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Joining The Dots
I have now published my new book, Joining The Dots, which offers a fresh look at the Atlantis mystery. I have addressed the critical questions of when, where and who, using Plato’s own words, tempered with some critical thinking and a modicum of common sense.Read More »
Briareus
Briareus was described in Greek mythology as a fifty-headed and hundred-handed giant, who guarded Cronos on the island of Ogygia. The mythologist, Michael MacRae, interprets this as a reference to Briareus as the captain of a ship with fifty oarsmen[985.180].
Felice Vinci notes that Aristotle had the ‘Pillars of Briareus’ as an earlier name for the Pillars of Heracles(a). Frank Joseph claims that he was also known as Aegeon (Aigaios)[104] whereas Hesiod and Homer have recorded Briareus as the son of Aigaios(b).
*Thorwald C. Franke has subsequently advised that Vinci’s reference is incorrect and that it was Aelian rather than Plutarch(c) who quoted Aristotle.*
(a) Fragment 687 Rose, in Plutarch, Il Voltodella Luna (Adelphi, Milan, 1991) (see ‘c’ below)
(b) https://www.theoi.com/Titan/HekatonkheirBriareos.html
(c) https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/The_Face_in_the_Moon%2a/D.html (see footnote 302, where fragment 678, not 687 is cited))