94 
pliny's natueal histoex. 
[Book II, 
slaugMer, and war, and that, while we drencL. her with our 
blood, we cover her with unburied bones ; and being covered 
with these and her anger being thus appeased, she conceals 
the crimes of mortals \ I consider the ignorance of her 
nature as one of the evil efffects of an ungrateful mind. 
CHAP. 64. (64.) — OE THE POEM OP THE EAETH. 
Every one agrees that it has the most perfect figure^. 
"We- always speak of the ball of the earth, and we admit it 
to be a globe bounded by the poles. It has not indeed the 
form of an absolute sphere, from the number of lofty moun- 
tains and flat plains ; but if the termination of the lines be 
bounded by a ciirve^, this would compose a perfect sphere. 
And this we learn from arguments drawn from the nature of 
things, although not from the same considerations which we 
made use of with respect to the heavens. Por in these the 
hollow convexity everywhere bends on itself, and leans upon 
the earth as its centre. "Whereas the earth rises up solid 
and dense, like something that swells up and is protruded 
outwards. The heavens bend towards the centre, while the 
earth goes from the centre, the continual rolling of the 
heavens about it forcing its immense globe into the form of 
a sphere'*. 
CHAP. 65. (65.)— WHETHEE THEEE BE ANTIPODES ? 
On this point there is a great contest between the learned 
^ " ossa vel insepulta cum tempore tellus occultat, deprimentia pondere 
suo mollitam pluviis humum." Alexandre, in Lemaire, i. 370. 
2 " figm'a prima." I may refer to the second chapter of this book, 
where the author remarked upon the form of the earth as perfect in all 
its parts, and especially adapted for its supposed position in the centre of 
the universe. 
3 " . . . . si capita hnearum comprehendantur ambitu ;" the meaning 
of this passage would appear to be : if the extremities of the lines drawn 
from the centre of the earth to the different parts of the surface were con- 
nected together, the result of the whole would be a sphere. I must, how- 
ever, remark, that Hardouiu interprets it in a somewhat different manner ; 
**Si per extremitates Hnearum ductarum a centro ad summos quosque 
vertices montium circulus exigatur." Lemaire, i. 370. 
^ *' immensum ejus globum in formam orbis assidua circa earn 
mundi volubihtate cogente." As Hardouin remarks, the word mundus 
is here used in the sense of ccelum. Lemaire, i. 371. 
