Where are the Columns of Hercules?, page 1

Hello Byrd

Thanks for your input on this most controversial topic

First of all I think that you are a bit too quik to question the honesty of N Densusianu before reading his whole book (wich, by the way, is not posible yet as the translation of it is still underway), and then make up your mind

Actually he was a man of great integrity and scolarship. He gather his material for this book during a span of a few decades serching in some of the great libraries of Europe including the Vatican as well as on the ground traveling extensivelly thruout Romania, the rest of Balcans and Italy. Along the way he colected the legends and mits of many places as well as the archeological data up to his time to have a broad overview

This book is not several hundreds yers old, as you asert - most probably an oversight on your part. It was publish in 1913, less then a hundred yers ago

It was not well received by the romanian scholars of his days (and is still the same today) and was not to be reprinted till the late '80s

It is verry unfortunated that the book is virtually unknown to the world at large by not beeing translated so far in a lunguge of world circulation

Even admiting your opinon about the book and his autor, wich personally I do not share, the dabate wich will have beeen created in the last hundred yers by i'ts verry controversial nuture, will only have been beneficial to the maters rised by N. Densusianu in his book, bringing up new ideas and interes about that long forgoted epoc

I will like now to bring up few more ideeas from N Densusianu's book about the place of the two Columns or Pillars of Hercules location

In the pt III Ch.XVI.8 according to Strabo and Herodotus the Tyrians of Phoenicia were the first people to look for the locatin of the Columns of Hercules at Oceanos potomas and were doing commerce with that region being paid in gold by the locals for they goods

Here is un interesting qote

According to Pliny (H. N. III. Proem), the locals from near the Columns of Hercules told that once upon a time, the mountains in this place were joined together on both sides, forming an uninterrupted chain, and that Hercules, by cutting an opening into these heights, had let the ocean, or the inland sea, to flow out, and in this way he had changed the appearance of the landscape (Mela, lib. I. 5, Cf. Diodorus Siculus, lib. IV. 18. 4)

The Pannonian plain, as we know, was covered by a fresh water sea until late in the Neolithic epoch. It stretched from the Eastern Alps to the Transylvanian Carpathians and its level was a lot higher than that of the Black Sea. The Carpathians and the Balkans were in those times directly connected and they barred the fresh water sea from the Black Sea.

N Densusianu is closing this section with this conclusion

Under no circumstance though, the ancient tradition about the cutting of mountains near the Columns of Hercules can be applied to the Gibraltar strait, between Europe and Africa. Here the width of the channel is 13km at its narrowest point, so this big waterway between Europe and Africa can’t be considered the result of a demolition work achieved by human genius and handiwork

An other interesting qote we find in Pt3 Ch-XVI.10

We find another important mention about the Columns of Hercules with the Roman grammarian Servius Maurus Honoratus (4th century a.d.), a lettered man with extraordinary knowledge of history and mythology. In the commentaries which he has written about Virgil’s Enaeid, he tells us the following: “according to what we read, the Columns of Hercules exist both in the Pontos region, and also in Hispania” (Virgilii Maronis opera). As we see here, Servius has added here “in Hispania also”, because this fiction had become consecrated, during many past centuries, on the Greek geographical documents, although the Romans, who had conquered Iberia and North Africa, had not found there any vestige, any tradition, about the Columns of Hercules