[869] _I thought to Hell, etc._: Virgil, holding on to Lucifer's hairy sides, descends the dark and narrow space between him and the ice as far as to his middle, which marks the centre of the earth. Here he swings himself round so as to have his feet to the centre as he emerges from the pit to the southern hemisphere. Dante now feels that he is being carried up, and, able to see nothing in the darkness, deems they are climbing back to the Inferno. Virgil's difficulty in turning himself round and climbing up the legs of Lucifer arises from his being then at the 'centre to which all weights tend from every part.' Dante shared the erroneous belief of the time, that things grew heavier the nearer they were to the centre of the earth. [870] _His upturned legs_: Lucifer's feet are as far above where Virgil and Dante are as was his head above the level of the Judecca. [871] _What point, etc._: The centre of the earth. Dante here feigns to have been himself confused--a fiction which helps to fasten attention on the wonderful fact that if we could make our way through the earth we should require at the centre to reverse our posture. This was more of a wonder in Dante's time than now. [872] _Mid tierce_: The canonical day was divided into four parts, of which Tierce was the first and began at sunrise. It is now about half-past seven in the morning. The night was beginning when they took their departure from the Judecca: the day is now as far advanced in the southern hemisphere as they have spent time on the passage. The journey before them is long indeed, for they have to ascend to the surface of the earth. [873] _To morn from night_: Dante's knowledge of the time of day is wholly derived from what Virgil tells him. Since he began his descent into the Inferno he has not seen the sun. [874] _'Neath whose summit_: Jerusalem is in the centre of the northern hemisphere--an opinion founded perhaps on _Ezekiel_ v. 5: 'Jerusalem I have set in the midst of the nations and countries round about her.' In the _Convito_, iii. 5, we find Dante's belief regarding the distribution of land and sea clearly given: 'For those I write for it is enough to know that the Earth is fixed and does not move, and that, with the ocean, it is the centre of the heavens. The heavens, as we see, are for ever revolving around it as a centre; and in these revolutions they must of necessity have two fixed poles.... Of these one is visible to almost all the dry land of the Earth; and that is our north pole [star]. The other, that is, the south, is out of sight of almost all the dry land.' [875] _The Man_: The name of Christ is not mentioned in the _Inferno_.