I'm not a classicist either. :) I'm reading this partly wondering if I'd like to participate in the Once upon a Fic Exchange, as well as just for interest. Like you, I'd read that the Greco-Roman thinkers knew the world was round - C.S. Lewis says it somewhere - but this is the first I've actually seen of it. I was also intrigued by the way the world began in chaos, very biblically, and by the South Pole being as cold as the North.