Ausc. 136; Plat. Tim. p. 24, 25, comp. Atlantis; Theophrast. Hist. Plant. iv. 6. § 4; Scylax, p. 53; Said. s. v. άπλωτα πελάγη, Άτλαντικά πελάγη; comp. Ideler, ad Aristot. Meteor. p. 504, and Humboldt, Krit. Untersuch. vol. ii. p. 67, foll., who explains the stories of the shallows and sea-weed as referring to the extraordinary phaenomena which the parts of the ocean near the coast would present at low water to voyagers previously unacquainted with its tides). The most marked epochs in the subsequent history of discovery in the Atlantic are those of the voyage of Pytheas of Massilia (about B.C. 334) round the NW. shores of Europe, described in his lost works, περί τού ώκεανού; and περίοδος τής γής, which are frequently cited by Strabo, Pliny, and others (Dict. of Biog. s. v.); the voyage of Polybius, with the fleet of Scipio, along the W. coast of Africa [Libya]; and the intercourse of the Romans with the British isles [Britannia]. But, as the Atlantic was not, like the Indian Ocean, a great highway of commerce, and there was no motive for the navigation of its stormy seas beyond the coasts of Spain and Gaul, little additional knowledge was gained respecting it. The latest views of the ancient geographers are represented in the statements of Dionysius and Agathemerus, referred to above. So little was known of the prevailing currents and winds, and other physical features of the Atlantic, that their discussion does not belong to ancient geography, except with reference to one point, which is treated under Libya, namely the influence of the currents along the W. coast of Africa on the attempts to circumnavigate that continent. The special names most in use for portions of the Atlantic Ocean were the following: Oceanus Gaditaus, the great gulf (if the expression may be allowed) outside the Straits, between the SW. coast of Spain and the NW. coast of Africa, to which, as has been seen above, some geographers gave the name of the Atlantic Sea or Gulf, in a restricted sense: Oceanus Cantaber (Καντάβριος ώκεανός: Bay of Biscay), between the N. coast of Spain and the W. coast of Gaul: Mare Gallicum or Oceanus Gallicus, off the NW. coast of Gaul, at the mouth of the English Channel: and Mare Britannicum or Oceanus Britannicus, the E. part of the Channel, and the Straits of Dover, between the mouths of the Sequana (Seine) and the Rhenus (Rhine). All to the N. of this belonged to the Northern Ocean. [Oceanus Septentrionalis.] Of the islands in the Atlantic, exclusive of those immediately adjacent to the mainlands of Europe and Africa, the only ones known to the ancients were those called by them Fortunatae Insulae, namely, the Canaries. with, perhaps, the Madeira group. The legend of the great island of Atlantis, and its connection with the question of any ancient knowledge of the great Western Continent, demands a separate article. [ P. S. ]
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The above passage is quoted fully to show the notion which it exhibits, when rightly understood, that beyond and on the opposite side of the Atlantic there was a vast continent, between which and the W. shores of Europe and Libya were a number of islands, the greatest of which, and the nearest to our world, was that called Atlantis. In this island of Atlantis, he adds, there arose a great and powerful dynasty of kings, who became masters of the whole island, and of many of the other islands and of parts of the continent And moreover, on this side the Atlantic, within the Straits, they ruled over Libya up to Egypt, and Europe up to Tyrrhenia. They next assembled their whole force for the conquest of the rest of the countries on the Mediterranean ; but the Athenians, though deserted by their allies, repelled the invaders, and restored the liberty of all the peoples within the Pillars of Hercules. But afterwards came great earthquakes and floods, by which the victors in the contest were swallowed up beneath the earth, and the island of Atlantis was engulfed in the sea, which has ever since been unnavigable by reason of the shoals of mud created by the sunken island. (Tim. p. 25, a — d.) The story is expanded in the Critias (p. 108, e; foil.), where, however, the latter part of it is unfortunately lost. Here Plato goes back to the original partition of the earth among the gods, and (what is of some importance as to the interpretation of the legend), he particularly marks the fact that, of the two parties in this great primeval conflict, the Athenians were the people of Athena and Hephaestus, but the Atlantines the people of Poseidon. The royal race was the offspring of Poseidon and of Cleito, a mortal woman, the daughter of Evenor, one of the original earthborn inhabitants of the island, of whose residence in the centre of the island Plato gives a particular description. (Crit. p. 113, o — e.) Cleito bore to Poseidon five pairs of twins, who became the heads of ten royal houses, each ruling a tenth portion of the island, according to a partition made by Poseidon himself, but all subject to the supreme dynasty of Atlas, the eldest of the ten, on whom Poseidon conferred the place in the centre of the island, which had been before the residence of Evenor, and which he fortified and erected into the capital. We have then a minute description of the strength and magnificence of this capital; of the beauty and fertility of the island, with its lofty mountains, its abundant rivers, its exuberant vegetation, its temperate climate, its irrigation by natural |
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