Columbus was also certainly aware of some of the views and allusions to be found in the ancient writers, indicating a belief in lands lying beyond the Pillars of Hercules.[84] He enumerates some of them in the letter which he wrote about his third voyage, and which is printed in Navarrete. The Colombina Library contains two interesting memorials of his connection with this belief. One is a treatise in his own hand, giving his correspondence with Father Gorricio, who gathered the ancient views and prophecies;[85] and the other is a copy of Gaietanus’ edition of Seneca’s tragedies, published indeed after Columbus’ death, in which the passage of the _Medea_, known to have been much in Columbus’ mind, is scored with the marginal comment of Ferdinand, his son, “Hæc prophetia expleta ē per patrē meus cristoforū colō almirātē anno 1492.”[86] Columbus, further, could not have been unaware of the opposing theories of Ptolemy and Pomponius Mela as to the course in which the further extension of the known world should be pursued. Ptolemy held to the east and west theory, and Mela to the northern and southern view. [Illustration: PTOLEMY. Fac-simile of a cut in _Icones sive imagines vivæ literis cl. virorum ... cum elogiis variis per Nicolaum Reusnerum. Basiliæ, CIƆ IƆ XIC_, Sig. A. 4.] The Angelo Latin translation of Ptolemy’s Greek _Geographia_ had served to disseminate the Alexandrian geographer’s views through almost the whole of the fifteenth century, for that version had been first made in 1409. In 1475 it had been printed, and it had helped strengthen the arguments of those who favored a belief in the position of India as lying over against Spain. Several other editions were yet to be printed in the new typographical centres of Europe, all exerting more or less influence in support of the new views advocated by Columbus.[87] Five of these editions of Ptolemy appeared during the interval from 1475 to 1492. Of Pomponius Mela, advocating the views of which the Portuguese were at this time proving the truth, the earliest printed edition had appeared in 1471. Mela’s treatise, _De situ orbis_, had been produced in the first century, while Ptolemy had made his views known in the second; and the age of Vasco da Gama, Columbus, and Magellan were to prove the complemental relations of their respective theories. [Illustration: PTOLEMY. Fac-simile of cut in _Icones sive imagines virorum literis illustrium ... ex secunda recognitione Nicolai Reusneri. Argentorati, CIƆ IƆ XC_, p. 1. The first edition appeared in 1587. Brunet, vol. iv., col. 1255, calls the editions of 1590 and Frankfort, 1620, inferior.] [Illustration: ALBERTUS MAGNUS. Fac-simile of cut in Reusner’s _Icones_, Strasburg, 1590, p. 4. There is another cut in Paulus Jovius’s _Elogia virorum litteris illustrium_, Basle, 1575, p. 7 (copy in Harvard College Library).] [Illustration: MARCO POLO.