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Someone was not thinking clearly in selecting the orb as a token of flat world domination.
A comical use of the world-ball motif occurs in the compilation of
legends concerning Alexander the Great called 'The Alexander
Romance.' Darius the Persian had sent to Alexander, among other
things, a ball, suggesting that young Alexander should run along and
play with the other children: "'I sent the ball so that you can play
with children your own age and not mislead so many young men at such
an arrogant age into going around with you, like a brigand chief,
and disturbing the peace of the cities. . .'" (Darius' letter,
Pseudo-Callisthenes, Alexander Romance, p. 680, Collected Ancient
Greek Novels, edited by B. P. Reardon). The delighted Alexander
pretends that Darius has given him the world-ball!: "'As for the
ball, you are indicating to me that I shall gain control over the
whole world: the world is spherical and round.'" (Alexander's reply,
Pseudo-Callisthenes, Alexander Romance, p. 682, Collected Ancient
Greek Novels, edited by B. P. Reardon).
Poets
Some people are willing to concede that the astronomers of
antiquity realized the earth was round, as indeed cannot be denied.
They allege, however, that most people did not know this. While
there are dissenters throughout the period, in fact most people had
good reason to know this. A rotund earth turns up in popular poetry, like
Virgil's Georgics:
"As our globe rises steep
to Scythia and the Riphaean crags, so it slopes downward to Libya's
southland. One pole is ever high above us, while the other,
beneath our feet, is seen of black Styx and the shades
infernal. . .There, men say,
is either the silence of lifeless night, and gloom ever
thickening beneath night's pall; or else Dawn returns from us
and brings them back the day, and when on us the rising Sun
first breathes with panting steeds, there glowing Vesper is
kindling his evening rays." (Virgil,
Georgics, Georgic 1).
Geography
Geography, a sister science to astronomy, was also premised on the
idea of the rotundity of the earth:
"Take, for example, the proposition that the earth is
spheroidal: whereas the suggestion of this
proposition comes to
us mediately from the law that bodies tend toward the center and
that each body inclines toward its own center of gravity, the
suggestion comes immediately from the phenomena observed at sea and
in the heavens; for our sense-perception and also our intuition can
bear testimony in the latter case. For instance, it is obviously the
curvature of the sea that prevents sailors from seeing distant
lights that are placed on a level with their eyes. At any rate, if
the lights are elevated above the level of the eyes, they become
visible, even though they be at a greater distance from the eyes;
and similarly if the eyes themselves are elevated, they see what was
before invisible. This fact is noted by Homer, also, for such is the
meaning of the words: 'With a quick glance ahead, being
upborne on a great wave, [he saw the land very near].' So, also,
when sailors are approaching land, the different parts of the shore
become revealed progressively, more and more, and what at first
appeared to be low-lying land grows gradually higher and higher."
(Strabo, Geography, Book I, Chapter I, Section 20).
Strabo, writing in the first century A.D., knew of people who had attempted circumnavigation, without success:
"For those who undertook circumnavigation, and turned back without having achieved their purpose, say
that they were made to turn back, not because of any
continent that stood in their way and hindered their
further advance, inasmuch as the sea still continued
open as before, but because of their destitution and
loneliness." (Strabo, Geography, Book I, Chapter I, Section 8.)
Dark Ages
The knowledge of a rotund earth was never lost; Thomas Aquinas, writing in the middle ages, boasts of the
improved number his contemporaries had worked up for the circumference of the earth:
"But according to the more careful measurement of present-day astronomers, the earth's
circumference is much less, i.e., 20,000 times 1,000 paces and 400, as Al Fargani says; or 180,000
stades, as Simplicius says — which is about the same, since 20,000 is 1/8 of 160,000. . .And so,
from all of this, we can argue that the earth's quantity is not only spherical, but not large
in comparison to the sizes of the other stars." (Thomas Aquinas,
Commentary on Aristotle's De Caelo, 'On
the Heaven,' Book II, Lecture 28, 543).
Though these new and improved numbers are too small, they are
encouraging: "And therefore, we would not consider as very absurd
the view of those who wish to link, on the basis of similarity and
nearness, the region situated in the far west about the pillars of
Hercules (which Hercules set up as a memorial of his victory), and
the region in the far east about the Indian Ocean, and who say there
is one sea, the Ocean, bordering on both places. And they make a
conjecture as to the similarity of both places from the elephants
which arise in both places but are not found in the regions between
them." (Thomas Aquinas, 'On the Heavens,' Book II, Lecture 28, 542).
People who want to criticize the church's loyalty to Ptolemaic
astronomy will have no difficult finding fault with Ptolemy's model. The system is geocentric,
but not with respect to a fixed point; the whole contraption does a little shimmy, like a grocery
cart with a bumpy wheel. Why they feel to need to make up a non-existent feature: a flat
earth,— is a mystery.
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