Mediæval maps are as fascinating as a fairy tale, which indeed they much resemble. The shape is conventional, and not supposed to represent the true shape of the habitable earth; it is sometimes circular, sometimes quadrilateral, occasionally oval, as in the present instance. The east is here, as usual, at the top, and there we see the Paradise of Adam and Eve, and close beside it, to the north, the River Ganges, flowing into the great ocean which surrounds all the land. At the opposite or western extremity are the Pillars of Hercules, which two angels appear to be guarding. In the centre, but not so exactly or conspicuously central as in some other maps, we find “Hierusalem.” Along the south is the long narrow continent of Africa, with the Atlas and Ethiopian mountains; and the Nile, rising far in the south-west, after mysterious submergences and reappearances, finally flows into the Mediterranean, past the pictured Pyramids, here strangely called (according to Dark-Age myth) the Barns of Joseph. In the north another Angel points to the country where dwell the Gog-Magogs, and not far off are the lands of the Hyperboreans, here described as untroubled by disease or discord, of the “most wicked” Gryphons, and of the Dog-headed folk, adjoining the Arctic Ocean. Italy is a very large country, roughly triangular, and in the Mediterranean to the south lie Sicily, the whirlpool Charybdis, the rock Scylla, Sardinia, Corsica, and other islands. Rome is figured as a battlemented city, about halfway between Jerusalem and the Pillars of Hercules. [Illustration: MAP OF THE WORLD BY HEINRICH OF MAINZ, ABOUT A.D. 1110. _To face p. 344._ _Reproduced by permission from Beazley’s “Dawn of Modern Geography.”_] This is where Dante also places the imperial city, for in his system it is about 45°, or 3 hours, east of Gades and west of Jerusalem. He tells us in one place that it was vespers in Naples when the sun rose in Purgatory,[429] and in another that when it was vespers or three o’clock in the afternoon in Purgatory, it was midnight “here”[430] which may mean Florence or Italy in general; both these statements indicate a difference of nine hours or 135° between Italy and Purgatory. Purgatory in the _Divine Comedy_ is exactly antipodal to Jerusalem, and therefore twelve hours distant in time;[431] and for the sake of his allegory Dante has so far departed from tradition as to place the Earthly Paradise here also.[432] These five places may therefore be diagramatically represented thus:— ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [429] _Purg._ iii. 25. [430] _Purg._ xv. 1-6. [431] _Purg._ iv. 68-71; xxvii. 1-5.