Note 446 — Chapter VI · THE FINDING OF STRANGE COASTS.
Reading edition
Footnote 446: Luigi Pulci, in his famous romantic poem published in 1481, has a couple of striking stanzas in which Astarotte says to Rinaldo that the time is at hand when Hercules shall blush to see how far beyond his Pillars the ships shall soon go forth to find another hemisphere, for although the earth is as round as a wheel, yet the water at any given point is a plane, and inasmuch as all things tend to a common centre so that by a divine mystery the earth is suspended in equilibrium among the stars, just so there is an antipodal world with cities and castles unknown to men of olden time, and the sun in hastening westwards descends to shine upon those peoples who are awaiting him below the horizon:—