Classical texts preloaded exploration with images of Paradise and the Golden Age.

Evidence

This was a major source of information and images about “other worlds.” Plato (c. 427–347 BC) described a string of legendary islands, among them Atlantis, which many early explorers set out to find. Aristotle (384–322 BC) and Eratosthenes (c. 276–194 BC) both made remarkably accurate estimates of the circumference of the globe, which were consulted by Columbus. Ptolemy’s Geographia (second century AD) provided a model for mapmakers more than a thousand years after it had been produced. Sixteenth-century explorers believed that in the outer world lay, not only Paradise, but that “Golden Age,” a place of perfect happiness and “springtime of the human race,” of which the classical poets, including Horace (65–8 BC) and Ovid (43 BC–AD 17), had written. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 597

Categorization

• SEED: The classical sources of the ‘Golden Age’ explorer imaginary could seed an essay on how the colonial gaze inherited pre-existing mythic templates rather than inventing them.