In his writings, Augustine rejected the "fable" of the Antipodes and the spherical earth, aligning himself with a view that the world was essentially flat or enclosed. While some historians view this as a simple scientific error, a political historian sees it as a tool for Intellectual Anchoring.
The strategy is simple: if a leader can persuade a population to accept one idea that contradicts their own observations—such as the shape of the earth—the population has effectively surrendered its critical faculties to that leader. Once a follower agrees that their eyes (which see a round horizon) are lying to them, it becomes significantly easier to convince them to accept other "outrageous" ideas, such as the doctrine of Original Sin or the total dependence on an institutional church for salvation.
The Long Tail of Compliance: This tactic did not end with Augustine. For centuries, the "Flat Earth" or the rejection of heliocentrism was used as a litmus test for loyalty. As seen in the later trial of Galileo Galilei, the issue was not whether the earth moved, but whether the Institutional Church had the authority to define reality itself. To challenge the shape of the earth was to challenge the structure of power.
By insisting on a biblical literalism that overrode Greek and Celtic scientific knowledge, Augustine was not trying to be an astronomer; he was establishing a Hierarchy of Truth. He signaled that the Word of the Church is superior to the evidence of the senses. In the power struggles of the Mediterranean, this was a masterstroke: it turned the act of "belief" into an act of "submission."