Pytheas

Gallic explorer

• Born: c. 350-325 b.c.e.
• Birthplace: Massalia, Gaul (now Marseille, France)
• Died: After 300 b.c.e.
• Place of death: Perhaps Massalia, Gaul (now Marseille, France)

Pytheas undertook the first lengthy voyage to the North Atlantic and may have circumnavigated England. This knowledge of the West, together with his astronomical observations, provided the basis for centuries of study.

Early Life

It is a special characteristic of the study of antiquity that the fewer facts scholars know about a figure, the more they seem to write about him or her. So it is that an enormous bibliography about Pytheas (PIHTH-ee-uhs) of Massalia, the first known man to explore the far reaches of the North Atlantic, has evolved.

The time period of Pytheas’s voyage has been determined with some certainty. He seems to have used a reference work that dates to 347 b.c.e., but because he is not mentioned by Aristotle, perhaps the voyage had not occurred before Aristotle’s death in 322 b.c.e. Also, according to Strabo, Pytheas is quoted by Dicaearchus, who died c. 285 b.c.e. Thus, the voyage most definitely occurred between 347 and 285. At this time Carthage was the leading city of the western Mediterranean and controlled all traffic in and out of the Pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar). It is, therefore, sometimes claimed that Pytheas could have escaped this blockade only while Carthage was distracted in the war with Syracuse. If these assumptions are correct, the voyage took place between 310 and 306. Further, because Pytheas was surely a mature adult when he undertook the journey, scholars place his birth roughly between 350 and 325.

The date for the voyage is important, for it is believed that Pytheas opened the world of the West to Greek exploration at the same time that the wonders of the Far East were trickling back to the Mediterranean region as a result of the conquests of Alexander the Great. The cosmopolitan Hellenistic age was being born, and a quest for knowledge of far-off lands and their marvels was to play a large role in it. Apart from this tenuous but probable date, only two firm facts about Pytheas’s life—his financial condition and his place of origin—are known. Polybius, also quoted by Strabo, sneers at Pytheas’s voyage, asking if it was likely that a private citizen, and a poor one at that, ever undertook such a venture. Although Polybius was far from impartial, this comment may indicate that the voyage was state-sponsored.

His place of origin, Massalia, was founded c. 600 b.c.e. by Phocaea in Asia Minor. One of the most ambitious seafaring Greek towns, it soon controlled the coast, from its fine harbor down to modern Ampurias, seventy-five miles northeast of Barcelona. A Massaliote named Euthymenes was said to have sailed south along Africa until he saw a river filled with crocodiles (possibly the Senegal), and Massalia had early trading connections with metal-rich Tartessus in Spain. Friction with Carthage was inevitable, as the two powers sought control of these rich trade routes. Into this tradition of Massaliote adventurism Pytheas was born, poor but ambitious.

Life’s Work

Not a word of Pytheas’s works remains. It has been suggested that Pytheas’s own works were not available to such authors as Diodorus Siculus (who wrote under Julius Caesar and Augustus), Strabo (who wrote under Augustus), and Pliny the Elder, who preserved for posterity meager fragments of Pytheas’s research by quoting from or citing his works.

Nevertheless, it is clear that Pytheas was remembered fondly as an astronomical scientist. Using only a sundial, he calculated the latitude of Massalia with remarkable accuracy. He noted first that the pole star was not really at the pole and was also the first to notice a relationship between the moon and the tides. Much of the information on latitudes and geography that he brought back from his voyages was deemed sufficiently accurate to be used by such famous ancient scholars as Timaeus, Hipparchus, and Ptolemy.

Pytheas the explorer, however, had another reputation entirely, neatly summed up by Strabo’s calling him “the greatest liar among mortals.” The nature and name of the work that reaped such abuse are unknown. The work may have been called “On the Ocean,” “The Periplus” (meaning “voyage”), or “Travels Around the World.” Modern scholars generally believe that it was a single work and that it recounted Pytheas’s voyage. There is much to be said, however, for the theory that it was a general work of geography in which he reported his own firsthand observations, along with the rumors and reports he heard from others. If this is so, the scorn of later antiquity, relying on a spurious text, is more understandable. One can imagine the same comments being directed at Herodotus if only the more marvelous passages of his work had survived in this fashion.

With all that as warning, it is still customary to take the scattered references to Pytheas’s voyage and reconstruct his route. If this approach is valid, his travels are impressive indeed. He left the Pillars of Hercules and cruised around Spain and the coast of France to the coast of Brittany and Ushant Island. Instead of continuing his coastal route, as was customary for ancient mariners, he apparently struck out across the channel to Land’s End, at the southwest tip of Britain at Cornwall. Here he described local tin mining. It is often asserted that Pytheas then circumnavigated the entire island of Britain. This belief is based on the fact that he describes the shape of the island correctly, describes its relationship to the coast better than did his critic Strabo, and, although doubling their true lengths, still correctly determines the proportion of the three sides. He probably made frequent observations of native behavior, and he may have conducted investigations inland. Diodorus, probably relying on Pytheas, reported correctly that the natives’ huts were primitive, that they were basically peaceful but knew the chariot used for warfare, that they threshed their grain indoors because of the wet climate, and that they brewed and consumed mead.

Pytheas undoubtedly passed by Ireland, although no specific mention of this is found. It is often claimed, however, that his observations on the island enabled subsequent ancient geographers to locate it accurately on their maps. He apparently moved on to the northern tip of Britain, where he blandly described incredible tides 80 cubits (120 feet) high. Modern scholars see in this the gale-enhanced tides of the Pentland Firth.

It is the next stop on Pytheas’s voyage that generates the most discussion. Pytheas claims that the island of Thule lay six days to the north of Britain and only one day from the frozen sea, sometimes called the Cronian Sea. Here, he states, days have up to twenty hours of sunlight in summer and twenty hours of darkness in winter. As if that information were not sufficiently incredible, he claims that the island lay in semicongealed waters in an area where earth, sea, and air are all mixed, suspended in a mixture resembling “sea lung” (perhaps a sort of jellyfish).

Where, if anywhere, is this Thule? Pytheas only claims that he saw the sea lung, getting the rest secondhand. Some parts of his tale ring true, such as long northerly days of light or darkness and a mixture of fog, mist, and slush so thick that one cannot tell where sea ends and sky begins. Scholars variously identify Thule as Iceland, Norway, the Shetland Islands, or the Orkney Islands, but no one solution is entirely satisfactory.

Pytheas soon turned south and completed his circumnavigation until he recrossed the channel. Here, again, there are problems, for he claims to have visited amber-rich lands as far as the Tanais River, acknowledged as the boundary between Europe and Asia. Scholars claim either that Pytheas reached the Vistula River and thus, remarkably, the heart of the Baltic Sea or that he stopped at the Elbe River. In either case, it is generally assumed that from there he retraced his steps along the European coast and returned home. Even by the most conservative estimates, he had traveled a minimum of seventy-five hundred miles in ships designed for the Mediterranean and manned by sailors unfamiliar with the rigors of the northern seas.

Significance

How can one assess a man and voyage so beset with problems of historicity? Did Pytheas in fact make a voyage at all? Was it a single voyage or were there two—one to Britain and one to the land of amber? In either case, how far did he go, and how much information is from his own experience and how much is from what he learned through inquiry?

Barring the remarkable discovery of a long-lost Pytheas manuscript, these questions will never be answered. A coin from Cyrene, found on the northern coast of Brittany and dating to this time, has been cautiously set forth as evidence of Greek intrusion at this date, but the caution is well deserved.

Despite the poor evidence and the hostility of the ancient authors, scholars can gauge Pytheas’s importance from the impact he had on those who came after him. Pytheas opened Greek eyes to the wonders of the West, and it was his reports, for better or worse, which formed the basis for all writers on this area of the world for two centuries to come. In the same way, his scientific observations were respected and used by the best geographical minds of antiquity.

Still, it is highly likely that Pytheas did undertake a voyage himself and that he pushed fairly far to the north. Several thorny problems are solved if one believes that many of his wilder statements were not based on firsthand information but on tales he heard along the way. Much of the difficulty regarding Thule, for example, disappears when one views Pytheas’s “discoveries” in this light.

The purpose of this voyage is also unclear. Some have hailed it as the first purely scientific voyage known to humankind. However, if Pytheas was, in fact, a poor man and thus had public funds behind him, it is highly unlikely that the elders of Massalia would have found reports of sea lung proper repayment for their investment. It is wiser to see the voyage as primarily commercial, aimed at rivaling Carthaginian trade routes to lands rich in tin and amber, although Pytheas clearly lost no opportunity to engage in scientific enquiry along the way. (To be sure, his entire trip north of Cornwall seems guided more by a sense of adventure than of mercantilism.)

The world soon forgot about Pytheas’s contribution to Massaliote trade routes. In fact, there is no evidence that an increase in trade followed his maiden voyage. Less ephemeral were Pytheas’s tales of gigantic tides, sea lung, or Thule. His appeal extends into modern times, as the term “ultima Thule” remains a synonym for “the ends of the earth.”

Bibliography

Bunbury, E. H. A History of Ancient Geography Among the Greeks and Romans from the Earliest Ages till the Fall of the Roman Empire. Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben, 1979. A very sensible and cautious reconstruction of the probable circumstances surrounding Pytheas’s voyage.

Carpenter, Rhys. Beyond the Pillars of Heracles. New York: Delacorte Press, 1966. A very lengthy section devoted to Pytheas treats several issues in great detail. The discussion of Thule is very well done.

Cary, Max, and E. H. Warmington. The Ancient Explorers. 1929. Reprint. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1963. A somewhat uncritical re-creation of the voyage, with a tendency to gloss over several of the thornier issues.

Cunliffe, Barry. Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek. Baltimore: Penguin, 2003. Chronicles the journey of Pytheas; demonstrates just how much of a pioneer he was, even if some of his accounts of his voyage were based merely on hearsay.

Whitaker, Ian. “The Problem of Pytheas’s Thule.” Classical Journal 77 (1982): 148-164. A fine, careful study not only of Thule but also of most of the crucial problems surrounding Pytheas. Contains excellent documentation and bibliography, with translations of crucial passages from ancient authorities.