(30) For beliefs of various nations of antiquity that the earth's center was in their most sacred place, see citations from Maspero, Charton, Sayce, and others in Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism, and Myth, chap. iv. As to the Greeks, we have typical statements in the Eumenides of Aeschylus, where the stone in the altar at Delphi is repeatedly called "the earth's navel"--which is precisely the expression used regarding Jerusalem in the Septuagint translation of Ezekiel (see below). The proof texts on which the mediaeval geographers mainly relied as to the form of the earth were Ezekiel v, 5, and xxxviii, 12. The progress of geographical knowledge evidently caused them to be softened down somewhat in our King James's version; but the first of them reads, in the Vulgate, "Ista est Hierusalem, in medio gentium posui eam et in circuitu ejus terrae"; and the second reads, in the Vulgate, "in medio terrae," and in the Septuagint, [Greek]. That the literal centre of the earth was understood, see proof in St. Jerome, Commentat. in Ezekiel, lib. ii; and for general proof, see Leopardi, Saggio sopra gli errori popolari degli antichi, pp. 207, 208. For Rabanus Maurus, see his De Universo, lib. xii, cap. 4, in Migne, tome cxi, p. 339. For Hugh of St. Victor, se his De Situ Terrarum, cap. ii. For Dante's belief, see Inferno, canto xxxiv, 112-115: "E se' or sotto l'emisperio giunto, Ch' e opposito a quel che la gran secca Coverchia, e sotto il cui colmo consunto Fu l'uom che nacque e visse senza pecca." For orthodox geography in the Middle Ages, see Wright's Essays on Archaeology, vol. ii, chapter on the map of the world in Hereford Cathedral; also the rude maps in Cardinal d'Ailly's Ymago Mundi; also copies of maps of Marino Sanuto and others in Peschel, Erdkunde, p. 210; also Munster, Fac Simile dell' Atlante di Andrea Bianco, Venezia, 1869. And for discussions of the whole subject, see Satarem, vol. ii, p. 295, vol. iii, pp. 71, 183, 184, and elsewhere. For a brief summary with citations, see Eiken, Geschichte, etc., pp. 622, 623.