SLEEP AND AWAKENING 15 
fer to the utmost in support of a speculative fancy, for 
after twenty years he was consecrated Bishop of Salz- 
burg, a pretty strong proof of his recantation. 
The reign of Papal authority lasted long, but from 
time to time the ancient ideas found expression. Ptol- 
emy's views leaked back into current thought from the 
tenth century onward through the Arabic translations 
brought to Europe by the Moors and made known by 
the writings of Isidore of Seville. Occasionally a specu- 
lative monk in drawing a wheel-map extended it far be- 
yond the limits of the Old World, and like Macrobius 
represented some possibility of a southern temperate and 
even of a southern frigid zone. Speculation revived as 
to the existence of Antipodes to the west as well as Antip- 
odes to the south. Roger Bacon, so far before his age 
in all that concerned natural science, openly declared his 
belief in them, and of course in the spherical form of the 
Earth. 
The travels of Marco Polo opened the eyes of the 
awakening intellect of Europe to the immense eastward 
extension of the Old World, and made it clear for the 
first time that the Torrid Zone was no barrier of fire, but 
a path for Chinese and Arab trade in the far east of Asia 
and along the east coast of Africa. Marco Polo prepared 
the way for the translation of Ptolemy made by Angeles 
in 1410. The world was ready for this revelation and 
there is something of pathos in the sight of the first leaders 
of thought in modem Europe eagerly welcoming as the 
latest advance the work of the last of the Greeks. Long 
before this, isolated writers, such as Moses, a converted 
Spanish Jew, in the eleventh century, Michael Scott, the 
astrologer and reputed wizard, and Albert Trismegistus, 
the alchymist, had urged that the Torrid Zone was not 
