PART 2 – Ch

PART 2 – Ch.XIV.3

(KION OURANOU. The Sky Column on Atlas Mountain

in the country of the Hyperboreans)

XIV. 3. Prometheus nailed on the Caucasus mountain in Dacia.

The chaining and torture of Prometheus formed in antiquity the object of a significant number of poems, descriptions and explanations. The fact that this memorable scene from the history of ante-Homeric civilization took place on the territory of Dacia, gives us the task to also analyze from a geographical point of view, the second legend about Prometheus’ suffering.

According to various Greek authors from a later time than the time of Hesiod, Prometheus was nailed on the Caucasus mountain in Scythia. So, the grammarian Apollodorus tells us:

“Prometheus, after shaping men from water and earth, secretly stole fire from Jove and hid it in the plant called ferula. But Jove sensing this, ordered Vulcan to nail his body on the Caucasus mountain. This mountain is in Scythia, where Prometheus stayed nailed for a number of years (Bibl. Lib. I. 7. 1).

We have here therefore a new question from the geography of antiquity: which is the Caucasus about which the second legend of Prometheus speaks?

This Caucasus of Scythia on which Prometheus was chained or nailed, was a geographical mystery even for the most distinguished authors of old. The Caucasus from Prometheus’ legends was not at all identical with the range of mountains which stretches between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea.

One of the most distinguished and learned men of the 12^th century, the bishop Eustathius of Thessalonika, tells us the following in the Commentaries written by him on Dionysius Periegetus: “But the ancient authors affirm that that Caucasus, on which according to legends Prometheus was crucified, does not figure on the geographical tables” (v. 663). So we have here a very precious statement, made on the basis of old legends and geographical sources, that Prometheus’ Caucasus was not the Caucasus of Asia, or from the eastern parts of the Black Sea. And regarding this, the epoch of Roman domination in the eastern parts of Europe elucidates it completely.

Once the sovereignty of the world passed into the hands of the Romans, the geographical knowledge started to make an immense progress. Each Roman expedition was at the same time also a geographical reconnaissance. And, in our case, as soon as the Roman legions reached the Istru, the SE region of the Carpathians appears in different historical and geographical monuments under the name of “Caucasus”.

The first Roman general who reached the Danube was Marcus Livius Drus (Florus, lib. III. c. 5; Mommsen, Rom. Gesch. II. 173). Shortly after that, the ex-consul Piso, following the same strong policy of punishing and weakening the barbarians by making military incursions in their lands, crossed, according to the historian Florus (lib. III. 5), the mountains of Rhodope and of Caucasus.

In the historical summary of Florus, under the name Rhodope was to be understood the entire complicated system of mountains of ancient Thrace, together with the Hem or today Balkans, as seventy or eighty years later the poet Virgil similarly called Rhodope not only the mountains of Thrace, but also the mountains of Scythia from the north of Istru (Georg. III. v. 351).

And Florus meant doubtlessly under the name of Caucasus, a mountain from the territory of ancient Scythia, or the southern range of Dacia’s Carpathians.

This is also confirmed by a remarkable Roman inscription (in Koln museum) from the time of the emperor Trajan, where the group of the Carpathians near the Olt river is called Caucasus.

The text of this inscription, of great value for the geography of Dacia in ante-Roman times is:

“Matronis / Aufanib(us) / C(aius) / Jul(ius) / Mansue / tus M(iles) l(egionis) I.M(inerviae) / p(iae) f(idelis) v(otum) s(olvit) l(ibens) m(erito) fu(it) / ad Alutum / flumen secus / mont(em) Caucasi” (Henzen, nr. 5939; Froehner, La Colonne Trajane, I. p. 28, nr. 16).

Dacia’s Carpathians appear also under the name Caucasus in various other historical and geographical descriptions.

In the 5^th century ad, the Roman geographer Julius Honorius had composed, based on older sources, a small treaty on cosmography (Cosmographia, 28), in which he mentions two mountain ranges with the name of Caucasus, one on the territory of Europe close to the Hem mountain, which corresponds to the SE Carpathians of Dacia, the other on the territory of Asia, on the eastern part of the Black Sea. (Honorius mentions near the Caucasus of Europe, the mountain Hypanis. We note that a mountain near Olt, towards SE of Samboteni village, is called today the Upanas Peak – Charta Romaniei meridionale, 1864).

We find another precious geographical statement with Jornandis, the historian of the Getae, who was probably born in Mesia. Caucasus, writes he (De reb. Get. C. VII), starts at the Indian Sea, goes then into Syria, where, forming a round corner, turns towards north, stretches along the lands of Scythia, descends to the Pontos, then, gathering its heights, touches also the courses of Istru, at the point where the river divides and flows in two directions.

Finally, the Carpathians also appear under the name Caucasus in the oldest Russian chronicle, attributed to the monk Nestor, born around 1056ad. “In the northern part of Pontos”, he writes, “there are the Danube, Nistru (Dnestr), and Caucasus mountains, or the Hungarian mountains” (Schlozer, Russische Annalen. II. Gottingen, 1802, c. II, p.22).

Prometheus’ Caucasus, or the legendary Caucasus of Scythia, is therefore from the point of view of prehistoric geography, one and the same with the southern range of the Carpathians, called by Apollodorus Atlas from the country of the Hyperboreans, and in the inscription from Koln, Caucasus by the river Olt (Alutum flumen) [1].

[1. Hasdeu says in Istoria critica, p.285: “It is therefore a fact mentioned by seven undeniable sources, plus Ovid’s and Strabo’s, which makes them nine, that the Carpathians were named Caucasus, beginning with the most remote time, until the Middle Ages”].

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