Pytheas
Pytheas of Massalia was a Greek geographer, explorer and astronomer from the Greek colony of Massalia. He made a voyage of exploration to Northern Europe in about 325 BC, but his account of it, known widely in antiquity, has not survived and is now known only through the writings of others.
On this voyage, he circumnavigated and visited a considerable part of the British Isles. He was the first known Greek scientific visitor to see and describe the Arctic, polar ice, and the Celtic and Germanic tribes. He is also the first person on record to describe the midnight sun. The theoretical existence of some Northern phenomena that he described, such as a frigid zone, and temperate zones where the nights are very short in summer and the sun does not set at the summer solstice, was already known. Similarly, reports of a country of perpetual snow and darkness had reached the Mediterranean some centuries before.
Pytheas introduced the idea of distant Thule to the geographic imagination, and his account of the tides is the earliest one known that suggests the moon as their cause.
Record
Pytheas described his travels in a work that has not survived; only excerpts remain, quoted or paraphrased by later authors. Much of what is known about Pytheas comes from commentary written by historians during the classical period hundreds of years after Pytheas's journeys occurred, most familiarly in Strabo's Geographica, passages in the world history written by Diodorus of Sicily between 60 and 30 BC, and Pliny's Natural History.Diodorus does not mention Pytheas by name. The association is made as follows: Pliny reports: "Timaeus says there is an island named Mictis where tin is found, and to which the Britons cross." Diodorus says that tin was brought to the island of Ictis, where there was an emporium. Walbank, Mette and Roller agree that Diorodus' information on the British Isles is an epitome of Pytheas via Timaeus.
Scholars of the 19th century tended to interpret these titles as the names of distinct works covering separate voyages; for example, Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology hypothesizes a voyage to Britain and Thule written about in "Ocean" and another from Cádiz to the river Don, written about in "A Sailing-Around". As is common with ancient texts, multiple titles may represent a single source, for example, if a title refers to a section rather than the whole. Mainstream consensus is that there was only one work, "On the Ocean", which was based on a periplus, a type of navigational literature.
Surviving fragments
Only 'fragments' or references/epitomies survive of Pytheas' original work in the works of other authors. Scott cited at least 39 such examples.Dating the voyage
said that Timaeus believed Pytheas' story of the discovery of amber. First century BC Strabo said that Dicaearchus did not trust the stories of Pytheas. None of Aristotle's works mention Pytheas, nor do those of Ephorus. Thus the terminus post quem for Pytheas' voyage are the works of Aristotle and Ephorus, and the terminus ante quem is that of Aristotle's student, Dicaearchus. Henry Fanshawe Tozer estimated that Pytheas' voyage occurred about 330 BC, derived from three main sources.The earliest extant author to quote Pytheas explicitly is Hipparcus, however he is also widely quoted explicitly by other later authors such as Polybius, Cleomides, Geminus and Aetius; perhaps the last was Dicuil. By far, the most quotations of Pytheas survive in Pliny and Strabo, however they seem to be quoting Pytheas as a tertiary source, perhaps through Timaeus. The Naturalis Historia and Geographica demonstrate that Pytheas was also used by a range of Hellenistic authors starting with Dicaearchus, Timaeus, Eratosthenes, Polybius, Artemidorus and Xenophon of Lampsacus. The extent to which Hecataeus of Abdera's On the Hyperboreans may have been inspired by Pytheas is not known.
Elton summarises the method of dating as:
"The exact date cannot be ascertained, but is found approximately by the facts that the astronomical discoveries of Pytheas were not mentioned by Aristotle, but were controverted on some points by Dicaearchus, the pupil of Aristotle, whose writings were published not long after the famous philosopher’s death."With which Roller agrees:
The most that can be said with certainty is that Pytheas’ journey and the research performed during it, which resulted in the treatise On the Ocean, occurred probably in the 320s BC or very shortly thereafter, since it was unknown to Aristotle, and first quoted by Aristotle’s student Dikaiarchos.
Circumstances of the voyage
Pytheas was the first documented Mediterranean mariner to reach the British Isles.The start of Pytheas's voyage is unknown. The Carthaginians had closed the Strait of Gibraltar to all ships from other nations. Some historians, mainly of the late 19th century and early, speculated that he must have traveled overland to the mouth of the Loire or the Garonne. Others believed that, to avoid the Carthaginian blockade, he may have stayed close to land and sailed only at night, or taken advantage of a temporary lapse in the blockade.
An alternate theory is that by the 4th century BC, the western Greeks, especially the Massaliotes, were on amicable terms with Carthage. In 348 BC, Carthage and Rome came to terms over the Sicilian Wars with a treaty defining their mutual interests. Rome could use Sicilian markets, Carthage could buy and sell goods at Rome, and slaves taken by Carthage from allies of Rome were to be set free. Rome was to stay out of the western Mediterranean, but these terms did not apply to Massalia, which had its own treaty. During the second half of the 4th century BC, the time of Pytheas' voyage, Massaliotes were presumably free to operate as they pleased; there is, at least, no evidence of conflict with Carthage in any of the sources that mention the voyage.
The early part of Pytheas' voyage was outlined by statements of Eratosthenes that Strabo said are false because they were taken from Pytheas. Apparently, Pytheas said that tides ended at the "sacred promontory", and from there to Gades is said to be 5 days' sail. Strabo complained about this distance, and about Pytheas' portrayal of the exact location of Tartessos. Mention of these places in a journal of the voyage indicates that Pytheas passed through the Straits of Gibraltar and sailed north along the coast of Portugal.
Voyage to Britain
The "circumnavigation"
Strabo reported that Pytheas said he "travelled over the whole of Britain that was accessible". Because there are scant first-hand sources available regarding Pytheas's journey, historians have looked at the etymology for clues about the route he took up the north Atlantic. The word epelthein, at root "come upon", does not imply any specific method, and Pytheas did not elaborate.Pytheas did use the word "whole" and he stated a perimetros for Britain of more than 40,000 stadia. Using Herodotus' standard of for one stadium gives ; however, there is no way to tell which standard foot was in effect. The English foot is an approximation. Strabo wanted to discredit Pytheas on the grounds that 40,000 stadia is outrageously high and cannot be real.
Diodorus Siculus gave a similar number: 42,500 stadia, about, and explains that it is the perimeter of a triangle around Britain. The consensus has been that he probably took his information from Pytheas through Timaeaus. Pliny gave the circuitus reported by Pytheas as 4,875 Roman miles.
The explorer Fridtjof Nansen explained this apparent fantasy of Pytheas as a mistake of Timaeus. Strabo and Diodorus Siculus never saw Pytheas' work, says Nansen, but they and others read of him in Timaeus. Pytheas reported only days' sail. Timaeus converted days to stadia at the rate of 1,000 per day, a standard figure of the times. However, Pytheas only sailed 560 stadia per day for a total of 23,800, which in Nansen's view is consistent with 700 stadia per degree.
Nansen later states that Pytheas must have stopped to obtain astronomical data. Presumably, the extra time was spent ashore. Using the stadia of Diodorus Siculus, one obtains 42.5 days for the time that would be spent in circumnavigating Britain. It may have been a virtual circumnavigation; see under Thule below.
The perimeter, according to Nansen based on the 23,800 stadia, was. This number is in the neighborhood of what a triangular perimeter ought to be, but it cannot be verified against anything Pytheas may have said, nor was Diodorus Siculus very precise about the locations of the legs. The "perimeter" is often translated as "coastline", but this translation is misleading. The coastline, following all the bays and inlets, is . Pytheas could have travelled any perimeter between that number and Diodorus'. Polybius added that Pytheas said he traversed the whole of Britain on foot, of which he, Polybius, was skeptical. Despite Strabo's conviction of a lie, the perimeter said to have been given by Pytheas is not evidence of it. The issue of what he did say can never be settled until more fragments of Pytheas's writings are found.
Name and description of the British
The first known written use of the word Britain was an ancient Greek transliteration of the original P-Celtic term. It is believed to have appeared within a periplus by Pytheas, but no copies of this work survive. The earliest existing records of the word are quotations of the periplus by later authors, such as those within Strabo's Geographica, Pliny's Natural History and Diodorus of Sicily's Bibliotheca historica. According to Strabo, Pytheas referred to Britain as Bretannikē, which shares more similarities with spellings in the modern Celtic languages than its Classical Latin variants. From this Greek spelling, the name is treated a feminine noun.File:Pictish Beast.svg|thumb|200px|A Pictish beast on an early medieval Pictish stone. "Britain" is most like Welsh Ynys Prydein, "the island of Britain", in which is a P-Celtic cognate of Q-Celtic Cruithne in Irish Cruithen-tuath, "land of the Picts". The base word is Scottish/Irish cruth, Welsh pryd, meaning "form". The British were the "people of forms", with the sense of shapes or pictures, thought to refer to their practice of tattooing or war painting. The Roman word Picti, "the Picts", means "painted".
This etymology suggests Pytheas most likely did not have much interaction with the Irish as their language was Q-Celtic. Rather, Pytheas brought back the P-Celtic form from more geographically accessible regions where Welsh or Breton are spoken presently. Furthermore, some proto-Celtic was spoken over all of Greater Britain, and this particular spelling is prototypical of those more populous regions, but there is no evidence that Pytheas distinguished between the peoples of the archipelago.
Diodorus – based on Pytheas – reported that Britain is cold and subject to frosts, being "too much subject to the Bear", and not "under the Arctic pole", as some translations say. The numerous population of natives, he says, live in thatched cottages, store their grain in subterranean caches and bake bread from it. They are "of simple manners" and are content with plain fare. They are ruled by many kings and princes who live in peace with each other. Their troops fight from chariots, as did the Greeks in the Trojan War.