"he found there some sailors newly arrived from the Atlantic Isles. These are two in number, separated only by a narrow strait, and they are 10,000 stadia (1000 geographical miles) from the African coast. They are called the 'Isles of the Blest.' Rain seldom falls there, and when it does so, it is in moderation; but they usually have mild winds, which spread such abundance of dew that the soil is not only good for sowing and planting, but produces of itself the most excellent fruit, and in such abundance that the inhabitants have nothing else to do but to abandon themselves to the enjoyment of repose. The air is always fresh and wholesome, through the favourable temperature of the seasons and their imperceptible transition.... So that it is generally assumed, even among the barbarians, that these are the Elysian Fields and the habitations of the blest, which Homer has described with all the magic of poetry. When Sertorius heard of these marvels he had a strong desire to settle in these islands, where he might live in perfect peace and far from the evils of tyranny and war."
But this remarkable man soon had fresh warlike under-takings to think about, so that he never went there. It appears too from the fragments that have come down to us of Sallust's Histories[329] that Sertorius did not visit these islands, but only wished to do so. In fragment 102 we read:
"It is related that he undertook a voyage far out into the ocean," and Maurenbrecher adds that a scholium to Horace [Epod. 16, 42] says: "The ocean wherein are the Insulæ Fortunatæ, to which Sallust in his Histories says that Sertorius wished to retire when he had been vanquished."
But in L. Annæus Florus, who lived under Hadrian (117-138 A.D.), we read [iii. 22]:[330]
"An exile and a wanderer on account of his banishment, this man [i.e., Sertorius] of the greatest but most fatal qualities filled seas and lands with his misfortunes: now in Africa, now in the Balearic Isles he sought fortune, was sent out into the ocean and reached the Fortunate Isles: finally he raised Spain to conflict."
It thus appears that by Florus's time the idea had shaped itself that Sertorius really had sought and found these islands; which, besides, in part at all events, were thought to be the same as those said to have been already discovered by the Carthaginian Hanno on the west coast of Africa about 500 B.C.