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demigod, in the Greek version called Herakles and in the Latin Hercules; and this figure was probably the same as Tubal. Hercules tore the mountains apart and set up pillars inscribed Non Plus Ultra (Nothing Beyond) to mark the end of the earth. From the very beginning all men knew that the Pillars of Hercules were the mountains called Abyla on the African shore and, on the European side, the limestone block which the Phoenicians called Alube and the Greeks Calpe, meaning "urn, hollowed out." This was the Rock, Gibraltar, and it was called "hollowed out" because of its innumerable caves, especially one very large one high on the west face, the Great Cave.
    About 1100 B.C. one or several Greek poets called Homer began to compose the Iliad and the Odyssey, which are, in fact, history and geography books, respectively. In them the bards set out in metrical form (so that it could more easily be memorized) all that was known of their own past and of the outside world.
    In the Odyssey Homer's archetypal wanderer, Ulysses or Odysseus, passes through a narrow strait. Here is the relevant passage in the lucid translation of S. O. Andrew:
     
    Of the two other rocks, the one reaches up to the sky
    With sharp-pointed peak, and a cloud encompasses it
    That never disperses, nor clear air ever reveals
    Even in summer or autumn its heav'n-soaring crest.
    No mortal that perilous summit could scale or descend
    Though with twenty hands and with twenty feet he were born,
    For its surface is smooth, like polished marble, and sheer .
    Midmost the rock is a cavern, misty and dim,
    Turn'd toward the region of darkness where
    Erebus lies, And beneath it,
    O noble Odysseus, your bark ye must steer.
    Not even an archer of power with a shaft from his bow
    Could shoot from a hollow ship to the depth of that cave;
    Therein has yelping Scylla her secret abode,
    Her voice like a newborn whelp's, no greater, yet she
    Is an evil monster indeed, nor would any that pass'd
    Rejoice to behold her, not though an Immortal he were.
    She has twelve feet, which she dangles down in the air,
    And above, six necks, very long, and on each of the six
    A hideous head which is arm'd with a triple array
    Of teeth set thickly teeming with black-venom'd death.
     
    And nine lines later:
     
    But mark thou, Odysseus, that other rock which is low,
    Quite nectr to the first (thou coulds't shoot with an arrow across).
    And on it, in full leafage a fig tree there is,
    Where under the mighty Charybdis sucks down the tide.
    Thrice in the day she disgorges and thrice in the day
    She sucks it again; mayest thou never be near when she sucks... .
     
    These passages have sometimes been taken to refer to the Strait of Messina between Sicily and the Italian mainland, but the description fits the Strait of Gibraltar much more closely. Gibraltar was also very far off, and its links with the fabulous Hercules and the hardly less mysterious Tarshish would make it a more attractive location for marvels. The cloud hiding the Rock's head is the most telling evidence, for the levanter cloud is unique in the Mediterranean; and in this poetic version of returned seamen's tall tales one can easily trace the Great Cave, the sheer eastern and northern cliffs, the giant squid with its black ink "venom," and the dangerous race which forms off the point of Septa on the African shore. The only factors against this identification are that the African pillar (Charybdis) is in fact not lower than Gibraltar but considerably higher, and the distance between the two is a good deal more than a bowshot; but the dramatic isolation of the Rock so dominates the strait that several later travelers fell into the first error, and the bowshot distance is a liberty required by Homer's plot.
    To return to the harsher yet still breathtaking light of history. This is Gibraltar about 600 B.C.... The trees grow thick on the lesser slopes, and sailors often go ashore but do not tarry unless they mean to worship at a shrine of