The Pillars of Hercules: Myth or Reality?

No one can dispute that mountains dramatically frame the entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar. On the European side stands the Rock of Gibraltar and on the African side, Gibraltar is guarded by two closely positioned mountains—Jebel Musa and Abyla.

The myth, however, tells of these mountains being raised by the great Greek hero Heracles to mark the boundary of the inhabited world. The Romans pronounced his name ‘Hercules’, coining the name ‘the Pillars of Hercules’. In some versions of the myth, Hercules is even credited with creating the Gibraltar Strait itself. He is said to have removed the mountains obstructing the Mediterranean Sea, thus opening the passage to the ocean. This is how Seneca1¹Lucius Annaeus SenecaLucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BCE–65 CE) was a Roman philosopher, writer, and the most significant intellectual figure in Rome in the mid-first century CE.describes it in the tragedy The Mad Hercules.

It seems as though the Greeks borrowed this myth from the Phoenicians, who referred to these rocks as the Pillars of Melqart, who was a Phoenician god, the patron of sailors. He was highly revered by this merchant nation, and they built temples and monuments to him, often portraying him as a bearded man riding a horse with a fish's tail. Later on, the Greeks clearly associated Hercules with Melqart, a connection that seems inevitable, considering that he was credited with creating the Pillars of Hercules.

While describing the temple of Melqart in Phoenician Tyre in Lebanon, both Strabo2²StraboStrabo (64 BCE–24 CE) was a historian and geographer of Roman Greece.and Herodotus3³HerodotusHerodotus (484–425 BCE) was a Greek historian and traveler.refer to the god of the seas as Hercules. Both also mention the presence of large columns in this temple measuring 8 cubits (approximately 3 meters and 30 centimeters), which were supposedly erected by the hero-deity as the summits of the Pillars of Hercules and later transported to the temple.

The golden column was meant to symbolize Africa, while the emerald one represented Europe. Even if one column was gilded and the other coated with molten green glass, the spectacle, one would assume, was awe-inspiring. The many foreign guests in Tyre undoubtedly spread the myth of the Pillars of Hercules, which were nothing more than precious columns of immense height standing at the edge of continents, shining brightly to guide ships. Their fame spread far and wide, and even Plato,4⁴PlatoPlato (circa 428-348 BCE) was a Greek philosopher.for instance, wrote about the Pillars of Hercules.

Despite numerous subsequent travelers realizing that these pillars were merely mountains devoid of masses of emeralds or tons of gold, the legend persisted. Over time, it transformed into an equally mythical tale suggesting that the columns standing on the mountains had actually been erected by someone, perhaps not from precious materials but from ordinary stone. However, in the early eighth century, the Arab military commander Tariq ibn Ziyad ordered them destroyed.

Tariq ibn Ziyad, the conqueror of the Iberian Peninsula, had indeed aggressively expanded his territories around the strait, which, by the way, still carries his name (Gibraltar is a distortion of ‘Jabal al-Tariq’ or ‘the Mountain of Tariq’). However, there are no reliable sources about his conflict with the columns and no credible accounts confirming the actual existence of any columns on the mountains of Gibraltar.

Nevertheless, these two mythical columns proudly embellish the coat of arms of Spain even today, having been incorporated from the personal emblem of Emperor Charles V.5⁵Charles VCharles V of the House of Habsburg (1500–1558) was the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.They symbolize the Atlantic possessions of the empire, situated beyond the Pillars of Hercules as indicated by the motto ‘Plus ultra’ (Latin for ‘Further beyond’) placed above the columns.