[118] _Conv._ II. xiv. 170-174. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ We may here remind our readers that the three Latin poets, Virgil, Ovid, and Lucan, were among the world’s five greatest poets met by Dante in Limbo; that next to Aristotle among the philosophers stood Socrates and Plato, and near these were Democritus, Anaxagoras, and Thales, Cicero and Seneca, Ptolemy, Avicenna and Averroës.[119] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [119] _Inf._ iv. 80, 81, 90, 131-144. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Among Christian writers, Dante may have gathered some information about ancient Greek speculations from St. Augustine and Peter Lombard; and Orosius, the Spanish friend of Augustine, was his chief authority for that geographical system which, in connection with astronomy, plays an important part in the time-indications of the _Divina Commedia_. Orosius had a great reputation among geographers and map-makers. He had travelled much between Spain, Africa, and Palestine, and he devotes a chapter to describing the different parts of the earth in his history _Adversus Paganos_, which he wrote to prove that Christianity had not injured but benefitted the countries in which it had been accepted. This fifth century geography seems to have been largely based on the first-century geography of Strabo, who quotes Eratosthenes, Posidonius, and Hipparchus among his authorities. Orosius states that the land is entirely surrounded by Ocean, and is divided into three continents—Asia, with the mouths of Ganges in the middle of its eastern coast, Europe stretching vaguely very far to the north-east, and Africa a narrow and long strip from east to west between the Mediterranean and the southern ocean. This chapter is quoted in _De Mon._ II. iii. 87-90 and _Qu._ xix. 43; and Orosius is almost certainly “quell’ avocato dei tempi cristiani,”[120] seen by Dante among the learned doctors in the Heaven of the Sun. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [120] “The advocate of the Christian centuries.” (_Par._ x. 199). Orosius is also mentioned by name in _Conv._ III. xi. 27; _V. E._ II. vi. 84; and _De Mon._ II. ix. 26. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The speaker who points him out in these words also mentions his own name and that of the spirit nearest to him:— “Questi che m’è a destro più vicino Frate e maestro fummi, ed esso Alberto È di Cologna, ed io Thomas d’Aquino.”[121] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [121] “He who is nearest to me on the right My brother and master was, and he Albertus Is of Cologne, I Thomas of Aquinum.” (_Par._ x. 97-99). ------------------------------------------------------------------------