In the Greek and Roman world this idea had found supporters and
opponents, Cicero and Pliny being among the former, and Epicurus,
Lucretius, and Plutarch among the latter. Thus the problem came
into the early Church unsolved.
Among the first churchmen to take it up was, in the East, St.
Gregory Nazianzen, who showed that to sail beyond Gibraltar was
impossible; and, in the West, Lactantius, who asked: "Is there any
one so senseless as to believe that there are men whose footsteps
are higher than their heads?. . . that the crops and trees grow
downward?. . . that the rains and snow and hail fall upward toward
the earth?. . . I am at a loss what to say of those who, when they
have once erred, steadily persevere in their folly and defend one
vain thing by another."
In all this contention by Gregory and Lactantius there was nothing to be
especially regretted, for, whatever their motive, they simply supported
their inherited belief on grounds of natural law and probability.
Unfortunately, the discussion was not long allowed to rest on these
scientific and philosophical grounds; other Christian thinkers
followed, who in their ardour adduced texts of Scripture, and soon
the question had become theological; hostility to the belief in
antipodes became dogmatic.
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