Note 236 — Chapter II · THE CONTRIBUTION OF WESTERN CHRISTENDOM BEFORE 1100 A. D.

The idea of antipodes in our modern sense of the term, as referring to regions on the opposite side of a spherical earth, came from the Greeks. Notably the doctrine of Crates of Mallos, it was adopted by Martianus Capella and Macrobius, who passed it on to the medieval West (see above, p. 18). Lactantius and Augustine argued against the possibility of such antipodes. The practical spirit of the Romans had not been interested in theoretical regions on the other side of the earth (see above, p. 10). Roman maps, we may infer, were usually circular and showed an ocean stream running around the orbis terrarum, or three known continents (Asia, Europe, Africa). Sometimes an unknown fourth continent beyond the impassable equatorial ocean was depicted (see Simar, op. cit., p. 150). These Roman maps probably formed the basis of many maps of the early Middle Ages. But during the Middle Ages, as has been the case with modern attempts to interpret these theories, true antipodes became confused with the fourth, or austral, continent, belief in which did not necessitate belief in a spherical world. Isidore was probably referring merely to the austral continent when he wrote: “Extra tres partes orbis, quarta pars trans Oceanum interior est in meridie quae solis ardore nobis incognita est, in cujus finibus antipodas fabulose inhabitare produntur” (Etym., XIV, 5).

386Arguing thus, Simar contends, in his brilliant study of Central African geography in antiquity and the Middle Ages, that medieval discussions of the antipodes referred to the austral continent and did not necessarily have anything to do with the question of belief in the sphericity of the earth. While this may be true, he gives, in the opinion of the writer, a misleading impression that the doctrine of a spherical earth met with scant favor in the West until as late as the twelfth century (Simar, op. cit., pp. 157–158). He tends to ignore the important influence of Macrobius and of Martianus Capella in keeping alive from the time of the Carolingian Renaissance onward the doctrine that the earth is a globe. On the influence of Macrobius, see Duhem, Système, vol. iii, 1915, pp. 62–71; and on Martianus Capella, see especially Mori, Misuraz. eratos., 1911, pp. 390–391.