Source: http://zapys.blogspot.com/2019/03/derrick-moors-imaginary-voyages.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 22:19:55+00:00

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It was suggested, in the light of Ptolemy and later medieval geographers, that if a ship sailed far enough south it would reach landfall. This was in spite of Francis Drake's reports to the contrary that no vast continent existed below the straits of Magellan, as Magellan himself had supposed. It had certainly not been the intention of Drake to either prove or disprove the existence of a Great South Land — he had merely been driven by a gale to 57 degrees south. The islands that he did discover, and which he named the Elizabethides, are now believed to be part of the Tierra del Fuego group. Yet these and other discoveries, which were thought to be projections of a southern continent, only served to heighten the belief in a Great South Land. Likewise Captain Davis, who promoted the search for a southern continent to the west of Chile; ‘Davis Land’ was to become synonymous with Terra Australis incognita.
Not until Cook's second voyage, in 1772–75, was the belief in a great southern continent finally laid to rest. Yet this did not put an end to the production of imaginary voyages with their setting in an unknown south land; Restif de la Bretonne's La découverte australe, one of the strangest of imaginary voyages set in a utopian south land, was published as late as 1781. It would seem then that, despite the knowledge of the Australian coastline and the refutation of a Great South Land, increased exploration had the effect of diminishing expectations but not the continued imagining of Terra Australis incognita. The reality, of course, was that all that remained of the Great South Land was Terra Australis cognita.
Seventeenth and eighteenth century exploration was responsible for three broad kinds of travel literature: genuine travel accounts; imaginary or extraordinary voyages; and a third group which might be termed travel liars, or pseudo travellers, whose intention it was to deceive.
This second group, imaginary voyages, were to become almost as popular in their day as authentic travel accounts. The genre included works of a realistic, philosophical, utopian and fantastic nature and, while not generally written to deceive, they have, in a few notable cases, done just that. For instance, it is difficult to comprehend anyone believing in the fantastic tales of Rudolf Raspe's Baron Munchausen, Peter Wilkin's flying men, or Cyrano de Bergerac's trips to the moon powered by bottles of morning dew. On the other hand, an experienced deceiver like Defoe was to fool almost everyone with his armchair traveller Captain Singleton; it is with good reason that Defoe's A new voyage round the world is politely referred to as an apocryphal voyage.
Such travel books of varying veracity abounded in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. The differences were marginal. Late in the ‘Age of Enlightenment’ travellers were still reporting giant Patagonians, 8–10 feet tall. Why then shouldn't Gulliver's midgets likewise be believed? Particularly when the author of the preface to Gulliver's Travels speaks of his cousin Sympson's [i.e. William Symson?] debt to cousin Dampier's A new voyage round the world.
Imaginary voyages are often classified into types. First there is the ‘fantastic’ voyage, in which the only limit placed upon the narrative is the writer's imagination. Next there is the more ‘realistic’ voyage which, by a ‘stretch of the imagination’, might be true. (These ‘realistic’ imaginary voyages made use of conventional forms of travel, provided biographical information, details of geographical locations etc.). Then there is the satirical or allegorical narrative describing a voyage to an ideal commonwealth, utopia, or merely to an appropriate setting in which to air non-conformist ideas.
These divisions are, of course, not mutually exclusive. Cyrano de Bergerac's voyages, for instance, were as much fantastic as they were satirical. Imaginary voyages proved a convenient form with which to attack governments, religions and customs; particularly in France, where a lack of intellectual freedom prevailed. This accounts in part for the bibliographical puzzles that are associated with much seventeenth and eighteenth century imaginary voyage literature. Anonymous, vague, or fictitious authors, as well as false imprints, abound.
The earliest imaginary utopia, or rather dystopia, set in Terra Australis incognita, is Bishop Hall's Mundus alter et idem. The protagonist traveller Mercurius Britannicus' society is far from ideal. Hall's Terra Australis incognita is intended to satirize perfect moral commonwealths. By satirizing the status quo in England, Hall presents a vision whereby the English Renaissance will ultimately produce a degenerate society that is simply up-sidedown: another world and yet the same. But while Hall does not yearn for a past golden age, nor an age of innocence, he does nevertheless believe that present Renaissance England is the equivalent of Sodom and Gomorrah. Hall is at once seeking moderation in all things and is attempting to demolish man's pride in himself and his accomplishments.
The first edition, which appeared anonymously with a fictitious Frankfurt imprint, is now generally believed to have been printed in London by H. Lownes in 1605. Many issues of this edition bear a manuscript alteration in which the name ‘Alberico Gentili’, in the line ‘Quid Alberico Gentili a Gynaecopolitis factum fuerit’, has been crossed out and the word ‘mihi’ [i.e. my] inserted. (‘What to me by the womenfolk was done’). This has led to the reasoned, although now discredited, argument by the Australian bibliographer E.A. Petherick that the Italian refugee, Alberico Gentili, is the actual author of Mundus.
Hall's Mundus was originally written in Latin. The first edition in English, entitled The discovery of a new world or A description of the South Indies. Hetherto vnknowne. By an English Mercury, translated by John Healey, was published in 1609. What is often referred to as the second English edition is the anonymous The travels of Don Francisco de Quevedo, through Terra Australis incognita, published in London in 1684. Erroneously attributed to Gomez de Quevedo y Villegas it is, in fact, a pirated adaption of Hall's Mundus. It pretends to be a translation of an old tattered Spanish manuscript, in which all that remained of the author's name was Don Q-; that is, as the Preface says, either Don Quevedo or Don Quixote. It is, in reality, a poor Grub Street edition.
Curiously, Hall's Mundus is mentioned in a legitimate cosmographie published in 1657. Peter Heylyn's Cosmographie in fours bookes, in its enlarged second edition, contains An appendix to the former work endeavouring a discovery of the unknown parts of the world, especially of Terra Australis incognita, dated 1656. Heylyn postulates that the southern continent must be as large as all the continents north of the equator, i.e. Europe, Asia, Africa. Heylyn's vision of Terra Australis, free from winters and supplying all wants, is clearly utopian. The Appendix contains a special section devoted to Tierra del Fuego, the Solomon Islands, New Guinea, Mundus alter et idem (‘a witty and ingenious invention of a learned prelate’), Utopia (‘discovered’ by Sir Thomas More), New Atlantis (‘discovered’ by Sir Francis Bacon), Faerie Land, the Painters Wives Island, Lords of Chivalrie, and the New world in the moon (Bishop John Wilkins).
Another English ‘voyage’ is The Isle of Pines, or, A late discovery of a fourth island near Terra Australis incognita, by Henry Cornelius van Sloetten, actually written by Henry Neville, but also variously ascribed to George Pine and Cornelius van Sloetten. (Sloetten was certainly the author of another piece on the same subject). It is often viewed as the first Robinsonade prior to Defoe's work. After the inevitable shipwreck, the hero George Pine, along with four women, is cast away on an island near the coast of Terra Australis incognita. Here he bravely sets to a vigorous pattern of polygamous sexual activity which, in fifty nine years, witnesses the growth of a community numbering 1,789. However, the paradise originally encountered by George, with its rapidly increasing population, is now falling into disorder.
The classic imaginary voyage to Terra Australis incognita is Gabriel Foigny's La Terra australe connue. It is written in the ‘realistic’ style; meaning that despite tales of unicorns, camels with cavities instead of humps, red, green, yellow and blue sheep, giant birds and hermaphrodites, we must take into account the knowledge of the author's contemporaries. For instance, being carried off in the talons of a giant bird would appear to us today as utterly fantastic. The idea of giant flying birds, however, persisted well into the seventeenth century. (An engraving of Magellan passing through the Pacific, in De Bry's Long and short voyages, includes a giant bird flying off with an elephant in its claws).
Foigny's Terra Australis, about 3,000 leagues in length and 400 or 500 leagues in breadth, contains about ‘fourscore and 16 millions’ of inabitants and is situated between South America and South Africa. Foigny's ‘Australians’ have abolished sexual relations altogether. The fact that they are of both sexes, or hermaphrodites, is also of little concern to Foigny's Jacques Sadeur who, apart from having the misfortune of being shipwrecked in every sea voyage he undertakes, was also born an hermaphrodite. He is therefore accepted by the community when found naked after yet another calamity at sea.
La Terre Australe was first published in 1676 at Geneva with a false imprint of Vannes, in France. Foigny was eventually jailed for his ‘extravagances, falsehoods, and even dangerous, infamous and blasphemous things’. His life makes fascinating reading. Originally a defrocked priest from France, Foigny fled to Geneva where, after seducing several servant girls and breaking a promise of marriage in favour of a widow with a bad reputation, he was expelled, and afterwards became a master at Lausanne. Here, Foigny proved equally unpopular and soon provided the opportunity to be removed from his post for drunkedness, apparently after vomiting in front of the communion table while conducting a service.
Of particular interest in the English edition is that John Dunton, its translator and publisher, anglicises the name ‘Terre Australis’ into Australia, and the inhabitants into Australians. Purchas had also used the name earlier when his publisher misprinted the word Australia. Later writers, including Hawkesworth, adopted and repeated this wrong spelling which by now, of course, is in general use.
Denis Vairasse d'Allais' Histoire des Sevarambes, of which the first two volumes appeared in English in 1675 as History of the Sevarites or Sevarambi, and the subsequent five volumes in French, published in Paris from 1677 to 1679, has the distinction of being associated with a ‘fantastic’ work and simultaneously being mistaken for an authentic travel account. A reviewer in the Journal des Sçcavans failed to realise that the voyage was fictional; and, in 1727, an English translation of Sevarambes was published as volume three of Gulliver's Travels (Swift's book had appeared the previous year in two volumes).
Although authorship of the work is no longer disputed, it has been variously ascribed in the past to Isaac Vossius, Pierre Bayle, Maurice Ashley and Algernon Sidney. However, the dedications in the French volumes are signed ‘D.V.D.E.L.; that is, Denis Vairasse d'Allais En Languedoc.
The preface to Sevarambes draws a careful distinction between the work at hand and imaginary voyages and Utopias. The documents were entrusted to the editor (i.e. Vairasse) by Captain Siden on his death-bed. Before publishing the journals, however, the editor investigates their authenticity and, sure enough, there are plenty of witnesses to assure him that Captain Siden's account is a veritable one. Siden is, of course, an anagram for Denis and similarly Sevarias, the law-giver of the Sevarambians, is an anagram of Vairasse.
Captain Siden, after the predictable shipwreck, finds himself and his companions in a Pacific Terra Australis. While awaiting relief from Batavia, the incidents that occur following the shipwreck bear a remarkable similarity to those actually experienced by Commander Francois Pelsaert off the West Australia coast with the mutinous Jerome Cornelis.
A longing to bring his wife and children from Holland (regardless of the fact that, in Sevarambe, he has acquired three wives and sixteen children) sees Captain Siden return to his homeland, thereby enabling the secret of this paradise to be told in a death-bed confession back in Europe. Perhaps more than any other work, the Histoire des Sevarambes is an obvious fore-runner to Swift's Gulliver's Travels.
Jonathan Swift constantly utilizes those known aspects of Terra Australis gleaned from Dampier's A new voyage round the world. When Gulliver is voyaging back from Brobdingnag, mention is made of the coast of New Holland, and then of keeping a course ‘west-south-west, and then south-southwest till we doubled the Cape of Good Hope’. Again, after having left Houyhnhnm-Land, Gulliver ‘arrives at New Holland, hoping to settle there’. Swift made use of a geographical region that was both unexplored and away from the major European trade routes. Gulliver states that he was driven by a storm to a latitude of 30 degrees south, to the northwest of Van Diemen's Land. It is argued that typographical errors in the first edition of Gulliver's Travels are responsible for the island of Lilliput being situated within Australia. The point is that Swift is ridiculing the forms of conventional travel literature. Terra Australis is used as an image both of fantasy and reality. Swift was also taking advantage of the popularity of discovery and travel literature. Rumours of undiscovered lands to the west and south of the Pacific were commonplace when Gulliver was released.
As in Hall's Mundus, Swift employs the devices of satire and allegory. Man appears as disgusting, ridiculous and stupid. It is possible that Mundus was, in fact, known to Swift. A friend and associate of Swift, Dr. William King, had translated the first six chapters of Mundus into English in 1711. (Published in Henry Morley's Ideal Commonwealths in 1896). So it is entirely possible that Mundus provided a source for Gulliver's Travels.
Tyssot de Patot's Voyages et avantures de Jaques Massé is situated in a South Land 60 degrees longitude and 44 degrees latitude, placing it somewhere off Chile. As in Foigny, Jaques also arrives in the earthly paradise entirely naked. Unlike Foigny's Terre Australis, which is completely flat, Tyssot De Patot's land is mountainous and has a population of 8,323,000; the size of this population being kept under control by a series of epidemics of smallpox. Unlike Vairasse's Sevarinde, monogamy is the norm, except for the King and his governors. Natural religion and hedonism prevail, and Jaques is constantly placed in the position of having to defend Christianity. The priests, for example, are unable to see why Jaques continues to say grace before his meals when they themselves do not do so and yet receive the same nourishment.
Clearly, one of Patot's aims was to attack Christianity using the imaginary voyage as a convenient vehicle. Certainly Jaques Massé achieved a reputation as an anti-religious tract, which explains in part the publication of five editions, each with an imprint of 1710, though none having been printed in that year. By pre-dating the work, the publisher had a greater chance of avoiding prohibition by attempting to show that the work had ‘already’ been accepted.
Miscellanea Aurea, or, The golden medley (London, 1720), written chiefly by Thomas Killigrew the Younger, contains an essay, signed Maurice (or Morris on the title page) and ascribed to Charles Gildon, entitled A description of New Athens in Terra Australis incognita. New Athens, where Maurice is marooned for twenty years, has impassable mountains which separate those who have been banished from the paradise beyond. Because his baggage contains so many works of classical literature, however, the judges allow Maurice to pass into New Athens, where he quickly ingratiates himself with the New Athenians by helping them to repel the barbarous invaders from the South Pole. New Athens contains no lawyers, attorneys, pettifoggers, solicitors, bailiffs, and the like; and probably, as a result, no poverty either.
An anonymous work Relation d'un voyage du Pole Arctique, au Pole Antarctique par le centre du monde, first published in Amsterdam in 1721, bears an obvious relation to Ludvig Holberg's Nicolai Klimii, although Pole Antarctique predates Holberg by twenty years. Both are subterranean voyages. The traveller in Pole Antarctique, on a voyage from Amsterdam to Greenland, is sucked into a giant whirlpool and re-appears in the southern continent.
Another anonymous Amsterdam imprint, signed simply ‘Robertson’, is Voyage de Robertson, aux Terres Australes. It is sometimes attributed to Louise Sébastien-Mercier, who was responsible for writing a Utopian work set in the year 2,500. The author claims to have sailed to South America with Francis Drake and, when to the west of Chile, to have discovered a new continent. Ordered by Drake to reconnoitre the new land, Robertson becomes lost during a storm and finds Australia instead. In reality an attack on the French government, the narrative is supposed to have inspired William Penn to found an ideal settlement in North America.
Zaccaria Seriman's Viaggi di Enrico Wanton alle Terre incognite Australi, first published in Venice in 1749, purports to be an account of the voyage of an Englishman, named Henry Wanton, to the unknown land of Australia, as well as to two other unknown countries named Scimie and Cinocefali. The four volume Spanish edition, published in Madrid in 1778, states that the work was translated ‘idioma ingles al italiano’, and from the Italian into Spanish by Joaquin de Guzmán y Manrique. The English original is certainly a fiction and the inference is that Joaquin de Guzmán y Manrique is himself the ‘faker’ of the third and fourth volumes of the Spanish edition. The engraved illustrations show Seriman's Australia to be very much like a Renaissance Planet of the Apes.
Whether imaginary voyages using the unknown South Land as a setting were Utopian, didactic, fantastic or realistic, the common element amongst them was that none intended to deceive, and that, at least in part, the voyage attempted was by conventional means. Granted that no writer of imaginary voyages entitled their work as such; it was generally taken for granted that they were Fictitious. Purely didactic and philosophic works with Australia as a setting would alone fill an anthology, and are best left as the subject for another essay.
The original of Iambulus’ narrative (written sometime between 165 and 50BC)1 has perished, and were it not for the excerpts made by Diodorus Siculus in his Biblld have to rely on two meagre references in Lucian and Tzetzes. In introducing his parody of imaginary-voyage literature, True Histories, Lucian singles out Ctesias and Iambulus as representative. The latter, says Lucian, wrote much that was incredible about the lands in the great sea, but though obviously fabulous, it was not an unpleasing story. Ionnes Tzetzes (Chiliades §§727-30) noted that Iambulus wrote of round animals found in the islands of the Ethiopians, of double-tongued men who could converse with two different people simultaneously, and numerous other things. From Diodorus’ excerpt, we may, in spite of its disorder, reconstruct the form and content of the work in some detail.
1. Iambulus’ Narrative. Entitled Islands of the Sun or possibly The Adventures of Iambulus in the Southern Ocean, it probably contained chapters in a sequence similar to the following: 1) Birth and Education of Iambulus; 2) Incidents Leading to his Discovery of the Islands of the Sun; 3) Geographical and Astronomical Description of the Islands; 4) Constitution and Customs of the Islanders; 5) Religion of the Islanders; 6) Language and Learning of the Islanders; 7) The Animals of the Islands; 8) Sojourn of Iambulus at Palibothra and his Return to Greece or Asia Minor. These headings will be followed in my account of Iambulus’story, which in Diodorus is narrated in the third person.
Chapters 1-2. There was a certain Iambulus who had an early passion for learning, but who upon the death of his merchant father, plunged into commercial enterprise. On the way through Arabia to the spice-bearing country (i.e. the Somali coast), he was seized by brigands and ultimately carried off to the Ethiopian coast where he was compelled to participate in a ritual for the purification of that land: A boat containing a six-month food supply was rigged for him and a companion, and they were ordered to put to sea and to steer south until they arrived at a blessed isle inhabited by virtuous folk. If they reached the island safely, they would not only secure personal bliss but also confer peace and prosperity upon the Ethiopians for six hundred years. But if they should grow afraid and turn back, they would incur the sharpest penalties and bring disaster on the whole nation. After sailing over a vast and tempestuous sea for four months, they put in at the island foretold them, where some of the natives met them and drew their boat to shore. The islanders, crowding around, were amazed at the strangers, but behaved decently toward them, and shared with them whatever they had.
Chapter 3. The island was circular in form, with a circumference of about five thousand stades (1000 kilometers). It was part of an archipelago consisting of seven islands, all of about equal size, equidistant from each other, and following the same laws and customs. Although at the equator, the natives enjoyed a most temperate climate; moreover, the fruits there ripened the year through, even as the poet writes: "Pear upon pear grows old, and apple on apple, yea, and clustered grapes on grapes, and fig upon fig" (Odyssey §§7:120-21). Day and night are of equal length, and at noon nothing casts a shadow, since the sun is directly overhead. Of the constellations known to us, the Bears and many others are entirely invisible.
The natives spend their time in the meadows, the land supplying many things for sustenance. For by reason of the island’s productivity and the mild climate, foods are produced of themselves in greater quantities than necessary. A certain reed growing there in great plenty, a span broad, bears abundant fruit resembling white vetch; it waxes and wanes with the moon. After gathering this reed, the natives steep it in warm water, until it becomes the size of a pigeon’s egg: then, having crushed it and kneaded it skillfully with their hands, they mould it into loaves which when baked are of excellent sweetness. The island also has abundant streams, the warm ones good for bathing and overcoming fatigue, while the cold ones are deliciously sweet and healthful. Even the sea about the island, which has violent currents and ebbs, is sweet to the taste. Fruit trees grow there abundantly and spontaneously, including the olive tree and vine. The natives catch many varieties of fish and birds. The immense snakes are harmless to man, and have deliciously sweet flesh. Clothing is made from certain reeds having a bright velvety down in the center, which they gather and mix with pounded oyster shells, thus making wonderful purple garments.
They live in clan groupings, not more than four hundred to a group. Each grouping is ruled by its oldest member, who is something like a king, and obeyed by all. On completion of his one hundred and fiftieth year the ruler puts an end to his life in accordance with the law, and the next oldest succeeds to the rule. They alternately serve one another, some of them fishing, others working at the crafts, others occupying themselves in other useful matters, and still others—except for the very aged—performing public duties in cyclic rotation. They do not marry, but possess their women in common, and raising the children as communal wards they love them equally. While still infants, they are frequently exchanged by their nurses, so that not even the mothers will recognize their own. Since there is thus no rivalry among them, they live free from partisan strife, placing the highest value upon inner harmony. Each grouping maintains a peculiar large bird, whereby a test is made to determine the psychic state of the infant children. They mount the babies upon the birds, and those who endure the aerial flight they rear, but those who get airsick and panicky they cast out as of an undeserving temperament and unlikely to live long.
Although everything is abundantly and spontaneously supplied to them, the islanders nevertheless do not indulge their pleasures without restraint, but practice simplicity and eat only to sufficiency. They prepare meats and all roasted or boiled foods, but they do not know other dishes, such as the numerous condiments and sauces concocted by cooks. Their whole way of life follows a prescribed order: not that they eat in a public area or the same foods, but specified days have been constituted for eating sometimes fish, sometimes fowl, at other times the flesh of land animals, and at others olives with the simplest side dishes.
They are extremely long-lived and mostly free from disease. Anyone maimed or with any bodily defect is compelled by an irrevocable law to do away with himself. When they reach the age of one hundred and fifty, it is their custom to voluntarily remove themselves by using a strange plant: whoever lies upon it falls imperceptibly and gently asleep and dies. They bury their dead at low tide, covering them with sand; when the tide comes in a mound is formed.
Chapter 5. As gods they revere the all-encompassing heavens, the Sun, and in general, all the celestial bodies. At their feasts and festivals, hymns and songs of praise to the gods are recited and sung, but especially to the Sun, after whom they name both the islands and themselves.
Chapter 6. Every branch of learning is diligently pursued by them, but their chief concern is with astrology. They employ an alphabet representing twenty-eight different phonetic values but comprising only seven characters, each of which can assume four different forms. They do not write their lines horizontally as we do, but vertically downward.
Chapter 7. They have a very odd sort of small animal: it is round and very similar to a tortoise, and its skin is crossed by two yellow diagonal lines, at each end of which it has an eye and a mouth. Though seeing with four eyes and using four mouths, it collects all its food through one gullet into one intestine. All its inner organs are similarly single; but all around its underbelly there are many feet enabling it to walk in any direction it pleases.3 The blood of this animal has a wondrous property: it immediately glues together any living member that has been severed; even if a hand or a similar organ is severed, by means of this blood it can be glued on again while the cut is fresh. The same is true of any other part of the body excepting the vital regions.
Chapter 8. After a seven-year stay, Iambulus and his friend were shipwrecked in shoals off India, and while his companion perished, Iambulus was taken up from the coast by native villagers to the king at Palibothra, a distance of many days from the sea. Since the king was fond of the Greeks and a supporter of learning, he regarded Iambulus with great favor. Finally, after receiving safe conduct, Iambulus traveled first to Persia and later safely home to Greece [or a Greek-speaking country]. Iambulus considered his adventures worth recording, and added a good deal of information about India unknown to his contemporaries.
2. Extraordinary Voyages and Utopian Themes in Greek Literature. The Hellenistic age witnessed an extraordinary flowering of geographical and travel literature, very striking in its profuseness and variety. This kind of literature was not, to be sure, a new interest with the Greeks. To appreciate the fascination such writings had always had for the Greek mind, one need only recall the epic adventures of Odysseus, the Arimaspeia of Aristeas of Proconnesus, the almost painful elaboration on Io’s peregrinations in Aeschylus’ Prometheus, and the texts of the Ionian pioneers of historical-geographical writing culminating in Herodotus’ medley. With the conquests of Alexander, however, this literature attained new dimensions. Eyewitness accounts of Greek generals, admirals, roving ambassadors and special envoys followed each other in rapid succession. A bare enumeration of their names would suffice to indicate the magnitude of a vast literature which has almost totally disappeared.4 This Hellenistic overflow may well be compared to a similar phenomenon which occurred in 16th-17th century Europe.
By a very natural development, there sprang up from the main branch of travel literature two considerable offshoots, the travel fantasy — a frankly fictive account of exotic travel adventures with no attempt to lend an air of reality to the narrative — and the voyage extraordinaire. Though the travel fantasy has perished, the name of Antiphanes of Berge and his famed tall tale survive to testify to the many travel yarns which flourished in this age.5 Our chief concern, however, is with the "extraordinary voyage," since it was this form that Iambulus chose for his utopian narratives. The choice was a logical one, for unlike the travel fantasy, the mark of authenticity carefully contrived by its author commends the extraordinary voyage to a wider audience and lends its imaginary contents the prestige of the real and concrete: the utopian community it described is not a wild dream which can be shrugged off, but a cold, hard fact. Before proceeding to examine Iambulus’ methods of authentication, let us observe the similar methods employed by the extraordinary voyages before him.
The earliest known utopian composition written in the form of an extraordinary voyage is the Peri Hyperboreon of Hecataeus of Abdera, a contemporary of Alexander the Great. Painting an elaborately idealized picture of the mythical Hyperboreans, Hecataeus added much geographical and astronomical data, which were sufficiently striking in their simulated authenticity to cause geographers to make detailed attempts at identification with specific sites. Combining the various fragments, we get the following geographical-astronomical picture: in the northern Amalchian sea, there lies opposite the land of the Celts an island not smaller than Sicily, called Helixoia. It is inhabited by the Hyperboreans, i.e. people who live beyond the point whence the north wind (Boreas) blows. The island is very fertile and productive, and owing to its extremely temperate climate it yields two crops a year. It is said that the Moon appears from this island to be only a very short distance from the Earth, so that its Earth-like prominences are visible, and that Apollo visits the island every nineteen years, the period in which the stars complete their heavenly movements returning to their former positions. The Hyperboreans speak a language peculiar to themselves, and are very friendly to the Greeks, especially the Athenians and Delians, who inherited this good will from the most ancient times. In fact, certain Greeks are said to have visited the Hyperboreans, leaving behind them costly votive offerings with Greek inscriptions.
So turn now6 to the Hiera Anagraphe of Euhemerus of Messana (ca. 300 BC), an extraordinary voyage with a special philosophical-religious theory as its purpose. It seems to have been an elaborately detailed work in at least three books, and exhibits every mark of a careful effort at authentication. Euhemerus speaks of his many voyages in his official capacity on behalf of King Cassander of Macedonia (301-297 BC) and specifically of a long southerly ocean-voyage he once made from the eastern coast of Arabia Eudaemon (i.e. from that NE part of Arabia lying opposite the modern Baluchistan), which took him to the Panchaean isles. A detailed description of three of these islands follows, including the names of the notable cities Hyracia, Dalis, Oceanis, and especially Panara, whose citizens are called "Suppliants of Zeus Triphylius" (Zeus of the three tribes). Whenever he can, Euhemerus gives exact dimensions and distances on and between the three islands; from Panchaea’s eastern promontory one can catch a glimpse of India through the misty distance. Another realistic touch is the elaborate description of the nature of frankincense and its preparation on the island of Hiera, to which may also be added that there is nothing very strange or incredible in Euhemerus’ account of the political setup of the Panchaeans. Finally, perhaps following the lead of Hecataeus, Euhemerus provides scientific documentation for his religious theory that the gods were nothing more than great rulers from the remote past deified for their admirable deeds on behalf of men, by referring all his information in this area—aside from supposed conversations with the priests—to various inscriptions, and especially to a gold stele in the sanctuary of Zeus Triphylius on which are inscribed in summary fashion, in the writing employed by the Panchaeans (apparently Egyptian hieroglyphics), the deeds of Uranus, Cronus and Zeus. Combining geographical and botanical detail with sober political narrative, Euhemerus produced a most persuasive voyage extraordinaire, which easily deceived Diodorus into taking it as straight history.
In general, Greek literary genres are sharply defined, and each has a set of themes (topoi) peculiar to itself. Conforming to this usage, Iambulus’ work exhibits themes frequently found in the Greek utopia. The Sun-islands are circular in form, the favorite geometrical pattern for a utopian country. So, for example, Plato’s Atlantis is composed of a series of concentric circles of land and sea, and Hecataeus’ temple of Apollo on the island of the Hyperboreans is spheroid. Similarly, the utopian climate is always pleasant, there is always an abundance of sweet and healthful spring water, and a super-abundant food supply. Further, utopians are usually tall and well-built. Iambulus’ Sun-men are also long-lived and free from disease, but most utopians outstrip them in this matter: the Uttarakuru of Sanskrit sources live one thousand (or 10,000) years, and so too the Hyperboreans; according to Herodotus the Ethiopians live to 120 years or more, and Onesicritus in Pos Alexandros ekhthe (in Strabo, Geography §15:1:34) attributes 130 years to the people of Musicanus; the Meropes of Theopompus live twice as long as ordinary mortals, and never know disease. Utopians, however, not only live pleasantly, but also die pleasantly. On the island paradise of Syria (Odyssey §§15:403-14), Apollo of the silver bow and Artemis slay the happy natives with their gentle shafts; in Hesiod’s Golden Age men die as overcome with sleep (Works and Days §116); the inhabitants of Theopompus’ Eusebes die laughing. Similarly, Iambulus’ Sun-men have a magical plant which induces the sleep of death.
Finally, most utopians expel their visitors as evil-doers. After a stay of seven years, Iambulus and his comrade are cast out as incorrigibly prone to evil ways. Homer’s Phaeacians similarly send strangers back where they came from (Odyssey §§7:32-33). Examples from later, 18th century utopias are Swift’s Gulliver and Foigny’s Sadeur, ultimately ejected as unfit for a perfect, rational society.
Summing up, Iambulus’ main source beside travel narratives on India was the Greek utopian tradition of extraordinary voyages which preceded him (as well as various philosophical works). Shaped by his imaginative genius, however, these varied elements blended into a distinct utopian art-form, which found a permanent place in European literature.
This multiplicity of opinion, at first sight baffling, is essentially the result of a lack of precision in defining the various kinds of utopianism and of an adequate terminology in this area. I propose to designate the utopianism which is unwilling to confine its program to a transformation of social and political patterns, but beguilingly seeks to overhaul the very structure of the natural world, as Cockayne utopianism—borrowing a word from a widespread folk motif, the Land of Cockayne, with which it shares its peculiar flight into fantasy. In Cockayne, Nature is refashioned to the author’s liking, and her beneficence charms our anxieties away. While Cockayne utopianism is an unrestrained expression of man’s hidden desires, utopianism proper is an expression of the reflective mind and in accord with philosophical ideals.16 The utopist’s mood is one of rebellion against the given. His utopian dream is an explosion of the poetic spirit, and beneath the glowing colors lies concealed his quarrel with the Lord: "If only God had plied his craft better!..." I shall now endeavor to show that Iambulus’ Island of the Sun is an unmistakable example of Cockayne utopianism.
The distinguishing mark of Cockayne utopianism is not its vision of a new social order, but of a new natural order which necessarily entails the former.17 It says, in effect, that what we need is a new Heaven and a new Earth—and a new race of men. This is exactly what Iambulus has conjured up before our eyes. His island enjoys perfect climatic conditions, and its automatic productivity yields an overabundance of everything. All foods (including snake-meat) and all liquids (including the seawater) are deliciously sweet and healthful. The islanders themselves are physically no ordinary mortals. They are all well over six feet, built like football players, with an inimitable hand-grip, and a wonderfully pliable bone structure. Severed limbs they glue right back on by means of a potent blood-extract, while their natural resistance makes them practically immune to disease. Ear valves keep out unnecessary noise and a two-forked tongue both speeds up their work and adds an unusual variety and zest to their conversation. Everything, in fact, exemplifies beauty, symmetry, and vigour. The islands form perfect circles (symbols of perfection), are seven in number (a number loaded with every conceivable form of symbolism), are all of about equal size, are equidistant from each other, and follow the same laws and customs. The people, perfectly alike physically and mentally, are divided into groupings, each numbering about four hundred members, who enjoy a life-span of 150 years (though they apparently could live much longer if they had so wished) whereupon they freely and pleasantly take their exit of life. This passion for symmetry, sometimes called the geometrical spirit, is an unfailing characteristic of our genre.18 Though pleasingly held within bounds in Iambulus, it is sometimes carried to enormous extremes.
To sum up, a super-race lives on a super-island, where all is beauty and symmetry. No philosopher, grappling with the complexities of reality and seeking the way to a new and better life in spite of them, would deny that Iambulus’ solution is much simpler and more effective. He would insist, however, that the Cockayne element removes Iambulus’ vision from the realm of serious philosophical speculation. This is not to deny, of course, that Iambulus may genuinely reflect many philosophical ideas. But for him they form part of an imaginative matrix from which he draws the various elements of his utopian construction. Thus his narrative seems shaped by opposed designs. At one end Iambulus seeks to approach the real as best he knows, at the other he seeks to escape it as completely as he can. That is why his techniques of authentication wrought such havoc among later geographic commentators. But his tendency to evade reality in the solution of social problems has been equally mischievous. Some see in his utopia the ideal of primitive simplicity, while others find in it an authoritarian collectivism. Both are wrong. There is nothing primitive about multilingual people, expert in every branch of learning, clad in beautiful purple, and enjoying a varied diet of all sorts of roasts and an abundance of oil and wine. On the other hand, there is nothing authoritarian about collectives which operate without the aid of a judiciary or central government, where every office or duty (however menial) is constantly rotated, and where labour is at a minimum. A most difficult paradox of real life has thus been resolved with the aid of Cockayne, which has graciously bestowed on the Sun-children the boon of natural virtue and absolute equality. These incorruptible utopians walk amid abundance, yet practice moderation and simplicity. Their well-oiled organization, thoroughly communist and all-regulating, operates, nevertheless, through separate and uncoordinated units, without coercion or central control. Everybody loves everybody. All hail to Iambulus!
1. The grounds for this dating may be found in my dissertation, "Iambulus: A Literary Study in Greek Utopianism," Columbia University, 1956.
2. Cf John Ferguson, Utopias of the Classical World (US 1975), p 209, n 14: "The late Sir Richard Paget, owing to a peculiarity of the voice-box, could sound two notes simultaneously. His daughter inherited this capacity, and they used to sing quartets."
3. A delightful sketch of this weird creature, with severed hands and legs strewn all about it, is in Leo Africanus, Description de l’Afrique, ed. Jean Temporal (Lyon 1556), vol 2, La Navigation de Iambol, marchant Grec, p 116.
4. See Franz Susemihl, Geschichte der Grieschischen Literatur in der Alexandrinerzeit (Leipzig 1891), 1:649-701, who lists over forty authors.
5. Antiphanes spoke of a city so cold that human speech freezes there as it is uttered, and only on its melting in the summer can one hear what has been said. For the subsequent elaborations of this story in European and American literature, see Eugene S. McCartney, "Antiphanes’ Cold-Weather Story and its Elaboration," Classical Philology 48(1953):169-72. Lucian’s parody of the fantastic-voyage literature, his True Histories, indicates its extensive proportions and popularity.
6. 1 have omitted from this discussion Amometus’ book on the Attacorae, which was classified by Pliny with Hecataeus’ work on the Hyperboreans (Natural History §6:55) and was probably also written in the form of a voyage extraordinaire. Unfortunately, all we know about it is that the Attocorae were said to have dwelt on the bay of the same name, sheltered by sunbathed hills from every harmful wind, and enjoying the same kind of climate as the Hyperboreans. Magasthenes seems to have referred to them when he mentioned "Indian Hyperboreans" (Strabo, Geography §15:1:57). Fragments of Amometus (lived during the reign of Ptolemy I or II) are in C. Müller, Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum §2:396. For the Sanskrit sources describing the Uttarakuru, see C. Lassen, "Berträge zur Kunde des Indischen Alterthums aus dem Mahabharata," Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 2(1839):62-70. These sources describe an Indian Cockayne: Uttara Kuru is the land of unbroken delights, not too cold or warm, free from disease, sadness, and worry. The earth is dust-free and aromatic, while the rivers flow along golden beds, rolling pearls and precious stones instead of pebbles. The trees always bear both fruits and all sorts of materials and multi-colored clothing, and every morning from their branches hang the most beautiful women, who, through a curse of Indra, must die again every evening. Cf Lucian, True Histories §§1-8. See also Erwin Rohde, Der Griechische Roman and Seine Vorläufer, 3d edn (Leipzig 1914), pp 233-34, and Bimala C. Law, Geographical Essays (UK 1937), 1:29.
7. See, for example, the fascinating account of pseudo-science by Martin Gardner, In the Name of Science (US 1952). Two classics of pseudo-science are the 750-page Glazial-Kosmogonie by Hans Horbiger, "filled with photographs and elaborate diagrams, heavy with the thoroughness of German scholarship, and from beginning to end totally without value," and The New Geology by George M. Price, "disproving" evolution (Gardner, pp 37, 128). The analogy is, of course, inexact, since the pseudo-scientist usually believes he is truly scientific.
8. Gian Battista Ramusio, "Navigatione di Iambolo mercantate antichissimo," in his Delle Navigationi et Viaggi (Venezia 1550), 1:188-90; also John Harris, Navigantium atque itinerantium Bibliotheca (London 1764), 1:383-85; E. Jacquet, "De la relation et de l’alphabet indien d’Iamboule, " Nouveau Jornal Asiatique 19, 2d ser., tome 8 (1831), pp 20-30; E. Stechow, "Kannte das Alterturn die Insel Madagascar?" Petermann’s Geographische Mitteilungen (1944), pp 84-85; Christian Lassen, Indische Alterthumskunde (Leipzig 1858), 3:253-71.
9. See Franz Joseph Dölger, Die Sonne der Gerechtigkeit und der Schwarze, Liturgiegeschichtliche Forschungen, Heft 2 (Münster 1918), pp 83-100; also the same author in Antike und Christentum 5(1936):138-40, and W.W. Tarn, "Alexander Helios and the Golden Age," Journal of Roman Studies 22(1932):140+147-48.
10. Rohde (Note 6), pp 243-60.
11. Benjamin Farrington, Head and Hand in Ancient Greece (UK 1947), pp 55-87.
12. Robert von Pöhlmann, Geschichte der Sozialen Frage und des Sozialismus in der Antiken Welt, 3d edn (Munich 1925), 2:305-24. Upon the death of Attalus III (133 BC) and his deeding of the Pergamene kingdom to Rome, Aristonicus, illegitimate member of the royal family, claimed the throne for himself. Compelled to retire to the hinterland and recruit new forces, Aristonicus appealed to the dispossessed poor and slave populations, offering the latter liberty and the former, it seems, a sparkling social program. These new recruits were specifically designated Heliopolitae (Strabo, Geography §14:1:38 C646), a fact which in the opinion of PöhImann (2:404-06) and W.W. Tarn (Alexander the Great [UK 1948], 2:411-14) suggests a definite relationship between Aristonicus’ social program and the Hellenistic utopian literature, especially Iambulus.
On the other hand, M. Rostovtzeff (Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World [UK 1941], 2:808), soberly comments that "the evidence is slight and inconclusive," and that "the name Heliopolitae may equally well be connected with the oriental belief in the Great Sun, the Supreme God of oriental solar henotheism, the God Justice and the protector of those who have suffered wrong." So too writes J.W. Swain ("Antiochus Epiphanes and Egypt," Classical Philology 39:78): "It seems more likely that the name was taken from some Anatolian cult with which the rebels would be more familiar than they were with Greek philosophy." Rostovtzeff’s explanation is also preferred by D.R. Dudley ("Blossiuis of Cumae," J. of Roman Studies 31:98), V. Vavřínek (La Revolte d’Aristonicos, Rozpravy Československe Akademie Ved 67 [Prague 1957], p 43), F. Bömer, Untersuchungen über die Religion der Sklaven in Griechenland und Rom , 3:165ff), T.W. Africa ("Aristonicus, Blossius and the City of the Sun," Int. Rev. Soc. History 6110-24), J. Vogt (Sklaverie und Humanität, Historia Einzelschr. 8 [Weisbaden 1965], p 43), and C. Mossé ("Les Utopies égalitaires a l’époque hellénistique," Revue Historique 93:297-308).
But Pöhlmann’s suggestion is accepted by Joseph Bidez (La Cité du Monde et la Cité du Soleil chez les Stoiciens [Paris 1932]), Hugh Last (Cambridge Ancient History, 9:104), G. Cardinale ("La Morte di Attalo III e la Rivolta di Aristonico," Saggi di Storia Antica e di Archeologia [Rome 1910], pp 300-301), Benjamin Farrington (Note 11), Esther V. Hansen (The Attalids of Pergamon [US 1947]), and most recently John Ferguson (Utopias of the Classical World [US 1975], pp 124-29). Finally, it is regarded as perhaps valid by Julius Beloch ("Sozialismus und Kommunismus in Alterthum," Zeitschr. f. Sozialwissenschaft 4:360) and Franz Altheim (Alexander und Asien [Tübingen 1953]).
13. Waldemar Richter, Iambulus (Beilage zum Osterprogramm des Gymnasiums Schaffhausen, 1888).
14. Tarn (Note 12, 1st par.); cf Elizabeth Visser, Iamboulos en de eilanden van de Zon (Groningen 1947).
15. Africa (Note 12, 2d par.).
16. These classifications have not been invented but simply introduced from other utopian literatures. The term "voyage extraordinaire" was introduced—according to Geoffrey Atkinson, The Extraordinary Voyage in French Literature Before 1700 (US 1920), page x—by Gustave Lanson in his Manuel Bibliographique de la Littérature Française Moderne (Paris 1914). For a detailed discussion of the problems involved in the classification of the imaginary voyage and cautions about extensions of the classification "voyage extraordinaire" for general use, see P.B. Gove, The Imaginary Voyage in Prose Fiction (US 1941), especially pp 93-122.
17. See Paul Hazard, The European Mind (US 1953), pp 26-27. For its use in Indian and Japanese tradition, see Aware of Utopia, ed. David W. Plath (US 1971), pp 28-29.
18. It is almost certain that many other utopias imitating the style and technique of Iambulus were composed in the Greco-Roman age. The fact that Lucian singles out Iambulus for special mention in the opening pages of True Histories is a clear testimony to his popularity with Greco-Roman readers, and it is inconceivable that he was not imitated by other writers. Further, though Hellenistic utopian literature has for the most part disappeared, Iambulus seems to have had a distinct influence on the 17th-century utopias by Tommaso Campanella (Civitas Solis or Città del Sole, 1623) and Gabriel Foigny (Terre australe connue or Les Aventures de Jacques Sadeur, 1676). Though Campanella lacks entirely the Cockayne concept, many elements of his City of the Sun are strikingly similar to those of Iambulus’ Islands of the Sun, as are many elements of Foigny’s Cockayne utopia and voyage extraordinaire. Iambulus was easily accessible to Campanella in the Italian translation of Ramusio (Note 8) and to Foigny in the French translation of Leo Africanus (Note 3). Although the loss of his work has made Iambulus a shadowy figure in the history of Greek literature, I hope this article has succeeded in restoring some of the flavor of his work and in indicating its importance in the utopian tradition.

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