(2.) _Gerard_ of Cremona, who, though for some time a resident at
Toledo, is essentially an Italian, tells us about the "Middle of the
World," from which longitudes were calculated, "called Arim," and "said
to be in India," whose longitude from west to east or from east to west
is ninety degrees.
In his _Theory of the Planets_ Gerard tells us still more wonderful
things. Arim was a geographical centre known and used by Hermes
Trismegistus and by Ptolemy, as well as by the great Arab geographers;
Alexander of Macedon marched just as far to the east of Arim as Hercules
to the west; both reached the encircling ocean, and accordingly "Arim
is equidistant from both the Gades, 90 degrees; likewise from each pole,
north and south, the same, 90 degrees." This all recurs in the tables of
Alphonso the Wise of Castille about A.D. 1260, and two of the greatest
of mediaeval thinkers, Albert and Roger Bacon, reproduced the essential
points of this doctrine, its false symmetry, and its balance of the true
and the traditional, with variations of their own.
(3.) _Albert the Great_, Albertus Magnus, second only to Aquinas among
the Continental Schoolmen, in his _View of Astronomy_, repeats Adelard
upon the question of Arim, "where there is no latitude," while (4)
_Roger Bacon_ discusses not only the true and the traditional East and
West, but even a twofold Arim, one "under the solstice, the other under
the equinoctial zone.
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