(3) There is a stanza in _Canzone XV._ which suggests that Dante believed Ethiopia to be on the south side of the equator. Classical and mediæval cosmographers had very vague ideas about the extent and position of this country. Dante describes a wind raised in its deserts by the sun, which _now_ is heating it (implying the time of summer?); but the same wind, crossing the sea to Europe, darkens all _this_ hemisphere, bringing clouds which fall in snow. “Levasi della rena d’Etiopia Un vento pellegrin, che l’ aer turba, Per la spera del sol, ch’ or la riscalda, E passa il mare, onde n’adduce copia Di nebbia tal, che s’ altro non la sturba Questo emisperio chiude tutto, e salda; E poi si solve, e cade in bianca falda Di fredda neve, ed in noiosa pioggia.”[409] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [409] “There riseth up from Ethiopia’s sands A wind from far-off clime which rends the air, Through the sun’s orb that heats it with its ray. The sea it crosses; thence, o’er all the lands Such clouds it brings that but for wind more fair O’er all our hemisphere ’twould hold its sway; And then it breaks and falls in whitest spray Of frozen snow and pestilential showers.” _Canz._ xv. 14-21. (_Plumptre_). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ However, it may be said that “or la riscalda”[410] means merely that it is always hot in the tropics, even when we have winter, and that “questo emisperio”[411] cannot possibly mean the whole of the terrestrial northern hemisphere from equator to pole, but simply describes the appearance of the hemispherical sky,[412] completely covered with cloud. These doubtful passages are not strong enough to set against the explicit statement in the _Quæstio_ that the habitable earth extends from the equator to the Arctic circle and no further.[413] Letters and reports from missionaries and traders, none of them scientific, did not shake Dante’s faith in the limits laid down by Ptolemy and Alfraganus. His geography was utterly wrong, but his astronomy was right; and therefore, although he had no idea of what he would see on our globe in untravelled latitudes, he knew exactly, and has described vividly, what he would see in the sunny sky. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [410] “Now heats it.” [411] “This hemisphere.” [412] Just as in _Par._ xxviii. 80. [413] _Qu._ xix. 53-57, and repeated in xxi. 36-40. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 9. CELESTIAL PHENOMENA AND TIME. The foregoing quotations have shown how well Dante understood the changing appearances of the celestial phenomena as viewed from different latitudes: it now remains to be seen what were his conceptions of longitude.