Pytheas, a citizen of Massalia (Μασσαλία, Latin Massilia, today Marseille), is known as the author of a book called About the Ocean (Περὶ Ὠκεανοῦ). It described a part of the world that at the time – early Hellenistic era – was very little known to the Mediterranean peoples. Pytheas claimed to have travelled along the Atlantic coast of Europe, to have visited a number of localities, both on the mainland and in the British Isles, and eventually, at a latitude of 66° N, to have reached the mystifying island of Thule (Θούλη). The book itself has gone lost but later ancient writers, from the famous astronomer Hipparchus of Nicaea of the second century B.C. to the sixth-century biblicist Cosmas Indicopleustes, consulted and referred to it. Their testimonies are not detailed or copious enough to make even a tentative reconstruction of Pytheas’ full work possible but have provided material to a variety of hypotheses and phantasies about his person and achievement.
The story of Pytheas, comprising both his life and work in antiquity and what we may call his afterlife up to the present day, is the subject of François Herbaux’s book under review here. Other ambitious studies on Pytheas – and there are not few of them – typically concentrate on the ancient testimonies, offering translations and commentaries on them and discussing suggested interpretations.[1] Herbaux aims at treating what he calls the dossier Pythéas. This presumed dossier contains not only what philologists, historians and other members of the scholarly world claim to have found out about Pytheas but also includes a variety of more or less wild speculations about Pytheas’ travels and his experiences in the Great North. Obviously, the scantiness of reliable information, in combination with a mystical aura that enrobes the daring explorer of the unknown North, has triggered creative fantasy, uncontrolled imagination, wishful thinking, etc., until Pytheas has become a figure of myth, rather than a real person. He is staged, e.g., as the hero of French comic books, and the mystifying island of Thule has been identified with the Estonian island of Saaremaa, where the name of the amusement park Thule Koda commemorates his imaginary visit to the island. Herbaux cites several more examples of such innovative use of the explorer’s name and reputation.
His own treatment of Pytheas’ “afterlife” into modern times could also be classified as innovative in a good sense of the word. Classicists sometimes forget and do not often demonstrate how figures and phenomena of classical antiquity under certain circumstances still become important to people of our time. Herbaux helps us to keep that in mind.
When reconstructing Pytheas’ life and tracking the course of his travel, Herbaux carefully avoids premature assumptions. The ancient testimonia that he regards as relevant are printed on pp. 190–213 of his book, translated from Greek and Latin into French by Christian Boudignon of Université d’Aix-Marseille. Most of them mention Pytheas by name and can be accepted as reliable for that reason. But Herbaux also includes some passages from Diodorus Siculus that describe the Atlantic regions of Europe. Pytheas is not mentioned there but Diodorus is dependent on Timaeus of Tauromenium and he, in his turn, was undoubtedly dependent on Pytheas. Conversely, Herbaux excludes a number of putative testimonia that have been accepted as evidential by others.
Lack of evidence is the reason why Herbaux mistrusts the opinion that Pytheas had not only scientific curiosity as the reason for his journey into the unknown. Since Massalia was a center of trade, involved in the import of, e.g., tin from Britannia and amber from the North Sea region, other scholars have assumed that Pytheas travelled for commercial interests or that he was financed by Massalian merchants. In present-day Marseille Pytheas is officially celebrated not only as an explorer but also as a mercantile pioneer. Since the mid-nineteenth century his statue adorns the façade of the Bourse de Commerce in one of the main streets; in 2015 the Banque Populaire celebrated the opening of a new branch called Marseille Pythéas with a large-scale exposition dedicated “au célèbre savant et navigateur Pythéas”, whose enterprise was claimed to have been “financée par des notables et commerçants marseillais”. Herbaux ironically distances himself from these declarations and, since commercial activities are not mentioned in any evidential text, he recommends leaving open the question of Pytheas’ interests in business.
Likewise, for lack of evidence, we do not know if Pytheas, to reach the ocean in the west, sailed through the Straits of Gibraltar and around the Iberian Peninsula or went from Massalia through Provence and Aquitaine by land and on rivers to the Gironde estuary. Both these alternatives have been defended. Herbaux cautiously supports the Gibraltar alternative and does not think that Carthaginian dominance in the south of Spain made it impossible for Greeks to pass the straits.
For the reconstruction of the continued journey the testimonia offer more evidence. Herbaux infers that Pytheas visited Brittany/Bretagne and the island of Ushant/Ouessant and then crossed the Channel. Concerning Great Britain Pytheas gave rather detailed information on its position relative to the continent and on its dimensions. He seems to have travelled along its southern coast from Cantion/Κάντιον (probably the headland North Foreland in Kent) to Land’s End (Belerion/Βελέριον) in the west. Then he continued his journey to the northernmost promontory of the island, which he calls Orcas/Ὄρκας, a name that may resound in Orkney Islands.
Thus far Herbaux can, with some confidence, identify the stations of Pytheas’ journey. Beyond Orcas, at the latitude of the Arctic circle, Pytheas claims to have reached the island of Thule. Herbaux believes that this was Iceland but recognizes the uncertainty, since people seem to have been living in Pytheas’ Thule, whereas archaeological evidence suggests that the first settlers of Iceland arrived there only in the ninth century A.D. He surveys a number of other suggested identifications of Thule, in particular by Scandinavians (83-100).
The “island of amber” is another unidentified locality, according to Pliny known to Pytheas under the name of Abalus or Basilia. Presumably, it was in the area where amber has been regularly collected since antiquity, i.e. the Danish islands, northern Germany and the shores of the Baltic Sea. Herbaux doubts that Pytheas ever entered the Baltic, but even so the precise location of the Amber Island eludes us.
The only preserved verbatim quotation from Pytheas’ Περὶ Ὠκεανοῦ appears in Geminus’ astronomical handbook; it begins “The barbarians showed us where the sun comes to rest” and then explains that in those regions the summer nights become very short, and the sun rises again a short distance from where it sets (Geminus, Isagoge 6.9). The place pointed out by the locals to Pytheas and his followers was the point on the horizon in the northwest where the sun sets in high summer. At the time they must have been at a high latitude, e.g. in Norway, as suggested by Herbaux. However, the same sentence has also been thought to indicate that Pytheas entered and explored the Baltic. In that case it is translated, e.g., “The barbarian showed me the grave where the Sun fell dead”,[2] and in that translation the word Sun does not have its usual meaning but refers to a meteorite that, in the distant past, crashed on the island of Saaremaa, creating a crater that is now the Kaalijärv lake. Herbaux (pp. 129–130) most clearly demonstrates that this translation defies both grammar, lexicon and the context to which the sentence belongs. However, on the supposition that both Thule and Pytheas’ Αmber Ιsland are identical with Saaremaa, the amusement park Thule Koda has been created. It exemplifies how ancient history, unscrupulously distorted, can serve contemporary tourist business.
Herbaux supposes that Pytheas, when returning from his journey, followed approximately the same route as on his way out, i.e. sailing to the Gironde estuary or through the straits of Gibraltar. Other commentators believe that Pytheas not only entered the Baltic but also used the rivers of eastern Europe for traversing the continent to the Black Sea and, eventually, the Mediterranean. The geographer Strabo reports that Pytheas claimed to have visited all European land adjacent to the Ocean “from Gadeira (Cádiz) to Tanaïs (Don)”[3] but Herbaux interprets this as a stereotyped phrase for the whole lot and not a reliable indication that Pytheas was familiar with the Russian river.
In conclusion: This is a very interesting book, summing up – with a critical eye – what we can know about the ancient explorer and apt to give the reader new ideas on ways of approaching the material provided by the classical texts and presenting it to others. Herbaux reveals himself as a competent philologist and, at the same time, he is capable of popularizing his ideas and making even complicated matters accessible to a general readership. The book contains a handy index of persons and places and a useful bibliography (although mostly Francophone items). There are no illustrations except a sketchy map of western Europe and its islands; localities presumably visited by Pytheas are highlighted; the map does not include the Baltic or eastern Europe.
In a concluding “Postface” Monique Mund-Dopchie, former professor of l’Université catholique de Louvain, provides a presentation of François Herbaux himself, underlining his versatility and wide experience as a historian and a journalist.
Notes
[1] A recent example: Lionel Scott, Pytheas of Massalia: texts, translation, and commentary. Routledge classical translations. Abingdon; New York: Routledge, 2022 (cf. BMCR 2022.08.14). A more widespread but much shorter book with the same general content: Barry Cunliffe, The extraordinary voyage of Pytheas the Greek. London: Penguin Press, 2001.
[2] Translation quoted from Siim Veski et al., ‘Ecological catastrophe in connection with the impact of the Kaali meteorite about 800–400 B.C. on the island of Saaremaa, Estonia’, Meteoritics & Planetary Science 36, 2001, 1369.
[3] Strabo, Geographia 2.4.1.