Editorial note — BOOK IX

[Note 2: Meaning the Canaries in which the ancients placed the Garden of the Hesperides. From them Ptolemy began to reckon longitude. The names Hesperia, Hesperides, Hesperus, etc., were used to indicate the west; thus Italy is spoken of by Macrobius: illi nam scilicet Græci a stella Hespero dicunt Venus et Hesperia Italia quæ occasui sit; Saturnalium, lib. i., cap. iii. Ptolemy likewise says: Italia Hesperia ab Hespero Stella quod illius occasui subjecta sit, and again in his Historia tripartita, lib. viii: Quum Valentinianus Imperator as oras Hesperias navigaret, id est ad Italiam, et Hispaniam. Elsewhere the same author mentions the islands off the west coast of Africa, of which he received some vague information as: Incognitam terram qui communi vocabulo Hesperi appellantur Ethiopes. Pliny, Strabo, in the last chapter De Situ Orbis, Diodorus, and others make similar usage of the terms. St. Anselm, De Imagine Mundi, lib. i., cap. xx., Juxta has, scilicet Gorgonas Hesperidum ortus; Pomponius Mela, lib. iii. cap. ix., x., xi.]

[Note 3: The sub-equatorial regions of Africa had already been visited by numerous navigators since the time of Prince Henry of Portugal, and the fact that they were inhabited was well known to the Spaniards.]

[Note 4: Plato, Cicero, Aristotle, Anaxagoras, Mela, and others were amongst those who believed in the existence of the Antipodes.]

[Note 5: Aristotle, De Cælo et Terra, ii., 14. The constellation of the Southern Cross was known from the writings of the Arab geographers.]

[Note 6: First noted by Columbus in a letter written from Hispaniola in October, 1498.]

[Note 7: Davus sum non Oedipus, Andria, Act I, Scene II. The quotation, transposed by Martyr from the singular into the plural number, is from Terrence, Davus being a comic character in the comedy of Andria.]