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It is difficult to realize that the Earth on which Alexander the Great was born was the same in its main outlines as the Earth on which we stand today, and at the same time to realize how very different from our present knowledge were men's ideas then of its area. Even modern writers picture Alexander as primitive in his notions, and it will be interesting to remember, when we find him anxious to press ever farther and farther east and south, that the philosophers of his time, especially his great teacher Aristotle, had just announced new arguments to prove that the Earth was spherical in form.
The old Homeric ideas that the Earth was a flat disk, that the bronze firmament, set with stars, was upheld on great pillars by Atlas, and that the sun (as Herodotus imagined) could be blown out of its course by a strong wind, had passed away for ever.