Geography

​But it is also natural for places themselves to take over the same name, and especially when time has destroyed the boundaries that had been set up. For the Altars of the Philaeni do not remain now, but the place has taken over the name. Nor in India, they say, are any pillars of either Heracles or Dionysus seen standing; yet when certain places were mentioned and pointed out, the Macedonians believed these to be the pillars in which they found some trace either of the stories told about Dionysus or of those about Heracles. And so here, too, one would not disbelieve that the first adventurers used as boundaries some hand-made altars or towers or small pillars at the most conspicuous of the places they reached last (and the straits, the adjacent mountains, and the small islands are most conspicuous for marking both the limits and the beginnings of places), and that when these hand-made monuments disappeared, the name was transferred to the places, whether one wishes to mean the islands or the capes that form the strait. For it is already difficult to determine to which of the two one should attach the name, because of both resembling pillars. And I say ‘resembling’ because they are situated in such places as clearly suggest the limits, in which sense the strait, both this one and many others, is also called a ‘mouth’; and the ‘mouth’ is the beginning with respect to sailing in, but the limit with respect to sailing out. Therefore, one would not improperly compare the small islands at the mouth, which have a well-defined outline and are distinctive, to pillars; and in the same way, the mountains that lie adjacent to the strait and show such a prominence as small pillars or pillars do. And Pindar would thus be right in speaking of the ‘Gadeiran Gates’ if the pillars were conceived of as being at the mouth; for mouths resemble gates. But Gadeira is not situated in such places as to mark a limit, but lies somehow in the middle of a great gulf-like coastline. To refer this name, however, to the actual pillars in the temple of Heracles there is less reasonable, as it seems to me; for it was not merchants but rather commanders who began this name, and it is plausible that this opinion prevailed, just as in the case of the Indian pillars. Besides, the inscription they speak of, which shows not a sacred offering but a total of expenditure, testifies against this account; for the Pillars of Heracles ought to be monuments of his great deeds, not of the expense of the Phoenicians.