1513, The Fountain of Youth in St. Augustine, Florida

An early Indiana Jones five centuries ago, was searching for the Fountain of Youth
                                                          [when he traveled to what is now Florida in 1513.

It was March 4 when Juan Ponce de Leon* departed from Puerto Rico 

   [to explore the coast of Florida, unbeknownst to the King of Spain and to the Queen.

In search of Immortality the world history mentions important people
             [like Alexander the Great, Prester John* and others full of fame and grandevity.

Herodotus* mentions a fountain containing a special kind of water
                                                                                  [which gives exceptional longevity.

Eternal youth is a gift frequently sought in stories of things such as
                                  [the philosopher's stone, universal panaceas, and the elixir of life

Certainly Juan Ponce did not found the water, otherwise he would be alive now,

                          [but we know that his life was cut from Death's the metaphysical knife.

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to be continued

* ''IT COULD BE OTHERWISE in verse'' _
Texts and Narration: Odysseus Heavilayias - ROTTERDAM //
Language adjustments and text adaptation: Kellene G Safis -CHICAGO//
Digital adaptation and text editing: Cathy Rapakoulia Mataraga - PIRAEUS
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* Herodotus was a Greek historian and he is often referred to as "The Father of History", a title first conferred by Cicero....
He lived in the fifth century BC (c. 484–c. 425 BC), a contemporary of Thucydides, Socrates, and Euripides.
He was the first historian known to have broken from Homeric tradition to treat historical subjects as a method of investigation—specifically, by collecting his materials systematically and critically, and then arranging them into a historiographic narrative.

19th-century German artist’s 

impression of Juan Ponce de León 

and his explorers drinking from a 

spring in Florida while supposedly 

seeking the Fountain of Youth

* Juan Ponce de León was a Spanish explorer and conquistador born in Santervás de Campos, Valladolid, Spain in 1474. 
Though little is known about his family, he was of noble birth and served in the Spanish military from a young age. 
He first came to the Americas as a "gentlemen volunteer" with Christopher Columbus's second expedition in 1493.

By the early 1500s, Ponce de León was a top military official in the colonial government of Hispaniola, where he helped crush a rebellion of the native Taíno people. 

He was authorized to explore the neighboring island of Puerto Rico in 1508 and was named the first Governor of Puerto Rico by appointment of the Spanish crown in 1509. 

While Ponce de León grew quite wealthy from his plantations and mines, he faced an ongoing legal conflict with Diego Columbus, the late Christopher Columbus's son, over the right to govern Puerto Rico. 

After a long court battle, Columbus replaced Ponce de León as governor in 1511. 

Ponce de León decided to follow the advice of the sympathetic King Ferdinand and explore more of the Caribbean Sea. 

The Fountain of Youth in St. Augustine, Florida

In 1513, Ponce de León led the first known European expedition to La Florida, which he named during his first voyage to the area.

He landed somewhere along Florida's east coast, then charted the Atlantic coast down to the Florida Keys and north along the Gulf coast, perhaps as far as Charlotte Harbor.

* Prester John (Latin: Presbyter Johannes) was a legendary Christian patriarch, presbyter (elder) and king who was popular in European chronicles and tradition from the 12th through the 17th centuries. He was said to rule over a Nestorian (Church of the East) Christian nation lost amid the Muslims and pagans of the Orient, in which the Patriarch of the Saint Thomas Christians resided. The accounts are varied collections of medieval popular fantasy, depicting Prester John as a descendant of the Three Magi, ruling a kingdom full of riches, marvels, and strange creatures.
At first, Prester John was imagined to reside in India; tales of the Nestorian Christians' evangelistic success there and of Thomas the Apostle's subcontinental travels as documented in works like the Acts of Thomas probably provided the first seeds of the legend. After the coming of the Mongols to the Western world, accounts placed the king in Central Asia, and eventually Portuguese explorers convinced themselves that they had found him in Ethiopia. 

*Metaphysical : Reality beyond what is perceptible to the senses 

  ELEGHOS... at history