"Haec Dicit Dominus Deus:

Ista est Jerusalem, in medio gentium posui eam, et in circuitu ejus terras;"[2] a declaration supposed to be corroborated by the Psalmist's expression, regarded as prophetic of the death of Our Lord: "Deus autem, Rex noster, ante secula operatus est salutem in medio Terrae" (Ps.

Lxxiii. 12).[3] The Terrestrial Paradise was represented as occupying the extreme East, because it was found in Genesis that the Lord planted a garden east ward in Eden.[4] Gog and Magog were set in the far north or north-east, because it was said again in Ezekiel: "Ecce Ego super te Gog Principem capitis Mosoch et Thubal ... et ascendere te faciam de lateribus Aquilonis," whilst probably the topography of those mysterious nationalities was completed by a girdle of mountains out of the Alexandrian Fables. The loose and scanty nomenclature was mainly borrowed from Pliny or Mela through such Fathers as we have named; whilst vacant spaces were occupied by Amazons, Arimaspians, and the realm of Prester John. A favourite representation of the inhabited earth was this [Symbol]; a great O enclosing a T, which thus divides the circle in three parts; the greater or half-circle being Asia, the two quarter circles Europe and Africa.[5] These Maps were known to St. Augustine.[6]

[Sidenote: Roger Bacon as a geographer.]

81. Even Ptolemy seems to have been almost unknown; and indeed had his Geography been studied it might, with all its errors, have tended to some greater endeavours after accuracy.

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