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BOOK I, CHAPTER XXXI 271
their country; ' (c) and Philip, when he saw from a little hill the order and arrangement of the Roman camp in his king- dom under Publius Sulpicius Galba.? (¢) Thus we see how weshould beware of adhering to. common opinions, and that we must weigh them by the test of reason, not by common report.*,
I had with me for a long time a man who had lived ten or twelve years in that other world which has been discovered in our time in the region where Villegaignon made land, and which he christened Antarctic France. This discovery of a boundless country seems to be worth consideration. I do not know whether I can be assured that some other may not hereafter be found, so many greater personages having been deceived about this one. I fear that our eyes may be greater than our stomachs,‘ and that we have more curiosity than capacity. We grasp at every thing, but clutch nothing but wind. Plato speaks of Solon narrating that he learned from the priests of the city of Sais in Egypt that in times past, and before the Deluge, there was a large island called Atlantidis, just at the mouth of the Strait of Gibraltar, which was of greater extent than Africa and Asia together, and that the kings of that country — who not only pos- sessed that island, but had extended their dominion so far on the continent that they held the breadth of Africa as far as Egypt, and the length of Europe as far as Tuscany — under- took to stride into Asia and to subdue all the nations on the shores of the Mediterranean as far as the Euxine; * and to this end they traversed all Spain, Gaul, and Italy, even to
Greece, where the Athenians resisted them; but, some time later, the Athenians and they and their island were swal- lowed up by the Deluge.* It is very probable that that im-
1 See Plutarch, Life of Flaminius, 111. But Plutarch says it of Fla- minius himself, not of his army.
- See Livy, XXXI, 34.
3 Par la voye de la raison, non par la voix commun.
4 In 1580-1588: Comme on dict, et le dit-on de ceux, ausquels Pappetit et la faim Sont plus desiver de viande, qu'ils n "en peuvent empocher; je crains aussi (omitted in the Edition M. unicipale).
’ Le golfe de la mer Majour; that is, the Black Sea.
- See the Timaus, XXII, XXIV, XXV. Cf. Benzoni’s Storia del
Monde Nuovo, translated into French by Chauveton.