Just as the British have Shakespeare, Italians have Dante Alighieri, and like every high school student in Italy, I spent two years studying his greatest work, the Divina Commedia. This poem is not only the foundation of the Italian language, but also an encyclopaedia of medieval knowledge.
For those unfamiliar with it, the Divine Comedy is an allegorical journey in which Dante travels through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven to understand sin, redemption, and ultimately the meaning of human life.
While in hell (XXVI canto dell’Inferno, v. 119 ), Dante encounters the Greek hero Ulysses, and asks him what led to his damnation. Ulysses recounts his final voyage: he and his men had reached the Pillars of Hercules, the threshold of the known world, beyond which lay lands still unexplored. Exhausted and longing for their families, his men refused to go further.
To persuade them, Ulysses delivers his famous exhortation:
"Fatti non foste a viver come bruti,
ma per seguir virtute e canoscenza"
(you were not made to live as brutes, but to pursue virtue and knowledge.)
With those words the Greek hero urges his fearful companions not to let themselves be overcome by their fears, in order to discover the mysteries of a part of the world still uninhabited, which humankind has not yet experienced. This convinced the men to do continue the journey, but unfortunately shortly after a storm capsized the ship.
This oration has always struck me as a profound expression of true human nature: a relentless drive to explore the unknown. What distinguishes us from other animals is rationality, the capacity to reason, to question, and to seek understanding beyond immediate necessity.
The unknown that once lay beyond the horizon now lies beyond our planet, and the drive that pushed Ulysses past the Pillars of Hercules is the same one that points us toward Mars and beyond.
This is why I'm working on Mars terraforming. I strongly believe that the work that we are doing can help shape the path for a new generation of Ulysses, one capable of setting foot on a “new world”, Mars.
Unlike Dante’s Ulysses, however, these explorers may return home, embrace their loved ones, and tell us what they have seen, rather than recounting their journey from the depths of Hell.