Monday, October 14, 2024
Happy Columbus Day
Dióscoro Puebla (1831-1901), Desembarco de Colón (Madrid, Museo del Prado, accession number P006766):
John Vanderlyn (1775-1852), Landing of Columbus (Washington, Capitol Rotunda):
Seneca, Medea 375-379 (tr. John G. Fitch):
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There will come an epoch late in timeC.D.N. Costa on line 379:
when Ocean will loosen the bonds of the world
and the earth lie open in its vastness,
when Tethys will disclose new worlds
and Thule not be the farthest of lands.
venient annis saecula seris,
quibus Oceanus vincula rerum
laxet et ingens pateat tellus
Tethysque novos detegat orbes
nec sit terris ultima Thule.
Farnaby reports that Abraham Oertel (the sixteenth-century Flemish geographer) regarded this passage as a prophecy by a Spaniard of the discovery of America by his fellow countrymen. Thinking on the same lines Ferdinand Columbus wrote in the margin of his copy of Seneca's tragedies 'haec prophetia expleta est per patrem meum Christoforum Colon almirantem anno 1492' (Damsté, Mnem. 46 (1918), 134).
