This sympathetic and authoritative commentator, who has illustrated the enterprise with all that classical or mediæval literature affords, declares his conviction that the discovery of a new continent was more completely foreshadowed in the simple geographical statement of the Greek Strabo,[248] who, after a long life of travel, sat down in his old age, during the reign of Augustus, to write the geography of the world, including its cosmography. In this work, where are gathered the results of ancient study and experience, the venerable author, after alluding to the possibility of passing direct from Spain to India, and explaining that the inhabited world is that which we inhabit and know, thus lifts the curtain: “There may be in the same temperate zone _two and indeed more inhabited lands_, especially near the parallel of Thinæ or Athens, prolonged into the Atlantic Ocean.”[249] This was the voice of ancient Science. Before the voyage of Columbus two Italian poets seem to have beheld the unknown world. The first was Petrarca; nor was it unnatural that his exquisite genius should reach behind the veil of Time, as where he pictures “The daylight hastening with wingèd steps, Perchance to gladden the expectant eyes _Of far-off nations in a world remote_.”[250] The other was Pulci, who, in his “Morgante Maggiore,” sometimes called the last of the romances and the earliest of Italian epics, reveals an undiscovered world beyond the Pillars of Hercules:-- “Know that this theory is false; his bark The daring mariner shall urge far o’er The western wave, a smooth and level plain, Albeit the earth is fashioned like a wheel. Man was in ancient days of grosser mould, And Hercules might blush to learn how far Beyond the limits he had vainly set The dullest sea-boat soon shall wing her way. “_Men shall descry another hemisphere_, Since to one common centre all things tend; So earth, by curious mystery divine Well balanced, hangs amid the starry spheres. _At our Antipodes are cities, states,_ _And throngèd empires, ne’er divined of yore._ But see, the sun speeds on his western path To glad the nations with expected light.”[251] This translation is by our own eminent historian, Prescott, who first called attention to the testimony,[252] which is not mentioned even by Humboldt. Leigh Hunt referred to it at a later day.[253] Pulci was born in 1431, and died about 1487, five years before Columbus sailed; so that he was not aided by any rumor of the discovery he so distinctly predicts. * * * * *