There is a 2,000-year-old story that may or may not be apocryphal. It took place when much of the world was unknown and largely unmapped. Cartographers had to have some way of portraying those areas of the earth that were as yet unexplored, so they symbolized these regions by dragons, monsters and large fish. The message was clear. Uncharted territories were frightening, fearsome places. Terrors lay buried there.

But as many maps declared, "There be Treasures" as well. The story is this: one commander of a battalion of Roman soldiers was caught up in a battle that took him into the territory that the mapmakers had represented with their monsters and dragons. Not knowing whether to forge ahead into the unknown, or turn back into the known, which would also be a retreat, he dispatched a mes…