Greek Myth as the Beginning of Political Geography: Heracles in Ancient Spain

Abstract

AbstractThe article examines the question of the beginning of political geography in Europe as a type of early geographical descriptions. Like any field of knowledge that once became a scientific discipline, the political geography develops from the mythology. And the main civilizing factor for Europe in this respect was the mythology of Ancient Greece. Here we find the origins of all aspects of European culture. This idea was based on the myth of the tenth labour of Hercules, which is directly related to the first political and geographical descriptions of Spain. The myth of Hercules’ journey to the land of Erythia, the “red country” at sunset, where the sun, deified as the titan-Helios, descends daily into the gloomy reaches of Hades, has extensive connotations. At its early stage (Hesiod and Stesichor), it was a cosmological myth, telling about the limits of the oecumene known to the Greeks (the earth was flat, surrounded on all sides by the Ocean River), in which the Hercules path was a reconnaissance operation to survey the boundaries of space. But it became soon “mundane” geographic, colonial and political ideas culminating in the imperial era of Rome. The article also investigates the real history of the penetration of the Hercules cult into the Iberian Peninsula and the connection of the Greek myth about the abduction of Geryon’s oxen by Hercules with possible historical myths. The questions posed are about whether the myth of the Hercules’ tenth labour can explain the history of his cult in ancient Spain, as well as about its possible connection with local Tartessian-Celtic theologies and with the Celtic cults of the tricephalic deities in southern France. Or was the original myth of Hercules' journey to southern Spain to seek Geryon's wealth “anticipated” by the Greek mythological culture and imported into the ancient Spanish culture along with the syncretic cult of Hercules-Melqart?KeywordsHistory of SpainGreek mythologyHercules cultGeryon’s herds