Born c. 380 B.C.,
Massalia, Gaul [France]
Died c. 300 B.C.,
Massalia, Gaul
Pytheas has generated more interest than any other of the ancient explorers. There are those who say that he is the first known explorer in the modern sense of the word. As a result, most histories of exploration have something to say about him. Pytheas was the first person to write about the British Isles and the Atlantic coast of Europe. His book, On the Ocean, has been lost, but the Greek historian Polybias left an account of his travels.
Pytheas was born around 380 B.C. in the Greek colony of Massalia, which is the present-day city of Marseilles, on the southern coast of France. Sometime toward the end of the fourth century B.C., he was sent out by the merchants of his native city to find a route to the tin mines of southern Britain, which provided that valuable metal for all of Europe and the Mediterranean. The trade in tin was controlled by the Carthaginians, who lived in the area that is now Tunisia, and the Greeks wanted to break their monopoly.
At that time the Pillars of Hercules, or the Strait of Gibraltar, which is the passage from the Mediterranean into the Atlantic, was controlled by the Carthaginians. Pytheas reached the Atlantic either by going overland or by passing through the strait during a time of Carthaginian weakness, possibly when Carthage was fighting a war with Syracuse in Sicily. In any case, he reached the Phoenician city of Gades—now Cádiz, Spain—then followed the shoreline of Europe to the port of Corbilo at the mouth of the Loire River. From there he sailed to the island of Ouessant off the tip of Brittany.
Pytheas sailed from Brittany to Belerium, or Land’s End, in Cornwall at the southwestern tip of Britain. There he visited the famous tin mines, which he described at length:
The inhabitants of Britain who dwell about the headland of Belerium are unusually hospitable and have adopted a civilized manner of life because of their intercourse with foreign traders. It is they who work the tin, extracting it by an ingenious process. The bed itself is of rock but between are pieces of earth which they dig out to reach the tin. Then they work the tin into pieces the size of knuckle bones and carry it to an island that lies off Britain and is called Ictis [St. Michael’s Mount, Cornwall]; for at the time of ebb tide the space between this island and the mainland becomes dry, and they can take the tin in large quantities over to the island on their wagons.
While Pytheas was in Britain he explored much of the island on foot and accurately estimated its circumference—4,000 miles—and he made a nearly correct calculation of the distance between northern Britain and Massalia—he estimated 1,050 miles and the actual distance is 1,120 miles.
From Cornwall, Pytheas sailed north through the Irish Sea between Britain and Ireland to the northern tip of Scotland, probably going as far as the Orkney Islands. Along the way, he stopped to travel short distances inland and described the customs of the inhabitants. Beyond northern Scotland, Pytheas found another land called the “Island of Thule.”
According to Pytheas, Thule was a six-day journey north from Britain. In midsummer, the sun retires to its resting place for only two or three hours. The inhabitants lived on wild berries and “millet,” or oats, and made a drink called mead from wild honey. From his description, Thule was probably Norway in the present region of the city of Trondheim, although other locations have been suggested. North of Thule he was told of a land where the sea became solid and the sun never set in summertime. These reports seemed so crazy to the people of the Mediterranean world that his report was not believed and was ridiculed for years afterward.
Ever since Pytheas’s visit the far northern extremes of the earth have had the poetic name of Thule, which is also the name of the northernmost town in Greenland. It is not clear whether Pytheas actually went to Thule or merely reported what he had heard about it.
Pytheas sailed back to Britain, then down its east coast and across the North Sea to the North Frisian Islands off the coast of Germany. Arriving at the island of Heligoland, which he called Abalus, he reported, “In the spring the waves wash up amber on the shores of this island. The inhabitants use it as fuel instead of wood … and also sell it to their neighbors the Teutons.” From there Pytheas sailed back along the coast of Europe and returned home.
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