According to
Greek mythology adopted by the
Etruscans and Romans, when
Hercules had to perform
twelve labours, one of them (the tenth) was to fetch the Cattle of
Geryon of the far West and bring them to
Eurystheus; this marked the westward extent of his travels. A lost passage of
Pindar quoted by
Strabo was the earliest traceable reference in this context: "the pillars which Pindar calls the 'gates of Gades' when he asserts that they are the farthermost limits reached by
Heracles". Since there has been a one-to-one association between Heracles and
Melqart since
Herodotus, the "Pillars of Melqart" in the temple near Gades/Gádeira (modern
Cádiz) have sometimes been considered to be the true
Pillars of Hercules.
Plato placed the legendary island of
Atlantis beyond the "Pillars of Hercules". Renaissance tradition says the pillars bore the warning
Ne plus ultra (also , "nothing further beyond"), serving as a warning to sailors and navigators to go no further. According to some Roman sources, while on his way to the garden of the
Hesperides on the island of
Erytheia, Hercules had to cross the mountain that was once
Atlas. Instead of climbing the great mountain, Hercules used his superhuman strength to smash through it. By doing so, he connected the Atlantic Ocean to the
Mediterranean Sea and formed the
Strait of Gibraltar. One part of the split mountain is
Gibraltar and the other is either
Monte Hacho or
Jebel Musa. These two mountains taken together have since then been known as the Pillars of Hercules, though other natural features have been associated with the name.
Diodorus Siculus, however, held that, instead of smashing through an isthmus to create the Straits of Gibraltar, Hercules "narrowed" an already existing strait to prevent monsters from the Atlantic Ocean from entering the Mediterranean Sea. In some versions, Heracles instead built the two to hold the sky away from the earth, liberating Atlas from his damnation.
Phoenician connection Beyond Gades, several important
Mauretanian colonies (in modern-day
Morocco) were founded by the
Phoenicians as the Phoenician merchant fleet pushed through the Pillars of Hercules and began constructing a series of bases along the Atlantic coast starting with
Lixus in the north, then
Chellah and finally
Mogador. Near the eastern shore of the island of Gades/Gadeira (modern
Cádiz, just beyond the strait)
Strabo describes
the westernmost temple of
Tyrian Heracles, the god with whom Greeks associated the Phoenician and Punic
Melqart, by . Strabo notes that the two bronze pillars within the temple, each eight
cubits high, were widely proclaimed to be the true Pillars of Hercules by many who had visited the place and had sacrificed to Heracles there. But Strabo believes the account to be fraudulent, in part noting that the inscriptions on those pillars mentioned nothing about Heracles, speaking only of the expenses incurred by the Phoenicians in their making. The
columns of the Melqart temple at
Tyre were also of religious significance.
The Pillars in Syriac geography Syriac scholars were aware of the Pillars through their efforts to translate Greek scientific works into their language as well as into Arabic. The Syriac compendium of knowledge known as ''Ktaba d'ellat koll 'ellan
(Cause of All Causes'') is unusual in asserting that there were three, not two, columns. ==In art==