In one version of the legend of St. Brandan there is a curious passage where not only the possibility of antipodal regions is indicated but the pious necessity of belief in such regions.[709] St. Brandan is here reported to have read in an old book that beneath this earth there is another world, where day prevails when it is night with us. Unable to accept such a story, Brandan burned the book in a fit of exasperation; and as a punishment for his incredulity God made him voyage nine years upon the seas. What the book was we are not informed, but perhaps we do not err in assuming that the poet had in mind a copy of the _In somnium Scipionis commentarius_ or possibly the _De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii_. PERSISTENCE OF BELIEF THAT ANTIPODAL REGIONS WERE INHABITED An essential feature of the theory as it had been expounded by Macrobius and Capella, however, was the insistence that the other three temperate areas are inhabited by races of men like our own. As belief in the existence of inhabitants in the antipodal regions rested in our period on the authority of Capella and Macrobius and was subjected to lively discussion and controversy, it is not out of place for us to observe what these two writers had actually said. Capella, after briefly stating that three out of the five zones are uninhabitable on account of cold and heat, declared that the other two are tempered by a wind which encourages life.[710] The inhabitants of the quarter south of us, beyond the equator, he called _antoikoi_; those of the quarter also in the southern hemisphere but beyond the north-south ocean, who have winter when we have summer, _antichthones_. Those in our own temperate zone beyond the ocean, who have the same summer and winter as ours but who have night when we have day, he called _antipodes_.[711] No commerce or communication is possible between us and these other groups of human beings, nor between one group and any of the others. Macrobius set forth this theory in similar terms,[712] expressly emphasizing the point that reason teaches us that the southern zone must be inhabited because its climate is temperate like ours. However, he added, it is not peopled by men like ourselves—Greeks, Romans, barbarians—nor shall we ever be able to learn what sort of men the inhabitants actually are.