Antipodes

“ Each year the Portuguese arrive at the antartic antipodes, and carry on commerce with those people. I say the antipodes; yet I am not ignorant that there are learned men, most illustrious for their genius and their science, amongst whom there are some saints who deny the existence of the antipodes. ”

“ At the end of the lesson, during the explanation of a text, Julian once mentioned the earth's antipodes, about which he had heard Mardonius speaking. He had done this with the secret intention of annoying the monk, but Eutropius became jocular. 24
"Who's been talking to you about 'antipodes,' my angel? Little sinner, how you do make me laugh! That old fool of a Plato did, I know, write something about it. But are you actually wise enough to believe that men walk about on their heads?"
Eutropius would launch forth into accusations of heresy against the philosophers. ”

“ To assert antipodes might become once more as heretical as Arianism or Pelagianism; and men might be dragged to the jails of some Holy Office, like Galilei, for saying they had seen what in fact they had seen, and what every one else that pleased might see. ”

“ Even the mild persuasion of Dalberg, who valued Schiller as he ought, was fruitless: indeed the reasons I set forth against any project of a union were difficult to contradict. No one could deny that between two spiritual antipodes there was more intervening than a simple diameter of the sphere: antipodes of that sort act as a sort of poles, and so can never coalesce. But that some relation may exist between them will appear from what follows. ”

“ To keep our eyes open longer were but to act our Antipodes. The Huntsmen are up in America, and they are already past their first sleep in Persia. But who can be drowsie at that howr which freed us from everlasting sleep? Or have slumbring thoughts at that time, when sleep it self must end, as some conjecture all shall awake again? ”

“ Yet gainsayers still appeared. That the doctrine of the antipodes continued to have life, is shown by the fact that in the sixth century Procopius of Gaza attacks it with a tremendous argument. He declares that, if there be men on the other side of the earth, Christ must have gone there and suffered a second time to save them; and, therefore, that there must have been there, as necessary preliminaries to his coming, a duplicate Eden, Adam, serpent, and deluge. ”

“ For if unto Jerusalem, or what part of the world soever he shall appear in the night, at the same time unto the Antipodes, it must be day; if twilight unto them, broad day unto the Indians; if noon unto them, yet night unto the Americans: and so with variety according unto various habitations, or different positions of the Sphere, as will be easily conceived by those who understand the affections of different habitations, and the conditions of Antæci, Periæci, and Antipodes. ”

“ ABOUT few geographical positions are there more mistakes made by intelligent people than the situation of the antipodes and the periœci. It has been commonly taught in the schools, at least in New England, that the antipodes of the Eastern States, or of dwellers near parallel 40, are in China, and that the antipodes of Boston are in Peking. ”

“ It may be added that, no matter where these two persons might meet, whether at the Antipodes or at any other place, still, upon comparing their journals, there would always appear a day's difference between them; and if they were to keep continually sailing on, one always towards the west, and the other always towards the east, every time they might meet or cross each other, they would increase the difference between them by an additional day. ”

“ Then when the god departs to the antipodes, the most important ceremonies of the Mysteries are performed, for our protection and salvation. And observe the following: As in the festival of the Mother the instrument of generation is severed, so too with the Athenians, those who take part in the secret rites are wholly chaste and their leader the hierophant forswears generation; because he must not have aught to do with the progress to the unlimited, but only with the substance whose bounds are fixed, so that it abides for ever and is contained in the One, stainless and pure. ”

“ They are built of huge blocks of granite piled up without cement. We know nothing of those who erected them; their name and history are alike effaced from the memory of man, and we know nothing either of their ancestors or of their descendants.
In the Antipodes certain curious discoveries point to the existence of man in those remote and mysterious times, to which, for want of a better, we give in Europe the name of the Age of the Mammoth and the Reindeer; and everything points to the conclusion that man appeared in the different divisions of the earth about the same time. ”

“ The Greek priests prudently refrained from dealing with the difficult problem of the earth's solid support.
The Hebrew pontiffs, however, were not so reserved. After having made Jerusalem the "navel of the world," they allowed for the earth itself seven solid columns as a foundation. The question of the Antipodes, in which the greatest intellects of antiquity believed,—Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle,—was thus pontifically judged and condemned. ”

“ The doctrine censured by the Pope, was that there is another world, and another race of men quite different from us, not children of Adam, and hence not redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ. This was the sense in which the Pope understood the doctrine of the Antipodes, this was the sense in which it was understood by St. Augustine, and for that reason reprobated by him as well as by the Pope. And the very words, in which the accusation against Virgilius is formulated, clearly point to this “perverse and wicked” teaching. ”

“ Other truths have beene formerly accounted as ridiculous as this, I shall specifie that of the Antipodes, which have beene denied and laught at by many wise men and great Schollers, such as were Herodotus, St. Austin, Lactantius, the Venerable Bede, Lucretius the Poet, Procopius, and the voluminous Abulensis with others. Herodotus counted it so horrible an absurdity, that hee could not forbeare laughing to thinke of it. ”

“ It is well known what opinion was entertained of Gallileo for maintaining the existence of the antipodes. Pope Gregory excommunicated as atheists all those who gave it credit. Thus each man has his God: But do all these gods exist? In reply it will be said, somewhat triumphantly, each man hath his ideas of the sun, do all these suns exist? However narrow may be the pass by which superstition imagines it has thus guarded its favourite hypothesis, nothing will perhaps be more easy than the answer: the existence of the sun is a fact verified by the daily use of the senses ”

“ Wallis, geometry professor of Oxford, did first of all lay down this proposition, and was counted by many to have overshot the point of learning, and to have been the author of a whimsical thesis. And I should not have wondered if, after a man's having asserted this might be done, before it was actually done, some blind devout people in those days, had accused him of heresy, and of attributing to men a power of working miracles. The notion of the antipodes was by the most learned men of the age in which St. ”

“ They took Thebes, put the king to death, and tied Dirce to the tail of a wild bull, which dragged her till she died. Bacchus changed her into a fountain, and deprived Antiope of the use of her senses. In this forlorn situation she wandered all over Greece, and at last found relief from Phocus son of Ornytion, who cured her of her disorder, and married her. Hyginus, fable 7, says that Antiope was divorced by Lycus, because she had been ravished by Epopeus, whom he calls Epaphus, and that after her repudiation she became pregnant by Jupiter. ”

“ In his anger, Antipater said he would punish all those who had encouraged the Greeks to revolt. He soon learned that Demosthenes had been one of the principal men to advise the uprising, so he sent his soldiers to make him prisoner.
Demosthenes, warned of his danger, immediately fled, but had only time to take refuge in the Temple of Neptune. There, in spite of the holiness of the place, Antipater's guards came to get him. ”

“ Antipater; and upon torturing him, he learned that Antipater had sent for a potion of deadly poison for him out of Egypt, by Antiphilus, a companion of his; that Theudio, the uncle of Antipater, had it from him, and delivered it to Pheroras; for that Antipater had charged him to take his father off while he was at Rome, and so free him from the suspicion of doing it himself: that Pheroras also committed this potion to his wife. Then did the king send for her, and bid her bring to him what she had received immediately. ”

“ Antipater Becomes Intolerable. He Is Sent To Rome, And Carries Herod's Testament With Him; Pheroras Leaves His Brother, That He May Keep His Wife. He Dies At Home.
1. Now when Antipater had cut off the hopes of the orphans, and had contracted such affinities as would be most for his own advantage, he proceeded briskly, as having a certain expectation of the kingdom; and as he had now assurance added to his wickedness, he became intolerable; for not being able to avoid the hatred of all people, he built his security upon the terror he struck into them. ”

“ The priest, however, not being able to pay the ransom for Ins son, Antipater was trained up in the practices of the Idumeans, and afterwards in great favour with Hyrcanus the high priest of Judea. He was subsequently sent by Hyrcanus on an embassy ta Pompey, and having restored the kingdom to him, which had been invaded by Aristobulus, the brother of the latter, Antipater himself had the good fortune to be nominated the procurator of Palestine. Antipater, however, having been treacherously slain, by those who envied his good fortune, was succeeded by his son Herod. ”

“ Hence the first intestine war among the Macedonians, in which Antipater, Antigonus, the satrap of Phrygia, and Ptolemy, the satrap of Egypt, were allied against Perdiccas, who was ultimately murdered in 321 on the Egyptian frontier (see Perdiccas [4] , Eumenes) . A second settlement, made at Triparadisus in Syria in 321, constituted Antipater regent and increased the power of Antigonus in Asia. ”

“ Rabble, indeed!—why these are the noble and free citizens of Epidaphne! Beasts, did you say?—take care that you are not overheard. Do you not perceive that the animal has the visage of a man? Why, my dear sir, that cameleopard is no other than Antiochus Epiphanes, Antiochus the Illustrious, King of Syria, and the most potent of all the autocrats of the East! It is true, that he is entitled, at times, Antiochus Epimanes—Antiochus the madman—but that is because all people have not the capacity to appreciate his merits. ”

“ ANTIGONE The poems and histories of legendary Greece often relate, as has been seen, to women and their lives. Antigone was as bright an example of filial and sisterly fidelity as was Alcestis of connubial devotion. She was the daughter of OEdipus and Jocasta, who, with all their descendants, were the victims of an unrelenting fate, dooming them to destruction. OEdipus in his madness had torn out his eyes, and was driven forth from his kingdom Thebes, dreaded and abandoned by all men, as an object of divine vengeance. ”

“ Antiochus, who had long been regent of the Eastern provinces beyond Mesopotamia, had come suddenly, by his father's murder, into possession of so vast a kingdom, that he could not control the coast of Asia Minor, where sundry free cities and dynasts sought to establish themselves. Ptolemy II. was already king of Egypt, including the suzerainty of Cyrene, and had claims on Palestine and Syria. Ptolemy Keraunos, the double-dyed villain and murderer, was in possession of the throne of Macedonia, but at war with the claimant Antigonus. ”

“ She arrived at Babylon after the messenger of Perdiccas had gone to visit Cleopatra. The arrival of Nicæa brought up very distinctly to the mind of Perdiccas the advantages of an alliance with Antipater. Olympias, it is true, had a great name, but she possessed no real power. Antipater, on the other hand, held sway over a widely-extended region, which comprised some of the most wealthy and populous countries on the globe. He had a large army under his command, too, consisting of the bravest and best-disciplined troops in the world ”

“ Archelaus had been designated king by Herod, with Judea, Samaria, and Idumea as his kingdom; but the emperor allowed him only the territory, with the title ethnarch. Antipas was named a tetrarch by Herod, and his territory was Galilee and the land east of the Jordan to the southward of the Sea of Galilee, called Perea. Antipas was the Herod under whose sway Jesus lived in Galilee, and who executed John the Baptist. He was a man of passionate temper, with the pride and love of luxury of his father. ”

“ The three kings whom Antiochus plucked up by the roots (cf. Dan 7:8, Dan 7:20,Dan 7:24) must be Heliodorus, the murderer of Philopator; Demetrius, who was a hostage in Rome, the son of Philopator, and the legitimate successor to the throne; and the son of Ptolemy Philometor, for whom his mother Cleopatra, the sister of Seleucus Philopator and of Antiochus Epiphanes, claimed the Syrian throne. But no one of these three reached the royal dignity, and none of them was dethroned or plucked up by the roots by Antiochus Epiphanes. Heliodorus, it is true, strove for the kingdom (Appian, Syriac. 45) ”

“ ANTIPAS, Antipas-Herod, or Herod-Antipas, was the son of Herod the Great, and Cleopatra of Jerusalem. Herod the Great, in his first will, declared him his successor in the kingdom; but he afterward named his son Archelaus king of Judea, and gave to Antipas only the title of tetrarch of Galilee and Peræa. Archelaus going to Rome, to persuade the emperor to confirm his father’s will, Antipas also went thither. ”