Dante and the early astronomers . Fig. 13, The Universe of Leudppus. rim, to secure its contents, and made it divide the sphereof air into two parts, so that it rested upon air, and airwas also in the sky above. The underside of the discwas not inhabited, no doubt because no one could standupside down. His order of the successive heavens is 64 LATER FLAT-EARTH SYSTEMS. not quite the same as that of Leucippus, as he puts themoon and the Morning Star together, and the rest ofthe planets beyond the sun. This scheme gave the universe a beautifully sym-metrical form, which must have pleased the Gre
Dante and the early astronomers . Fig. 13, The Universe of Leudppus. rim, to secure its contents, and made it divide the sphereof air into two parts, so that it rested upon air, and airwas also in the sky above. The underside of the discwas not inhabited, no doubt because no one could standupside down. His order of the successive heavens is 64 LATER FLAT-EARTH SYSTEMS. not quite the same as that of Leucippus, as he puts themoon and the Morning Star together, and the rest ofthe planets beyond the sun. This scheme gave the universe a beautifully sym-metrical form, which must have pleased the Greeks,but now they were puzzled to know why the heavenly. Fig. 14. The Universe of Democritus. bodies did not circle symmetrically with regard to thecentral earth. Why was not the pole in their zenithand the equator on the horizon ? They could only guessthat it must have been so at first, and that the disc hadslipped out of position, either through some irregularityin its weight, or in the density of the underlying air. LATER FLAT-EARTH SYSTEMS. 65 Compare Miltons— Some say He bid His angels turn askanceThe poles of Earth twice ten degrees and more,From the Suns axle; they with labour pushedOblique the centric globe. Paradise Lost, Bk. X., 563-566. All these theories and guesses may seem to us verycrude and fanciful, and we may compare them to theeager questionings of intelligent children, too impatientto consider whether the answers given are satisfactoryexplanations or no. But we must remember that all weknow of the early cosmogonies is from allusions anddescriptions by later writers, who often—like Aristotle,for instance—only quote
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