landed as an exile on the south-west coast of Spain (Andalusia),
“he found there some sailors newly arrived from the Atlantic Isles. These are two in number, separated only by a narrow strait, and they are 10,000 stadia (1000 geographical miles) from the African coast. They are called the ‘Isles of the Blest.’ Rain seldom falls there, and when it does so, it is in moderation; but they usually have mild winds, which spread such abundance of dew that the soil is not only good for sowing and planting, but produces of itself the most excellent fruit, and in such abundance that the inhabitants have nothing else to do but to abandon themselves to the enjoyment of repose. The air is always fresh and wholesome, through the favourable temperature of the seasons and their imperceptible transition.... So that it is generally assumed, even among the barbarians, that these are the Elysian Fields and the habitations of the blest, which Homer has described with all the magic of poetry. When Sertorius heard of these marvels he had a strong desire to settle in these islands, where he might live in perfect peace and far from the evils of tyranny and war.”
But this remarkable man soon had fresh warlike under-takings to think about, so that he never went there. It appears too from the fragments that have come down to us of Sallust’s Histories[329] that Sertorius did not visit these islands, but only wished to do so. In fragment 102 we read: