6. Then Africanus said: "I perceive that you are now fixing your eyes on the abode and home of men, and if it seems to you small, as it really is, then look always at these heavenly things, and despise those earthly. For what reputation from the speech of men, or what fame worth seeking, can you obtain? You see that the inhabited places of the earth are scattered and of small extent, that in the spots [Footnote: Latin, _maculis_,--a figure so bold in Cicero's time as to need an apology for its use, but now employed with no consciousness of its being otherwise than strictly literal.]--so to speak--where men dwell there are vast solitary tracts interposed, and that those who live on the earth are not only so separated that no communication can pass from place to place, but stand, in part at an oblique angle, in part at a right angle with you, in part even in an opposite direction; [Footnote: It hardly needs to be said, that the reference here is to the convex surface of the earth, on which those remote from one another may hold all the various angles to each other that are borne by the spokes of a wheel.] and from these you certainly can anticipate no fame. "You perceive also that this same earth is girded and surrounded by belts, two of which--the farthest from each other, and each resting at one extremity on the very pole of the heavens--you see entirely frost-bound; while the middle and largest of them burns under the sun's intensest heat. Two of them are habitable, of which the southern, whose inhabitants are your antipodes, bears no relation to your people; and see how small a part they occupy in this other northern zone, in which you dwell. For all of the earth with which you have any concern--narrow at the north and south, broader in its central portion--is a mere little island, surrounded by that sea which you on earth call the Atlantic, the Great Sea, the Ocean, while yet, with such a name, you see how small it is. To speak only of these cultivated and well-known regions, could your name even cross this Caucasus which you have in view, or swim beyond that Ganges? Who, in what other lands may lie in the extreme east or west, or under northern or southern skies, will ever hear your name? All these cut off, you surely see within what narrow bounds your fame can seek to spread. Then, too, as regards the very persons who tell of your renown, how long will they speak of it?