In 500 BC, the Carthaginian navigator Himilco sailed north from Hanno to Spain, Portugal, and France and noted weeds and dangers lurking in the un-navigable Atlantic. Atlantis was a creation of philosophical romance, incited and aided by miscellaneous data out of history. For early explorers, the Atlantic Ocean was viewed as shallow, stagnant, weed-infested, and home to sea monsters. Later, William Reed legitimized these claims of in The Phantom of the Poles (1906) and wrote that sea monsters lived inside the earth and surfaced in the Atlantic.

By the time of Christ, Atlantis was placed beside the mythical Isles of Blest, sometimes called the Fortunate Isles. These were located in the Western Ocean. At the Isles of Blest, the souls of favored mortals were received by the gods and lived happily in paradise. Belief in the islands long persisted, and the Canaries Islands, Azores, and Madeira Islands were sometimes identified with them.

In 30 BC, Diodorus Siculus wrote in The History of Diodorus Siculus the Amazons, Gorgons and Atlanteans were present in North Africa. He also discussed the Atlanteans’ ideas about the genesis of the gods and recounts Atlanteans as a historical people. The works of Siculus are now dismissed because of inaccuracies and contradictory material. Ammianus Marcellinus (330-395), a Roman historian and author of Roman History, discussed different types of earthquakes and referred to an island larger than Europe being swallowed up by the earth. Unlike Siculus, the works of Marcellinus are regarded as accurate and noted for their details of Roman military life.

Further Reading