Pillars of Hercules

You take me back to Atlantis.

We're going to go beyond the pillars of Hercules.

He's like, no one's ever done that before.

You're crazy.

But if we don't find your home within a month, I think he says between two full moons or something like that, you're going to be my wife and you're going to serve me.

And she's like, all right, yeah, fine, whatever.

And so they go beyond the Pillars of Hercules, and there's some pretty great early special effects work going on there.

Demetrius hallucinates Poseidon attacking him, but it feels like a scene out of Cabin Boy.

Within a few generations, they would begin to thrive again, taking advantage of the power vacuum to build new trading networks.

The Phoenician civilization that would eventually found Carthage and sail beyond the Pillars of Hercules was born from the ashes of the Bronze Age collapse.

But that was later.

For now, the world was breaking.

The term Atlantic was first used in the 6th century BC by the Greek poet Stesichorus, who referred to it as Atlantikoi Heligei, meaning Sea of Atlas.

The Greeks also referred to modern-day Gibraltar on one side and Morocco on the other as the Pillars of Hercules, with the concept that this was the end of the world.

Plato placed the legendary island of Atlantis, a lost kingdom, beyond the Pillars of Hercules.

And Renaissance tradition says that the pillars bore the warning, nay plus ultra, or nothing further beyond, warning sailors and navigators not to sail due west.

Any discussion of Columbus must also include whether 5th century Irish monks made it to North America.

The Critias dialogue, though incomplete, provides the detailed description of Atlantis that has captivated imaginations for over two millennia.

Plato describes an island larger than Libya and Asia combined, situated beyond the Pillars of Hercules, the ancient name for the Strait of Gibraltar.

This geographical placement positioned Atlantis in the Atlantic Ocean in waters that were supposedly impossible after the island's destruction due to shallow mud left by the catastrophe.

The physical description of Atlantis reveals a civilization of extraordinary sophistication and wealth.

This dating positions the narrative in the immediate aftermath of the last ice age, a period when sea levels were indeed rising and coastal civilizations might have faced catastrophic flooding.

However, the nine thousand year gap also conveniently places the events beyond the reach of any contemporary historical verification, lending the account an air of ancient authenticity while preventing factual challenges.

The geographical location beyond the Pillars of Hercules similarly serves multiple narrative purposes.

This placement removes Atlantis from the familiar Mediterranean world while positioning it as a genuine threat to the civilizations Plato's audience knew.

Heracles, driving the cattle of Geryones, came to this land, which was then desolate, but is now inhabited by the Scythians.

Geryones lived west of the Pontus, settled in the island called by the Greeks Erythia, on the shore of Ocean, near Gadira, outside the pillars of Heracles.

As for Ocean, the Greeks say that it flows around the whole world from where the sun rises, but they cannot prove that this is so.

Heracles came from there to the country now called Scythia, where, encountering wintry and frosty weather, he drew his lion's skin over him and fell asleep.

And it appears to me to be wider beyond all comparison, for Libya shows clearly that it is bounded by the sea, except where it borders on Asia.

Necos, king of Egypt, first discovered this and made it known.

When he had finished digging the canal that leads from the Nile to the Arabian Gulf, he sent Phoenicians in ships, instructing them to sail on their return voyage past the Pillars of Heracles until they came into the northern sea and so to Egypt.

So the Phoenicians set out from the Red Sea and sailed to the southern sea.

The most famous of them all was the overthrow of the island of Atlantis.

This great island lay over against the Pillars of Heracles, in extent greater than Libya and Asia put together, and was the passage to other islands and to a great ocean of which the Mediterranean Sea was only the harbour; and within the pillars the empire of Atlantis reached in Europe to Tyrrhenia and in Libya to Egypt.

This mighty power was arrayed against Egypt and Hellas and all the countries bordering on the Mediterranean.

Then your city did bravely and won renown over the whole earth.

Many great and wonderful deeds are recorded of your state in our histories, but one of them exceeds all the rest in greatness and valor.

For these histories tell of a mighty power which, unprovoked, made an expedition against the whole of Europe and Asia, and to which your city put an end.

This power came forth out of the Atlantic Ocean, for in those days the Atlantic was navigable, and there was an island situated in front of the straits which are by you called the Pillars of Heracles.

The island was larger than Libya and Asia put together, and was the way to the other islands, and from these you might pass to the whole of the opposite continent which surrounded the true ocean.

The ocean, pelagos, there was at that time navigable.

For in front of the mouth, which you Greeks call the Pillars of Heracles, lay an island which was larger than Libya and Asia together.

Lying within the mouth is evidently a haven having a narrow entrance, but that yonder is a real ocean, and the land surrounding it may most rightly be called in the fullest and truest sense, a continent.

Okay, so interesting that there is an emphasis on it being part of a full-blown continent, while also several times referring to the city as an island.

All right, so that's what I got on Timaeus, and now moving into the only other manuscript by Plato on the subject called Critias.

Critias kicks off repeating what might be one of the more important aspects here.

We must recall the fact that nine thousand is the sum of years since the war occurred between the dwellers beyond the Pillars of Heracles and all that dwelt within them.

As regards the numerous barbaric tribes that then existed, the sequel of our story, as it were, unrolled.

They're keeping that like a corporate secret.

Uh, it's also not terrible, terribly hard to keep a corporate secret when up until that point, uh, the Strait of Gibraltar was known as The Pillars of Hercules.

That was kind of essentially almost like the end of the navigable, uh, marine world at that point.

It was the end of the Greek world, I mean.

Locations of the narratives to Malta are reasonably close.

Well, Plato, he said that the great island lay against the pillars of Hercules, okay? Large in Libya and Asia put together and was the passage to other islands.

So maybe Malta wasn't downtown Atlantis, but it could have been part of the past, one of those other islands that was passage too, okay? as far as the empire.

And Plato also said that within the pillars, meaning the pillars of Hercules, Atlantis reached in Europe to Tyrrhenia, which means anything that's not Greek, and in Libya to Egypt.

So within that bubble includes Malta, according to Plato, and where he described the Atlantis empire was, because it wasn't one island.

It reached the many islands and was part of an empire in Plato's Timaeus.

The empire.

And that there are many islands.

And things like...

One of the major Phoenician symbols is the Pillars of Hercules.

And the Phoenicians depicted the Pillars of Hercules, which is basically the Straits of Gibraltar.

And that's also represented with a snake.

And so you've got two columns with a snake connecting the two columns.

The dollar sign is Phoenician.

And then when you take a look at the goddess that is on the top of the Capitol Dome in Washington, D.C., she has a U with an S in the middle of it, in the middle of her chest.

And if you look at it, if you look at that symbol, you can see that it's the pillars of Hercules with the snake, and it's just been deconstructed a little bit.