There are two inhabitable sections of the earth: one near our upper, or nothern pole, the other near the other or southern pole; and their shape is like that of a tambourine. If you draw lines from the centre of the earth they cut out a drum-shaped figure. The lines form two cones; the base of the one is the tropic, of the other the ever visible circle, their vertex is at the centre of the earth. Two other cones towards the south pole give corresponding segments of the earth. These sections alone are habitable. Beyond the tropics no one can live: for there the shade would not fall to the north, whereas the earth is known to be uninhabitable before the sun is in the zenith or the shade is thrown to the south: and the regions below the Bear are uninhabitable because of the cold.
(The Crown, too, moves over this region: for it is in the zenith when it is on our meridian.)So we see that the way in which they now describe the geography of the earth is ridiculous. They depict the inhabited earth as round, but both ascertained facts and general considerations show this to be impossible. If we reflect we see that the inhabited region is limited in breadth, while the climate admits of its extending all round the earth. For we meet with no excessive heat or cold in the direction of its length but only in that of its breadth; so that there is nothing to prevent our travelling round the earth unless the extent of the sea presents an obstacle anywhere. The records of journeys by sea and land bear this out. They make the length far greater than the breadth. If we compute these voyages and journeys the distance from the Pillars of Heracles to India exceeds that from Aethiopia to Maeotis and the northernmost Scythians by a ratio of more than 5 to 3, as far as such matters admit of accurate statement. Yet we know the whole breadth of the region we dwell in up to the uninhabited parts:
in one direction no one lives because of the cold, in the other because of the heat.
But it is the sea which divides as it seems the parts beyond India from those beyond the Pillars of Heracles and prevents the earth from being inhabited all round.
Now since there must be a region bearing the same relation to the southern pole as the place we live in bears to our pole, it will clearly correspond in the ordering of its winds as well as in other things. So just as we have a north wind here, they must have a corresponding wind from the antarctic. This wind cannot reach us since our own north wind is like a land breeze and does not even reach the limits of the region we live in. The prevalence of north winds here is due to our lying near the north. Yet even here they give out and fail to penetrate far: in the southern sea beyond Libya east and west winds are always blowing alternately, like north and south winds with us. So it is clear that the south wind is not the wind that blows from the south pole. It is neither that nor the wind from the winter tropic. For symmetry would require another wind blowing from the summer tropic, which there is not, since we know that only one wind blows from that quarter. So the south wind clearly blows from the torrid region. Now the sun is so near to that region that it has no water, or snow which might melt and cause Etesiae. But because that place is far more extensive and open the south wind is greater and stronger and warmer than the north and penetrates farther to the north than the north wind does to the south.
The origin of these winds and their relation to one another has now been explained.
6
Let us now explain the position of the winds, their oppositions, which can blow simultaneously with which, and which cannot, their names and number, and any other of their affections that have not been treated in the 'particular questions'. What we say about their position must be followed with the help of the figure. For clearness' sake we have drawn the circle of the horizon, which is round, but it represents the zone in which we live; for that can be divided in the same way. Let us also begin by laying down that those things are locally contrary which are locally most distant from one another, just as things specifically most remote from one another are specific contraries. Now things that face one another from opposite ends of a diameter are locally most distant from one another.
(See diagram.)
Let A be the point where the sun sets at the equinox and B, the point opposite, the place where it rises at the equinox. Let there be another diameter cutting this at right angles, and let the point H on it be the north and its diametrical opposite O the south. Let Zbe the rising of the sun at the summer solstice and E its setting at the summer solstice; D its rising at the winter solstice, and G its setting at the winter solstice. Draw a diameter from Z to G from Dto E. Then since those things are locally contrary which are most distant from one another in space, and points diametrically opposite are most distant from one another, those winds must necessarily be contrary to one another that blow from opposite ends of a diameter.
The names of the winds according to their position are these.