opposite parallels
and meridians." The word <i>Antipodes</i> was adopted into the
Latin language, and occurs in two of the Fathers, Lactantius
and Augustine. By the mediaeval church to believe in the
antipodes was regarded as heresy. `O.E.D.' quotes two examples
of the early use of the word in English.

1398. `Trevisa Barth. De P. R.,' xv. lii. (1495), p. 506:

"Yonde in Ethiopia ben the Antipodes, men that have theyr fete
ayenst our fete."

1556. `Recorde Cast. Knowl.,' 93:

"People . . . called of the Greeks and Latines also
<i>'antipodes</i>, <i>Antipodes</i>, as you might say
Counterfooted, or Counterpasers."

Shakspeare uses the word in five places, but, though he knew
that this "pendent world" was spherical, his Antipodes were not
Australasian. In three places he means only the fact that it
is day in the Eastern hemisphere when it is night in England.

`Midsummer Night's Dream,' III. ii. 55:

"I'll believe as soon
This whole earth may be bored, and that the moon
May thro' the centre creep and so displease
His brother's noontide with the Antipodes."

`Merchant of Venice,' V. 127:

"We should hold day with the Antipodes
If you would walk in absence of the sun."

`Richard II.,' III. ii. 49:

"Who all this while hath revell'd in the night,
Whilst we were wandering with the Antipodes."

In `Henry VI.,' part 3, I. iv. 135, the word more clearly
designates the East:

"Thou art as opposite to every good
As the Antipodes are unto us,
Or as the South to the Septentrion." [<i>sc</i>. the North.]

But more precise geographical indications are given in `Much
Ado,' II. i. 273, where Benedick is so anxious to avoid
Beatrice that he says--

"I will go on the slightest errand now to the Antipodes that
you can devise to send me on. I will fetch you a tooth-picker
now from the farthest inch of Asia; bring you the length of
Prester John's foot; fetch you a hair of the great Kam's beard;
do you any embassage to the Pygmies rather than hold three
words conference with this harpy."

Now the Pygmies lived on the Upper Nile, near Khartoum,
Prester John in India, and the great Kam (Khan) in Tartary.

The word <i>Antipodes</i> in modern use is applied rather to
places than to people. Geographically, the word means a place
exactly opposite on the surface of the globe, as Antipodes
Island (Eastward of New Zealand), which is very near the
opposite end of the diameter of the globe