Note 1213 — Chapter XII · REGIONAL GEOGRAPHY

Otia imper., vol. i, p. 892. Dante also placed the Terrestrial Paradise in the southern hemisphere, at the summit of the Mount of Purgatory, which was the antipodes of “Mount Zion.” This has usually been interpreted to mean the Mount Zion near Jerusalum. See Coli, op. cit., pp. 185–207; Moore, Studies in Dante, Third Series, 1903, pp. 134–139; Mori, La geogr., 1922, pp. 287–289. Benini (Origine del Monte del Purgatorio, 1917, pp. 1037–1055), however, maintains that the mountain to which Dante refers was to be associated with Sinai or with the Mount Pharaan of Habakkuk, iii, 3 (see above, p. 461, note 19; see also R. Benini, Il grande Sion, il Sinai e il piccolo Sion (dove ha posto Dante l’entrata dell’ inferno), in: Rendiconti della Reale Accademia dei Lincei, Classe di scienze morali, storiche e filologiche, series 5, vol. xxiii, Rome, 1915, pp. 293–315). He argues that Dante believed this mountain to be on the Tropic of Cancer and that the Mount of Purgatory, its antipodes, was consequently on the Tropic of Capricorn.