He does not define his own position more exactly than this, but we may conjecture that he was 45° (a sign and a half) east of the sun, since this would be the meridian of Rome, and there would be a peculiar fitness in such a position at such a moment, when he has just received a message of warning and prophecy from St. Peter to bear to this city.[505] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [505] _Par._ xxvii. 64-66. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration: Fig. 49. The view six hours later. _Par._ xxvii.] Fig. 49 shows these positions of Dante and the sun, and the consequent limits of his vision. Jerusalem is “near,” in comparison with the much more distant sunlit space of ocean in the opposite direction. We place the sun in the middle of Aries, because we shall see presently (when discussing the date) that this is its most probable position, and Dante in the first degree of Gemini because this is 45° east of the sun, and also because the fact that he is above Earth’s “first climate” suggests that he is in the beginning of this sign. For the northern limit of the first climate was 20½°, according to Alfraganus, and the ecliptic in the sign of Gemini rises gradually from 20° north of the equator to 23½° at its end, where it adjoins Cancer. Since the time when he looked down before, he sees that he has revolved over an arc equal to half the climate, that is 90°, for the climates only extended over the habitable earth, which was 180° in longitude. His former position, then, must have been 90° further east, halfway between Jerusalem and Ganges; and it was then noon at Jerusalem, while all the ocean east of Ganges lay in the black darkness of night. Fig. 48 shows this position. In this interpretation of a difficult passage, the meaning given to the first lines seems a little forced; but if we take them in the more natural sense that Dante had moved from above the centre to the end of the climate, that is, from the meridian of Jerusalem to Gades, we are met by a difficulty in the following lines. For to say that he is standing over Gades, and in the same breath that the sun is more than 30° further to the west, means that it is setting more than 30° west of Jerusalem: he cannot therefore possibly see Jerusalem, nor is it “near” him. It does not help us to take “presso” in its alternative meaning, and say that he could see “nearly as far as” Jerusalem, for however little more than 30° “a sign and more” may mean, it brings the “terminator” (as astronomers call the dividing line between light and darkness on a planet) a long way from Jerusalem and much nearer Italy, according to Dante’s reckoning of distances in the Mediterranean. This is shown on fig. 50, where the data are made as favourable as possible, by putting the sun at the very end of Aries.