Tartessus

, a town in Spain near the columns of Hercules, on the Mediterranean. Some suppose that it was afterwards called Carteia , and it was better known by the name of Gades , when Hercules had set up his columns on the extremity of Spain and Africa. There is also a town called Tarte us, in a small island formed by the river of the same name, near Gades in Iberia. Tarte us has been called the most distant town in the extremities of Spain, by the Romans, as also the place where the poets imagined the sun unharne ed his tired horses. Silius Italic us , bk. 3 , lis. 399 & 411; bk. 10 , li. 538 .— Mela , bk. 2 , ch. 6 .— Pausanias , bk. 6 , ch. 19 .— Ovid , Metamorphoses , bk. 14 , li. 416 .— Strabo , bk. 3 .