32. Why the same days are unequal in length
TRANSLATION
Sun] has withdrawn towards the winter regions. Pytheas of Marseilles writes that this happens on the island of Thule, which is six days by ship from Britain.278
Indiscussingthesematters concerning the varyinglength of the solstitial days, Pliny leaves the length of the winter [solstitial] days in those regions to be inferred. But he makes it equally clear what the length of the night in both seasons is, because it is necessary that the days, be they of whatever length, make up, together with the night, a space of 24 hours. But it should be noted that Solinus writes these things about Thule in another vein: In uttermost Thule, when the Sun passes at the summer solstice through the star Cancer, there is no night, and likewise no day at the winter solstice.279 Nor does Pliny contradict this in his seventh book:TheuttermostplaceofalltheycallThule,inwhichwehaveindicated that there are no nights at the solstice when the Sun passes through the sign of Cancer, and on the other hand no days at the winter [solstice].
Some are of the opinion that this happens for six months.280 /380/
32. WHY THE SAME DAYS ARE UNEQUAL IN LENGTH
The reason why the same [calendar] days are of unequal length is the roundness of the Earth, for not without reason is it called ''the orb of the world'' on the pages of Holy Scripture and of ordinary literature. It is, in fact, a sphere set in the middle of the whole universe. It is not merely circular like a shield [or] spread out like a wheel, but resembles more a ball, being equally round in all directions, but not in a mass of equal magnitude ^ although I would believe that the enormous distance of mountains and valleys neither adds to it nor diminishes it any more than a ¢nger would a playing ball.281
278 Pliny, HN 2.74.182^2.77.187 (1.314^318). ''Thus it happens that . . . by ship from Britain.'' Cf. Bede, On Times 7.
279 Solinus, Collectanea rerum memorabilium 22.9, ed. Th. Mommsen (Berlin:
Weidmann, 1895):101.11^102.2; cf. Isidore, Etym. 14.6.4.
280 Pliny, HN 4.16.104 (2.198). All the MSS agree that Bede refers to the seventh book of Pliny, though the quotation comes from the fourth. On the possibility that Bede used an anthology of Pliny excerpts, see Introduction, section 5. Perhaps the passage was misidenti¢ed in this abridgement.
281 ''The reason why . . . playing ball.'' Cf. Pliny, HN 2.64.160 (2.294^296). The seemingly ineradicable belief that medieval people thought the world to be £at, and consideredithereticaltothinkotherwise,wasrefutedbyC.W.Jonesin''TheFlatEarth'',Thought9
(1934):296^307.The weed continues to £ourish nonetheless,though one hopes that it will be
THE RECKONING OF TIME
The Earth being thus shaped and given to mortals as their habitation, the orbit of the Sun, which is always shining in this universe, gives daylight to one place and leaves another in night by the ¢rm decree of God's law. And because, as Ecclesiastes says, the Sun rises and sets and returns to its place,282 when it is being reborn there, it circles through the south and inclines towards the north.283 When orbiting through eastern regions in the morning before western ones on the same latitude, it necessarily brings noon and evening in its train. Nonetheless, through the whole year it makes days as well as nights to be of equal length in both
[regions]. Again, it is necessary that the ¢ery Sun mount up the middle orb of heaven284 at one and the same point in time through the whole circle of the year for all who are placed facing one another in the same
[vertical] line under the northern or the southern clime. However, it does not rise and set at the same moment or hour for both, /381/ but travelling through the southern zone in wintertime, it rises earlier and sets later for those who inhabit the southern regions of Earth than [it does] for us who, placed towards the north, with the globe of the earth blocking the way, receive its rising later, and its setting earlier. But on the other hand, in summer the Sun rises very much earlier for us who live under the same latitude, and seems to remain much longer on the point of setting [with us] than with those who dwell on Earth's southern
£ank.285 They are denied an earlier sight of [the Sun] by the imposition of the Earth, and then are obliged to renounce it sooner. Therefore they have shorter days in summer than we do, but longer ones in winter.
This can be known not only from the orbit of the Sun, but also from de¢nitively eradicated by Je¡rey Burton Russell's Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians (New York: Praeger, 1991). However, as Marina Smyth points out
(271^278) the Irish cosmographers of the 7th century were ambivalent or confused about the di¡erence between ''round''and ''spherical''.Belief inthe spherical Earth was con¢rmed byincreasedexposuretoclassicalandPatristicliterature.BedeknewtheseIrishsourceswell, and may therefore have seen ¢t to hammer home the point about sphericity.
282 Ecclesiastes 1.5.
283 I.e.when the days are lengthening (the Sun is ''being reborn''), the Sun is in the southern sky, but day by day edging northward.
284 I.e. cross the equator. The phrase is from Vergil, Aeneid 8.97, ed. R.A.B.
Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969):285.
285 in meridiano terrae sinu (381.30^31). Since Bede vehemently denies the existence of the antipodes in ch. 34, one must presume that he is referring here to those who dwell further south on the Earth's £ank, but still in the northern hemisphere.