's utmost limits Zeus assigned
A life, a seat, distinct from human kind,
Beside the deepening whirlpools of the Main,
In those blest Isles where Saturn holds his reign,
Apart from Heaven's immortals calm they share,
A rest unsullied by the clouds of care:
And yearly thrice with sweet luxuriance crown'd
Springs the ripe harvest from the teeming Ground.

The poet Pindar places in the same mysterious West "the castle of
Chronos" (i. e., "Old Time"), "where o'er the Isles of the Blest ocean
breezes blow, and flowers gleam with gold, some from the land on
glistening trees, while others the water feeds; and with bracelets of
these they entwine their hands, and make crowns for their heads."

_Vesper_, the star of evening, was called Hesperus by the Greeks; and
hence the Hesperides, daughters of the Western Star, had the task of
watching the golden apples planted by the goddess Hera in the garden of
the gods, on the other side of the river Oceanus. One of the labors of
Hercules was to fetch three of those mystic apples for the king of
Mycenae. The poet Euripides thus refers to the Gardens of the West, when
the Chorus wish to fly "over the Adriatic wave":

Or to the famed Hesperian plains,
Whose rich trees bloom with gold,
To join the grief-attuned strains
My winged progress hold;
Beyond whose shores no passage gave
The Ruler of the purple wave.

Of all the lands imagined to lie in the Western Ocean by the Greeks, the
most important was "Atlantis." Some have thought it may possibly have
been a prehistoric discovery of America. In any case it has exercised
the ingenuity of a good many modern scientists. The tale of Atlantis we
owe to Plato himself, who perhaps learned it in Egypt, just as Herodotus
picked up there the account of the circumnavigation of Africa by the
Phenician mariners.

"When Solon was in Egypt," says Plato, "he had talk with an aged priest
of Sais who said, 'You Greeks are all children: you know but of one
deluge, whereas there have been many destructions of mankind both by
flood and fire.'... In the distant Western Ocean lay a continent larger
than Libya and Asia together."...

In this Atlantis there had grown up a mighty state whose kings were
descended from Poseidon and had extended their sway over many
islands and over a portion of the great continent; even Libya up to
the gates of Egypt, and Europe as far as Tyrrhenia, submitted to
their sway