Pytheas
PYTHEAS, of Marseilles (Massilia), a celebrated Greek navigator and geographer, from whom the Greeks apparently derived their earliest definite information concerning western Europe, and especially the British Islands. He was probably contemporary with Alexander the Great; he certainly wrote before Dicaearchus, a pupil of Aristotle who died about 285 B.C. His work is lost, and we are left almost wholly in the dark as to its form and character, but the various titles under which it is quoted (e.g. Fijs rEpl050s, or 7rEpi Tou 'S21ceavou) point to a geographical treatise, in which Pytheas had embodied the results of his observations, rather than to a continuous narrative of his voyage.
Some modern writers have supposed Pytheas to have been sent out, at public expense, in command of an expedition organized by the republic of Massilia; but there is no ancient authority for this, and Polybius, who had unquestionably seen the original work, expressly states that he had undertaken the voyage in a private capacity and with limited means. All that we know concerning the voyage of Pytheas (apart from detached notices) is contained in a brief passage of Polybius, cited by Strabo, in which he tells us that Pytheas, according to his own statement, had not only visited Britain, but had personally explored a large part of it ("travelled all over it on foot," according to one reading of the text in Strabo, bk. iv. ch. i.), and estimated its circumference at more than 40,000 stadia (4000 geographical miles). To this he added the account of Thule (which he placed six days' voyage north of Britain) and the adjoining regions, in which there was no longer any distinction between air, earth and sea, but a kind of mixture of all three, resembling the gelatinous mollusc known as pulmo marinus, which rendered all navigation and progress in any other mode alike impossible. This substance Pytheas had himself seen, according to Strabo (bk. iv. ch. i.), but the other phenomena he described only from hearsay. After this he visited "the whole of the coasts of Europe" (i.e. those bordering on the ocean) as far as the Tanais (Strabo, bk. ii. ch. iv. § 1). This last sentence has led some modern writers to suppose that he made two different voyages; but this is improbable; the expressions of Polybius imply that his explorations in both directions, first towards the north and afterwards towards the east, formed part of the same voyage.
The countries visited, and to a certain extent explored, by Pytheas, were previously unknown to the Greeks - except, perhaps, by vague accounts received through the Phoenicians - and were not visited by any subsequent authority during more than two centuries. Hence some of the later Greek geographers altogether disregarded his statements, and treated his voyage as a fiction. Eratosthenes, indeed (276-196 B.C.), attached great value to his authority as to Britain and Spain, though doubting some of his statements; but Polybius (c. 204-122 B.C.) considered the whole work of Pytheas a tissue of fables, like that of Euhemerus concerning Panchaea; and even Strabo, in whose time the western regions of Europe were comparatively well known, adopted to a great extent the view of Polybius.
In modern times a critical examination has arrived at a more favourable judgment, and though Gossellin in his Recherches sur la giographie des anciens (iv. 168-180) and Sir G. C. Lewis in his History of Ancient Astronomy (pp. 466-481) revived the sceptical view, the tendency of modern critics has been rather to exaggerate than to depreciate the value of what was really added by Pytheas to knowledge. Our information concerning him is so imperfect, and the scanty notices preserved to us from his work are so meagre and discordant, that it is difficult to arrive at anything like a sound conclusion. It may, however, be considered as fairly established that Pytheas made a voyage round the western coasts of Europe, proceeding from Gades, the great Phoenician empor
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