intro
This geographical introduction has aroused the wildest speculations. Kepler was convinced that the trans-Atlantic continent was America, and he tried to identify the islands mentioned in the myth cf. notes 97, 98, 103, and 105 to Kepler’s translation (see note a, p. 20 supra) and note 2 to his Somnium sive Astronomia Lunaris. In Theatrum Orbis Terrarum Abrahami Ortelii (Antwerp, 1593), p. 5, this passage of Plutarch was used, apparently for the first time, to prove that the ancients knewthe American continent.; W. Christ in 1898 still could assert that Plutarch’s continent is obviously America and proves that about A.D. 100 sailors reached the North American coast via Iceland, Greenland, and Baffinland Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur, Dritte Auflage (1898), p. 662, n. 1. W. Schmid and O. Stählin in the sixth edition of this work (Zweiter Teil, Erste Hälfte [1920], p. 498) suppress this note of Christ’s but write aus dem Festland jenseits des atlantischen Ozeans (Amerika ?). ; and in 1909 G. Mair argued that the source of this knowledge of America was reports of Carthaginian seafarers who had penetrated into the Gulf of Mexico, that the Isle of Cronus is Scandinavia, and that the northern geography of the myth derives from accounts of the voyages of Pytheas of Massilia.G. Mair, Pytheas’ Tanais und die Insel des Kronos in Plutarchs Schrift Das Gesicht im Monde (Jahresbericht des K.K. Staats-Gymnasiums in Marburg ÁD, 1909). A fair example of Mair’s argument is his identification (p. 18) of the κόλρος mentioned in 941 B with the Christiana-Fjord, although according to Plutarch it is in the trans-Atlantic continent. Moreover, all of Plutarch’s islands lie to the West and North-West of Britains3 Even before Mair had published his fantastic theory Ebner had conclusively demonstrated that Plutarch could not have referred to any real crossing of the Atlantic or any rumours of such a crossing, that by using the name Ogygia at the beginning (941 A - B) he had clearly indicated the purely mythical intention of his geography, and that this geographical setting is simply an imitation of Plato’s Atlantis in the spirit of Hecataeus story of the Hyperboreans, Theopompus Meropis, and the Sacred Records of Euhemerus.E. Ebner, Geographische Hinweise und Anklänge in Plutarchs Schrift, de facie in orbe lunae (Munich, 1906). A. von Humboldt had concluded long before that the geographical frame is entirely mythical (Kritische Untersuchungen über die historische Entwicklung der geographischen Kenntnisse von der Neuen Welt [Berlin, 1836], pp. 174-185). H. von Arnim (Plutarch über Dämonen und Mystik, pp. 37-47 [Verhand. K. Akad. van Wetenschappen te Amsterdam, Afd. Letterk., 1921]) contended that Plutarch’s source for chapter 26 was a fantastic travel-romance that had nothing to do with philosophy or moon-demonology, but in which the demons of Cronus served the purpose of prophesying to the hero about his future. W. Hamilton (Class. Quart. xxviii [1934], pp. 24 ff., cf. p. 24, n. 1), while citing as parallels to the geographical myth Hecataeus, Euhemerus, Theopompus, and the Abaris of Heraclides Ponticus (cf. also Hirzel, r Dialog, ii, p. 187, n. 4), maintains that Plutarch wrote the whole of his myth in direct imitation of Plato’s story of Atlantis. Rohde (r griechische Roman, 204-276 = 3rd edition [Leipzig, 1914], pp. 219-296) places Plutarch’s geographical myth in its proper environment with the romances of Theopompus, Hecataeus, Euhemerus, Iambulus, Antonius Diogenes, and Marcellus. cf. also H. Martin, Ètudes sur le TimÈe de Platon (Paris, 1841), i, pp. 290-304, and J. O. Thomson, Op. cit. (note b, p. 18), pp. 237-238. The additional geographical particulars are the usual corroborative detail intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative. The theme of the sleeping Cronus may have been suggested to Plutarch by Demetrius of Tarsus, who in the Defectu Oraculorum (419 E 420 A) is made to say that on an island near Britain Cronus is kept prisoner by the bonds of sleep and is guarded by Briareus and attended by Spirits who are his servitors. This Demetrius appears to have been an historical person who did travel to Britain, whence in the dialogue he is said to have recently returned; and he may have told Plutarch some Celtic legend or superstition which the latter hellenized and wove into the fabric of his myth.For Demetrius cf. R. Flaceliére, Plutarque: Sur la Disparition des Oracles (Paris, 1947), pp. 26-28, and K. Ziegler, Plutarchos von Chaironeia (Stuttgart, 1949), 36. If Demetrius did hear a Celtic tale of a god or hero asleep on some western island, it would have been easy for him or Plutarch to identify the subject with Cronus (cf. Hesiod, Works and Days, 169, and Pindar, Olympian, ii. 77 [70] ff.; see also note a on p. 182 and note a on 942 A s.v.). Pohlenz’s notion (R.E. xi. 2013) that Posidonius, who was familiar with the northern world, was the intermediary of this Kyffhäusermotiv has nothing to support it. Posidonius was the source of the Cronus-motif as well as of the whole geographical part of the myth according to M. Adler, Op. cit. (note b, p. 18), pp. 169-170, who has no trouble in showing that Schmertosch adduced no real reason for designating Xenocrates as Plutarch’s source for this section; but Hamilton (loc. cit. [note a, p. 22]) has proved that Posidonius could not have been the source either.
