In Northern Mists Volume I Part 3

Thus a comparison of the various statements points definitely to Brittany as the place where we must look for the tin-bearing islands. That it was two days' voyage thence to the holy island of Hierne, and that near to it lay the land of Albion, also agrees; but too much weight must not be laid upon this, as we do not know for certain whether this is really derived from Himilco.

The sea-monsters may be taken as accessories put in to make the voyage terrible; but on the other hand they may be the great whales of the Bay of Biscay, of which there were many in those days, before whaling was undertaken there. The exaggerated description of the length and difficulties of the voyage fits in badly with the information that the men of Tartessus and the Carthaginians were in the habit of trading there. How much of this is due to misunderstanding of the original, or to downright interpolation, we do not know. With the universal desire of the Carthaginians and Phnicians to keep the monopoly of their trade-routes, Himilco may have added this to frighten others. It is also possible that he made a longer voyage in four months, but that Avienus's authority gave an obscure and bungled account of it.

The description of the shallow water, and of the seaweed which holds the ships back, etc., seems to correspond to the actual conditions. In another part of the poem something similar occurs, where we read [v. 375]: "Outside the Pillars of Hercules along the side of Europe the Carthaginians once had villages and towns. They were in the habit of building their fleets with flatter bottoms, since a broader ship could float upon the surface of a shallower sea."[34] One is reminded of the shallow west coast of France, where the tide lays large tracts alternately dry (covered with seaweed) and under water, so that it might well be said that "the surface of the earth is barely covered by a little water." Ebb and flood were, of course, an unknown phenomenon in the Mediterranean. In this respect also the description suits the voyage to Brittany, where the sea is shallow. It has been a.s.serted that the expression "seaweed among the waves" might show that Himilco had been near to or in the Sarga.s.so Sea; but there is no reason whatever for supposing this; the explanation given above is more natural, besides which the Sarga.s.so Sea could hardly be described as shallow and as lying on the way to strymnis.[35]

On the Atlantic Ocean Avienus has the following [vv. 380-389]:

"Farther to the west from these Pillars there is boundless sea.

Himilco relates that the ocean extends far, none has visited these seas; none has sailed ships over these waters, because propelling winds are lacking on these deeps, and no breeze from heaven helps the ship. Likewise because darkness ['caligo' == darkness, usually owing to fog] screens the light of day with a sort of clothing, and because a fog always conceals the sea, and because the weather is perpetually cloudy with thick atmosphere."

If we may believe Avienus that this description is derived from Himilco, it possesses great interest, since here and in the description (above) of the voyage to strymnis we find the same ideas of the western sea and of the uttermost sea which appear later, after Pytheas's time, in the accounts of the thick and sluggish sea without wind round Thule, and in this case it shows that already at that early period ideas of this sort had developed. Mullenhoff [1870, pp. 78, 93 f.], it is true, takes it for granted that these descriptions in Avienus cannot be derived from Himilco, but his reasons for so doing do not appear convincing. Aristotle says ["Meteorologica," ii. 1, 14] that the sea beyond the Pillars of Hercules was muddy and shallow, and little stirred by the winds. This shows clearly enough that ideas of that kind were current among the Greeks even before Pytheas, and they must doubtless have got them from the Phnicians.

That some very ancient authority is really the basis of the description of the west coast of Europe as far as the strymnides, which we find in Avienus, is proved again by the fact that the regions farther to the north or north-east are clearly enough represented as entirely unknown, when we read [vv. 129-145]:

"If any one dares to steer his boat from the strymnic Islands in the direction where the air is cold at the axis of Lycaon,[36] he will arrive at the country of the Ligurians, which is void of inhabitants.

For by the host of the Celts and by numerous battles it has lately been rendered void. And the expelled Ligurians came, as fate often drives people away, to the districts where there is hardly anything but bush. Many sharp stones are there in those parts, and cold rocks, and the mountains rise threateningly to heaven. And the refugees lived for a long time in narrow places among rocks away from the sea. For they were afraid of waves [i.e., afraid to come near the coast] by reason of the old danger. Later, when security had given them boldness, peace and quietness persuaded them to leave their high positions, and now they descended to places by the sea."

Mullenhoff thinks [1870, pp. 86 f.] that this mention of the expulsion of the Ligurians by the Celts is necessarily a late addition by a man from the district of Ma.s.salia where the Ligurians lived; but it seems more probable that the name is here used as a common designation for the pre-Celtic people who dwelt in these north-western regions; and if it is the north side of Brittany which is here spoken of, the Ligurians of southern Gaul will not be so far away after all. It is clear that in ancient times the people of west and north-west Europe were called "Ligyans." Hesiod mentioned them as the people of the west in contradistinction to the Scythians of the east [cf. Strabo, vii. 300], and in the legend of Phaethon occurs the Ligyan king Cycnus at the mouth of the amber-producing river Erida.n.u.s, which doubtless was originally supposed to fall into the sea on the north or north-west. We may interpret it as meaning that the aborigines, Ligyans or Ligurians, were driven by the immigrant Celts up into the bush-covered mountainous parts of Brittany. In any case this pa.s.sage in Avienus, which a.s.sumes that the districts farther north are unknown, is a strong proof that his information is ancient and derived from Himilco, and that the latter penetrated as far as the north coast of Brittany, or the south of Britain, but no farther.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER II

PYTHEAS OF Ma.s.sALIA

THE VOYAGE TO THULE

Among all the vague and fabulous ideas about the North that prevailed in antiquity, the name of Pytheas stands out as the only one who gives us a firmer foothold. By his extraordinary voyage (or voyages ?) this eminent astronomer and geographer, of the Phocaean colony of Ma.s.salia (now Ma.r.s.eilles), contributed a knowledge of the northern countries based upon personal experience, and set his mark more or less upon all that was known of the farthest north for the next thousand or fifteen hundred years. Even though later writers like Polybius and Strabo declared themselves unwilling to believe in his "incredible" statements, they could not neglect him.[37]

Pytheas wrote at least one work, which, if we may believe Geminus of Rhodes, was called "On the Ocean"; but all his writings have been lost for ages, and we only know him through chance quotations in much later authors (chiefly Strabo and Pliny) who have not even read his work themselves, but quote at second hand; and several of them (especially Polybius and Strabo) tried to represent him as an impostor and laid stress upon what they thought would make him ridiculous and lessen his reputation.[38] The sc.r.a.ps of information we possess about him and his voyages have thus come down on the stream of time as chance wreckage, partly distorted and perverted by hostile forces. It is too much to hope that from such fragments we may be able to form a trustworthy idea of the original work, but nevertheless from the little we know there arises a figure which in strength, intelligence, and bold endurance far surpa.s.ses the discoverers of most periods.

[Sidenote: Personal circ.u.mstances and date of the voyage]

Of Pytheas's personal circ.u.mstances we have no certain information, and we do not even know when he lived. As he was unknown to Aristotle, but was known to his pupil Dicaearchus (who died about 285 B.C.), he was probably a contemporary of Aristotle and Alexander, and his voyage may have been undertaken about 330-325 B.C. So little do we know about the voyage that doubts have been raised as to whether it was really a sea-voyage, or whether a great part of it did not lie overland. Nor do we know whether Pytheas made one or several long journeys to the North. According to a statement of Polybius, Pytheas was a poor man: for he finds it (according to Strabo, ii. 104) "incredible that it should be possible for a private individual without means to accomplish journeys of such wide extent." If it be true that he was poor, which is uncertain, we must doubtless suppose that Pytheas either had command of a public expedition, fitted out by the merchants of the enterprising city of Ma.s.salia, or that he accompanied such an expedition as an astronomer and explorer. At that time the city was at the height of its prosperity, after it had expelled the Carthaginians, as the result of the successful war with them, from the rich fisheries of the Iberian coast, and had also succeeded in establishing commercial relations there, whereby its ships were able to sail out beyond the Pillars of Hercules; a thing which cannot have been so easy for them during the former sea-supremacy of Carthage in the western Mediterranean, which was re-established in 306 B.C., whereby the western ocean again became more or less closed to the Ma.s.salians. It is very probable that the flourishing city of Ma.s.salia desired to send out an expedition to find the sea-route to the outer coasts of the continent, from whence it was known that the two important articles of commerce, tin and amber, were obtained. But it is evident that Pytheas had more than this business motive for his journey. From all that we know it appears that with him too the object was to reach the most northern point possible, in order to find out how far the "c.u.mene" extended, to determine the position of the Arctic Circle and the Pole, and to see the light northern nights and the midnight sun, which to the Greeks of that time was so remarkable a phenomenon.

[Sidenote: Astronomical measurements]

We know that Pytheas was an eminent astronomer. He was the first in history to introduce astronomical measurements for ascertaining the geographical situation of a place; and this by itself is enough to give him a prominent position among the geographers of all times.

By means of a great gnomon he determined, with surprising accuracy, the lat.i.tude of his own city, Ma.s.salia,[39] which formed the starting-point of his journey, and in relation to which he laid down the lat.i.tude of more northerly places.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Gnomon]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sundial]

Pytheas also made other astronomical measurements which show him to have been a remarkably good observer. He found that the pole of the heavens did not coincide, as the earlier astronomer Eudoxus had supposed, with any star; but that it made an almost regular rectangle with three stars lying near it.[40] The pole of the heavens was naturally of consequence to Pytheas, who steered by the stars; but it is nevertheless striking that he should have considered it necessary to measure it with such accuracy, if he had not some other object in doing so. He may have required the pole for the adjustment of the equinoctial sun-dial ("polus"), whose pointers had to be parallel with the axis of the heavens;[41] but it is also possible that he had discovered that by measuring the alt.i.tude of the pole above the horizon he obtained directly the lat.i.tude of the spot on the earth, and that this was a simpler method of determining the lat.i.tude than by measuring the alt.i.tude of the sun by a gnomon. Nor is it likely that he possessed the requisite knowledge for calculating gnomon measurements unless they were taken either at the solstice or the equinox.

To judge by quotations in various authors he must have given the lat.i.tude of several places in numbers of parts of a circle north of Ma.s.salia.[42]

These results of his may perhaps be partly based on measurements of the polar alt.i.tude. Whether Pytheas was acquainted with any instrument for the measurement of angles we do not know; but it is not unlikely, since even the Chaldeans appear to have invented a kind of parallactic rule, which was improved upon by the Alexandrians, and was called by the Romans "triquetrum" (regula Ptolemaica). The instrument resembled a large pair of compa.s.ses with long straight rods for legs, and the angle was determined by measuring, in measure of length, the distance between these two legs.[43] As the pole of the heavens did not coincide with any star, such measurements cannot have been very accurate, unless Pytheas took the trouble to measure a circ.u.mpolar star in its upper and lower culmination; or, indeed, in only one of them, for he may easily have found the distance of the star from the pole by his earlier observations to determine the position of the pole itself. It is also quite possible that by the aid of the rectangle formed by the pole with three stars, he was able to obtain an approximate measurement of the alt.i.tude of the pole. Another indication used by the Greeks to obtain the lat.i.tude of a place was the length of its longest day. To determine this Pytheas may have used the equinoctial dial ("polus"), or the water-clock, the "clepsydra" of the Greeks.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Greek trading-vessel and longship (warship), from a vase painting (about 500 B.C.)]

[Sidenote: Pytheas's ship]

It is not known what kind of ship he had for his voyage; but if it was equal to the best that Ma.s.salia at that time could afford, it may well have been a good sea-craft. As it was necessary to be prepared for hostilities on the part of the Carthaginians and Gaditanians, he doubtless had a warship (longship), which sailed faster than the broader merchantmen, and which could also be rowed by one or more banks of oars.

It may have been considerably over 100 feet long, and far larger than those in which later the Nors.e.m.e.n crossed the Atlantic. It has been a.s.serted that Pytheas must have gone on foot for the greater part of his journey, since, according to Strabo [ii. 104], he is said to have stated "not only that he had visited the whole of Britain on foot, but he also gives its circ.u.mference as more than 40,000 stadia." But, as Professor Alf Torp has pointed out to me, it is not stated that he "traversed" it, but "visited" it on foot. The meaning must be that he put in at many places on the coast, and made longer or shorter excursions into the country. That a man should be able to traverse such great distances alone on foot, through the roadless and forest-clad countries of that period, seems impossible.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pytheas's probable routes]

We do not know what previous knowledge Pytheas may have had about the regions visited by him; but it is probable that he had heard of the tin country through the merchants who brought the tin overland through Gaul and down the Rhone to Ma.s.salia. In a similar way he had certainly also heard of the amber country. Besides this, he may have been acquainted with the trading voyages of the Phnicians and Carthaginians along the west coast of Europe, and with the voyage of Himilco. Although it is true that the Phnician sailors tried to keep the secret of their routes from their dangerous rivals the Greeks and Ma.s.salians, they cannot have been altogether successful in the long run, whether their intercourse was hostile or friendly; a few sailor prisoners would have been enough to bring the information.

[Sidenote: The voyage northward]

When Pytheas sailed out through the Pillars of Hercules he soon arrived, in pa.s.sing the Sacred Promontory (Cape St. Vincent), at the limit of the world as known to the Greeks. He sailed northward along the west and north coast of Iberia (Portugal and Spain). He made observations of the tides, that remarkable phenomenon to a man from the Mediterranean, and their cause, and was the first Greek to connect them with the moon. He proceeded farther north, and found that the north-western part of Celtica (Gaul) formed a peninsula, Cabaeum (Brittany), where the Ostimians lived. He supposed that it extended farther west than Cape Finisterre; but errors of that sort are easily understood at a time when no means existed of determining longitude.

[Sidenote: Britain]

Farther north he came to Brettanice (Britain), which he appears to have circ.u.mnavigated. The Sicilian historian Diodorus, an elder contemporary of Strabo, says [v. 21]: "Britain is triangular in form like Sicily; but the sides are not of equal length; the nearest promontory is Kantion [Kent], and according to what is reported it is 100 stadia distant (from the continent). The second promontory is Belerion [Cornwall], which is said to be four days' sail from the continent. The third lies towards the sea [i.e., towards the north] and is called Orkan.[44] Of the three sides the one which runs parallel to Europe is the shortest, 7500 stadia; the second, which extends from the place of crossing [Kent] to the point [i.e., Orkan], is 15,000 stadia; but the last is 20,000 stadia, so that the circ.u.mference amounts to 42,500 stadia."

These statements must originally have been due to Pytheas, even though Diodorus has taken them at second hand (perhaps from Timaeus). But Pytheas cannot very well have acquired such an idea of the shape of the island without having sailed round it. It is true that the estimate attributed to him of the island's circ.u.mference is more than double the reality,[45] a discrepancy which is adduced by Strabo as a proof that Pytheas was a liar;[46] but neither Strabo nor Diodorus was acquainted with his own description, and there are many indications that the exaggeration cannot be attributed to himself, but to a later writer, probably Timaeus. Pytheas in his work can only have stated how many days he took to sail along the coasts, and his day's sail in those unknown waters was certainly a short one. But the uncritical Timaeus, who was moreover a historian and not a geographer, may, according to the custom of his time, have converted Pytheas's day's journeys into stadia at the usual equation of 1000 stadia (about 100 geographical miles) for one day's sailing.[47] Timaeus served to a great extent as the authority for later authors who have mentioned Pytheas, and it is probably through him that the erroneous information as to the circ.u.mference of Britain reached Polybius, Strabo, Diodorus, Pliny, and Solinus. In this way geographical explorers may easily have gross errors attributed to them, when their original observations are lost.

[Sidenote: Astronomical measurements in Britain]

From statements of Hipparchus, preserved by Strabo [ii. 71, 74, 75, 115, 125, 134], we may conclude that Pytheas obtained astronomical data at various spots in Britain and Orkan. Hipparchus has made use of these in his tables of climate, and he was able from them to point out that the longest day in the most northern part of Britain was of eighteen equinoctial hours,[48] and in an inhabited country, which according to Pytheas lay farther north than Britain, the longest day was of nineteen equinoctial hours. If the length of day is fixed in round numbers of hours, a longest day of eighteen hours fits the northernmost part of Scotland,[49] while the country still farther north with a longest day of nineteen hours agrees exactly with Shetland.[50] These data are important, as they show that Pytheas must have been in the most northerly parts of the British Isles, and reached Shetland.[51]

[Sidenote: Thule]

But the bold and hardy explorer does not seem to have stopped here. He continued his course northward over the ocean, and came to the uttermost region, "Thule," which was the land of the midnight sun, "where the tropic coincides with the Arctic Circle."[52]

On this section of Pytheas's voyage Geminus of Rhodes (1st century B.C.) has an important quotation in his Astronomy [vi. 9]. After mentioning that the days get longer the farther north one goes, he continues:

To these regions [i.e., to the north] the Ma.s.salian Pytheas seems also to have come. He says at least in his treatise "On the Ocean": "the Barbarians showed us the place where the sun goes to rest. For it was the case that in these parts the nights were very short, in some places two, in others three hours long, so that the sun rose again a short time after it had set."

The name of Thule is not mentioned, but that must be the country in question. It does not appear from this whether Pytheas himself thought that the shortest night of the year was of two or three hours, or whether that was the length of the night at the time he happened to be at these places; but the first case is doubtless the more probable. At any rate Geminus seems to have understood him thus, since in the pa.s.sage immediately preceding he is speaking of the regions where the longest day is of seventeen or eighteen hours, and he goes on to speak of those where the longest day is of twenty-three hours. If on the other hand it is the length of the night at the time Pytheas was there that is meant, then it seems strange that he should require to be shown by the barbarians where the sun rose and set, which he could just as well have seen for himself; for it is scarcely credible that after having journeyed so far his stay should have been so brief that the sky was overcast the whole time.[53]

If the longest day of the year was determined by direct observations of the points at which the sun first appeared and finally disappeared in places with a free horizon to the north, then days of twenty-one and twenty-two hours at that time will answer to 63 39' and 64 39' N. lat.

Calculated theoretically, from the centre of the sun and without taking refraction into account, they will be 64 32' and 65 31' N. lat.

respectively.[54]

In addition to this there are two things to be remarked in the pa.s.sage quoted in Geminus. First, that the country spoken of by Pytheas was inhabited (by barbarians). Secondly, that he himself must have been there with his expedition, for he says that "the barbarians showed us," etc.

Consequently he cannot, as some writers think, have reported merely what he had heard from others about this country (Thule). Statements in Strabo also show clearly that Pytheas referred to Thule as inhabited.

Other pieces of information derived from Pytheas establish consistently that Thule extended northwards as far as the Arctic Circle. Eratosthenes, Strabo, Pomponius Mela, Pliny, Cleomedes, Solinus, and others, all have statements which show clearly that Pytheas described Thule as the land of the midnight sun.