Page:Essays in Historical Criticism.djvu/241



SENECA AND THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA ^

Ferdinand Columbus tells us that among the causes that moved his father to discover the Indies was the high author- ity of those who said it was possible to sail from Spain west- ward to India like Aristotle. . . and like Seneca in his first book on Nature who says that from the uttermost parts of Spain to the Indians one might sail in a few days with a fair wind. 2 The passage in Seneca to which reference is here made is the following : ** Punctum est istud in quo navigatis, in quo bellatis, in quo regna disponitis ;. . . Sursum ingen- tia spatia sunt in quorum possessionem animus admittitur; . . . tunc contemnit domicilii prioris angustias. Quantum enim est, quod ah ultimis litorihus Hispaniae usque ad Indos jacet ? Paucissimorum dierum spatium, si navem suus ventus implevit. At ilia regio coelestis per triginta annos velocis- simo sideri viam praestat, nusquam resistenti, sed aequaliter cito." {Nat, Quaest. Praef. 9-12.)

The two sentences in Italics have been quoted by nearly every writer on the discoveries from Ferdinand Columbus to the present day and have without exception so far as I have noticed been misinterpreted in two ways. The error began with Roger Bacon who, in his Opus Majus,^ in support of

1 Reprinted with some rearrangement from The Academy (London) of Feb- ruary 11, 1893.

2 Eistorie, cap. vii. The passage is no doubt based on the words of Colum- bus in his letter to Ferdinand and Isabella describing his third voyage. Navar- rete, I, 261.

large part the source of the Ymago Mundi of Cardinal Pierre D'Ailly (Petrus de Aliaco) which Columbus studied and from which he derived his knowledge of the geographical theories of the ancients.
 * Edition of J. H. Bridge, London, 1900, I, 290. Bacon's Opus Majus was in