Hæc nos, ab imis Punicorum annalibus
Prolata longo tempore, edidimus tibi.”
Compare also v, 115-130 of the same poem, where the author again quotes from a voyage of Himilco, who had been four months in the ocean outside of the Pillars of Hercules:—
“Sic nulla late flabra propellunt ratem,
Sic segnis humor æquoris pigri stupet.
Adjicit et illud, plurimum inter gurgites
Extare fucum, et sæpe virgulti vice
Retinere puppim,” etc.
The dead calm, mud, and shallows of the external ocean are touched upon by Aristot. Meteorolog. ii, 1, 14, and seem to have been a favorite subject of declamation with the rhetors of the Augustan age. See Seneca, Suasoriar. i, 1.
Even the companions and contemporaries of Columbus, when navigation had made such comparative progress, still retained much of these fears respecting the dangers and difficulties of the unknown ocean: “Le tableau exagéré (observes A. von Humboldt, Examen Critique de l’Histoire de la Géographie, t. iii, p. 95) que la ruse des Phéniciens avait tracé des difficultés qu’opposaient à la navigation au delà des Colonnes d’Hercule, de Cerné, et de l’Ile Sacrée (Ierné), le fucus, le limon, le manque de fond, et le calme perpétuel de la mer, ressemble d’une manière frappante aux récits animés des premiers compagnons de Colomb.”