Among them were Hercules, Pallas Athena, who was a High Priestess in the Temple of Truth, and Lady Portia, known as the Goddess of Justice.
Hercules (Heracles) slew the dragon Ladon guarding the golden apples.
Later linked to Melqart/Hercules in Philistine cities (e.g., Jamnia), showing his long survival in the region.
This transition marked the start of a powerful civilization on a continent comprising seven major islands, dedicated to divine wisdom and known as Olisis or Atlantis, beyond the Columns of Hercules.
Then, I’ll dive into Plato’s original texts, examining potential mistranslations or later interpolations—such as the “Pillars of Hercules”—using the Greek text and scholarly perspectives to assess their reliability and original intent.
I’ll examine the Greek text for key terms—e.g., “Pillars of Hercules”—and assess potential mistranslations or interpolations, using scholarly insights to question their authenticity.
“Pillars of Hercules” (Ἡρακλέους στήλαι, Herakleous Stelai):
Text: Timaeus 24e: “ἐντὸς τῶν Ἡρακλέους στηλῶν” (“within the Pillars of Hercules”) describes Atlantis’s location relative to Athens, contrasting with “ἐκτὸς” (“outside”) the Mediterranean (Timaeus 25a).
The “Pillars of Hercules” isn’t definitively a later addition but could misrepresent an Egyptian “sea boundary,” while “great island” likely exaggerates for effect.
This contrasts with Plato’s specific “beyond the Pillars of Hercules,” aligning with your preference for non-Western abstraction.
Contrast with Tradition: Unlike Plato’s precise “beyond the Pillars of Hercules” or Cayce’s Bimini, this is a fluid, archetypal space—less a place on Earth than a phase of existence submerged by time and water.
Contrast with Tradition: Unlike Plato’s “beyond the Pillars of Hercules” or esotericists’ Mid-Atlantic Ridge, Khlebnikov’s Atlantis feels timeless and placeless, a futurist reimagining unbound by historical coordinates.
Significance: Alcaeus may have been associated with early Greek dynasties or connected to the heroic lineage leading to Heracles (Hercules).
This power had landed on the Atlantic coast, for in those days the Atlantic was navigable froman island situated to the west of the straits which you call Pillars of Hercules: the island waslarger than Libya and Asia fAsia meaning the Middle East] put together, and from it could bereached other islands, and from the islands you might pass through to the opposite continent,which surrounded the true ocean; for this sea which is within the columns of Hercules is only aharbour, having a narrow entrance, but that other is a real sea, and the surrounding land may bemost truly called a continent.
And the Pillars of Hercules did not refer to the Strait of Gibraltar but to theisland of Krakatoa and its sister volcano that sits now in the Strait of Sunda, between Sumatra and Java,the entrance into the channel leading to the main continent of Atlantis.
However, I can prove that the Phoenicians got there knowledge of glass making from the "people who lived beyond the pillars of Hercules." It is necessary to say that the country which used the ancient medals as an equivalent of labor had a more advanced currency system than we have at present.
The magnet was called the "Stone of Hercules." Hercules was the patron divinity of the Phœnicians.
"Hercules, it was said, being once overpowered by the heat of the sun, drew his bow against that luminary; whereupon the god Phœbus, admiring his intrepidity, gave him a golden cup, with which he sailed over the ocean.
But whether this famous, and afterward deified, mariner (Hercules) had a compass or not, we can hardly regard the association of his name with so many Western monuments as accidental."
Hercules was, as we know, a god of Atlantis, and Oceanos, who lent the magnetic cup to Hercules, was the Dame by which the Greeks designated the Atlantic Ocean.
Hercules is often represented with a cup in his hand; we even find the cup upon the handle of the bronze dagger found in Denmark, and represented in the chapter on the Bronze Age, in this work.
When Hercules left the coast of Europe to sail to the island of Erythea in the Atlantic, in the remote west, we are told, in Greek mythology (Murray, p.
Here, too, we have the Pillars of Hercules, supposed to have been placed at the mouth of the Mediterranean, and the tree of life or knowledge, with the serpent twined around it, which appears in Genesis; and in the combination of the two pillars and the serpent we have, it is said, the original source of our dollar mark [$].
the primitive geographic point for the countries which were the cradle of the human race." (Urquhart's "Pillars of Hercules," vol.
The Greeks associated the origin of astronomy with Atlas and Hercules, Atlantean kings or heroes.
The Book of Invasions, the "Cin of Drom-Snechta," claims that these Scythians were the Phœnicians; and we are told that a branch of this family were driven out of Egypt in the time of Moses: "He wandered through Africa for forty-two years, and passed by the lake of Salivæ to the altars of the Philistines, and between Rusicada and the mountains Azure, and he came by the river Monlon, and by the sea to the Pillars of Hercules, and through the Tuscan sea, and he made for Spain, and dwelt there many years, and he increased and multiplied, and his people were multiplied."
The fragments of the history of Izdubar, so far as I have at present examined them, remind me of the exploits and labors of Hercules, and, on the supposition that our present version of Berosus is correct as to dates, Izdubar may have been placed about 30,000 years before the Christian era.
Heracles (Hercules): A mortal hero who became a god, born of Zeus and the mortal Alcmene.
Examples include Noah as Deucalion, Samson as Hercules, and parallels between biblical and mythological events.
They are linked to mythological figures such as Sardus, the son of Hercules, and Norax, the son of Mercury.
The Pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar) were for a long period believed to be the end of the world.
The Phoenician sailors began to strike out beyond the Pillars of Hercules.
Erytheia is an ancient island from Greek mythology, known for its association with the myth of Heracles (Hercules).
In the Greek mythology the tenth labor of Hercules consisted in driving away the cattle of Geryon, who lived in the island of Erythea, "an island somewhere in the remote west, beyond the
Pillars of Hercules." (Murray's "Mythology," p.
257.) Hercules stole the cattle from this remote oceanic island, and, returning drove them "through Iberia, Gaul, over the Alps, and through Italy." (Ibid.) It is probable that a people emigrating from the Erythræan Sea, that is, from the Atlantic, first gave their name to a town on the coast of Spain, and at a later date to the Persian Gulf--as we have seen the name of York carried from England to the banks of the Hudson, and then to the Arctic Circle.
The Greeks called him "Melicertes," and identified him with Hercules.
Chronos, or Saturn, Dionysos, Hyperion, Atlas, Hercules, were all connected with "a great Saturnian continent;" they were kings that ruled over countries on the western shores of the Mediterranean, Africa and Spain.
376), "relate to Spain, North-western Africa, and other regions on the Atlantic, such as those concerning Hercules, the Cronidæ, the Hyperboreans, the Hesperides, and the Islands of the Blessed.
350.) "On the coast of Brittany, where Cape Raz stands out westward into the ocean, there is 'the Bay of Souls,' the launching-place where the departed spirits sail off across the sea." (Ibid.) In like manner, Odysseus found the land of the dead in the ocean beyond the Pillars of Hercules.
"Reached the far confines of Oceanus," beyond the Pillars of Hercules.
By Demeter (Ceres) he had Persephone (Proserpine); by Leto, Apollo and Artemis (Diana); by Dione, Aphrodite (Venus); by Semele, Dionysos (Bacchus); by Maia, Hermes (Mercury); by Alkmene, Hercules, etc., etc.
Hercules slew the serpent, and gave the apples to the Hesperides.
Heracles (Hercules), we have seen, was a son of Zeus, king of Atlantis.
The meaning of Geryon is the red glow of the sunset." He dwelt on the island of "Erythea, in the remote west, beyond the Pillars of Hercules." Hercules took a ship, and after encountering a storm, reached the island and placed himself on Mount Abas.
Hercules killed Geryon, stole the cattle, put them on the ship, and landed them safely, driving them "through Iberia, Gaul, and over the Alps down into Italy." (Murray's "Mythology," p.
We shall see, as we proceed, that the magnetic needle, or "mariner's compass," dates back to the days of Hercules, and that it consisted ofa bar of magnetized iron floating upon a piece of wood in a cup.
We shall see hereafter that the mythological traditions of Greece referred to a Bronze Age which preceded an Iron Age, and placed this in the land of the gods, which was an island in the Atlantic Ocean, beyond the Pillars of Hercules; and this land was, as we shall see, clearly Atlantis.
Plato tells us that the dominion of Gadeirus, one of the kings of Atlantis, extended "toward the pillars of Heracles (Hercules) as far as the country which is still called the region of Gades in that part of the world." Gades is the Cadiz of today, and the dominion of Gadeirus embraced the land of the Iberians or Basques, their chief city taking its name from a king of Atlantis, and they themselves being Atlanteans.
Likewise, figures like Hercules are tied to the zodiac through his labors, such as battling lions in the Age of Leo.
Proclus quotes an extract from an ancient writer who refers to the islands in the sea beyond the Pillars of Hercules (Straits of Gibraltar), and says that the inhabitants of one of these islands had a tradition from their ancestors of an extremely large island called Atlantis, which for a long time ruled over all the islands of the Atlantic Ocean.
Diodorus Siculus relates that the Phœnicians discovered "a large island in the Atlantic Ocean beyond the Pillars of Hercules several days' sail from the coast of Africa."
For at that time the Atlantic sea was navigable and had an island before that mouth which is called by you the Pillars of Hercules.
Herakles (Hercules): Mentioned as visiting the Hesperides in the same context as Perseus.
This disappearance of the old land (âldland, âtland) was known by the Greeks, for Plato mentions in his “Timæus,” 24, the disappearance of Atlantis, the position of which was only known as somewhere far beyond the Pillars of Hercules.
That the fleet really [xvi]came to the Mediterranean appears in Plutarch’s “Life of Alexander;” but he makes Nearchus bring the fleet round Africa, and sail through the Pillars of Hercules.
He described the island as a highly advanced society located beyond the Pillars of Hercules (now the Strait of Gibraltar), which eventually fell into corruption and was destroyed by the gods.