Seven Books of History Against the Pagans

the east the Tyrrhenian Sea and the port of the City meaning Rome; to the south Sardinia; to the west the Balearic islands, positioned far away; and to the northwest and north the Ligustian Gulf. It is one hundred and sixty miles long and twenty-six miles wide. There are two Balearic islands, the major and the minor, on which there are two towns: the major has the Spanish city of Tarraco opposite it, and the minor has Barcino toward the north. Below the major island lies Ebusus. From there, it faces Sardinia to the east, the Gallic Sea to the north, the Mauritanian Sea to the south and southwest, and the Iberian Sea to the west. These are the islands situated throughout the Great Sea the Mediterranean from the Hellespont to the Ocean, which are considered the most famous for their cultivation and historical records. I have briefly enumerated (as I was able) the provinces [35] and islands of the entire world. Now I shall set forth, as much as I am able, the local miseries of each individual nation, just as they have existed ceaselessly from the beginning, and how they have arisen for each one.

Chapter III.

When, after the creation and ornamentation of this world, man—whom God had made upright and immaculate—and consequently the human race had become deafened by sins and corrupted by lusts, a just punishment immediately followed the unjust license [36]. Everyone, however unwillingly, either approves by denying or tolerates by confessing the sentence of the Creator God and Judge, destined for sinful man and for the earth on account of man, which will last as long as men inhabit the earth: and for those whom the faithful scripture has not persuaded, their own weakness brands itself as a witness in their stubborn minds. Then, with the sea poured out over the whole earth and the flood brought in, when the whole world was covered and there was but one expanse of sky and water, most truthful writers show most evidently that the entire human race was destroyed, with a few reserved in the ark by the merit of their faith for the restoration of the origin.