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In Northern Mists: Arctic Exploration in Early Times (Volume 1 of 2)

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Title: In Northern Mists: Arctic Exploration in Early Times (Volume 1 of 2)

Author: Fridtjof Nansen

Translator: Arthur G. Chater


        
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN NORTHERN MISTS: ARCTIC EXPLORATION IN EARLY TIMES (VOLUME 1 OF 2) ***

IN NORTHERN MISTS




[Illustration:

  "THE GOLDEN CLOUDS CURTAINED THE DEEP WHERE IT LAY,
  AND IT LOOKED LIKE AN EDEN AWAY, FAR AWAY"]




  IN NORTHERN MISTS

  ARCTIC EXPLORATION IN EARLY TIMES


  BY FRIDTJOF NANSEN
  G.C.V.O., D.Sc., D.C.L., Ph.D., PROFESSOR OF OCEANOGRAPHY
  IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CHRISTIANIA, ETC.


  TRANSLATED BY ARTHUR G. CHATER

  ILLUSTRATED

  VOLUME ONE

  LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN: MCMXI




  PRINTED BY
  BALLANTYNE & COMPANY LTD
  AT THE BALLANTYNE PRESS
  TAVISTOCK STREET COVENT GARDEN
  LONDON




PREFACE


This book owes its existence in the first instance to a rash promise made
some years ago to my friend Dr. J. Scott Keltie, of London, that I would
try, when time permitted, to contribute a volume on the history of arctic
voyages to his series of books on geographical exploration. The subject
was an attractive one; I thought I was fairly familiar with it, and did
not expect the book to take a very long time when once I made a start with
it. On account of other studies it was a long while before I could do
this; but when at last I seriously took the work in hand, the subject in
return monopolised my whole powers.

It appeared to me that the natural foundation for a history of arctic
voyages was in the first place to make clear the main features in the
development of knowledge of the North in early times. By tracing how ideas
of the Northern World, appearing first in a dim twilight, change from age
to age, how the old myths and creations of the imagination are constantly
recurring, sometimes in new shapes, and how new ones are added to them, we
have a curious insight into the working of the human mind in its endeavour
to subject to itself the world and the universe.

But as I went deeper into the subject I became aware that the task was far
greater than I had supposed: I found that much that had previously been
written about it was not to be depended upon; that frequently one author
had copied another, and that errors and opinions which had once gained
admission remained embedded in the literary tradition. What had to be done
was to confine one's self to the actual sources, and as far as possible to
build up independently the best possible structure from the very
foundation. But the more extensive my studies became, the more riddles I
perceived--riddle after riddle led to new riddles, and this drew me on
farther and farther.

On many points I arrived at views which to some extent conflicted with
those previously held. This made it necessary to give, not merely the bare
results, but also a great part of the investigations themselves. I have
followed the words of Niebuhr, which P. A. Munch took as a motto for "Det
norske Folks Historie":

"Ich werde suchen die Kritik der Geschichte nicht nach dunkeln Gefühlen,
sondern forschend, auszuführen, nicht ihre Resultate, welche nur blinde
Meinungen stiften, sondern die Untersuchungen selbst in ihrem ganzen
Umfange vortragen."

But in this way my book has become something quite different from what was
intended, and far larger. I have not reached the history of arctic voyages
proper.

Many may think that too much has been included here, and yet what it has
been possible to mention here is but an infinitesimal part of the mighty
labour in vanished times that makes up our knowledge of the North. The
majority of the voyages, and those the most important, on which the first
knowledge was based, have left no certain record; the greatest steps have
been taken by unknown pioneers, and if a halo has settled upon a name here
and there, it is the halo of legend.

My investigations have made it necessary to go through a great mass of
literature, for which I lacked, in part, the linguistic qualifications.
For the study of classical, and of mediæval Latin literature, I found in
Mr. Amund Sommerfeldt a most able assistant, and most of the translations
of Greek and Latin authors are due to him. By his sound and sober
criticism of the often difficult original texts he was of great help to
me.

In the study of Arabic literature Professor Alexander Seippel has afforded
me excellent help, combined with interest in the subject, and he has
translated for me the statements of Arab authors about the North.

In the preparation of this work, as so often before, I owe a deep debt of
gratitude to my old friend, Professor Moltke Moe. He has followed my
studies from the very beginning with an interest that was highly
stimulating; with his extensive knowledge in many fields bordering on
those studies he has helped me by word and deed, even more often than
appears in the course of the book. His intimate acquaintance with the
whole world of myth has been of great importance to the work in many ways;
I will mention in particular his large share in the attempt at unravelling
the difficult question of Wineland and the Wineland voyages. Here his
concurrence was the more valuable to me since at first he disagreed with
the conclusions and views at which I had arrived; but the constantly
increasing mass of evidence, which he himself helped in great measure to
collect, convinced him of their justice, and I have the hope that the
inquiry, particularly as regards this subject, will prove to be of value
to future historical research.

With his masterly knowledge and insight Professor Alf Torp has given me
sound support and advice, especially in difficult linguistic and
etymological questions. Many others, whose names are mentioned in the
course of the book, have also given me valuable assistance.

I owe special thanks to Dr. Axel Anthon Björnbo, Librarian of the Royal
Library of Copenhagen, for his willing collaboration, which has been of
great value to me. While these investigations of mine were in progress, he
has been occupied in the preparation of his exhaustive and excellent work
on the older cartography of Greenland. At his suggestion we have exchanged
our manuscripts, and have mutually criticised each other's views according
to our best ability; the book will show that this has been productive in
many ways. Dr. Björnbo has also assisted me in another way: I have, for
instance, obtained copies of several old maps through him. He has,
besides, sent me photographs of vignettes and marginal drawings from
ancient Icelandic and Norwegian MSS. in the Library of Copenhagen.

Mr. K. Eriksen has drawn the greater part of the reproductions of the
vignettes and the old maps; other illustrations are drawn by me. In the
reproduction of the maps it has been sought rather to bring before the
reader in a clear form the results to which my studies have led than to
produce detailed facsimiles of the originals.

In conclusion I wish to thank Mr. Arthur G. Chater for the careful and
intelligent way in which he has executed the English translation. In
reading the English proofs I have taken the opportunity of making a number
of corrections and additions to the original text.

FRIDTJOF NANSEN

Lysaker, August 1911




CONTENTS


  CHAP.                                                       PAGE

        INTRODUCTION                                             1

     I. ANTIQUITY, BEFORE PYTHEAS                                7

    II. PYTHEAS OF MASSALIA: THE VOYAGE TO THULE                43

   III. ANTIQUITY, AFTER PYTHEAS                                74

    IV. THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES                                  125

     V. THE AWAKENING OF MEDIÆVAL KNOWLEDGE OF THE NORTH       168

    VI. FINNS, SKRIDFINNS [LAPPS], AND THE FIRST SETTLEMENT
        OF SCANDINAVIA                                         203

   VII. THE VOYAGES OF THE NORSEMEN: DISCOVERY OF ICELAND
        AND GREENLAND                                          233

  VIII. VOYAGES TO THE UNINHABITED PARTS OF GREENLAND IN
        THE MIDDLE AGES                                        279

    IX. WINELAND THE GOOD, THE FORTUNATE ISLES, AND THE
        DISCOVERY OF AMERICA                                   312




[Illustration]


INTRODUCTION

                    "For my purpose holds
  To sail beyond the sunset and the baths
  Of all the Western stars until I die."
                              Tennyson, "Ulysses."


In the beginning the world appeared to mankind like a fairy tale;
everything that lay beyond the circle of familiar experience was a
shifting cloudland of the fancy, a playground for all the fabled beings of
mythology; but in the farthest distance, towards the west and north, was
the region of darkness and mists, where sea, land and sky were merged into
a congealed mass--and at the end of all gaped the immeasurable mouth of
the abyss, the awful void of space.

Out of this fairy world, in course of time, the calm and sober lines of
the northern landscape appeared. With unspeakable labour the eye of man
has forced its way gradually towards the north, over mountains and
forests, and tundra, onward through the mists along the vacant shores of
the polar sea--the vast stillness, where so much struggle and suffering,
so many bitter failures, so many proud victories, have vanished without a
trace, muffled beneath the mantle of snow.

When our thoughts go back through the ages in a waking dream, an endless
procession passes before us--like a single mighty epic of the human
mind's power of devotion to an idea, right or wrong--a procession of
struggling, frost-covered figures in heavy clothes, some erect and
powerful, others weak and bent so that they can scarcely drag themselves
along before the sledges, many of them emaciated and dying of hunger, cold
and scurvy; but all looking out before them towards the unknown, beyond
the sunset, where the goal of their struggle is to be found.

We see a Pytheas, intelligent and courageous, steering northward from the
Pillars of Hercules for the discovery of Britain and Northern Europe; we
see hardy Vikings, with an Ottar, a Leif Ericson at their head, sailing in
undecked boats across the ocean into ice and tempest and clearing the
mists from an unseen world; we see a Davis, a Baffin forcing their way to
the north-west and opening up new routes, while a Hudson, unconquered by
ice and winter, finds a lonely grave on a deserted shore, a victim of
shabby pilfering. We see the bright form of a Parry surpassing all as he
forces himself on; a Nordenskiöld, broad-shouldered and confident, leading
the way to new visions; a Toll mysteriously disappearing in the drifting
ice. We see men driven to despair, shooting and eating each other; but at
the same time we see noble figures, like a De Long, trying to save their
journals from destruction, until they sink and die.

Midway in the procession comes a long file of a hundred and thirty men
hauling heavy boats and sledges back to the south, but they are falling in
their tracks; one after another they lie there, marking the line of route
with their corpses--they are Franklin's men.

And now we come to the latest drama, the Greenlander Brönlund dragging
himself forward over the ice-fields through cold and winter darkness,
after the leader Mylius-Erichsen and his comrade, Hagen, have both
stiffened in the snow during the long and desperate journey. He reaches
the depot only to wait for death, knowing that the maps and observations
he has faithfully brought with him will be found and saved. He quietly
prepares himself for the silent guest, and writes in his journal in his
imperfect Danish:

    Perished,--79 Fjord, after attempt return over the inland ice, in
    November. I come here in waning moon and could not get farther for
    frost-bitten feet and darkness.

    The bodies of the others are in the middle of the fjord opposite the
    glacier (about 2-1/2 leagues).

    Hagen died November 15 and Mylius about 10 days after.

    JÖRGEN BRÖNLUND.

What a story in these few lines! Civilisation bows its head by the grave
of this Eskimo.

What were they seeking in the ice and cold? The Norseman who wrote the
"King's Mirror" gave the answer six hundred years ago: "If you wish to
know what men seek in this land, or why men journey thither in so great
danger of their lives, then it is the threefold nature of man which draws
him thither. One part of him is emulation and desire of fame, for it is
man's nature to go where there is likelihood of great danger, and to make
himself famous thereby. Another part is the desire of knowledge, for it is
man's nature to wish to know and see those parts of which he has heard,
and to find out whether they are as it was told him or not. The third part
is the desire of gain, seeing that men seek after riches in every place
where they learn that profit is to be had, even though there be great
danger in it."

The history of arctic discovery shows how the development of the human
race has always been borne along by great illusions. Just as Columbus's
discovery of the West Indies was due to a gross error of calculation, so
it was the fabled isle of Brazil that drew Cabot out on his voyage, when
he found North America. It was fantastic illusions of open polar seas and
of passages to the riches of Cathay beyond the ice that drove men back
there in spite of one failure after another; and little by little the
polar regions were explored. Every complete devotion to an idea yields
some profit, even though it be different from that which was expected.

But from first to last the history of polar exploration is a single mighty
manifestation of the power of the unknown over the mind of man, perhaps
greater and more evident here than in any other phase of human life.
Nowhere else have we won our way more slowly, nowhere else has every new
step cost so much trouble, so many privations and sufferings, and
certainly nowhere have the resulting discoveries promised fewer material
advantages--and nevertheless, new forces have always been found ready to
carry the attack farther, to stretch once more the limits of the world.

But if it has cost a struggle, it is not without its joys. Who can
describe his emotion when the last difficult ice-floe has been passed, and
the sea lies open before him, leading to new realms? Or when the mist
clears and mountain-summits shoot up, one behind another farther and
farther away, on which the eye of man has never rested, and in the
farthest distance peaks appear on the sea-horizon--on the sky above them a
yellowish white reflection of the snow-fields--where the imagination
pictures new continents?...

Ever since the Norsemen's earliest voyages arctic expeditions have
certainly brought material advantages to the human race, such as rich
fisheries, whaling and sealing, and so on; they have produced scientific
results in the knowledge of hitherto unknown regions and conditions; but
they have given us far more than this: they have tempered the human will
for the conquest of difficulties; they have furnished a school of
manliness and self-conquest in the midst of the slackness of varying ages,
and have held up noble ideals before the rising generation; they have fed
the imagination, have given fairy-tales to the child, and raised the
thoughts of its elders above their daily toil. Take arctic travel out of
our history, and will it not be poorer? Perhaps we have here the greatest
service it has done humanity.

We speak of the first discovery of the North--but how do we know when the
first man arrived in the northern regions of the earth? We know nothing
but the very last steps in the migrations of humanity. What a stretch of
time there must have been between the period of the Neanderthal man in
Europe and the first Pelasgians, or Iberians, or Celts, that we find there
in the neolithic age, in the earliest dawn of history. How infinitesimal
in comparison with this the whole of the recent period which we call
history becomes.

What took place in those long ages is still hidden from us. We only know
that ice-age followed ice-age, covering Northern Europe, and to some
extent Asia and North America as well, with vast glaciers which
obliterated all traces of early human habitation of those regions. Between
these ice-ages occurred warmer periods, when men once more made their way
northward, to be again driven out by the next advance of the ice-sheet.
There are many signs that the human northward migration after the last
ice-age, in any case in large districts of Europe, followed fairly close
upon the gradual shrinking of the boundary of the inland ice towards the
interior of Scandinavia, where the ice-sheath held out longest.

The primitive state--when men wandered about the forests and plains of the
warmer parts of the earth, living on what they found by chance--developed
by slow gradations in the direction of the first beginnings of culture; on
one side to roving hunters and fishers, on the other to agricultural
people with a more fixed habitation. The nomad with his herds forms a
later stage of civilisation.

The hunting stage of culture was imposed by necessity on the first
pioneers and inhabitants of the northernmost and least hospitable regions
of the earth. The northern lands must therefore have been first discovered
by roving fishermen who came northwards following the rivers and seashores
in their search for new fishing-grounds. It was the scouting eye of a
hunter that first saw a sea-beach in the dreamy light of a summer night,
and sought to penetrate the heavy gloom of the polar sea. And that
far-travelled hunter fell asleep in the snowdrift while the northern
lights played over him as a funeral fire, the first victim of the polar
night's iron grasp.

Long afterwards came the nomad and the agriculturist and established
themselves in the track of the hunter.

This was thousands of years before any written history, and of these
earliest colonisations we know nothing but what the chance remains we find
in the ground can tell us, and these are very few and very uncertain.

It is not until we come far down into the full daylight of history that we
find men setting out with the conscious purpose of exploring the unknown
for its own sake. With those early hunters, it was doubtless new ground
and new game that drew them on, but they too were attracted, consciously
or unconsciously, by the spirit of adventure and the unknown--so deep in
the soul of man does this divine force lie, the mainspring, perhaps, of
the greatest of our actions. In every part of the world and in every age
it has driven man forward on the path of evolution, and as long as the
human ear can hear the breaking of waves over deep seas, as long as the
human eye can follow the track of the northern lights over silent
snow-fields, as long as human thought seeks distant worlds in infinite
space, so long will the fascination of the unknown carry the human mind
forward and upward.

[Illustration]




[Illustration: Ship of the Egyptian Punt expedition, 17th century B.C. (J.
DÜMICHEN)]


CHAPTER I

ANTIQUITY, BEFORE PYTHEAS


The learned world of early antiquity had nothing but a vague premonition
of the North. Along the routes of traffic commercial relations were
established at a very early time with the northern lands. At first these
ran perhaps along the rivers of Russia and Eastern Germany to the Baltic,
afterwards along the rivers of Central Europe as well. But the information
which reached the Mediterranean peoples by these routes had to go through
many intermediaries with various languages, and for this reason it long
remained vague and uncertain.

What the people of antiquity did not know, they supplied by poetical and
mythical conceptions; and in time there grew up about the outer limits of
the world, especially on the north, a whole cycle of legend which was to
lay the foundation of ideas of the polar regions for thousands of years,
far into the Middle Ages, and long after trustworthy knowledge had been
won, even by the voyages of the Norsemen themselves.

[Sidenote: Origin of the word Arctic]

Long before people knew whether there were lands and seas far in the
north, those who studied the stars had observed that there were some
bodies in the northern sky which never set, and that there was a point in
the vault of heaven which never changed its place. In time, they also
found that, as they moved northwards, the circle surrounding the stars
that were always visible became larger, and they saw that these in their
daily movements described orbits about the fixed point or pole of the
heavens. The ancient Chaldeans had already found this out. From this
observation it was but a short step to the deduction that the earth could
not be flat, as the popular idea made it, but must in one way or another
be spherical, and that if one went far enough to the north, these stars
would be right over one's head. To the Greeks a circle drawn through the
constellation of the Great Bear, which they called "Arktos," formed the
limit of the stars that were always visible. This limit was therefore
called the Bear's circle, or the "Arctic Circle," and thus this
designation for the northernmost regions of the earth is derived from the
sky.

[Illustration: The world according to Hecatæus (BUNBURY)]

[Sidenote: Œcumene and Oceanus]

[Sidenote: Herodotus on the ocean]

According to the common Greek idea it was the countries of the
Mediterranean and of the East that formed the disc of the earth, or
"œcumene" (the habitable world). Around this disc, according to the
Homeric songs (the Iliad was put into writing about 900 B.C.), flowed the
all-embracing river "Oceanus," the end of the earth and the limit of
heaven. This deep, tireless, quietly flowing river, whose stream turned
back upon itself, was the origin and the end of all things; it was not
only the father of the Oceanides and of the rivers, but also the source
whence came gods and men. Nothing definite is said of this river's farther
boundary; perhaps unknown lands belonging to another world whereon the sky
rested were there; in any case we meet later, as in Hesiod, with ideas of
lands beyond the Ocean, the Hesperides, Erythea, and the Isles of the
Blest, which were probably derived from Phœnician tales. Originally
conceived as a deep-flowing river, Oceanus became later the all-embracing
empty ocean, which was different from the known sea (the Mediterranean)
with its known coasts, even though connected with it. Herodotus (484-424
B.C.) is perhaps the first who used the name in this sense; he definitely
rejects the idea of Oceanus as a river and denies that the "œcumene"
should be drawn round, as though with a pair of compasses, as the Ionian
geographers (Hecatæus, for example) thought. He considered it proved that
the earth's disc on the western side, and probably also on the south, was
surrounded by the ocean, but said that no one could know whether this was
also the case on the north and north-east. In opposition to Hecatæus[1]
and the Ionian geographers (the school of Miletus) he asserted that the
Caspian Sea was not a bay of the northern Oceanus, but an independent
inland sea. Thus the "œcumene" became extended into the unknown on the
north-east. He mentions several peoples as dwelling farthest north; but to
the north of them were desert regions and inaccessible mountains; how far
they reached he does not say.

[Illustration: The world according to the ideas of Herodotus (J. MURRAY)]

He thus left the question undetermined, because, with the sound
cool-headedness of the inquirer, which made him in a sense the founder of
physical geography, he trusted to certain observations rather than to
uncertain speculations; and therefore he maintained that the geographers
of the Ionian school had not provided adequate proofs that the world was
really surrounded by sea on all sides. But nevertheless, it was, perhaps,
his final opinion that the earth's disc swam like an island in Oceanus.

[Sidenote: Division of the ocean]

This common name for the ocean was soon dropped, and men spoke instead of
the Outer Sea beyond the Pillars of Hercules in contradistinction to the
Inner Sea (i.e., the Mediterranean). The Outer Sea was also called the
Atlantic Sea after Atlas. This name is first found in Herodotus. South of
Asia was the Southern Ocean or the Erythræan Sea (the Red Sea and Indian
Ocean). North of Europe and Asia was the Northern Ocean; and the Caspian
Sea was a bay of this, in the opinion of the majority. Doubtless, most
people thought that these various oceans were connected; but the common
name Oceanus does not reappear as applied to them until the second century
B.C.[2]

[Sidenote: Homeric ideas of the universe]

According to the Homeric conception the universe was to be imagined
somewhat as a hollow globe, divided in two by the disc of the earth and
its encircling Oceanus; the upper hemisphere was that of light, or the
heaven; the lower one Tartarus, hidden in eternal darkness. Hades lay
beneath the earth, and Tartarus was as far below Hades as the sky was
above the earth. The solid vault of heaven was borne by Atlas, but its
extremities certainly rested upon Oceanus (or its outer boundary), or at
least were contained thereby. According to Hesiod (about 800 B.C.) an
anvil falling from heaven would not reach earth till the tenth day, and
from the earth it would fall for nine days and nine nights and not reach
the bottom of Tartarus until the tenth. This underworld is filled to the
brim with triple darkness, and the Titans have been hurled into it and
cannot come out. On the brink the limits of the earth, the waste Oceanus,
black Tartarus, and the starry heaven all coincide. Tartarus is a deep
gulf at which even the gods shudder; in a whole year it would be
impossible to search through it.[3]

So early do we find three conceptions which two thousand years later still
formed the foundation of the doctrine of the earth's outer limits,
especially on the north: (1) the all-embracing Oceanus or empty ocean; (2)
the coincidence of sky, sea, land and underworld at the uttermost edge;
and lastly (3) the dismal gulf into which even the gods were afraid of
falling.

[Sidenote: Spherical form of the earth]

These or similar ideas still obtained long after the mathematical
geographers had conceived the earth as a sphere. Pythagoras (568-about 494
B.C.) was probably the first to proclaim the doctrine of the spherical
form of the earth. He relied less upon observation than upon the
speculative idea that the sphere was the most perfect form. Before him
Anaximander of Miletus (611-after 547 B.C.), to whom are attributed the
invention of the gnomon or sun-dial, and the first representation of the
earth's disc on a map, had maintained that the earth was a cylinder
floating in space; the inhabited part was the upper flat end. His pupil
Anaximenes (second half of the sixth century B.C.) thought that the earth
had the form of a trapezium, supported by the air beneath, which it
compressed like the lid of a vase; while before him Thales of Miletus
(640-about 548 B.C.) was inclined to hold that the earth's disc swam on
the surface of the ocean, in the middle of the hollow sphere of heaven,
and that earthquakes were caused by movements of the waters.[4]

[Sidenote: Doctrine of zones]

[Sidenote: The abyss]

Parmenides of Elea (about 460 B.C.) divided the earth's sphere into five
zones or belts, of which three were uninhabitable: the zone of heat, or
the scorched belt round the equator, and the two zones of cold at the
poles. Between the warmth and the cold there were on either side of the
hot zone two temperate zones where men might live. This division was
originally derived from the five zones of the heavens, where the Arctic
Circle formed the boundary of the northern stars that are always visible,
and the tropics that of the zone dominated by the sun. Pythagoras seems to
have been the first to transfer it to the globe, the centre of the
universe.[5] This idea of the earth's five habitable and uninhabitable
zones was current till nearly the end of the Middle Ages; but at the same
time one finds, often far on in the Middle Ages, the former conceptions of
the empty ocean encircling all, and of the "œcumene" swimming in it as an
island. Occasionally we meet with a vast unknown continent beyond this
ocean, belonging to another world, which no one can reach.[6] Together
with these theories, though not very conspicuously, the belief in the
immeasurable gulf at the edge of the world also persisted; and this became
the "Ginnungagap" of our forefathers.

The conception of the earth's form and of its uttermost limits was thus by
no means consistent, and on some points it was contradictory. We must
always, and especially in dealing with past times, distinguish between the
views of the scientific world and those of ordinary people, two aspects
which were often hopelessly mixed together. And again in the scientific
world we must distinguish between the mathematical-physical geographers
and the historical, since the latter dealt more with descriptions and were
apt to follow accounts and legends rather than what was taught by physical
observations.

[Sidenote: The Rhipæan Mountains]

[Sidenote: Læstrygons and Cimmerians]

The world which the Greeks really knew was bounded in the earlier period
on the north by the Balkans. These again gave rise to the mythical Rhipæan
Mountains, which were soon moved farther to the north or north-east[7] as
knowledge increased, and so they and the Alps were made the northern
boundary of the known world. As to what lay farther off, the Greeks had
very vague ideas; they seem to have thought that the frozen polar
countries began there, where it was so cold that people had to wear
breeches like the Scythians; or else it was a good climate, since it lay
north of the north wind which came from the Rhipæan Mountains. But that
some genuine information about the North had reached them as early as the
time of the Odyssey seems to be shown by the tale of the Læstrygons--who
had the long day, and whose shepherds, driving their flocks in at evening,
could call to those who were setting out in the morning, since the paths
of day and night were with them so close to one another--and of the
Cimmerians at the gates of the underworld, who lived in a land of fog, on
the shores of Oceanus, in eternal cheerless night. It is true that the
poet seems to have imagined these countries somewhere in the east or
north-east, probably by the Black Sea; for Odysseus came from the
Læstrygons to the isle of Ææa "by the mansions and dancing-places of the
Dawn and by the place where the sun rises." And from Ææa the Greek hero
steered right out into the night and the mist on the dangerous waters of
Oceanus and came to the Cimmerians,[8] who must therefore have dwelt
beyond the sunrise, shrouded in cloud and fogs. It might be supposed that
it was natural to the poet to believe that there must be night beyond the
sunrise and on the way to the descent to the nether regions; but it is,
perhaps, more probable that both the long day and the darkness and fog are
an echo of tales about the northern summer and the long winter night, and
that these tales reached the Greeks by the trade-routes along the Russian
rivers and across the Black Sea, for which reason the districts where
these marvels were to be found were reported to lie in that direction. A
find in the passage-graves of Mycenæ (fourteenth to twelfth century B.C.)
of beads made of amber from the Baltic,[9] besides many pieces of amber
from the period of the Dorian migration (before the tenth century) found
during the recent English excavations of the temple of Artemis at
Sparta,[10] furnish certain evidence that the Greek world had intercourse
with the Baltic countries long before the Odyssey was put into writing in
the eighth century, even though the northern lands of this poem seem to
have been limited by a communication by sea between the Black Sea and the
Adriatic, running north of the Balkan peninsula. Perhaps this imaginary
communication may have been conceived as going by the Ister (Danube),
which, at any rate later, was thought to have another outlet in the
Adriatic. We may also find echoes of tales about the dark winter and light
summer of the North in Sophocles's tragedy, where we are told that
Orithyia was carried off by Boreas and borne over

  ... the whole mirror of the sea, to the edge of the earth,
  To the source of primæval night, where the vault of heaven ends,
  Where lies the ancient garden of Phœbus[11]

--though images of this sort may also be due to an idea that the sun
remained during the night beyond the northern regions.

[Sidenote: The Hyperboreans]

According to a comparatively late Greek conception there was in the far
North a happy people called the Hyperboreans. They dwelt "under the
shining way" (the clear northern sky) north of the roaring Boreas, so far
that this cold north wind could not reach them, and therefore enjoyed a
splendid climate. They did not live in houses, but in woods and groves.
With them injustice and war were unknown, they were untouched by age or
sickness; at joyous sacrificial feasts, with golden laurel-wreaths in
their hair, and amid song and the sound of the cithara and the dancing of
maidens, they led a careless existence in undisturbed gladness, and
reached an immense age. When they were tired of life they threw
themselves, after having eaten and drunk, joyfully and with wreaths in
their hair, into the sea from a particular cliff (according to Mela and
Pliny, following Hecatæus of Abdera). Among other qualities they had the
power of flying, and one of them, Abaris, flew round the world on an
arrow. While some geographers, especially the Ionians, placed them in the
northern regions, beyond the Rhipæan Mountains,[12] Hecatæus of Abdera
(first half of the third century B.C.), who wrote a work about the
Hyperboreans, collected from various sources, and more like a novel than
anything else, declares that they dwelt far beyond the accessible regions,
on the island of Elixœa in the farthest northern Oceanus, where the tired
stars sink to rest, and where the moon is so near that one can easily
distinguish the inequalities of its surface. Leto was born there, and
therefore Apollo is more honoured with them than other gods. There is a
marvellous temple, round like a sphere,[13] which floats freely in the air
borne by wings, and which is rich in offerings. To this holy island Apollo
came every ninth year; according to some authorities he came through the
air in a car drawn by swans. During his visit the god himself played the
cithara and danced without ceasing from the spring equinox to the rising
of the Pleiades. The Boreads were hereditary kings of the island, and were
likewise keepers of the sanctuary; they were descendants of Boreas and
Chione. Three giant brothers, twelve feet high, performed the service of
priests. When they offered the sacrifice and sang the sacred hymns to the
sound of the cithara, whole clouds of swans came from the Rhipæan
Mountains, surrounded the temple and settled upon it, joining in the
sacred song.

Theopompus (Philip of Macedon's time) has given us, if we may trust
Ælian's account ["Varia," iii. c. 18; about 200 A.D.], a remarkable
variation of the Hyperborean legend in combination with others:

    Europe, Asia, and Africa were islands surrounded by Oceanus; only that
    land which lay outside this world was a continent; its size was
    immense. The animals there were huge, the men were not only double our
    size, but lived twice as long as we. Among many great towns there
    were two in particular greater than the rest, and with no resemblance
    to one another; they were called Machimos (the warlike) and Eusebes
    (the pious). The description of the latter's peaceful inhabitants has
    most features in common with the Hyperborean legend. The warlike
    inhabitants of Machimos, on the other hand, are born armed, wage war
    continually, and oppress their neighbours, so that this one city rules
    over many peoples, but its inhabitants are no less than two millions.
    It is true that they sometimes die of disease, but that happens
    seldom, since for the most part they are killed in war, by stones, or
    wood [that is, clubs], for they are invulnerable to iron. They have
    such superfluity of gold and silver that with them gold is of less
    value than iron is with us. Once indeed they made an expedition to our
    island [that is, Europe], came over the Ocean ten millions strong and
    arrived at the land of the Hyperboreans. But when they learned that
    these were the happy ones of our earth, and found their mode of life
    bad, poverty-stricken and despicable, they did not think it worth
    while to proceed farther.

    Among them dwell men called Meropians, in many great cities. On the
    border of their country is a place which bears the significant name
    Anostos (without return), and resembles a gulf ("chiasma"). There
    reigns there neither darkness nor light, but a veil of mist of a dirty
    red colour lies over it. Two streams flow about this place, of which
    one is called Hedone (the stream of gladness), the other Lype (the
    stream of sorrow), and by the banks of each stand trees of the size of
    a great plane-tree. The fruit of the trees by the river of sorrow has
    the effect that any one who eats of it sheds so many tears that for
    the rest of his life he melts away in tears and so dies. The other
    trees that grow by the river of gladness bear fruit of a quite
    different kind. With him who tastes it all former desires come to
    rest; even what he has passionately loved passes into oblivion, he
    becomes gradually younger and goes once more through the previous
    stages of his existence in reverse order. From an old man he passes to
    the prime of life, becomes a youth, a boy, and then a child, and with
    that he is used up. Ælian adds: "And if the Chionian's [that is,
    Theopompus of Chios] tale appears credible to any one, then he may be
    believed, but to me he seems to be a mythologist, both in this and in
    other things."

There can be no doubt that the regions which we hear of in this story,
with the Hyperboreans, the enormous quantities of gold, the gulf without
return, and so on, were imagined as situated beyond the sea in the North;
and in the description of the warlike people of Machimos who came in great
hordes southward over the sea, one might almost be tempted to think of
warlike northerners, who were slain with stones and clubs, but not with
iron, perhaps because they had not yet discovered the use of iron.[14]

The legend of the happy Hyperboreans in the North has arisen from an error
of popular etymology, and it has here been treated at some length as an
example of how geographical myths may originate and develop.[15] The name
in its original form was certainly the designation of those who brought
offerings to the shrine of Apollo at Delphi (perhaps also in Delos). They
were designated as "perpheroi" or "hyper-pheroi" (bringers over), which
again in certain northern Greek dialects took the forms of "hyper-phoroi"
or "hyper-boroi;" this, by an error, became connected in later times with
"Boreas," and their home was consequently transferred to the North, many
customs of the worship of Apollo being transferred with it [see O.
Crusius, 1890, col. 2830]. This gives at the same time a natural
explanation of their many peculiarities, their sanctity, their power of
flight and the arrow (Apollo's arrow), their ceremonial feasts, and their
throwing themselves from a certain cliff,[16] and so on, all of which is
derived from the worship of Apollo. Apollonius of Rhodes (about 200 B.C.)
relates that according to the legends of the Celts (in North Italy ?)
amber originated from the tears of Apollo, which he shed by thousands when
he came to the holy people of the Hyperboreans and forsook the shining
heaven.

When, after the conquests of Alexander, the Greeks became acquainted with
the mythical world of India, they naturally connected the Indians'
legendary country, "Uttara Kuru," beyond the Himalayas, with the country
of the Hyperboreans. "This land is not too cold, not too warm, free from
disease; care and sorrow are unknown there; the earth is without dust and
sweetly perfumed; the rivers run in beds of gold, and instead of pebbles
they roll down pearls and precious stones."

The mythical singer Aristeas of Proconnesus (sixth century ?)--to whom was
attributed the poem "Arimaspeia"--is said (according to Herodotus) to have
penetrated into the country of the Scythians as far as the northernmost
people, the Issedonians. The latter told him of the one-eyed, long-haired
Arimaspians, who lived still farther north, at the uttermost end of the
world, before the cave from which Boreas rushes forth. On their northern
border dwelt the Griffins, lion-like monsters with the wings and beaks of
eagles;[17] they were the guardians of the gold which the earth sends
forth of itself. But still farther north, as far as the sea, were the
Hyperboreans.

But the learned Herodotus (about 450 B.C.) doubted that the Hyperboreans
dwelt to the north of Boreas; for, said he, if there are people north of
the north wind, then there must also be people south of the south wind.
Neither did he credit the Scythians' tales about goat-footed people[18]
and Sleepers far in the North. Just as little did this sceptic believe
that the air of Scythia was full of feathers which prevented all seeing
and moving; it was, he thought, continuous snowfall that the Scythians
described thus. On the other hand, he certainly believed in the Amazons,
though whether they dwelt in the North, as later authors considered, he
does not say.

The idea of the Sleepers, who slept for six months, may very probably be
due to legendary tales of the long northern winter-night, the length of
which was fixed at six months by theoretical speculations, these tales
being confused with reports that the people of Scythia slept a great part
of the winter, as even to-day the peasants are said to do in certain parts
of Russia, where they almost hibernate. Nor must the possibility be
overlooked of stories about the winter's sleep of animals, bears, for
example, being transferred to men.

Later learned geographers, in spite of the scepticism of Herodotus,
occupied themselves in assigning to the Hyperboreans a dwelling-place in
the unknown. The founder of scientific geography, Eratosthenes of Cyrene
(275-195 B.C.), declared that Herodotus's method of disproving the
existence of the Hyperboreans was ridiculous. [Cf. Strabo, i. 61.]

Even so long as five hundred years after Herodotus, Pliny declared the
Hyperboreans to be a historical people, whose existence could not be
doubted; and on the maps of the Middle Ages we always find them in the
most northern inhabited regions, together with the Amazons and other
peoples; we even find the Hyperborean Mountains ("Hyperborei Montes") in
Northern Europe and the Hyperborean Sea ("Oceanus Hyperboreus") to the
north of them. Adam of Bremen (eleventh century) thought that the
Scandinavians were the Hyperboreans.

[Illustration: Trade-routes between the Mediterranean and the North]

[Sidenote: Trade-routes between the Mediterranean and the North]

Archæological finds show that as long ago as the Scandinavian Bronze Age,
or before, there must have been some sort of communication between the
Mediterranean and the northern lands. One of the earliest trade-routes
between the Mediterranean and the Baltic certainly went from the Black Sea
up the navigable river Borysthenes (Dnieper), of which early mention is
made by the Greeks, thence along its tributary the Bug to the Vistula, and
down the latter to the coast. We also find this route in common use in
later antiquity. When we first meet with the Goths in history they are
established at both ends of it, by the mouths of the Vistula and of the
Borysthenes. The Eruli, who came from the North, are also mentioned by the
side of the Goths on the Black Sea. What the wandering nation of the
Cimmerians was we do not know, but, as before remarked (p. 14), they may
have been Cimbri who in those early times had migrated to the northern
shore of the Black Sea by this very route. This trade-route was well known
in its details to our forefathers in Scandinavia, which likewise points to
an ancient communication. Somewhat later it is probable that men travelled
from the Baltic up the Vistula and across to the March, a tributary of the
Danube, and so either down this river to the Black Sea or overland to the
Adriatic. A similar line of communication certainly ran between the North
Sea and the Mediterranean along the Elbe to the Adriatic, and up the
Rhine across to the Rhone and down this to the coast, or across the Alps
to the Po.

[Illustration: Cromlechs: on the right, in Portugal (after Cartailhac); on
the left, in Denmark (after S. Müller)]

But very early there was also communication by sea along the coasts of
western Europe between the Mediterranean and the North. This is shown
amongst other things by the distribution, about 2000 B.C., of cromlechs
over Sicily, Corsica, Portugal and the north of Spain, Brittany, the
British Isles, the North Sea coast of Germany, Denmark and southern
Scandinavia as far as Bohuslen [cf. S. Müller, 1909, p. 24 f.], and
perhaps farther. Somewhat later, in the middle of the second millennium
B.C., the passage-graves or chambered barrows followed the same route
northward from the Mediterranean. That this sea-communication was
comparatively active in those far-off times is proved by the fact that
cromlechs, which originated in the grave-chambers of the beginning of the
Mycenæan period in the eastern Mediterranean, reached Denmark, by this
much longer route round the coast, before the single graves, which were an
older form in the Mediterranean countries, but which spread by the slower
route overland, through Central Europe.

    That as far back as the Stone Age there was communication by one way
    or another, perhaps along the coast between Spain and the shore of the
    North Sea or the Baltic, appears probable from the fact that amber
    beads have been found in the Iberian peninsula containing 2 per cent.
    of succinic acid, a proportion which is taken to indicate its northern
    (Baltic) origin [cf. L. Siret, 1909, p. 138].

On account of the many intermediaries, speaking different languages,
through which it passed, the information which reached the Mediterranean
by these various routes was very defective. According to Herodotus [iv.
24] the Scythians on their trading journeys to the bald-headed Agrippæans
required no fewer than seven different interpreters to enable them to
barter with the peoples on the way. Their first more direct knowledge of
northern and western Europe must certainly have reached the Mediterranean
peoples through the tin trade and the amber trade. It is worth remarking
that it was precisely these two articles, representing two powerful sides
of human nature, utility and the love of ornament, that were to be of such
great importance also as regards knowledge of the North.

[Illustration: Ancient Egyptian ship; from a grave in western Thebes
(after R. Lepsius)]

[Sidenote: Tin in antiquity]

We do not know when, where, or how tin first came into use, the metal
which, together with copper, was as important in the Bronze Age as iron is
in our time. In Egypt it is found in the oldest pyramid-graves, and in the
third millennium B.C. bronze was in general use there, though we know not
whence the tin came to make it. Tin-ore occurs in comparatively few places
on the earth, and if China, which formed a world by itself, be excluded,
the only places where we know that the metal was obtained in ancient times
are north-west Spain, the Cassiterides (probably in Brittany) and
Cornwall,[19] which still possesses rich deposits; and as far as we can
trace history back, the civilised peoples of the Mediterranean and the
Orient obtained their tin from western Europe.[20] If the first tin in
Egypt and in the valley of the Euphrates also came from there, the
civilisation of western Europe, implied by regular working of mines, would
be given a venerable age which could almost rival the oldest civilisations
of the Mediterranean. But this is difficult to believe, as we should
expect to find traces of this early connection with Egypt along the
trade-routes between that country and the place of origin of the tin; and
no archæological evidence to prove this is at present forthcoming.[21]

    This possibility is nevertheless not wholly excluded: finds of beads
    of northern (?) amber in Egyptian graves of the Fifth Dynasty (about
    3500 B.C.) may point to ancient unknown communication with the
    farthest parts of Europe. In Spain, too, neolithic objects have been
    found, of ivory and other substances, which may have come from Egypt
    [cf. L. Siret, 1909]. It is certain that the earliest notices of tin
    in literature mention it as coming from the uttermost limits of
    Europe. In his lament over Tyre the prophet Ezekiel says [xxvii. 12]:
    "Tarshish was thy merchant by reason of the multitude of all kind of
    riches; with silver, iron, tin, and lead, they traded in thy fairs."
    Herodotus [iii. 115] says that it came from the Cassiterides. As
    Tarsis was the starting-point of the tin-trade with the
    Cassiterides,[22] these two statements are in agreement.

    Figures and thin rods of tin have been found in association with stone
    implements on the sites of pile-dwellings in Switzerland. Tin rings
    have also been found at Hallstatt. In barrows (of the Bronze Age ?) in
    the island of Anrum, on the west coast of Sleswick, there were found
    a dagger or arrowhead and several other objects of tin, besides a lump
    of the metal, and in Denmark it is known that tin was used for
    ornament on oak chests of the earliest Bronze Age, which again points
    to coastal traffic with the south-west.

In the Iliad tin is spoken of as a rare and costly metal, used for the
decoration of weapons, and it appears that arms were then made of copper,
bronze not being yet in general use, as was the case in the later time of
the Odyssey. But in the excavations at Troy, curiously enough, bronze
objects were found immediately above the neolithic strata, which would
seem to show that the Bronze Age reached the Greeks from Egypt without any
intervening copper age.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Homeric songs do not allude to tin as a Phœnician commodity, like
amber. This may mean that the Greeks even in the earliest times obtained
it through their own commercial relations with Gaul, without employing the
Phœnicians as middlemen.

Possibly the Greek word for tin, "kassiteros," and the name of the
tin-islands, "Kassiterides," themselves point to this direct connection.
The same word is also found in Sanscrit, "kastîra," and in Arabic,
"qazdir." Professor Alf Torp thinks that the word both in Greek and in
Sanscrit "must be borrowed from somewhere, but whence or when is not
known. 'Kassiteros,' of course, occurs as early as Homer, 'kastîra' is in
Indian literature much later, but as far as that goes it may well be old
in Sanscrit. I do not know of any Celtic word one could think of; a
'cassitír' (woodland) is hardly to the point; it is true that 'tír' means
'land,' but no other 'cass' is known to me except one that means 'hair'"
(in a letter of November 9, 1909). We may therefore look upon it as
certain that "kassiteros" is not an original Greek word; it must in all
probability have come from the country whence the Greeks first obtained
tin (analogous cases are the name of copper from the island of Cyprus,
that of bronze from Brundisium, etc.). That this country was India, as
some have thought, is improbable, since it is stated in the "Periplus
Maris Erythræi" [xlix.], confirmed by Pliny [xxxiv. 163], that tin was
imported into India from Alexandria in exchange for ivory, precious stones
and perfumes; we must therefore suppose that the name reached India with
the tin from the Greeks, and not vice versâ. It is very possible that the
word consists of two parts, of which the second "-teros" may be connected
with the Celtic word "tír" for land (Latin "terra"). The first part,
"kassi," occurs in many Celtic words and names. Ptolemy [ii. 8] mentions
in Gaul, in or near Brittany: "Bidu-kasioi," "Uenelio-kasioi,"
"Tri-kasioi," and "Uadi-kasioi." As mentioned by Reinach [1892, p. 278],
there was a people in Brittany called "Cassi" (a British king,
"Cassi-vellaunos," an Arvernian chief, "Ver-cassi-vellaunos," etc.). It
may be supposed that the country was named after these people, or was in
some other way referred to by such a word and called "Kassi-tír." In this
case the Cassiterides might be sought for in Brittany, and this agrees
with what we have arrived at in another way. But this would entail the
assumption that the Celts were already in Gaul at the time of the Iliad.

Professor Alf Torp has called attention to the remarkable circumstance
that "the Cymric word for tin, 'ystaen,' resembles 'stannum,' which cannot
be genuine Latin. I am inclined to think that both words are derived from
an Iberian word; the Romans would in that case have got it from Galicia,
and the Cymri doubtless from a primitive Iberian population in the British
Isles. In some way or other our word 'tin' must be connected with this
word, though the 'i' is curious in the face of the Cymric 'a'" (letter of
November 9, 1909). In connection with this hypothesis of Professor Torp,
it may be of interest to notice that in the tin district of Morbihan in
Brittany, by the mouth of the Vilaine, is "Penestin," where the deposits
still contain much tin, and the name of which must come from the Celtic
"pen" (== head, cape) and "estein" (== tin).[23] It is conceivable that
the Latin "stannum" was derived from Brittany rather than from Galicia.

In ancient Egyptian there is no word for tin; as in early Latin, it is
described as white lead (dhti hs), which may point to a common western
origin for these two metals.

There has been great diversity of opinion as to where the Cassiterides of
the Greeks were to be found. Herodotus [iii. 115] did not know where they
were: "in spite of all his trouble, he had not been able to learn from any
eye-witness what the sea is like in that region [that is, on the north
side] of Europe. But it is certain that tin comes from the uttermost end,
as also amber." Posidonius mentioned the islands as lying between Spain
and Britain (see above, p. 23). Strabo says [iii. 175]:

    "The Cassiterides are ten, and lie near to one another, in the midst
    of the sea northwards from the harbour of the Artabri [Galicia]. One
    of them is unoccupied, while the others are inhabited by people in
    black cloaks, with the robe fastened on the breast and reaching down
    to their feet, who wander about with staves in their hands like the
    Furies in tragedy. They live for the most part as herdsmen on their
    cattle; but as they also have mines of tin and lead they barter these
    metals and hides for pottery, salt, and articles of copper with the
    merchants. Formerly the Phœnicians alone carried on this trade from
    Gadir and kept the sea-route secret from every one else; but as the
    Romans once sailed in pursuit of one of their vessels with the object
    of finding out the position of their markets, the captain
    intentionally allowed his ship to be stranded on a sandbank and
    brought the same destruction upon his pursuers; but he saved himself
    from the wreck, and was compensated by the State for the value of his
    loss. Nevertheless the Romans discovered the sea-route after repeated
    attempts, and when Publius Crassus [under Cæsar] had also traversed it
    he saw the metals dug out from near the surface and that the
    inhabitants were peaceful, and he proved this sea-passage to be
    practicable, if one wished to make it, although it is longer[24] than
    that which divides Britain [from the continent]."

[Illustration: Places where tin is found in western Europe (marked with
crosses), and routes of the tin-trade in ancient times (after L. Siret,
1908)]

It is unlikely that the Cassiterides were Cornwall, as has been commonly
supposed, since this peninsula can with difficulty be regarded as a group
of islands; moreover this would not agree with the descriptions which
always mention them as separate from Britain, and usually farther south.
The Scilly Isles, lying far out in the sea, where tin has never been
worked to any great extent, and whose waters are dangerous to navigate,
are out of the question. On the other hand, it may almost be regarded as
certain that the Cassiterides are the same as the "Œstrymnides" (see
below), and these must be looked for on the coast of Gaul. Furthermore tin
is mentioned as "Celtic" by several Greek authorities; in the "Mirabiles
auscultationes" of Aristotle or Pseudo-Aristotle [i. 834, A. 6] it is so
called, and Ephorus (about 340 B.C.) speaks [in Scymnus of Chios] of
Tartessus [i.e., Gadir], "the famous city," as "rich in alluvial tin from
Celtica [Gaul], in gold, as also in copper."[25] It may further be
mentioned that Mela referred to the Cassiterides[26] as "Celtican," which
would mean that they belonged to the north-west coast of Spain, unless it
is confused with Celtic; and in his description of the islands of Europe,
going from south to north, he puts them immediately before "Sena," or the
Île de Seine at the western extremity of Brittany, which means in any case
that they would be to the south of that island. Everything points to the
islands being situated on the south coast of Brittany, and there is much
in favour of Louis Siret's assumption [1908] that they are the islands of
Morbihan ("Les Îles du Morbraz"), west of the mouth of the Loire, exactly
where "Penestin" is situated. This agrees very well, as we shall see
later, with the description of Himilco's voyage to the Œstrymnides. The
free alluvial deposits along the shore in this district, near the mouth of
the Vilaine, still contain a good deal of tin, together with gold and
other precious metals; but in those distant times they may have been very
rich in tin, and as they lie on the very seashore they were naturally
discovered early and became the most important source of tin until they
were partly exhausted. In the meantime the rich tin deposits of Cornwall
had begun to be utilised, and they became in turn the most important,
while the Cassiterides were gradually forgotten.

    Diodorus [v. 22] alludes to the tin trade in the following terms: "On
    that promontory of Prettanike [Britain] which is called 'Belerion,'
    the inhabitants are very hospitable, and they have become civilised by
    intercourse with foreign merchants. They produce tin, by actively
    working the land which contains it. This is rocky and contains veins
    of earth, and by working and smelting the products they obtain pure
    metal. This they make into the form of knuckle-bones and bring it to
    an island which lies off the coast of Britain and is called 'Ictis.'
    For when the intervening space becomes dry at ebb-tide they bring a
    quantity of tin to the island in waggons. A curious thing happens with
    the islands near the coast between Europe and Britain; for when the
    dividing strait is filled at high water they appear as islands, but
    when the sea recedes at the ebb and leaves a great space of dry land,
    they look like part of the mainland. Here the merchants buy it from
    the natives and bring it across to Gaul; but finally they journey on
    foot through Gaul, and bring the goods on horses to the mouth of the
    river Rhone." In another place [v. 38] he says that the tin is
    conveyed on horseback to Massalia and to the Roman commercial town of
    Narbo.

    Bunbury [1883, ii. p. 197] thinks that "this characteristic account
    leaves no reasonable doubt that Ictis was St. Michael's Mount in
    Cornwall (Belerion), to which the description precisely answers, and
    which contains a small port such as would have been well suited to
    ancient traders." The description decidedly does not fit, as some have
    thought, the island of Vectis (Wight); moreover the tin would in any
    case have had to be brought to the latter by sea from Cornwall, and
    not in waggons. It is, however, also possible that we have here some
    confusion with the original tin district in Brittany, where such
    places as Ictis, with the change between flood and ebb tide, are well
    known, from Cæsar's description among others. But as Diodorus did not
    know the tin-mines of Brittany, which in his time had lost their
    importance, and had heard of tin-mines in Belerion, he transferred to
    the latter the whole description which he found in earlier writers.
    This supposition may be confirmed by Pliny's statement [Hist. Nat. iv.
    16, 104]: "The historian Timæus says that in six days' sailing inwards
    from Britain the island of 'Mictis' is reached, in which white lead
    (tin) occurs. Thither the Britons sail in vessels of wicker-work,
    covered with hides." Originally the passage doubtless read "insulam
    Ictis," which by transference of the "m" became "insula Mictis," and
    this again has been amended to "insulam Mictis." It is impossible to
    identify the description with Vectis, which moreover has just been
    mentioned by Pliny, and it is also difficult to understand how it
    could be a place in Cornwall, but it is consistent with the tin
    district of Brittany.

We do not know how or at what period this tin industry first developed.
Perhaps it was as early as the end of the neolithic period; but it is
improbable that it should have been independently developed by the Iberian
aborigines who lived in the tin districts of Iberia, and doubtless also of
Brittany; it is far more likely to be due to communication with the
Mediterranean through a seafaring, commercial people, and we know of none
other than the Phœnicians. How early they began their widespread commerce
and industry is unknown; but they must have reached this part of the world
long before Gadir was founded by the Tyrians about 1100 B.C. It is
conceivable that in their search for gold and silver they discovered these
deposits of tin and knew how to take advantage of them. As already
remarked, there was as early as 2000 B.C. a continuous communication by
sea along the coasts of western Europe, and it is probable that there
arose at a very early time efficient navigators on the coasts of northern
Spain and Brittany, just those districts which are rich in tin, where
there are many good harbours. For a long time the tin trade was carried on
by sea, southward along the coast to Tarsis in southern Spain; but by
degrees an overland trade-route also came into use, going up the Loire and
down the Rhone to the Mediterranean. This route became known to the
Greeks, and the Phocæan colony Massalia was founded upon it about 600
B.C.; later the Greek colony of Corbilo was possibly founded at its other
extremity, by the mouth of the Loire (?). Later still another trade-route
ran along the Garonne overland to the Roman Narbo (Narbonne). On the
development of the Cornish tin industry, the same routes by sea and land
continued to be used. Thus it was that the tin trade furnished one of the
first and most important steps in the path of the exploration of the
North.

[Sidenote: Amber in ancient times]

When Phaëthon one day had persuaded his father Helios to let him drive the
chariot of the sun across the sky, the horses ran away with him and he
first came too near the vault of heaven and set fire to it, so that the
Milky Way was formed; then he approached too near the earth, set the
mountains on fire, dried up rivers and lakes, burned up the Sahara,
scorched the negroes black, until, to avoid greater disasters in his wild
career, Zeus struck him down with his thunderbolt into the river Eridanus.
His sisters, the daughters of the sun, wept so much over him that the gods
in pity changed them into poplars, and their tears then flowed every year
as amber on the river's banks. "For this reason amber came to be called
'electron,' because the sun has the name of 'Elector.'" In this way the
Greeks, in their poetry, thought that amber was formed. The mythical river
Eridanus, which no doubt was originally in the north (cf. Herodotus), was
later identified sometimes with the Rhone, sometimes with the Po.
Herodotus [iii. 115] says of northern Europe: "I do not suppose that
there is a river which the barbarians call Eridanus, and which flows into
the sea to the northward, from whence amber may come.... For in the first
place the name Eridanus itself shows that it is Hellenic and not
barbarian, and that it has been invented by some poet or other"; and in
the second, he was not able to find any eye-witness who could tell him
about it (cf. p. 27); but in any case he thought that amber as well as tin
came from the uttermost limits of Europe.

[Illustration: Places where amber is found (marked with crosses)]

The most important sources of amber in Europe are the southern coast of
the Baltic, especially Samland, and the west coast of Jutland with the
North Frisian islands. It is also found in small quantities in many places
in western and central Europe, on the Adriatic, in Sicily, in South
Africa, Burmah, the west coast of America, etc. Northern amber, from the
Baltic and the North Sea, is distinguished from other kinds that have been
investigated, by the comparatively large proportion of succinic acid it
contains, and it seems as though almost all that was used in early
antiquity in the Mediterranean countries and in Egypt was derived from the
north. Along the coasts of the Baltic and North Sea the amber is washed by
the waves from the loose strata of the sea-bottom and thrown up on the
beach. When these washed-up lumps were found by the fishers and hunters of
early times they naturally attracted them by their brilliance and colour
and by the facility with which they could be cut. It is no wonder,
therefore, that amber was used as early as the Stone Age for amulets and
ornaments by the people on the Baltic and North Seas, and spread from
thence over the whole of the North. In those distant times articles of
amber were still rare in the South; but in the Bronze Age, in proportion
as gold and bronze reach the north, they become rarer there, but more
numerous farther south. In the passage-graves of Mycenæ (fourteenth to
twelfth centuries B.C.) there are many of them, as also in Sparta at the
time of the Dorian migration (twelfth to tenth centuries B.C.; cf. p. 14).
It is evident that amber was the medium of exchange wherewith the people
of the North bought the precious metals from the South, and in this way it
comes that the two classes of archæological finds have changed their
localities. The neolithic ornaments of amber at Corinth, already referred
to, the amber beads of the Fifth Dynasty in Egypt, and those of the
neolithic period in Spain, show, however, if they are northern, that this
connection between South and North goes back a very long way. But the
Greek tribes among whom the Iliad originated do not appear to have known
amber, as it is not mentioned in the poem, and it is first named in the
more recent portions of the Odyssey (put into writing in the eighth
century B.C.). Among the jewels which the Phœnician merchant offered to
the Queen of Syria was "the golden necklace hung with pieces of amber"
[Od. xv. 460]. We must therefore believe that the Phœnicians were the
middlemen from whom the Greeks obtained it at that time. But it was not so
much esteemed by the Greeks of the classical period as it became later,
and they rejected it in their art industries, for which reason it is
seldom mentioned by Greek authors. Thales of Miletus (600 B.C.) discovered
that when rubbed it attracted other bodies, and from this important
discovery made so long ago has sprung the knowledge of that force which
dominates our time, and which has been named from the Greek word for
amber, "electron."

Among the Romans of the Empire this substance was so highly prized that
Pliny tells us [xxxvii., chap. 12] that "a human likeness made of it,
however small, exceeds the price of a healthy living person." This was
both on account of its beauty and of its occult properties; when worn as
an amulet it was able to ward off secret poisons, sorcery and other evils.
It therefore naturally became an article that was in great demand, and for
which merchants made long voyages.

It has been thought that the North Sea amber came into the southern market
before that of the Baltic, and as the Eridanus of the myth was sometimes
taken for the Rhone and sometimes for the Po, it was believed that in
early times amber was carried up the Rhine and across to both these
rivers, later also up the Elbe to the Adriatic [cf. Schrader, 1901,
"Bernstein"]. It was thought that the archæological finds also favoured
this theory; but it must still be regarded as doubtful, and it is scarcely
probable that the Phœnicians obtained it from the mouths of the Rhone and
the Po, while they may have brought it by sea at an early period. By what
routes amber was distributed in the earliest times is still unknown.

[Illustration: Phœnician warship, according to an Assyrian representation]

[Sidenote: Voyages of the Phœnicians]

Even though the Phœnicians were for the most part a commercial and
industrial people, who were not specially interested in scientific
research, there can be no doubt that by their distant voyages they
contributed much geographical knowledge to their age, and in many ways
they influenced Greek geography, especially through Miletus, which from
the beginning was partly a Phœnician colony, and where the first Greek
school of geographers, the Ionian school, developed. Thales of Miletus was
himself probably a Semite. How far they attained on their voyages is
unknown. Hitherto no certain relics of Phœnician colonies have been found
along the coasts of western Europe farther north than south-west Spain
(Tarsis), and there is no historically certain foundation for the
supposition that these seafaring merchants of antiquity, the Phœnicians,
Carthaginians and Gaditanians, on their voyages beyond the Pillars of
Hercules and northwards along the coasts of western Europe, should have
penetrated beyond the tin country and as far as the waters of northern
Europe, even to Scandinavia and the Baltic, whence they themselves might
have brought amber.[27] But a hypothesis of this sort cannot be disproved,
and is by no means improbable. Everything points to the Phœnicians having
been uncommonly capable seamen with good and swift-sailing ships; and a
seafaring people who achieved the far more difficult enterprise of
circumnavigating Africa, and of sailing southwards along its west coast
with whole fleets to found colonies, cannot have found it impossible to
sail along the west and north coast of Europe, where there are plenty of
natural harbours. It would then be natural for them to try to reach the
North Sea and the Baltic, if they expected to find the precious amber
there, and on this point they certainly had information from the merchants
who brought it either by land or by sea. It has already been remarked that
it is first mentioned in history as a Phœnician article of commerce.[28]
It may be supposed that the Phœnicians at an early period obtained amber
from their harbours on the Black Sea;[29] but after having pursued this
prosperous carrying-trade from their harbours here and in the west, it is
not improbable that they themselves tried to penetrate to the amber
countries with their ships.[30] The Phœnicians, however, tried to keep
their trade-routes secret from their dangerous and more warlike rivals the
Greeks, and it is therefore not surprising that no mention of these routes
should be extant, even if they really undertook such voyages; but it is
undeniably more remarkable still that no certain trace of them has been
found along the coasts of western Europe.

[Sidenote: Himilco's voyage, 500 B.C.]

The only thing we know is that about the year 500 B.C. the Carthaginians
are said to have sent out an expedition under Himilco through the Pillars
of Hercules and thence northwards along the coast. This is the first
northern sea voyage of which mention is to be found in literature. At that
time Tyre, the mother-city of Gadir, had been destroyed. Until then she
had controlled the trade of the west. It was natural that Gadir in her
isolated position should seek support from Carthage, which was now rising
into power. To strengthen her trade communications, therefore, this
flourishing city sent out Hanno's great expedition along the west coast of
Africa, and Himilco to the tin country in the north. Himilco seems to have
written an account of the journey; but of this all that has been preserved
is a few casual pieces of information in a poem ("Ora Maritima") by the
late Roman author Rufus Festus Avienus[31] (of the end of the fourth
century A.D.). The only other place where Himilco's name is mentioned is
in Pliny [Hist. Nat. ii. 67, 169], who merely says that he made a voyage
to explore the outer coast of Europe, contemporary with Hanno's voyage to
the south along the west coast of Africa, and in addition he names him in
the list of his authorities. But Pliny himself probably never saw his
work; it cannot be seen that he has made use of it.

It is true that Avienus makes a pretence of having used Himilco's original
account, but certainly he had never seen it. He may have utilised a Greek
authority of about the time of the Christian era [cf. Marx, 1895]. This
again was a compound of Greek tales, of which a part may have been taken
from a Punic source, but of the latter no trace is found in any other
known classical writer, with the exception of Pliny. Unfortunately the
information given us by Avienus shows little intelligence in the use of
his authorities, and his poem is often obscure.

In the description of the coast of western Europe [vv. 90-129] we read:

    "And here the projecting ridge raises its head--the older age called
    it 'Œstrymnis'--and all the high mass of rocky ridge turns mostly
    towards the warm south wind. But beneath the top of this promontory
    the Œstrymnian Bay opens out before the eyes of the inhabitants. In
    the midst of this rise the islands which are called Œstrymnides,
    scattered widely about, and rich in metals, in tin and in lead. Here
    live a multitude of men with enterprise and active industry, all
    having continually commercial interests; they plough in skilful
    fashion far and wide the foaming sea ['fretum,' literally, strait],
    and the currents of monster-bearing Ocean with their small boats. For
    these people do not know how to fit together [literally, weave] keels
    of fir or maple; they do not bend their craft with deal, in the usual
    way; but strange to say, they make their ships of hides sewed
    together, and often traverse the vast sea with the help of hides. Two
    days' voyage from thence lay the great island, which the ancients
    called 'the Holy Island,'[32] and it is inhabited by the people of
    Hierne [i.e., Ireland] far and wide, and near to it again extends the
    island of Albion. And it was the custom of the men of Tartessus to
    trade to the borders of the Œstrymnides, also colonists from Carthage
    and the many who voyage between the Pillars of Hercules visited these
    seas. The Carthaginian Himilco assures us that these seas can scarcely
    be sailed through in four months, as he has himself related of his
    experience on his voyage; thus no breeze drives the ship forward, so
    dead is the sluggish wind of this idle sea. He also adds that there is
    much seaweed among the waves, and that it often holds the ship back
    like bushes. Nevertheless he says that the sea has no great depth, and
    that the surface of the earth is barely covered by a little water. The
    monsters of the sea move continually hither and thither, and the wild
    beasts swim among the sluggish and slowly creeping ships."

It may be difficult to decide how much of this is really derived from
Himilco. The name "Œstrymnis" is not found elsewhere in literature, and
may be taken from him.[33] The supposition that it was Cape Finisterre and
that the Œstrymnic Bay ("sinus Œstrymnicus") was the Bay of Biscay is
improbable; a bay so open and wide could scarcely have been described in
terms which a Latin author would have rendered by "sinus"; besides which
there would be difficulties with the Œstrymnides which were widely spread
therein. Œstrymnis is certainly in Brittany, and since it "turns chiefly
towards the warm south wind," we may suppose it to be a headland on the
south coast. That the Œstrymnic Bay opens out beneath this headland ("sub
hujus") agrees with all that we know of it. As already stated, the
tin-producing Œstrymnides are undoubtedly the Cassiterides, which may
probably be the islands in the bay by the mouth of the Vilaine and
Quiberon, on the south side of Brittany, where tin occurs.

    It is just in this district, at the mouth of the Loire, that we find
    the Veneti as the only people famous for seamanship in ancient times
    in these parts. But, according to Cæsar's valuable description, they
    had strong, seaworthy ships, built wholly of oak and with leather
    sails. This seems scarcely to tally with the statement that the people
    of the Œstrymnides sailed the sea in boats of hide, the coracles of
    the Celts, which is also confirmed by Pliny's statement [xxxiv. c. 47]
    that "according to fabulous tales tin was brought in ships of
    wicker-work sewed round with hides from islands in the Atlantic
    Ocean." Either the Veneti must have acquired the art of shipbuilding
    after the voyage of Himilco--perhaps, indeed, through their
    intercourse with Carthaginians and Gaditanians--or else we must
    believe that the statement in Avienus rests upon a misinterpretation
    of the original authorities, and that the flowery language really
    means that the ships were not built of fir, maple or spruce, but of
    oak, the omission of which is striking.

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 Phœnicians 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 asserted that the expression "seaweed among
the waves" might show that Himilco had been near to or in the Sargasso
Sea; but there is no reason whatever for supposing this; the explanation
given above is more natural, besides which the Sargasso Sea could hardly
be described as shallow and as lying on the way to Œstrymnis.[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 Œstrymnis 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. Müllenhoff [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 Phœnicians.

That some very ancient authority is really the basis of the description of
the west coast of Europe as far as the Œstrymnides, 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 Œstrymnic 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."

Müllenhoff 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 Massalia 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 Phaëthon occurs the Ligyan king Cycnus at the mouth of
the amber-producing river Eridanus, 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 passage in Avienus, which assumes 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.




[Illustration]


CHAPTER II

PYTHEAS OF MASSALIA

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 Phocæan colony of Massalia (now
Marseilles), 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 scraps 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 surpasses
the discoverers of most periods.

[Sidenote: Personal circumstances and date of the voyage]

Of Pytheas's personal circumstances 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 Dicæarchus (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 Massalia, 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 Massalians. It is very
probable that the flourishing city of Massalia 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 "œcumene" 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
latitude of his own city, Massalia,[39] which formed the starting-point of
his journey, and in relation to which he laid down the latitude of more
northerly places.

[Illustration: Gnomon]

[Illustration: 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 altitude of the
pole above the horizon he obtained directly the latitude of the spot on
the earth, and that this was a simpler method of determining the latitude
than by measuring the altitude 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 latitude
of several places in numbers of parts of a circle north of Massalia.[42]
These results of his may perhaps be partly based on measurements of the
polar altitude. 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
compasses 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 circumpolar 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 altitude of the pole. Another indication
used by the Greeks to obtain the latitude 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.

[Illustration: 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 Massalia 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 Norsemen crossed the Atlantic. It has been
asserted 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 circumference 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.

[Illustration: 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 Massalia. 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 Phœnicians and Carthaginians along the west
coast of Europe, and with the voyage of Himilco. Although it is true that
the Phœnician sailors tried to keep the secret of their routes from
their dangerous rivals the Greeks and Massalians, 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 passing 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, Cabæum (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
circumnavigated. 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 circumference 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 Timæus). 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 circumference 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 Timæus. 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 Timæus, 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] Timæus 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 circumference 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 Massalian 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 passage
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 passage
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.

If we now sum up what is known of Pytheas's voyage to the North, we shall
find that it all hangs well together: he first came to the north of
Scotland, where the longest day was of eighteen hours, thence to Shetland
with a longest day of nineteen hours, and then to a land beyond all,
Thule, where the longest day was in one place twenty-one hours and in
another twenty-two, and which extended northwards as far as the midnight
sun and the Arctic Circle (at that time in 66° 15' N. lat.). There is
nothing intrinsically impossible in the supposition that this remarkable
explorer, who besides being an eminent astronomer must have been a capable
seaman, had heard in the north of Scotland of an inhabited country still
farther to the north, and then wished to visit this also. We must remember
how, as an astronomer, he was specially interested in determining the
extent of the "œcumene" on the north, and in seeing with his own eyes
the remarkable phenomena of northern latitudes, in particular the midnight
sun. It is not surprising that he was prepared to risk much to attain this
end; and he had already shown by his voyage to the northernmost point of
Britain that he was an explorer of more than ordinary boldness, and equal
to the task.

Nevertheless it has seemed incredible to many--not only in antiquity, but
in our own time as well--that Pytheas should have penetrated not only so
far into the unknown as to the islands north of Scotland, but that he
should have ventured yet farther into the absolutely unexplored Northern
Ocean, and found an extreme country beyond this. He would thus have
pushed back the limit of the learned world's knowledge from the south
coast of Britain to the Arctic Circle, or about sixteen degrees farther
north. As a feat of such daring and endurance has appeared superhuman, a
great deal of ingenuity has been employed, especially by Müllenhoff [1870,
i., pp. 392 f.], to prove that Thule was Shetland, that Pytheas himself
did not get farther than the Orkneys or the north of Scotland, and that he
heard from the natives of the country still farther north, which he never
saw. But in order to do this almost all the statements that have been
preserved on this part of Pytheas's voyage must be arbitrarily distorted;
and to alter or explain away one's authorities so as to make them fit a
preconceived opinion is an unfortunate proceeding. Unless, like Polybius
and Strabo, we are willing to declare the whole to be a freely imaginative
work, which however is remarkably consistent, we must try to draw our
conclusions from the statements in the authorities as they stand, and in
that case it must for the following reasons be regarded as impossible that
Thule means Shetland:

[Sidenote: Thule is not Shetland]

(1) It is improbable that (as Müllenhoff asserts) so capable an astronomer
as Pytheas should have made a mistake of several hours when he gave the
length of the night as two or three hours. There is little intrinsic
probability in the conjecture that he had overcast weather all the time he
was in the north of Scotland and Orkney, and therefore relied on the
approximate statements of the natives, which he did not fully understand,
and which when translated into Greek measures of time might produce gross
errors. But it is worse when we look at it in connection with Hipparchus's
statements from Pytheas, that in Britain the longest day was of eighteen
hours, and nineteen hours in a region (i.e., Shetland) farther north,
where the sun at the winter solstice stood less than three cubits above
the horizon. Unless he has given the latter region a long extension to the
north, he must have made several conflicting statements about the same
region. It will be seen that this leads us to a violent and arbitrary
alteration of the whole system of information, which is otherwise
consistent.

(2) The assertion that Pytheas did not himself say that he had been in the
country where the night was two and three hours long, conflicts with the
words of Geminus. Cleomedes also tells us that Pytheas is said to have
been in Thule.

(3) The definite statements in a majority of the authorities that Thule
lay within the Arctic Circle and was the land of the midnight sun, also
exclude the Shetland Isles. The astronomer Pytheas cannot have been so far
mistaken as to the latitude of these islands.

(4) That it was six days' sail to Thule from Britain[55] will not suit
Shetland, even if we make allowance for the frequently obscure statements
as to the day's journeys that are attributed to Pytheas (e.g., by Strabo).

(5) That Strabo in one place [ii. 114] calls Thule "the northernmost of
the British Isles" cannot be used, as Müllenhoff uses it, as a proof of
its belonging to these islands and having a Celtic population. There is
not a word to this effect. To Strabo, who also placed Ierne (Ireland) out
in the sea north of Britain, it must have been natural to call all the
islands in that part of the world British. Indeed, he says himself in the
same breath that Thule, according to Pytheas, lay within the Arctic
Circle. How little weight he attached to the expression British is
additionally apparent from another passage [ii. 75], where he says that
"Hipparchus, relying on Pytheas, placed these inhabited regions [Shetland]
farther north than Britain."

(6) Pliny [Nat. Hist. iv. 104] mentions among islands north of Britain as
"the greatest of all, 'Berricen,' which is the starting-place for Thule."
Berricen, which in some MSS. is written "Nerigon," has been taken for
Mainland of Shetland,[56] while others have seen in the form Nerigon the
first appearance in literature of the name of Norway ("Noregr"),[57]
though with doubtful justification, since this name was hardly in
existence at that time. But whether the island be Shetland or Norway, this
passage in Pliny puts Thule outside the Scottish islands. And the
reference to that country makes it probable that the statements, in part
at any rate, are derived from Pytheas.

(7) Finally, it may perhaps be pointed out that Thule is nowhere referred
to as a group of islands; the name rather suggests the idea of a
continuous land or a single island. To this it may be objected that
neither is Orkan referred to as an archipelago in the oldest authorities;
but it is uncertain whether in Pytheas, as in Diodorus, Orkan was not used
of the northern point of Brettanice, and only later transferred to the
islands lying to the north of this. Thule, on the other hand, always
appears as a land far out in the ocean, and it is moreover uncertain
whether Pytheas ever expressly described it as an island.

[Sidenote: Thule is not Iceland]

But if none of the statements about Thule answers to Shetland, it becomes
a question where we are to look for this country.[58] The Irish monk
Dicuil, who wrote about 825 A.D., regarded it as self-evident that
Iceland, which had then been discovered by Irish monks, must be Thule, and
called it so. After him Adam of Bremen and many others have looked upon
Iceland as the Thule of the ancients. The objections to this hypothesis
are: first, that Thule was inhabited (cf. Geminus, Strabo, and others, see
pp. 54-55), while Iceland probably was not at that time. Even in Dicuil's
time only a few monks seem to have lived there (see below on the discovery
of Iceland). Nor is it likely that Pytheas should have continued his
voyage at haphazard across the ocean, unless he had heard that he would
find land in that direction. To this must be added that Iceland lies so
far away that the distance of six days' sail will not suit it at all.
Finally, if Pytheas had sailed northward at haphazard from Scotland or
from Shetland, the least likely thing to happen was for him to be carried
towards Iceland; neither the currents nor the prevailing winds bear in
that direction; but, on the other hand, they would carry him towards
Norway, and it would be natural for him to make the land there, perhaps
just between 63° and 64° N. lat. or thereabouts.

[Sidenote: Thule is Norway]

All the statements about Thule which have been preserved answer to
Norway,[59] but to no other country; and even if it may seem a bold idea
that there should be communication over the North Sea between the Scottish
islands and Norway 300 years before Christ, or 1000 years before the age
of the Vikings, we are compelled to accept it, if we are to rely upon our
authorities as they stand, without arbitrarily altering them; and Pytheas
will then be the first man in history to sail over the North Sea and
arrive on our coasts.[60]

That Thule, according to Strabo, lies six days' sail "north of" Brettanice
is no objection to its being Norway. "North of" can only mean "farther
north than," in the same way that Brittany and places in Britain are
described as being so many stadia north of Massalia. It also looks as
though Eratosthenes, according to the latitudes and distances which he has
taken from Pytheas, actually puts Thule to the north-east of Britain (see
his map, p. 49), or precisely where Norway lies. Besides, Pytheas had no
means of determining his course in overcast weather, or of fixing the
longitude, for which reasons he supposed, for instance, that Cabæum (the
extreme point of Brittany) lay farther west than Cape Finisterre.

That Thule is often referred to as an island by later authors is of little
weight. In the first place we do not know whether Pytheas himself so
described it; according to all the geographical ideas of the ancients
about the north a land in the ocean farther north than the British Isles
must necessarily have been an island, even if Pytheas did not say so. In
the next place, if a traveller sails northwards, as he did, from one
island to another, and then steers a course over the sea from Shetland and
arrives at a country still farther north, it would be unlikely that he
should believe himself back again on the continent. Besides, Pytheas made
another voyage eastwards along the north coast of Germany, past the mouth
of the Elbe, and then he had the sea always to the north of him in the
direction of his Thule. In order to discover that this land was connected
with the continent, he would have had to sail right up into the Gulf of
Bothnia. It would therefore have been illogical of Pytheas if he had not
conceived Thule as a great island, as in fact it was spoken of later. It
is mentioned indeed as the greatest of all islands. When the Romans first
heard of Sweden or Scandinavia (Skåne) in the Baltic, they likewise called
it an island, and so it was long thought to be.

According to what has been advanced above we must then believe that
Pytheas had already received information in northern Brettanice or in the
Scottish islands about Thule or Norway across the sea. But from this it
follows that in his time, or more than a thousand years before the
beginning of the Viking age, there must have been communication by sea
between North Britain and Norway. It may seem that this is putting back
the Norsemen's navigation of the high seas to a very remote period; but as
we shall see in a later chapter on the voyages of the Norsemen, there are
good reasons for thinking that their seafaring is of very ancient date.

Pytheas may have sailed from Shetland with a south-westerly wind and a
favourable current towards the north-east, and have arrived off the coast
of Norway in the Romsdal or Nordmöre district, where the longest day of
the year was of twenty-one hours, and where there is a free outlook over
the sea to the north, so that the barbarians may well have shown him where
the sun went to rest. From here he may then have sailed northwards along
the coast of Helgeland, perhaps far enough to enable him to see the
midnight sun, somewhere north of Dönna or Bodö; this depends upon how
early in the summer he reached there. On midsummer night he would have
been able to see a little of the midnight sun even at about 65-1/2° N.
lat.; or south of Vega.[61]

It is nowhere expressly stated that Pytheas himself saw the midnight sun;
but a passage in Pomponius Mela [iii. 6, 57] may perhaps point to this. He
says of Thule: "but at the summer solstice there is no night there, since
the sun then no longer shows merely a reflection, but also the greater
part of itself." It is most reasonable to suppose that this statement is
due to actual observation; for if it were only a theoretical conclusion it
seems extraordinary that he should not rather mention that the whole of
the sun is above the horizon in northern regions, which was clearly enough
grasped long before his time (cf. for instance Geminus of Rhodes). Now it
may, of course, be thought that such an observation was made by people who
came from northernmost Europe later than Pytheas's time and before Mela
wrote; but so long as we do not know of any such authority it is doubtless
more reasonable to suppose that like so many other pieces of information
it is derived from Pytheas.

[Sidenote: The inhabitants of the northern regions]

Strabo has a statement about what Pytheas said of the peoples of the
northernmost regions. In a special section wherein he is speaking of
Thule, and, as usual, trying to cast suspicion on Pytheas's veracity, he
says:

    "Yet as far as celestial phenomena and mathematical calculations are
    concerned, he seems to have handled these subjects fairly well. [Thus
    he says not inappropriately that] in the regions near the cold zone
    the finer fruits are lacking and there are few animals, and that the
    people live on millet [i.e., oats] and other things, especially green
    vegetables, wild fruits and roots; but among those that have corn and
    honey they make a drink thereof. But because they have no clear
    sunshine they thresh the corn in large buildings after the ears have
    been brought thither; for it becomes spoilt on the open
    threshing-floors by reason of the want of sunshine and the heavy
    showers."

As Diodorus [v. 21] says something similar about the harvest in Britain,
it seems possible that Strabo is here thinking rather of what Pytheas had
said in a more general way about the peoples near the cold regions, than
of his observations on the actual inhabitants of Thule, though, as already
remarked, the passage occurs in a section devoted to the latter. The
mention of honey may strengthen this view; for even though bee-keeping is
now practised in Norway as far north as Hedemarken, and also on the west
coast, it is doubtful whether such was the case at that time, though it is
not impossible. That wild honey is alluded to, or honey imported from
abroad, is improbable.

In the MSS. of Solinus there is a statement about the people of Thule
which will be referred to later. Even if the passage were genuine it could
hardly, as some have thought, be derived from Pytheas; in any case it does
not agree with what he is said by Strabo to have related of the people of
the North. In particular it may be pointed out that while the inhabitants
of Thule according to the Solinus MSS. lived principally as herdsmen, and
are not spoken of as agriculturists, Strabo says nothing about cattle, but
on the contrary calls them tillers of the soil. In both accounts they also
live on herbs and wild fruits; but, in spite of that, these two passages
cannot be derived from the same description. It is true that Strabo was
not acquainted with Pytheas's original work, in which other northern
peoples may have been referred to; but this is not very likely.

[Sidenote: Length of the voyage]

Most writers have thought that Pytheas completed his voyage in
comparatively few months, and that he was only some few days in Thule;
while others have considered that he spent many years over it.[62] There
is no cogent reason for assuming this. As regards the first hypothesis, it
is by no means impossible that he should have sailed from Spain to
Helgeland in Norway and back again in one summer. But as the greater part
of the voyage lay through unknown regions, and as he frequently stopped to
investigate the country and the people, he cannot have proceeded very
rapidly. To this must probably be added that he often had to barter with
the natives to obtain the necessary provisions, since he certainly cannot
have carried stores for so long a time. It therefore seems doubtful
whether he was ready to return the same summer or autumn, and it is more
reasonable to suppose that he wintered at some place on the way.

Whether it be Thule or Britain that is referred to in the passage quoted
above from Strabo, it seems to imply that he was in one of these countries
at the harvest, and saw there the gathering in of the corn; but, of
course, there is also the possibility that the people may have told him
about it (through interpreters): and more than that we can scarcely say.
It might be objected that if Pytheas had spent a winter in Norway it is
probable that he would have furnished many details, remarkable at that
time, about the northern winter, of which we hear nothing in any of our
authors. But it must always be remembered how utterly casual and defective
are the quotations from him which have been preserved, and how little we
know of what he really related.

[Sidenote: The sea beyond Thule]

Pytheas also furnished information about the sea on the other side of
Thule. This may be concluded from the following passages in particular:

Strabo says [i. 63]: "Thule, which Pytheas says lies six days' sail north
of Brettanice, and is near to the congealed sea (πεπηγοια θαλαττα, i.e.,
the Polar Sea)."

Pliny [iv. 16 (30)]: "After one day's sail from Thule the frozen sea
('mare concretum') is reached, called by some 'Cronium.'"[63]

Solinus [22, 11]: "Beyond[64] Thule we meet with the sluggish and
congealed sea ('pigrum et concretum mare')."

Finally we have a well-known passage in Strabo [ii. 104] which says that
Pytheas asserted that in addition to having visited the whole of Britain
...

    "He had also undertaken investigations concerning Thule and those
    regions, in which there was no longer any distinction of land or sea
    or air, but a mixture of the three like sea-lung, in which he says
    that land and sea and everything floats, and this [i.e., the mixture]
    binds all together, and can neither be traversed on foot nor by boat.
    The substance resembling lung he has seen himself, as he says; the
    rest he relates according to what he has heard. This is Pytheas's
    tale, and he adds that when he returned here, he visited the whole
    ocean coast of Europe from Gadeira to Tanais."

This much-disputed description of the sea beyond Thule has first passed
through Polybius, who did not believe in Pytheas and tried to throw
ridicule upon him. Whether Polybius obtained it directly, or at second
hand through some older writer, we do not know. From him it came down to
Strabo, who had as little belief in it, and was, moreover, liable to
misunderstand and to be hasty in his quotations. The passage is evidently
torn from its context and has been much abbreviated in order to accentuate
its improbability. It is, therefore, impossible to decide what Pytheas
himself said. As it has come down to us the passage is extremely obscure,
and it does not even appear clearly how much Pytheas asserted that he had
himself seen, and how much he had heard; whether he had only heard of the
stiffened and congealed sea (the Polar Sea), while he had really seen the
condition that he compared to a lung. As to the meaning of this word there
have been many and very different guesses. Some have thought that a common
jelly-fish may have been called a sea-lung in the Mediterranean countries
at that time, in analogy to its German designation, "Meerlunge." It may
also be thought that Pytheas merely wished to describe a spongy, soft
mass, like an ordinary lung.[65] In both cases the description may mean a
gelatinous or pulpy mass, and what Pytheas himself saw may have been the
ice sludge in the sea which is formed over a great extent along the edge
of the drift ice, when this has been ground to a pulp by the action of
waves. The expression "can neither be traversed on foot nor by boat" is
exactly applicable to this ice-sludge. If we add to this the thick fog,
which is often found near drift ice, then the description that the air is
also involved in the mixture, and that land and sea and everything is
merged in it, will appear very graphic. But that Pytheas should have been
far enough out in the sea north of Norway to have met with drift ice is
scarcely credible.[66] If, on the other hand, he wintered in Norway, he
may well have seen something similar on a small scale. Along the Norwegian
coast, in the Skagerak, there may be ice and ice-sludge enough in the late
winter, and in the fjords as well; but in that case it is probable that he
would also have seen solid ice in the fjords, and would have been able to
give a clearer description of the whole, which would have left no room for
such misunderstandings on the part of Polybius and Strabo. It may also
appear unlikely that Pytheas should not have known ice before; he must,
one would think, have seen it on pools of water in the winter even in
Massalia, and from the Black Sea ice was, of course, well known to the
Greeks. But then it is strange that he should have given such an obscure
description of such a condition, and have said that the land was also
involved in the mixture; unless we are to regard the whole passage as
figurative, in which case the word land may be taken as an expression for
the solid as opposed to the liquid form (the sea) and the gaseous (the
air).

It appears most probable that Pytheas himself never saw the Polar Sea, but
heard something about it from the natives,[67] and his description of the
outer ocean has then been coloured by older Greek, or even Phœnician,
ideas.[68] It may suggest the old conception, which we find even in Homer,
that at the extreme limits of the world heaven, earth, ocean, and Tartarus
meet. To this may possibly have been added Platonic ideas of an
amalgamation of the elements, earth, sea, and air; and this may have led
to a general supposition that in the outer ocean everything was merged in
a primeval chaos which was neither solid, liquid, nor gaseous. It is
further legitimate to suppose that Pytheas in the course of his voyage in
northern waters may have thought in some way or other that he had found
indications of such a state of things as pointed out by Kähler [1903], for
example, when he arrived at the flat coasts of Holland and North Germany
(die Wattenzone), where the sea at high water pours in over the swampy
land through a network of innumerable channels, which might suggest the
idea of a lung, and where the peat bogs are sometimes impossible to
traverse, being neither land nor sea. If Pytheas said that this was like a
lung, he can only have used the word as a figure of speech, for it is
incredible that he should have really regarded this as the lung of the
sea, whose breathing was the ebb and flood, as he had discovered the
connection between the tides and the moon.

Other interpretations are also possible; but as we do not know what
Pytheas really said, a true solution of the riddle is unattainable, and it
is vain to speculate further upon it. In any case one thing is certain:
his description of the outer ocean gave rise to an idea in the minds of
others that it was sluggish and stiffened, or congealed, a conception
which is current with most later authors who have written on it, far down
into the Middle Ages. It is the same idea which we recognise as the
congealed ("geliberôt") sea in the "Meregarto" and under the name of
"Lebermeer" in German mediæval poetry, "la mar betée" in French, and "la
mar betada" in Provençal poetry. Seafaring peoples between the Red and the
Yellow Seas have similar tales,[69] but whether they are due to Greek
influence or the reverse is not easy to decide.

[Sidenote: The voyage along the coast of Germany]

Since Pytheas, as mentioned above, was probably acquainted with both the
east and west coasts of Britain, we must assume either that on his way
back from Norway he sailed southwards along the side which he had not seen
on his voyage northwards, or else that he made more than one voyage to
Britain. From Strabo (see above, p. 66) we know that Pytheas also asserted
that he had visited "the whole ocean coast of Europe from Gadeira to
Tanais," and that he had furnished information "about the Ostiæi[70] and
the countries beyond the Rhine as far as the Scythians," all of which
Strabo looks upon as imaginary. As Thule is never alluded to as lying
north of these regions, but always as north of Britain, we cannot believe
that he went straight from Norway south or south-eastwards to Jutland or
the north coast of Germany. The meaning of Strabo's words must be that he
claimed to have sailed along the west and north-west coast of Europe
(which looks towards the ocean) as far as the borders of Asia, since
Tanais (the Don) was generally used as defining the frontier of the two
continents.

We do not know when Pytheas undertook this voyage; but the passage quoted
from Strabo [ii. 104] points to some time after the journey to Thule.
There is no sufficient reason for believing that it was all accomplished
at one time, or even in one year, as some will have it. It is more
probable that a discoverer and explorer like Pytheas made several voyages,
according as he had opportunity; and the rich commercial city of Massalia
was greatly interested in the communications with the tin and amber
countries, and in hearing about them.

[Sidenote: Abalus and Balcia]

On his voyage along the coast beyond the Rhine, Pytheas must have come to
an island where there was amber, for according to Pliny [Nat. Hist.,
xxxvii. 2, 11]: "Pytheas relates that the 'Gutones,' a Germanic people,
dwelt on a bay of the sea ('æstuarium') called 'Metuonidis,'[71] the
extent of which was 6000 stadia. From thence it was one day's sail to the
island of 'Abalus.' Here in the spring the waves cast up amber, which is
washed out of the congealed sea ['mare concretum,' the Polar Sea]. The
natives use it instead of wood for fire, and sell it to the neighbouring
Teutons. This was also believed by Timæus, but he calls the island
'Basilia.'"

It is possible that this island, Abalus, is the same as the amber island
mentioned in another passage of Pliny [iv. 13, 27], where he says of the
Scythian coast that there are reports of "many islands without a name, and
Timæus relates that among them is one off Scythia, a day's sail away,
which is called 'Baunonia,' and on which the waves cast up amber in the
springtime." In any case they are both mentioned in very similar terms
[cf. Hergt, 1893, pp. 31 f.]. In the same place we read that "Xenophon, of
Lampsacus [about 100 B.C.], mentions that three days' sail from the
Scythian coast there is an island called 'Balcia,' of immense size.
Pythias calls it 'Basilia.'" This conflicts with the passage quoted above
from Pliny, and here there must be a misunderstanding or confusion of some
kind, either on the part of Pliny or of his authority. A possible
explanation may be that Pytheas referred to his island of Abalus as a
βασιλεια νησος, i.e., an island with a king [cf. Detlefsen, 1904, p. 18].
This would agree with the statement of Diodorus Siculus (1st century B.C.)
[v. 23], which he gives without quoting any authority: "Just opposite
Scythia, above Galatia [Gaul], an island lies in the ocean called
'Basilia'; upon it amber is cast up by the waves, which is otherwise not
found in any place on the earth." It is probable that this is taken from
Timæus and originally derived from Pytheas, and that the island is the
same as Abalus. It is to be noticed that in Pytheas's time the name
Germania was not yet used; northern Europe, east of the Rhine, was counted
as Scythia, whereas the name Germania was well known in the time of
Diodorus.

Pytheas may also have heard of, or visited, a country or a large island
(Jutland ?), which lay three days' sail from the coast he was sailing
along, and he may likewise have referred to it as a king's island
(βασιλεια). Timæus, or others, may have taken this for a name, both for
Abalus and for this larger and more distant island, which has later been
assumed to be the same as Balcia, a name that may be derived either from
Pytheas or from some later writer.

As the Gutones resemble the Gytoni (Goths) of Tacitus, who lived on the
Vistula, and as further Basilia and Balcia were the same country, the name
of which was connected with that of the Baltic Sea, and as this country
was identified with the south of Sweden, it was thought that Pytheas must
have been in the amber country on the south coast of the Baltic, and even
in Skåne. This view may appear to be supported by the fact that Strabo
says he lied about the "Ostiæi," who might then be the Esthonians. But as
already remarked this word may be an error for "Ostimians"; and Gutones
may further be an error for Teutones, since a carelessly written Τευ may
easily be read as Γου [cf. Hergt, 1893, p. 33], and immediately afterwards
it is stated that the Teutones (not Gutones) lived near Abalus. Whether
Pytheas really mentioned "Balcia" or "Baltia" is, as already remarked,
extremely doubtful; but even if he did so, and even if it lay in the
Baltic, it is not certain that he was there, and he may only have been
told about it. We need not therefore believe that he went farther than the
coast of the North Sea. "Abalus" may have been Heligoland [cf. Hergt], or
perhaps rather one of the islands of Sleswick,[72] where beach-washed
amber is common, as along the whole west coast of Jutland. The statement
that the natives used amber as fuel is a misunderstanding, which may be
due to a discovery of Pytheas that amber was combustible. If he had really
sailed past the Skaw and through the Belts into the Baltic, it is unlikely
that he should only have mentioned one amber island Abalus, and another
immense island farther off. We should expect him to have changed the ideas
of his time about these regions to a greater extent than this. It is true
that he might have travelled overland to the south coast of the Baltic;
but neither is this very probable. It must nevertheless be borne in mind,
as will be pointed out later, that until Strabo's time no other voyages in
these regions were known in literature, and it is, therefore, possible
that much of what we find in Mela and Pliny on the subject was originally
derived from Pytheas. If we did not possess this one chance passage in
Pliny about Abalus and the amber, we should not know that Pytheas had said
anything about it. But of how much more are we ignorant for want of
similar casual quotations?

[Sidenote: Importance of Pytheas]

Little as we know of Pytheas himself, he yet appears to us as one of the
most capable and undaunted explorers the world has seen. Besides being the
first, of whom we have certain record, to sail along the coasts of
northern Gaul and Germany, he was the discoverer of Great Britain, of the
Scottish isles and Shetland, and last, but not least, of Thule or Norway,
as far north as to the Arctic Circle. No other single traveller known to
history has made such far-reaching and important discoveries.

But Pytheas was too far in advance of his time; his description of the new
lands in the North was so pronouncedly antagonistic to current ideas that
it won little acceptance throughout the whole succeeding period of
antiquity. His younger contemporary, Dicæarchus, doubted him, and Polybius
and Strabo, who came two hundred and three hundred years later,
endeavoured, as we have seen, to throw suspicion upon Pytheas and to stamp
him as an impostor. The two eminent geographers and astronomers,
Eratosthenes and Hipparchus, seem to have valued him more according to his
deserts. Polybius's desire to lessen the fame of Pytheas may perhaps be
explained by the fact that the former, a friend of Scipio, had taken part
in many Roman campaigns, and claimed to be more widely travelled than any
other geographer. But as his farthest north was the south of Gaul, he did
not like the idea that an earlier traveller, who enjoyed great renown,
should have penetrated so much farther into regions which were entirely
unknown to himself. Men are not always above such littleness.




[Illustration: The World according to Strabo (K. Kretschmer, 1892)]


CHAPTER III

ANTIQUITY, AFTER PYTHEAS


There was a long interval after the time of Pytheas before the world's
knowledge of the North was again added to, so far as we can judge from the
literature that has come down to us. The mist in which for a moment he
showed a ray of light settled down again. That no other known traveller
can have penetrated into these northern regions during the next two or
three centuries appears from the unwillingness of Polybius and Strabo to
believe in Pytheas, and from the fact that Strabo pronounces him a liar
[i. 63], because "all who have seen Britain and Ierne say nothing about
Thule, though they mention other small islands near Britain"; furthermore,
he says expressly [vii. 294] that "the region along the ocean beyond Albis
[the Elbe] is entirely unknown to us. For neither do we know of any one
among the ancients who made this voyage along the coast in the eastern
regions to the opening of the Caspian Sea, nor have the Romans ever
penetrated into the countries beyond Albis, nor has any one yet traversed
them by land." If any other traveller had been currently mentioned in
literature it is incredible that the well-read Strabo should not have
known it. He therefore ascribed all that he found about these regions to
Pytheas.

There are nevertheless indications that the Greeks had commercial
relations with the coasts of the Baltic and North Sea, and fresh obscure
statements, which may be derived from such a connection, appear later in
Pliny, and to some extent also in Mela. It may be supposed that
enterprising Greek traders and seamen, enticed by Pytheas's accounts of
the amber country, attempted to follow in his track, and succeeded in
reaching the land of promise whence this costly commodity came. And if
they had once found out the way, they would certainly not have
relinquished it except upon compulsion. But it must be remembered that the
voyage was long, and that they had first to pass through the western
Mediterranean and the Pillars of Hercules, where the Carthaginians had
regained their power and obtained the command of the sea. The overland
route was easier and safer; it ran through the country of tribes which in
those distant times may have been comparatively peaceful. The trade
communication between the Black Sea and the Baltic countries seems, as
mentioned above, to have developed early, and it may be thought that the
active Greek traders would try it in order to reach a district where so
much profit was to be expected; but no certain indication of this
communication can be produced from any older author of note after
Pytheas's time, so far as we know them, and even so late an author as
Ptolemy has little to tell us of the regions east of the Vistula.

[Sidenote: Eratosthenes, c. 200 B.C.]

The founder of scientific geography, Eratosthenes (275-circa 194
B.C.),[73] librarian of the Museum of Alexandria, based what he says of
the North chiefly on Pytheas. He divided the surface of the earth into
climates (zones) and constructed the first map of the world, whereon an
attempt was made to fix the position of the various places by lines of
latitude and meridians. He started with seven known points, along the old
meridian of Rhodes. They were: Thule, the Borysthenes, the Hellespont,
Rhodes, Alexandria, Syene, and Meroe. Through these points he laid down
lines of latitude (see the map). He also made an attempt to calculate the
circumference of the globe by measurement, and found it 250,000 stadia (==
25,000 geographical miles), which is 34,000 stadia (== 3400 geographical
miles) too much. He placed the island of Thule under the Arctic
Circle,[74] far out in the sea to the north of Brettanice. This was to him
the uttermost land and the northern limit of the "œcumene," which he
calculated to be 38,000 stadia (== 3800 geographical miles) broad,[75]
which according to his measurement of the circumference of the earth is
about 54° 17', since each of his degrees of latitude will be about 700
stadia. His "œcumene" thus extended from the latitude of the Cinnamon
Coast (Somaliland) and Taprobane (Ceylon), 8800 stadia north of the
equator, to the Arctic Circle. South of it was uninhabitable on account of
the heat, and north of it all was frozen.

Eratosthenes was especially an advocate of the island-form of the
"œcumene," and thought that it was entirely surrounded by the ocean, which
had been encountered in every quarter where the utmost limits of the world
had been reached. By a perversion of the journey of Patrocles to a voyage
round India and the east coast of the continent into the Caspian Sea, he
again represented the latter as an open bay of the northern ocean, in
spite of the fact that Herodotus, and also Aristotle, had asserted that it
was closed. The view that the Caspian Sea was a bay remained current until
the time of Ptolemy. Eratosthenes also held that the occurrence of tides
on all the outer coasts was a proof of the continuity of the ocean. He
said that "if the great extent of the Atlantic Ocean did not make it
impossible, we should be able to make the voyage from Iberia to India
along the same latitude." This was 1700 years before Columbus.

[Illustration: Reconstruction of Eratosthenes' map of the world (K.
Miller, 1898)]

With the scientific investigator's lack of respect for authorities, he had
the audacity to doubt Homer's geographical knowledge, and gave offence to
many by saying that people would never discover where the islands of
Æolus, Circe, and Calypso, described in the Odyssey, really were, until
they had found the tailor who had made the bag of the winds for Æolus.

[Sidenote: Hipparchus, 190-125 B.C.]

Hipparchus (circa 190-125 B.C.) also relies upon Pytheas, and has nothing
new to tell us of the northern regions. Against Eratosthenes' proof of the
continuity of the ocean, to which allusion has just been made, he objected
that the tides are by no means uniform on all coasts, and in support of
this assertion he referred to the Babylonian Seleucus.[76] But it is not
clear whether Hipparchus was an opponent of the doctrine of the
island-form of the "œcumene," as has been generally supposed; probably he
merely wished to point out that the evidence adduced by Eratosthenes was
insufficient. Hipparchus calculated a continuous table of latitude, or
climate-table, for the various known localities, as far north as Thule. He
introduced the division into degrees. It is also probable that he was the
first to use a kind of map-projection with the aid of converging
meridians, which he drew in straight lines; but as he was more an
astronomer than a geographer it is unlikely that he constructed any
complete map of the world.

[Illustration: Terrestrial globe, according to Crates of Mallus (K.
Kretschmer)]

[Sidenote: Polybius, 204-127 B.C.]

Polybius (circa 204-127 B.C.), as we have seen, pronounced against the
trustworthiness of Pytheas, and declared that all the country north of
Narbo, the Alps, and the Tanais was unknown. Like Herodotus, he left the
question open whether there was a continuous ocean on the north side; but
he appears to have inclined to the old notion of the "œcumene" as
circular.

[Sidenote: Crates of Mallus, 150 B.C.]

The Stoic and grammarian Crates of Mallus (about 150 B.C.), who was not a
geographer, constructed the first terrestrial globe, in which he made the
Atlantic Ocean extend like a belt round the world through both the poles,
and with the Stoic's worship of Homer he thought he could follow in this
ocean Odysseus's voyage to the regions of the Læstrygons' long day and
the Cimmerians' polar night. Since the school of the Stoics considered it
necessary that there should be ocean in the torrid zone, so that the sun
might easily keep up its warmth by the aid of vapours from the sea--for
warmth was supported by moisture--Crates placed a belt of ocean round the
earth between the tropics, which formed the limits of the sun's path.
These two belts of water left four masses of land of which only one was
known to men.

[Sidenote: Posidonius, 135-51 B.C.]

The physical geographer Posidonius of Apamea in Syria (135-51 B.C.), who
lived for a long time at Rhodes, took the Rhipæan Mountains for the Alps,
and speaks of the Hyperboreans to the north of them. He thought that the
Ocean surrounded the "œcumene" continuously:

    "for its waves were not confined by any fetters of land, but it
    stretched to infinity and nothing made its waters turbid."

A ship sailing with an east wind from the Pillars of Hercules must reach
India after traversing 70,000 stadia, which he thought was the
half-circumference of the earth along the latitude of Rhodes. The greatest
circumference he calculated at 180,000 stadia. These erroneous
calculations were adopted by Ptolemy, and were afterwards of great
significance to Columbus.

He made a journey as far as Gadir in order to see the outer Ocean for
himself, to measure the tides and to examine the correctness of the
generally accepted idea that the sun, on its setting in the western ocean,
gave out a hissing sound like a red-hot body being dipped into water. He
rightly connected the tides with the moon, finding that their monthly
period corresponded with the full moon; whereas others had thought, for
instance, that they were due to changes in the rivers of Gaul.

[Sidenote: Cæsar, 55-45 B.C.]

Cæsar's Gallic War and his invasion of Britain (55-45 B.C.) contributed
fresh information about these portions of Western Europe; but it cannot be
seen that they gave anything new about the North. Cæsar describes Britain
as a triangle. This is undoubtedly the same idea that we find in his
contemporary Diodorus Siculus, and is derived from Pytheas. Cæsar merely
gives different proportions between the sides from those of Diodorus. He
puts Hibernia to the west of Britain, not to the north like Strabo, and
makes its size about two-thirds of the latter, from which it is separated
by a strait of about the same breadth as that between Gaul and Britain.
Between Ireland (Hibernia) and Britain is an island, "Mona" (Anglesey),
and scattered about it many other islands. In some of them there was said
to be a month of unbroken night at the winter solstice; but of this Cæsar
was unable to obtain certain information. This must be an echo of the
tales about Thule, which he had got from older Greek or Roman authors.

Cæsar is a good example of the Romans' views of and sense for geography.
In spite of this military nation having extended their empire to the
bounds of the unknown in every direction, they never produced a scientific
geographer, nor did they send out anything that we should call a voyage of
exploration, as the Phœnicians, Carthaginians, and Greeks had done. They
were above all a practical people, with more sense for organisation than
for research and science, and in addition they lacked commercial interests
as compared with those other peoples. But during their long campaigns
under the Empire, and by their extensive communications with the most
distant regions, they brought together an abundance of geographical
information hitherto unknown to the classical world. It is natural that it
should have been a Greek who, in one of the most important geographical
works that have come down to us from ancient times, endeavoured to collect
a part of this information, together with the knowledge already acquired
by the Greeks, into a systematic statement.

[Sidenote: Strabo, Christian era]

This man was the famous geographer Strabo, a native of Asia Minor (about
63 B.C.-25 A.D.). But unfortunately this critic has nothing to tell us
about the North, and in his anxiety to avoid exaggeration he has, like
Polybius, been at great pains to discredit Pytheas, of whose statements he
will take no account; nor has he made use of the knowledge of the
northernmost regions which we see, from Pliny among others, that other
Greek authors possessed. He has not even made use of the geographical
knowledge which was gained in his own time during the Roman campaign in
Northern Germania under Augustus, if indeed he knew of it. To him the
Ister (Danube), the mountainous districts of the Hercynian Forest, and the
country as far as the Tyregetæ formed, roughly, the northern boundary of
the known world. He thinks it is only ignorance of the more distant
regions that has made people believe the fables "of the Rhipæan Mountains
and the Hyperboreans, as well as all that Pytheas of Massalia has invented
about the coast of the ocean, making use of his astronomical and
mathematical knowledge as a cloak." "Ierne" (Ireland) was placed by Strabo
out in the ocean to the north of Britain. He took it for the most northern
land, and thought that its latitude (which would have to be about 54° N.)
formed the boundary of the "œcumene."

    "For," he says [ii. 115], "living writers tell us of nothing beyond
    Ierne, which lies near to Britain on the north, and is inhabited by
    savages who live miserably on account of the cold." He says further
    [iv. 201] of this island at the end of the world: "of this we have
    nothing certain to relate, except that its inhabitants are even more
    savage than the Britons, as they are both cannibals and omnivorous [or
    grass-eaters ?], and consider it commendable to devour their deceased
    parents,[77] as well as openly to have commerce not only with other
    women, but also with their own mothers and sisters. But this we relate
    perhaps without sufficient authority; although cannibalism at least is
    said to be a Scythian custom, and the Celts, the Iberians, and other
    peoples are reported to have practised it under the stress of a
    siege."

Strabo evidently attributes to a cold climate a remarkable capacity for
brutalising people, and he considers that the reports of the still more
distant Thule must be even more uncertain.

The breadth of the "œcumene," from north to south, he made only 30,000
stadia, and thought that Eratosthenes, deceived by the fables of Pytheas,
had put the limit 8000 stadia (== 11° 26') too far north. Of the countries
beyond the Albis (Elbe), he says, nothing is known. Nevertheless he
mentions the Cimbri as dwelling on a peninsula by the northern ocean; but
he has no very clear idea of where this peninsula is.

    No one can believe, he thinks [vii. 292], that the reason for their
    wandering and piratical life was that they were driven out of their
    peninsula [which must be Jutland] by a great inundation, for they
    still have the same country as before, and it is ridiculous to suppose
    that they left it in anger at a natural and constant phenomenon, which
    occurs twice daily [i.e., the tides], etc. But it appears from
    Strabo's statements that there had been many reports of a great
    storm-flood in Denmark, which the Cimbri escaped from with difficulty.

    Of the customs of these people Strabo relates among other things that
    they were accompanied on their expeditions by priestesses with gray
    hair, white clothes, and bare feet. "They went with drawn swords to
    meet the captives in the camp, crowned them with garlands and led them
    to a sacrificial vessel of metal, holding twenty amphoræ [Roman cubic
    feet]. Here they had a ladder, upon which one of them mounted and,
    bent over the vessel, they cut the throat of the prisoner, who was
    held up. They made auguries from the blood running into the vessel;
    while others opened the corpse and inspected the entrails, prophesying
    victory for their army. And in battle they beat skins stretched upon
    the wicker-work of their chariots, making a hideous noise." This is
    one of the first descriptions of the customs of the warrior-hordes
    roving about Europe, who came in contact with the classical world from
    the unknown north, and who in later centuries were to come more
    frequently. But the description is certainly influenced by Greek
    ideas.

Strabo thought that besides the world known to the Greeks and Romans,
other continents or worlds, where other races of men dwelt, might be
discovered.

[Sidenote: Albinovanus Pedo]

In a work called "Suasoriæ" (circa 37 A.D.) of the Spanish-born
rhetorician Seneca there are preserved fragments of a poem, written by
Albinovanus Pedo (in the time of Augustus), which described an expedition
of Germanicus in the North Sea. It has been thought that this may have
been the younger Germanicus's unfortunate campaign in 16 A.D., when he
sailed out from the Ems with a fleet of a thousand ships. This supposition
is strengthened by the fact that Tacitus mentions a cavalry leader,
Albinovanus Pedo, under the same commander in 15 A.D., and it is easy to
believe that he was the poet.[78] But as this unhappy fleet did not get
far from the coast, and the poem describes a voyage into unknown regions,
others have thought that it might be an expedition undertaken by Drusus,
the elder Germanicus, in some year between 12 and 9 B.C.[79] How this may
be is of less importance to us, as the poem does not mention any fresh
discoveries. It is interesting because it gives us a picture of the ideas
current at that time about the northern limits of the world. Where the
fragments commence, the travellers have long ago left daylight and the sun
behind them, and, having passed beyond the limits of the known world,
plunge boldly into the forbidden darkness towards the end of the western
world. There they believe that the sea, which beneath its sluggish
("pigris") waves is full of hideous monsters, savage whales ("pistris"),
and sea-hounds ("æquoreosque canes" == seals ?), rises and takes hold of
the ship--the noise itself increases the horror--and now they think the
ships will stick in the mud, and the fleet will remain there, deserted by
the winds[80] of the ocean--now that they themselves will be left there
helpless and be torn to pieces by the monsters of the deep. And the man
who stands high in the prow strives with his eyes to break through the
impenetrable air, but can see nothing, and relieves his oppression in the
following words: "Whither are we being carried? The day itself flees from
us, and uttermost nature closes in the deserted world with continual
darkness. Or are we sailing towards people on the other side, who dwell
under another heaven, and towards another unknown world?[81] The gods call
us back and forbid the eyes of mortals to see the boundary of things. Why
do we violate strange seas and sacred waters with our oars, disturbing the
peaceful habitations of the gods?"

This last conception is clearly derived from the "Isles of the Blest" of
the Greeks (originally of the Phœnicians), which were situated in the deep
currents of Oceanus and are already referred to in Hesiod.

Seneca, on the other hand, says of the outer limits of the world: "Thus is
nature, beyond all things is the ocean, beyond the ocean nothing" ("ita
est rerum natura, post omnia oceanus, post oceanum nihil"), and Pliny
speaks of the empty space ("inane") that puts an end to the voyage beyond
the ocean.

[Sidenote: Augustus, 5 A.D.]

In the year 5 A.D. the emperor Augustus, in connection with Tiberius's
expedition to the Elbe, sent a Roman fleet from the Rhine along the coast
of Germania; it sailed northward by the land of the Cimbri (Jutland), past
its northern extremity (the Skaw), probably into the Cattegat, and perhaps
to the Danish islands. Augustus himself, in the Ancyra inscription, tells
us of the voyage of this fleet, and says that it came "even to the people
of the Cimbri, whither before that time no Roman had penetrated either by
land or sea,[82] and the Cimbri and the Charydes (Harudes, Horder), and
the Semnones, and other Germanic peoples in those districts sent
ambassadors to ask for my friendship and that of the Roman people."[83]
Velleius [ii. 106] also gives an account of this voyage, and Pliny [ii.
167] gives the following description of it: "The Northern Ocean has also
been in great part traversed; by the orders of the divine Augustus a fleet
sailed round Germania to the Cimbrian Cape, and saw therefrom a sea that
was immeasurable, or heard that it was so, and came to the Scythian region
and to places that were stiff [with cold] from too much moisture. It is
therefore very improbable that the seas can run short where there is such
superfluity of moisture." Müllenhoff thinks [iv., 1900, p. 45] that on
this voyage they saw the Norwegian mountains, the immense "Mons Sævo" (see
later under Pliny), rising out of the sea. This is not impossible, but we
read nothing about it; nor indeed is it very probable. On the other hand,
it is likely that the voyage resulted in fresh knowledge about the North,
and that at any rate some of the statements in Mela and Pliny may be
derived from this source.

[Sidenote: Mela, c. 43 A.D.]

The oldest known Latin geography, "De Chorographia," was written about 43
A.D. by an otherwise unknown Pomponius Mela, of Tingentera, in Spain.
With the strange mental poverty of Roman literature, Mela bases his work
chiefly on older Greek sources (e.g., Herodotus and Eratosthenes) which
are several centuries before his time; but in addition he gives much
information not found elsewhere. Whether this is also for the most part
taken from older writers it is impossible to say, as he nowhere gives his
authorities. His descriptions, especially those of more distant regions,
are sometimes made obscure and contradictory by his evidently having drawn
upon different sources without combining them into a whole.

[Illustration: The world according to Mela]

He begins with these words of wisdom: "All this, whatever it is, to which
we give the name of universe and heaven, is one and includes itself and
everything in a circle ('ambitu'). In the middle of the universe floats
the earth, which is surrounded on all sides by sea, and is divided by it
from west to east [that is, by the equatorial sea, as in Crates of Mallus]
into two parts, which are called hemispheres." Whether one is to conclude
from this that the earth in his opinion was a sphere or a round disc, he
seems to leave the reader to determine. He divides the earth into the five
zones of Parmenides. The two temperate or habitable zones seem, according
to Mela, to coincide with the two masses of land, while the uninhabitable
ones, the torrid and the two frigid zones, are continuous sea. On the
southern continent dwell the Antichthons, who are unknown, on account of
the heat of the intervening region. On the northern one we dwell, and this
is what he proposes to describe.

Europe is bounded on the west by the Atlantic, and on the north by the
British Ocean. Asia has on the north the Scythian Ocean.

    [iii. c. 5.] In proof of the continuity of these oceans he appeals not
    only to the physicists and Homer, but also to Cornelius Nepos, "who is
    more modern and trustworthy," and who confirms it and "cites Quintus
    Metellus Celer as witness thereto, and says that he has narrated the
    following: When he was governing Gaul as proconsul the king of the
    Boti[84] gave him some Indians," who "by stress of storm had been
    carried away from Indian waters, and after having traversed all the
    space between, had finally reached the shores of Germania."

Mela has many ancient fables to tell of the peoples in the northern
districts of Germania, Sarmatia and Scythia, which last was his name for
what is now Russia and for the north of Asia. It appears that he too was
of the opinion that a cold climate develops savagery and cruelty.

    He says of Germania [iii. c. 3]: "The inhabitants are immense in soul
    and body; and besides their natural savagery they exercise both, their
    souls in warfare, their bodies by accustoming them to constant
    hardship, especially cold." "Might is right to such an extent that
    they are not even ashamed of robbery; only to their guests are they
    kind, and merciful towards suppliants." The people of Sarmatia were
    nomads. [iii. c. 4.] "They are alike warlike, free, unconstrained, and
    so savage and cruel that the women go to war together with the men. In
    order that they may be fitted thereto the right breast is burned off
    immediately after birth, whereby the hand which is drawn out [in
    drawing a bow] becomes adapted for shooting [by the breast not coming
    in the way or because the arm grew stronger] and the breast becomes
    manly.[85] To draw the bow, to ride and to hunt are employments for
    the young girls; when grown up it is their duty to fight the foe, so
    that it is held to be a shame not to have killed some one, and the
    punishment is that they are not allowed to marry."[86] It would appear
    that the northern countries, according to the view of Mela, had a
    tendency to "emancipate" women, even though he always regards it as a
    severe punishment for them to have to live as virgins.[86] Among the
    Xamati in his western Asia, at the mouth of the Tanais [i. c. 19],
    "the women engage in the same occupations as the men." "The men fight
    on foot and with arrows, the women on horseback, not using swords, but
    catching men in snares and killing them by dragging them along." Those
    who have not killed an enemy must live unmarried. Amongst other
    peoples the women do not confine themselves to this snaring of men;
    the Mæotides who dwell in the country of the Amazons are governed by
    women; and farthest north live the Amazons; but he does not tell us
    whether the latter could dispense with men altogether, and reproduce
    themselves like the women he tells us of on an island off the coast of
    Africa, who were hairy all over the body. "This is related by Hanno,
    and it seems worthy of credit, because he brought back the skin of
    some he had killed." [iii. c. 9.]

But this increasing savagery towards the north had a limit, as in the
early Greek idea, after which things became better again; for beyond the
country of the Amazons [i. c. 19] and other wild races, like the
Thyssagetæ and Turcæ who inhabited immense forests and lived by
hunting,[87] there extended, apparently towards the north-east (?), a
"great desert and rugged tract, full of mountains, as far as the
Aremphæans, who had very just customs and were looked upon as holy."[88]
"Beyond them rise the Rhipæan Mountains and behind them lies the region
that borders on the Ocean." In addition, the happy "Hyperboreans" dwelt in
the north. In his description of Scythia he says of them [iii. c. 5]:
"Then [i.e., after Sarmatia] come the neighbouring parts of Asia [or the
parts bordering on Asia ?]. Except where continual winter and unbearable
cold reigns, the Scythian people dwell there, almost all known by the name
of 'Belcæ' (?). On the shore of Asia come first the Hyperboreans, beyond
the north wind and the Rhipæan Mountains under the very pivot of the
stars" [i.e., the pole]. In their country the sun rose at the vernal
equinox and set at the autumnal equinox, so that they had six months day
and six months night. "This narrow [or holy ?] sunny land is in itself
fertile." He goes on to give a description of the happy life of the
Hyperboreans, taken from Greek sources.

[Illustration: Europe according to the description of Mela]

On north-western Europe Mela has much information which is not met with in
earlier authors. The tin-islands, the Cassiterides, lay off the north-west
of Spain, where the "Celtici" lived [iii. c. 6]. "Beyond ('super')
Britain is Juverna [Ireland], nearly as large, with a climate unfavourable
to the ripening of corn, but with such excellent pastures that if the
cattle are allowed to graze for more than a small part of the day, they
burst in pieces. The inhabitants are rude and more ignorant than other
peoples of all kinds of virtue. Religion is altogether unknown to them."

"The Orcades are thirty in number, divided from each other by narrow
straits; the Hæmodæ seven, drawn towards Germany" ("septem Hæmodæ contra
Germaniam vectæ"). This is the first time, so far as is known, that these
two groups of islands are mentioned in literature. Diodorus, it is true,
had already spoken of "Orkan" or "Orkas," but not as a group of islands.
As this name is probably derived from Pytheas, it is likely that the
other, "Hæmodæ," is also his. Possibly the groups were re-discovered under
the emperor Claudius (about 43 A.D.) or more definite information may have
been received about them; but on the other hand, Mela says that the
knowledge of Britain that was acquired during this campaign would be
brought back by Claudius himself in his triumph. It will be most
reasonable to suppose that Mela's thirty Orcades are the Orkneys--the
number is approximately correct--and not the Orkneys and Shetlands
together. The seven Hæmodæ, on the other hand, must be the latter, and can
hardly be the Hebrides, as many would believe, since Mela mentions the
islands off the west coast of Europe in a definite order, and he names
first "Juverna," then the "Orcades," and next the "Hæmodæ," which are
"carried ('vectæ') towards Germany"[89] (cf. also Pliny later).

In his description of Germania [iii. c. 3] Mela says:

    "Beyond ('super') Albis is an immense bay, Codanus, full of many great
    and small islands. Here the sea which is received in the bosom of the
    shore is nowhere broad and nowhere like a sea, but as the waters
    everywhere flow between and often go over [i.e., over the tongues of
    land or shallows which connect the islands] it is split up into the
    appearance of rivers, which are undefined and widely separated; where
    the sea touches the shores [of the mainland], since it is held in by
    the shores of the islands which are not far from each other, and since
    nearly everywhere it is not large [i.e., broad], it runs in a narrow
    channel and like a strait ('fretum'), and turning with the shore it is
    curved like a long eyebrow. In this [sea] dwell the Cimbri and the
    Teutons, and beyond [the sea, or the Cimbri and Teutons ?] the extreme
    people of Germania, namely the Hermiones."

The meaning of this description, which seems to be as involved as the many
sounds he is talking about, must probably be that in the immense bay of
Codanus there are a number of islands with many narrow straits between
them, like rivers. Along the shore of the mainland there is formed, by the
almost continuous line of islands lying outside, a long curving strait,
which is nearly everywhere of the same narrowness. In this sea--that is to
say, on the peninsulas and islands in this bay--dwell the Cimbri and
Teutons, and farther away in Germania the Hermiones.

[Illustration: Island with Hippopod or horse-footed man (from the Hereford
map)]

In his account of the islands along the coast of Europe, Mela says further
[iii. c. 6]:

[Sidenote: Codanus]

    "In the bay which we have called Codanus is amongst the islands
    Codanovia, which is still inhabited by the Teutons, and it surpasses
    the others both in size and in fertility. The part which lies towards
    the Sarmatians seems sometimes to be islands and sometimes connected
    land, on account of the backward and forward flow of the sea, and
    because the interval which separates them is now covered by the waves,
    now bare. Upon these it is asserted that the Œneans dwell, who live
    entirely on the eggs of fen-fowl and on oats, the Hippopods with
    horses' feet, and the Sanalians, who have such long ears that they
    cover the whole body with them instead of clothes, since they
    otherwise go naked. For these things, besides what is told in fables,
    I find also authorities whom I think I may follow. Towards the coast
    of the Belgæ[90] lies Thule, famous in Greek poems and in our own;
    there the nights in any case are short, since the sun, when it has
    long been about to set, rises up; but in the winter the nights are
    dark as elsewhere.... But at the summer solstice there is no night at
    all, because the sun then is already clearer, and not only shows its
    reflection, but also the greater part of itself."

Thus we see here, as in so many of the classical authors, and later in
Pliny, old legends and more trustworthy information hopelessly mixed
together. The legends, whose Greek origin is disclosed by the form of the
names, may be old skippers' tales, or the romances of merchants who went
northward from the Black Sea, but they may also in part be derived from
Pytheas. A fable like that of the long-eared Sanali (otherwise called
Panoti) originally came from India and is later than his time. The
statement about the Œneæ, or, doubtless more correctly, Œonæ (i.e.,
egg-eaters), who live on eggs and oats, may, on the other hand, have
reached him from the north, where the eggs both of fen-fowl (plovers'
eggs, for example) and of sea-birds were eaten from time immemorial. Cæsar
had heard or read of people who lived on birds' eggs and fish on the
islands at the mouth of the Rhine, but he may indeed have derived his
knowledge from Greek sources [cf. Müllenhoff, i., 1870, p. 492].

[Illustration: Island with long-eared man (from the Hereford map)]

What Mela says about Thule probably comes from Pytheas, as already
mentioned (p. 90), and it is very possible that the remarkable statements
about the immense bay of Codanus are likewise derived from him, although
they may also be ascribed to the circumnavigation of the Skaw under
Augustus, or to other voyages in these waters of which we have no
knowledge.

[Sidenote: Codanovia]

Whether Codanovia (which is not found in any other known author) is the
same name as the later Scadinavia in Pliny, must be regarded as uncertain.
It is the first time that such an island or that the bay of Codanus is
mentioned in literature. This "immense bay" must certainly be the Cattegat
with the southern part of the Baltic; and the numerous islands which close
it in to a curved strait or sound must be for the most part the Danish
islands and perhaps southern Sweden. Whence the name is derived we do not
know for certain.[91]

    Ptolemy mentions three peoples in southern Jutland, and calls the
    easternmost of them "Kobandoi." It is not likely that three peoples
    can have lived side by side in this narrowest part of the peninsula,
    and we must believe that some of them lived among the Danish islands,
    where Ptolemy does not give the name of any people. The "Kobandoi"
    would then be on the easternmost island, Sealand [cf. Much, 1893, pp.
    198 f.]. Now it will easily be supposed that "Codanus" and "Kobandoi"
    have some connection or other; the latter might be a corruption of the
    name of a people, "Kodanoi" or "Kodanioi." But as precisely these
    islands and the south of Sweden were inhabited by tribes of the
    Danes--of whom several are mentioned in literature: South Danes, North
    Danes, Sea Danes, Island Danes, etc.--it may be further supposed that
    "Kodanioi" is composed of "ko" or cow[92] and "Daner" (that is,
    Cow-Danes), and means a tribe of the latter who were remarkable for
    the number of their cows, which would be probable enough for a people
    in fertile Sealand (or in Skåne).[93] In this case "Codanus" must be
    derived from the name of this people, just as most of the names of
    seas and bays in these regions were taken from the names of peoples
    (e.g., "Oceanus Germanicus," "Mare Suebicum," "Sinus Venedicum,"
    "Quænsæ"). The name "Daner" is one of those names of peoples that are
    so ancient that their derivation must be obscure.[94] Procopius uses
    it as a common name for many nations ("ethne"), in the same way as he
    names the "ethne" of the Slavs (see later, p. 146). It is also used in
    the early Middle Ages as a common name for the people of the North,
    like Eruli, and later Normans. It is therefore natural that there
    should have been special names for the tribes, like Sea-Danes,
    Cow-Danes, etc. "Kodan-ovia" ("ovia," equivalent to Old High German
    "ouwa" or "ouwia") for island, Gothic "avi," Old Norse "ey" [cf.
    Grimm, 1888, p. 505], must be the island on which this tribe lived,
    and this might then be Sealand (though Skåne is also possible).

That the Cimbri lived in Codanus suits very well, as their home was
Jutland;[95] on the other hand, we know less about the country inhabited
by the Teutons. They must have been called in Germanic "*þeodonez" (Gothic
"*þiudans" means properly kings), and the name has been connected with
Old Norse "þiód," now Thy (Old Danish "Thythesyssel") with its capital
Thisted, and the island Thyholm, in north-western Jutland [cf. Much, 1893,
pp. 7 ff.; 1905, p. 100].

Whether the Vistula had its outlet into Codanus or farther east Mela does
not say, nor does he tell us whether Sarmatia was bounded by this gulf;
but this is not impossible, although Codanus is described at the end of
the chapter on Germania. Strangely enough, he says, according to the MSS.
[iii. c. 4], that "Sarmatia is separated from the following [i.e.,
Scythia] by the Vistula"; it would thus lie on the western side of the
river, which seems curious. It might be possible that the islands off the
coast of Sarmatia are among the many which lay in Codanus (?). As Sarmatia
lay to the east of Germania, these islands would in any case be as far
east as the Baltic, if not farther; but there is no ebb and flood there by
which the connecting land between them might be alternately covered and
left dry; on the other hand, the description suits the German North Sea
coast. Either Mela's authority has heard of the low-lying lands--the
Frische Nehrung and the Kurische Nehrung, for instance--off the coast of
the amber country, and has added the tidal phenomena from the North Sea
coast, or, what is more probable, the Frisian islands, for example, may by
a misunderstanding have been moved eastwards into Sarmatia, since older
writers, who as yet made no distinction between Germania, Sarmatia and
Scythia, described them as lying far east, off the Scythian coast (perhaps
taken from the voyage of Pytheas).[96]

[Sidenote: Voyage to Samland, circa 60 A.D.]

The emperor Nero's (54-68 A.D.) love of show led, according to Pliny [Nat.
Hist., xxxvii. 45], to the amber coast of the Baltic becoming "first known
through a Roman knight, whom Julianus sent to purchase amber, when he was
to arrange a gladiatorial combat for the emperor Nero. This knight visited
the markets and the coasts and brought thence such a quantity that the
nets which were hung up to keep the wild beasts away from the imperial
tribune had a piece of amber in every mesh; indeed the weapons, the biers,
and the whole apparatus of a day's festival were heavy with amber. The
largest piece weighed thirteen pounds." This journey must have followed an
undoubtedly ancient trade-route from the Adriatic to Carnuntum (in
Pannonia), the modern Petronell on the Danube, where the latter is joined
by the March, and from whence Pliny expressly says that the distance was
600,000 paces to the amber coast, which agrees almost exactly with the
distance in a straight line to Samland. From Carnuntum the route lay along
the river March, thence overland to the upper Vistula, and so down this
river to Samland. It may easily be understood that much fresh knowledge
reached Rome as a result of this journey.

[Sidenote: Pliny 23-79 A.D.]

The elder Pliny's (23-79 A.D.) statements about the North, in his great
work "Naturalis Historia" (in thirty-seven books), are somewhat obscure
and confused, and so far are no advance upon Mela; but we remark
nevertheless that fresh knowledge has been acquired, and it is as though
we get a clearer vision of the new countries and seas through the northern
mists. He himself says, moreover, that he "has received information of
immense islands which have recently been discovered from Germania." His
work is in great part the fruit of an unusually extensive acquaintance
with older writers, mostly Greek, but also Latin. He repeats a good deal
of what Mela says, or draws from the same sources, probably Greek.

His information about the North must have been obtained, so far as I can
see, mainly in three different ways: (1) Directly through the Romans'
connection with Germania and through their expeditions to its northern
coasts (under Augustus and Nero, for example). Pliny himself lived in
Germania for several years (45-52 A.D.) as a Roman cavalry commander, and
may then have collected much information. (2) He has drawn extensively
from Greek sources, whose statements about the North may have come partly
by sea, chiefly through Pytheas (perhaps also through later trading
voyages); partly also by land, especially through commercial intercourse
between the Black Sea and the Baltic.[97] (3) Finally he received
information from Britain about the regions to the north. This may be
derived partly from Greek sources, partly also from later Roman connection
with Britain. Mela expressly says of this country that new facts will soon
be known about it, "for the greatest prince [the Emperor Claudius] is now
opening up this country, which has so long been closed ... he has striven
by war to obtain personal knowledge of these things, and will spread this
knowledge at his triumph." The information obtained by Pliny through these
different channels is often used by him uncritically, without remarking
that different statements apply to the same countries and seas.

His theory of the universe was the usual one, that the universe was a
hollow sphere which revolved in twenty-four hours with indescribable
rapidity. "Whether by the continual revolution of such a great mass there
is produced an immense noise, exceeding all powers of hearing, I am no
more able to assert than that the sound produced by the stars circulating
about one another and revolving in their orbits, is a lovely and
incredibly graceful harmony." The earth stood in the centre of the
universe and had the form of a sphere. The land was everywhere surrounded
by sea, which covers the greater part of the globe.

In his description of the North [iv. 12, 88 f.] Pliny begins at the east,
and relies here entirely on Greek authorities.

    Far north in Scythia, beyond the Arimaspians, "we come to the 'Ripæan'
    Mountains and to the district which on account of the ever-falling
    snow, resembling feathers, is called Pterophorus. This part of the
    world is accursed by nature and shrouded in thick darkness; it
    produces nothing else but frost and is the chilly hiding-place of the
    north wind. By these mountains and beyond the north wind dwells, if we
    are willing to believe it, a happy people, the Hyperboreans, who have
    long life and are famous for many marvels which border on the
    fabulous. There, it is said, are the pivots of the world, and the
    uttermost revolution of the constellations." The sun shines there for
    six months; but strangely enough it rises at the summer solstice and
    sets at the winter solstice, which shows Pliny's ignorance of
    astronomy. The climate is magnificent and without cold winds. As the
    sun shines for half the year, "the Hyperboreans sow in the morning,
    harvest at midday, gather the fruit from the trees at evening, and
    spend the night in caves. The existence of this people is not to be
    doubted, since so many authors tell us about them."

Having then mentioned several districts bordering on the Black Sea, Pliny
continues [iv. 13, 94 f.]:

    "We will now acquaint ourselves with the outer parts of Europe, and
    turn, after having gone over the Ripæan Mountains, towards the left to
    the coast of the northern ocean, until we arrive again at Gades. Along
    this line many nameless islands are recorded. Timæus mentions that
    among them there is one off Scythia called Baunonia, a day's sail
    distant, upon which the waves cast up amber in the spring. The
    remaining coasts are only known from doubtful rumours. Here is the
    northern ocean. Hecatæus calls it Amalcium, from the river
    Parapanisus[98] onwards and as far as it washes the coast of Scythia,
    which name [i.e., Amalcium] in the language of the natives means
    frozen.[99] Philemon[100] says that it was called by the Cimbri
    Morimarusa, that is, the dead sea; from thence and as far as the
    promontory Rusbeas, farther out, it is called Cronium. Xenophon of
    Lampsacus says that three days' sail from the Scythian coast is an
    island, Balcia, of enormous size; Pytheas calls it Basilia." He goes
    on to mention the Œonæ, Hippopods, and Long-eared men in almost the
    same terms as Mela.

This mention of lands and seas in the North is of great interest. But in
attempting to identify any of them in Pliny's description we must always
remember that to him and his Greek authorities, and to all writers even in
much later times, all land north of the coasts of Scythia, Sarmatia and
Germania was nothing but islands in the northern ocean. Further, it must
be remembered that the ancient Greeks did not know the name Germania,
which was not introduced until about 80 B.C. To them Scythia and Celtica
(Gaul) were conterminous, and their Scythian coast might therefore lie
either on the Baltic or the North Sea.

It has not been possible to decide where the name "Rusbeas" (called by
Solinus "Rubeas") comes from;[101] but it is best understood if we take it
to be southern Norway or Lindesnes. As the description begins at the east
on the Scythian coast, it follows that "Amalcium" is the Baltic as far as
the Danish islands and the land of the Cimbri. "Morimarusa,"[102] which
extends from Amalcium to Lindesnes, will be the Cattegat (in part, at any
rate) and the Skagerak. Cronium will be the North Sea and the Northern
Ocean beyond Lindesnes.[103] We must believe that Philemon has obtained
his information about the Cimbri (at the Skaw), about Morimarusa, and
about Rusbeas either from Pytheas--whose mention thereof we must then
suppose to have been accidentally omitted by other authors--or else from
later Greek merchants. In the same way Xenophon must have got his Balcia,
which is here named for the first time in literature. As these two Greek
authors (probably of about 100 B.C.) are expressly mentioned as
authorities, the statements cannot be derived from the circumnavigation of
the Skaw in the time of Augustus, nor from any other Roman expedition. It
is clear enough that Pliny himself did not know where Rusbeas and Balcia
were, but simply repeated uncritically what he had read. On the other
hand, he knew from another source that the sea he calls Cronium lay far
north of Britain, and must therefore be sought for to the north-west of
the Scythian coast.

Balcia must be looked for most probably in the Baltic. As already
mentioned (p. 72) it may be Jutland; but as it is described as an island
of immense size and three days' sail from the Scythian coast, it suits
southern Sweden better, although Pliny has also the name Scadinavia for
this from another source.

After these doubtful statements about the north coast of Scythia, taken
from Greek sources and interwoven with fables, Pliny reaches firmer ground
in Germania, when he continues [iv. 13, 96]:

    "We have more certain information concerning the Ingævones people who
    are the first [that is, the most north-eastern] in Germania. There is
    the immense mountain Sævo, not less than the Riphæan range, and it
    forms a vast bay which goes to the Cimbrian Promontory [i.e.,
    Jutland], which bay is called Codanus and is full of islands, amongst
    which the most celebrated is Scatinavia, of unknown size; a part of it
    is inhabited, as far as is known by the Hilleviones, in 500 cantons
    ('pagis'), who call it [i.e., the island] the second earth. Æningia is
    supposed to be not less in size. Some say that these regions extend as
    far as the Vistula and are inhabited by Sarmatians [i.e., probably
    Slavs], Venedi [Wends], Scirri, and Hirri; the bay is called
    Cylipenus, and at its mouth lies the island Latris. Not far from
    thence is another bay, Lagnus, which borders on the Cimbri. The
    Cimbrian Promontory runs far out into the sea and forms a peninsula
    called Tastris." Then follows a list of twenty-three islands which are
    clearly off the North Sea coast of Sleswick and Germany. Among them is
    one called by the soldiers "Glæsaria" on account of the amber
    ("glesum"),[104] but by the barbarians "Austeravia" [i.e., the eastern
    island], or "Actania."

Here are a number of new names and pieces of information. The form of some
of the names shows that here too Pliny has borrowed to some extent from
Greek authors; but his information must also partly be derived from Roman
sources, and from Germany itself. His "Codanus" must be the same as that
of Mela, and is the sea adjacent to the country of the Cimbri, which is
here for the first time clearly referred to as a promontory
(promunturium). It is the Cattegat, and, in part at any rate, the
Skagerak. The enormous mountain "Sævo" will then be most probably the
mountains of Scandinavia, especially southern Norway, which forms the bay
of Codanus in such a way that the latter is bounded on the other side by
the Cimbrian Promontory.[105] It will then be in the same mountainous
country that we should look for the promontory of Rusbeas (see above).

[Sidenote: Scandinavia]

The name "Scatinavia" or "Scadinavia" (both spellings occur in the MSS. of
Pliny) is found here certainly for the first time; but, curiously enough,
we also find the name "Scandia" in Pliny; it is used of an island which is
mentioned as near Britain (see below, p. 106). "Scandia" has often been
taken for a shortened form of "Scadinavia"; but if we consider the
occurrence of both names in Pliny in conjunction with the fact that Mela
has not yet heard either, but has, on the other hand, a large island,
"Codanovia," in the bay of Codanus, then it may seem possible that
originally there were two entirely different names: "Codanovia," for
Sealand (and perhaps for south Sweden), and "*Skânovia" ("Skáney,"
latinised into "Scandia") for Skåne. By a confusion of these two the form
"Scadinavia" for south Sweden may have resulted in Pliny, instead of
Mela's "Codanovia," while at the same time he got the name "Scandia" from
another source. The latter is the only one used by Ptolemy both for south
Sweden and the Danish islands; he has four "Scandiæ," three smaller ones
and one very large one farther east, "Scandia" proper (see below, p. 119).
By further confusion of the two names, "Scadinavia" has become
"Scandinavia" in later copyists and authors.[106]

    In conflict with this is the hitherto accepted opinion among
    philologists that the name "Skåne" must be derived from "Scadinavia,"
    which would regularly become by contraction "*Skadney," and this by
    losing the "d" would become "Skáney." But this similarity may after
    all be accidental, and it is difficult to reconcile the hypothesis
    with the fact that the form "Scandia" (and not "*Skadnia") already
    appears in Pliny and later in Ptolemy. To this must be added that the
    form "*Skadney," or a similar one, is not known; the first time we
    find the word Skåne in literature is in the story of Wulfstan the Dane
    to King Alfred (about 890, see later), where it takes the form "Scôn
    eg," which is the same as "Skáney." "Skania," which is a latinised
    form of "Skáney," is found in a Papal letter of 950, and a Swedish
    runic inscription of about 1020 reads "ą Skąnu," which also is the
    same as "Skáney." It therefore appears probable that this is the
    original form, the same as the Norwegian name "Skáney," and that it
    has not resulted from a contraction of "Skadinavia." Professor Torp
    agrees that a form "*Skânovia" might possibly be the original.

What may be the meaning of the name "Hilleviones" in Scadinavia is
difficult to make out; it does not occur in any other writer, but is in
all likelihood a common term for all Scandinavians. One is reminded of the
"Hermiones" who occur in Mela in the same connection, but a little later
Pliny mentions these also. "Æningia," which is said to be no smaller than
Scadinavia, is a riddle. Could it be a corruption of a Halsingia or
Alsingia (the land of the Helsingers), a name for northern Sweden, which
thus lay farther off and was less known than Scadinavia?[107] When we read
that these regions were supposed to extend as far as the Vistula, this
might indicate a vague idea that Scadinavia and Æningia were connected
with the mainland, whereby a bay of the sea was formed, called
"Cylipenus,"[108] which will thus be yet another name for the Baltic,
taken from a new source; but the whole may be nothing more than an obscure
statement.

"Latris," which lay at the mouth of Cylipenus, may be one of the Danish
islands, and one may perhaps be reminded of Sealand with the ancient royal
stronghold of "Lethra" or Leire, Old Norse "Hleidrar." The bay of
"Lagnus,"[109] which borders on the Cimbri, must then be taken as a new
name for the Cattegat, while "Tastris" may be Skagen. According to the
sources Pliny has borrowed from, we thus get the following names for the
same parts: for the Baltic or parts thereof, "Amalcium" and "Cylipenus,"
and perhaps in part "Codanus"; for the Cattegat, "Lagnus" and "Codanus";
for the Skagerak, "Morimarusa," in part also "Codanus"; for south Sweden,
"Scadinavia" and "Balcia"; for Jutland or Skagen, "Promunturium Cimbrorum"
and "Tastris." At any rate, this superfluity of names discloses increased
communication, through many channels, with the North. Communication with
the North is also to be deduced from Pliny's mention [viii. c. 15, 39] of
an animal called "achlis," as a native of those countries.

    It had "never been seen among us in Rome, though it had been described
    by many." It resembles the elk [alcis], "but has no knee-joint, for
    which reason also it does not sleep lying down, but leaned against a
    tree, and if the tree be partly cut through as a trap, the animal,
    which otherwise is remarkably fleet, is caught. Its upper lip is very
    large, for which reason it goes backwards when grazing, so as not to
    get caught in it if it went forward." It might be thought that this
    elk-like animal was a reindeer; but the mention of the long upper lip
    and the trees suits the elk better, and it may have been related of
    this animal that it was caught by means of traps in the forest. The
    fable that it slept leaning against a tree may be due to the
    similarity between the name "achlis" (which may be some corruption or
    other, perhaps of "alces") and "acclinis" (== leaning on).

Finally, Pliny had a third source of knowledge about the North through
Britain, which to him was a common name for all the islands in that
ocean. Some of the statements from this quarter originated with Pytheas;
but later information was added; Pliny himself mentions Agrippa as an
authority. Among the British Isles he mentions [iv. 16, 103]: "40
'Orcades' separated from each other by moderate distances, 7 'Acmodæ,' and
30 'Hebudes.'" His 7 "Acmodæ" (which in some MSS. are also called
"Hæcmodæ") are, clearly enough, Mela's 7 Hæmodæ, and probably the Shetland
Islands, while the 30 "Hebudes" are the Hebrides, which are thus mentioned
here for the first time in any known author.

After referring to a number of other British islands "and the 'Glæsiæ,'
scattered in the Germanic Ocean, which the later Greeks call the
'Electrides,' because amber (electrum) is found in them,"[110] Pliny
continues [iv. 16, 104]: "The most distant of all known islands is 'Tyle'
(Thule), where at the summer solstice there is no night, and
correspondingly no day at the winter solstice."[111]... "Some authors
mention yet more islands, 'Scandia,' 'Dumna,' 'Bergos,' and the largest of
all, 'Berricen,' from which the voyage is made to Tyle. From Tyle it is
one day's sail to the curdled sea which some call 'Cronium.'" We do not
know from what authors Pliny can have taken these names, nor where the
islands are to be looked for; but as Thule is mentioned, we must suppose
that in any case some of them come originally from Pytheas. As Scandia
comes first among these islands, one is led to think that Dumna and the
two other enigmatical names are of Germanic origin. "Dumna" might then
remind us of Scandinavian names such as Duney, Dönna (in Nordland), or
the like; but it is more probable that it comes from the Celtic "dubno" or
"dumno" (== deep), and may be the name of an island off Scotland. "Bergos"
may remind us of the Old Norse word "bjarg" or "berg."[112] It is not so
easy with the strange name "Berricen," which in some MSS. has the form
"Verigon" or "Nerigon" (cf. above, p. 58). If the first reading is the
correct one, it suggests an origin in an Old Norse "ber-ig" ("ber" ==
bear; the meaning would therefore be "bear-y," full of bears), not an
unsuitable name for southern Norway, whence the journey was made to Thule
or northern Norway; but this is doubtful. If "Nerigon" is the correct
reading, it will not be impossible, in the opinion of Professor Torp, that
this, as Keyser supposed, may be the name Norway, which in Old Norse was
called, by Danes for example, "*NorþravegaR" (like "AustravegaR" and
"VestravegaR"). If any of the names of these islands are really Germanic,
like Scandia, then they cannot, as some have thought, refer to islands off
Scotland or to the Shetlands, as these were not yet inhabited by Norsemen.
The islands in question must therefore be looked for in Norway. It is
important that Scandia is mentioned first among them in connection with
Britain, and that at the same time another is described as the largest of
them all, and as lying on the way to Thule. This again points to
communication by sea between the British Isles and Scandinavia, of which
we found indications four hundred years earlier.

[Sidenote: Agricola, 84 A.D.]

In 84 A.D. Agricola, after his campaign against the Caledonians, sent his
fleet round the northern point of Scotland, "whereby," Tacitus[113] tells
us, "it was proved that Britain is an island. At the same time the
hitherto unknown islands which are called 'Orcadas' (the Orkneys) were
discovered and subdued. Thule also could be descried in the distance; but
the fleet had orders not to go farther, and winter was coming on. Moreover
the water is thick and heavy to row in; it is said that even wind cannot
stir it to much motion. The reason for this may be the absence of land and
mountains, which otherwise would give the storms increased power, and that
the enormous mass of continuous ocean is not easy to set in motion." This
Thule must have been Fair Island or the Shetland Isles, and this is the
most northern point reached by the Romans, so far as is known. The idea of
the heavy sea, which is not moved by the winds, is the same that we met
with in early antiquity (see pp. 40, 69).

    In the preceding summer some of Agricola's soldiers--a cohort of
    Usippii, enlisted in Germania and brought to Britain--had mutinied,
    killed their centurion and seized three ships, whose captains they
    forced into obedience. "Two of them aroused their suspicions and were
    therefore killed; the third undertook the navigation," and they
    circumnavigated Britain. "They were soon obliged to land to provide
    themselves with water and to plunder what they required; thereby they
    came into frequent conflict with the Britons, who defended their
    possessions; they were often victorious, but sometimes were worsted,
    and finally their need became so great that they took to eating the
    weakest; then they drew lots as to which should serve the others as
    food. Thus they came round Britain [i.e. round the north], were driven
    out of their course through incompetent navigation, and were made
    prisoners, some by the Frisians and some by the Suevi, who took them
    for pirates. Some of them came to the slave-markets and passed through
    various hands until they reached Roman Germania, becoming quite
    remarkable persons by being able to relate such marvellous
    adventures."[114] It is possible that certain inaccurate statements
    may have found their way to Rome as the result of this voyage.

[Sidenote: Tacitus, 98 A.D.]

Cornelius Tacitus, who wrote his "Germania" in the year 98 A.D., was a
historian and ethnographer, not a geographer. His celebrated work has not,
therefore, much to say of the northern lands; he has not even a single
name for them. On the other hand, he has some remarkable statements about
the peoples, especially in Sweden, which show that since the time of Pliny
fresh information about that part of the world must have reached Rome.

[Illustration: The nations of Tacitus (after K. Miller)]

Tacitus makes the "Suebi," or "Suevi," inhabit the greater part of Germany
as far as the frontier of the Slavs (Sarmatians) and Finns on the east
(and north ?). The name, which possibly means the "hovering" people and is
due to their roving existence, is perhaps rather to be regarded as a
common designation for various Germanic tribes. After them he called the
sea on the eastern coast of Germany, i.e., the Baltic, the Suebian Sea
("Suebicum mare"). On its right-hand (eastern) shore dwelt the "Æstii"
(i.e., Esthonians; perhaps from "aistan" == to honour, that is, the
honourable people [?]). "Their customs and dress are like those of the
Suevi, but their language more nearly resembles the British" (!). "The use
of iron is rare there, that of sticks [i.e., clubs, fustium] common. They
also explore the sea and collect amber in shallow places and on the shore
itself. But they do not understand its nature and origin, and it long lay
disregarded among things cast up by the sea, "until our luxury made it
esteemed." "They have no use for it,[115] they gather it in the rough,
bring it unwrought, and are surprised at the price they receive" [c. 45].
From this it may be concluded that there was constant trading
communication between the Mediterranean and the Baltic, and that Roman
merchants had probably penetrated thither.

[Illustration: Boat found at Nydam, near Flensburg. Third century A.D. 70
feet long (after C. Engelhardt)]

"In the Ocean itself (ipso in Oceano) lie the communities of the Suiones,
a mighty people not only in men and arms, but also in ships." The Suiones,
who are first mentioned by Tacitus, are evidently of the same name as the
Svear (Old Norse "svíar," Anglo-Saxon "sveon") or Swedes.[116] Their ships
were remarkable for having a prow, "prora," at each end (i.e., they were
the same fore and aft); they had no sail, and the oars were not made fast
in a row, but were loose, so that they could row with them now on one
side, now on the other, "as on some rivers."[117] In other words, they had
open rowlocks, as in some of the river boats of that time, and as is
common in modern boats; the oars were not put out through holes as in the
Roman ships, and as in the Viking ships (the Gokstad and Oseberg ships).
The boat of the Iron Age which was dug up at Nydam had just such open
rowlocks.

The Suiones (unlike the other Germanic peoples) esteemed wealth, and
therefore they had only one lord; this lord governed with unlimited power,
so much so that arms were not distributed among the people, but were kept
locked up, and moreover in charge of a thrall,[118] because the sea
prevented sudden attacks of enemies, and armed idle hands (i.e., armed men
unemployed) are apt to commit rash deeds [c. 44].

The neighbours of the Suiones, probably on the north, are the "Sitones"
[c. 45], whom Tacitus also regards as Germanic. "They are like the Suiones
with one exception, that a woman reigns over them; so far have they
degenerated not only from liberty, but also from slavery. Here Suebia ends
(Hic Suebiæ finis)." Suebia was that part of Germany inhabited by the
Suevi. It looks as though Tacitus considered that courage and manliness
decreased the farther north one went. The Suiones allow themselves to be
bullied by an absolute king, who sets a thrall to guard their weapons, and
the Sitones are in a still worse plight, in allowing themselves to be
governed by a woman. The Sitones are not mentioned before or after this in
literature, and it seems as though the name must be due to some
misunderstanding.[119] It has been supposed that they were Finns
("Kvæns")[120] in no

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