Discovery of Great Britain by the Romans.
The mercantile Phoenicians traded to the Scilly islands, the Cassiterides , or land of tin , from the port of Cadiz , four hundred years before Christ. The Romans, for a considerable time, could not discover the place from whence the former procured the precious metal. They attempted to detect the trade, by following the course of a Phoenician vessel; but the master, faithful to the interest of his country, voluntarily run his ship ashore in another place; preferring the loss of all, rather than sillier n. foreign nation to become partakers of so profitable a secret.
The public immediately compensated Iris loss out of its treasury . This did but make the Romans more eager for the discovery; and after many trials they succeeded. Publius Crassus (father of Marcus Crassus the Triumvir) who was praetor, and governed Spain for several years, landed in the Cassiterides, and found the report of their riches verified.
As soon as the Romans made a conquest of the country, they formed in the tin province camps and roads, still visible; and left behind vases, urns, sepulchres, and money, that exhibit daily proofs of their having been a stationary people in those parts” ; and that Dunmonium extended even to the Belerian promontory, or the Land’s-end
TIN COPPER
And was not, as some writers imagine, limited by the western parts of Somersetshire.
It is not to be imagined, that they could neglect a corner of our island, productive of a metal so useful in mechanics as tin, and which it yielded in such plenty, as to receive from that circumstance the name.
So great was the intercourse that foreign nations had with the inhabitants bordering on Belerium, as to give them a greater scavoir vivre, and more extensive hospitality, than was to be found in other parts of the island.
They were equally expert in working the mines, and preparing the ore, which lay in earthy veins within the rocky strata.
They melted and purified it, then cast it into rows of cubes, and carried it to let is, the modern Mount St. Michael: from thence it was transported into Gaul; conveyed from the place it was landed at, on horses’ backs, a journey of thirty days, to the mouth of the Rhone, and also to the Massylians, and the town of Narbonne".
Copper. Did not Caesar and Strabo agree in their account, I should never have believed it possible that the Britons could have neglected their rich mines of copper, and have beenobliged at first to import that metal. Perhaps the ore was less accessible, and the art of fusion unknown; for islands, from their very situation, must remainlonger ignorant of arts than continents; especially ours, which lay far to the west of the origin of all science.
Strabo says, that the Britons imported works of brass; but it is as certain, that they afterwards did themselves fabricate that metal into instruments.
The Celts, a British, instrument, was made in this island.
Numbers have been found in Yorkshire, and Essex", together with cinders, and lumps of melted metal; which evince the place of a forge. The Romans had then founderies of copper in our island; and cast the metal into regular forms.
A mass was found at Caer hen, the antient Conovium, four miles above Conway,which probably was smelted from the ore of the Snowdon hills; where of late years much has been raised.
This mass is in shape of a cake of beeswax; and on the upper part is a deep concave impression, with the words Socio Romae; across these is impressed obliquely, in lesser letters, Natsol.
I cannot explain it, unless Nat. stands for Natio, the people who paid this species of tribute; and sol. for solvit, that being the stamp-master’s mark. These cakes might be bought up hy a merchant resident in Britain, and consigned Socio RomaE, to his partner at Rome.
The weight of this antiquity is forty-two pounds;
Roman general Vespasian captures the Dorset hill forts c. Summer AD 44 Roman general Vespasian captures the Dorset hill fortsIn the second phase of the conquest of Britain, Roman general Vespasian (Titus Flavius Vespasianus – a future emperor) led his II Augusta Legion into Dorset. He fought numerous small-scale battles and captured a string of hill forts, including Maiden Castle and Hod Hill. By 48 AD, the Romans had effectively subdued all territory south of a line from the mouth of the Humber river to the Severn Estuary.
The Ravenna Cosmography identifies a major regional Roman-era settlement as Nemetostatio in central Dumnonia identified with North Tawton , Devon , which would translate from Latin as * The Outpost of the Sacred Grove *
The first section of the Ravenna Cosmography to deal with Britain, covering , is obscure but nevertheless generally recognised as dealing with south-western England . Why it should have been separated out by the Cosmographer is not at all clear. Rivet and Smith (1979, 197) see it as evidence for a special source covering this area in greater detail than the rest of Britain.
This does not seem a necessary hypothesis for reasons to be given. Indeed, the words that introduce the next section, ‘Again, next to the aforementioned civitas Isca Dumnoniorum’ iterum iuxta superscriptam ciuitatem scadumnamorum , strongly hint that the Cosmographer is looking at the same map as he used as a source for this section. We will see many instances of the Cosmographer duplicating names throughout his text, the most startling being *Moridunum* , Sidford, which is repeated no less than four times. However, they are not noticeably more common in this section than in those that follow. Had he employed a special and separate source for the south-west, it is difficult to see how he would have integrated the information he derived from it with that he derived from his main source without making many more such duplications. We would on this hypothesis also expect the following long section which covers the province or diocese of Britannia to contain a few names relating to the south-western peninsula which the Cosmographer had not noticed as duplications: we do not find them. Arguments e silentio are never strong; more telling are the duplications within this section that cannot be the result of taking names from two different sources. For instance, the name *Antiuesteum* appears twice, in both cases with virtually the same truncation.This truncation may well have occurred if the first three or four letters of the name were written ‘in the sea’ on the Cosmographer’s postulated map source . The same error of reading is extremely unlikely to have occurred as a result of using two separate source documents.
There are thus no compelling reasons to believe that the Cosmographer was using a separate and fuller source for the south-west of Britain than for the remainder of the island. True enough, the density of names in the peninsula is high, but it is also high in Cumbria and between the Roman walls . The contrast is not so much with a low density in the remainder of the province, but with specific areas, such as Wales and East Anglia, very poorly represented. This does not solve the problem of why the Cosmographer should have seen Isca Dumnoniorum, Exeter, as a point at which to insert a break in his listing. The Peutinger Table may offer a clue: although Britain is severely truncated, with only East Anglia and Kent appearing on the surviving copy, Moridunum and Isca Dumnoniorum are also shown without any intervening south-coast places. It is possible that Isca Dumnoniorum was depicted as prominent in some way, perhaps isolated on a promontory or, as seems more likely, as the gateway to .
In this way the Cosmographer might have decided to break his text at a point which appeared dictated by the geography of the region. He does so further north, where his listing of the Antonine Wall forts occurs ‘where that same Britain is seen to be narrowest from sea to sea’ ubi et ipsa britania plus angustissima de oceano in oceanum esse dinoscitur . Although this was not the primary reason for inserting a break at this latter point, the Cosmographer was clearly sensitive to the depicted shape of the island.
On the other hand, we should perhaps take into account the curious fact that the Civitas Dumnoniorum , basically the Cornish peninsula west of Exeter appears to have been a part of Britain virtually unaffected by those changes to élite behaviour usually termed ‘romanisation’. Is it possible that much of it lay outside provincial or diocesan control and that some kind of border was depicted on the Cosmographer’s map source as separating the south-western peninsula from the rest of Britain? In that case, Isca Dumnoniorum may have been prominent as a point of contact between the wilds of the far south-west and the more ‘civilised’ Durotriges (or Durotrages, following RIB 1673: the form of the name is very uncertain according to Rivet & Smith 1979, 352) to the east. Group 1: the Cornish Peninsula V ¶31 in qua britania plurimas fuisse ciuitates et castra legimus ex quibus aliquantas designare uolumus id est:
Giano Barnstaple 10546
Eltabo River Taw 10546
Elconio River Torridge ? 10547
Nemestotatio North Tawton 10547
Tamaris Launceston ?
Puro coronauis ? 10548
Pilais ? 10549
Vernilis Liskeard ? 10549
Ardua rauenatone River Dart 10550
Deuionisso Statio ? 10551
deuentia steno Buckfastleigh / Totnes ? 10551/10552
Vxelis Barnstaple ? 1061
Verteuia Land’s End 1061 = 1069
This group appears to take us on a general perambulation of the Cornish Peninsula and adjacent area
* Taua, the second name, is clearly the River Taw .
*Nemetostatio is probably the fort at North Tawton, which is in an area where a group of modern names containing the elements Nymet and Nemet are found .
The identification of *Conio* with Ptolemy’s must therefore be questioned as the general progression seems to be from north-east to southwest.
It may refer the River Torridge, although this is a Celtic name, derived from a Brittonic *Torric-, ‘violent, rough’.
*Glano* should therefore be somewhere in north Devon, perhaps in the vicinity of Barnstaple.
Tamaris, this a site on the River Tamar , perhaps at the crossing at Launceston , not the river itself , as the name recurs in the list of river-names . *Durocornouio* and *Pilais*
Britannia in the Ravenna Cosmography: a reassessment K J Fitzpatrick-Matthews cannot now be identified. Charles Thomas (1966a, 87) originally identified the former with The Rumps, a pre-Roman defended enclosure.
More recently, he suggested that it might be Tintagel, the site of an important sub-Roman trading settlement, although its Romano-British status is not clear . *Vernilis* may be the , perhaps near Liskeard ; the correct RomanoBritish form may have been *Verleua.
The Cosmographer’s form would have arisen by way of a transposition of -l- and -u-, the latter being miscopied as -n-. The next name must be for * Deruentione, the River Dart, so the Cosmographer’s eye may have moved from travelling along the spine of Cornwall, following the poorly known road along the centre of the peninsula, and he has possibly now turned his attention to the road south from Exeter, closer to the south Devon coast. Deuionisso Statio and *Deruentio Statio (which are wrongly divided in the text) are probably unlocated Roman government establishments, perhaps tax offices. The latter may have lain in the Dart valley (Dart being Brittonic *Deruentiu: Ekwall 1928, 114), perhaps at Buckfastleigh or Totnes, and the former perhaps near Newton Abbot or elsewhere on the River Teign. The next name, Duriarno, is probably not the same as Durnouaria (Dorchester), as suggested by Rivet & Smith (1979, 345) following Horsley (1732, 490), since it is probably not corrupt (compare the Arnodurum quoted by Williams (Richmond & Crawford 1949, 32), which shows the more usual ‘continental’ ordering of elements). Instead, it may be the name of a site in the vicinity of Plymouth where the inhumation cemetery at Mount Batten and a sequence of coins attest a settlement of some importance (Thomas 1966a, 86). Uxelis is too far west to be the same as Ptolemy’s Οὔξελλα (II.3, 13), which must be on the River Parrett, his Οὐεξάλλα εἴσχυσις (II.3,2), and may be a site or river in Cornwall, perhaps the Fowey or the Fal, unless it is an example of a name written to the west of its symbol on the map source. If this is the case, then it may have been near Barnstaple (Strang 1997, 30). Group 2: the south Devon and Cornish coast Melamoni Sidford ? 1062 = 1064/1069/10613 Scadumnamorum Exeter , Termonin Mesteuia - Land’s End
The mention of Moridunum, Sidford , for the first time indicates a change of direction, and there are now hints of an ordering of names with a general progression from east to west. The -l- for -r- in Moridunum is also found in the next section; it may be that the name was very difficult to read in the Cosmographer’s source. It is unlikely to have occurred as a result of misreading two separate documents, further evidence for the essential unity of the Cosmographer’s sources. The unlocated *Terminum would have been somewhere between Exeter and Land’s End, an admittedly imprecise location. The River Gowy in Cheshire was formerly known as the aqua de Tervin (‘water of Tarvin’) in 1209, the name deriving from the Latin terminus, ‘boundary’, via Welsh Terfyn (Dodgson 1970, 26), which has been retained by a large parish and village. Although the origin of the latter name is generally sought in the post-Roman politics of the region (Bu’Lock 1972, 24), it is probable that the River Gowy was the eastern boundary of the prata legionis of the fortress at Chester. Could a similar origin be suggested for this name, at the western boundary of the prata legionis of the early fortress at Exeter or the territorium of the later capital of the CivitasDumnoniorum?
Somerset Milidunum Sidford
Apaunaris Bath
Masona Camerton? 1065
Alouergium Shepton Mallett 1065
The Cosmographer returns to Moridunum, with the same peculiar -l- for -r- as in the previous group, and a similarly logical ordering of names this time jumping north-eastward and then working back to the starting-point identify Apaunaris with Aquae Sulis, Bath, perhaps correctly, so the two remaining names may relate to sites between Bath and Sidford.
<Masona> suggests a name derived from that of a river, although which cannot now be ascertained; it perhaps refers to the small town at Camerton. The name is corrupt. *Alobergium should be in a hilly location, probably near the Mendip Hills at Shepton Mallett, where parts of a Romano-British small town have recently been identified.
Then again towards the North of Europe , there is evidently a quantity of gold by far larger than in any other land:
as to how it is got , here again I am not able to say for certain , but it is said to be carried off from the griffins by Arimaspians, a one-eyed race of men.But I do not believe this tale either, that nature produces one-eyed men which in all other respects are like other men. However it would seem that the extremities which bound the rest of the world on every side and enclose it in the midst possess the things which by us are thought to be the most beautiful and the most rare. This is a point in which all "Devonians” and,indeed ,dwellers in the three western counties of Somerset , Devon and Cornwall may be especially interested.“ Dumnonia, ” like “ Demetia ” and “ Demetica regio", is a very ancient geographical term and the Dumnonii certainly go back to Roman times and were noted for their sea fairing qualities.
In King Alfred’s time “ Dumnonia” was used by the King’s Biographer, Bishop Asser, and would certainly mean a good deal more than we now mean by the County of Devon which meets Somerset at Countisbury Gate and Exmoor.
But until we are sure of the exact meaning of say, " Dumnonia ” and “ Demetica regio how can we follow King Alfred’s great Danish campaign of 878 Historical problems wait for their real solution upon the proper explanation of geographical terms.
Many disputes have turned and still turn upon the exact site of Cynuit and Ethandune, two very momentous fights in our island history........There is an Edington Dumnonia !
Dumnonia
was a Keltic kingdom that existed in Britain from the late 4th to the late 8th centuries . It covered the regions of Cornwall, Devon, and parts of Somerset and Dorset. Its name came from the Dumnonii, a tribe that lived in the area before the Roman invasion. Dumnonia was one of the last bastions of Keltic culture and resistance against the Anglo-Saxon expansion. Its rulers claimed descent from King Arthur and maintained ties with Brittany, where many Dumnonian refugees settled. Dumnonia's history is shrouded in legend and mystery, but it remains a fascinating part of Britain's heritage . Dumnonia was a fascinating kingdom that existed in Britain from the 4th to the 9th centuries. It was ruled by the Dumnonii, a Keltic people who resisted the Roman invasion and maintained their independence for centuries. Dumnonia was rich in culture, religion, and trade, evidence of history and mythology .The origins of christianity christmas and the shortest day and the northern european customs ! The landscape has changed since bodecias' time in Britain !
Pytheas of Massalia (Ancient Greek: Πυθέας ὁ Μασσαλιώτης; Latin: Pitheas Massiliae; fl. 4th century BC), was a Greek geographer and explorer from the Greek colony of Massalia (modern-day Marseille). He made a voyage of exploration to northwestern Europe in about 325 BC, but his description of it, widely known in Antiquity, has not survived.
In this voyage he circumnavigated and visited a considerable part of Great Britain. He is the first person on record to describe the Midnight Sun. The theoretical existence of a Frigid Zone, and temperate zones where the nights are very short in summer and the sun does not set at the summer solstice, was already known. Similarly, reports of a country of perpetual snow and darkness (the country of the Hyperboreans) had reached the Mediterranean some centuries before. Pytheas is the first known scientific visitor and reporter of the Arctic, polar ice, and the Germanic tribes. He introduced the idea of distant Thule to the geographic imagination, and his account of the tides is the earliest known to suggest the moon as their cause
1 Dates
2 Record
3 Circumstances of the voyage
4 Discovery of Britain 4.1 The "circumnavigation"
4.2 Name and description of the British
4.3 The three corners of Britain: Kantion, Belerion and Orkas
4.4 The tin trade
5 Discovery of Thule
6 Encounter with drift ice
7 Discovery of the Baltic
8 Voyage to the Don
9 Pytheas' measurements of latitude 9.1 Latitude by the altitude of the sun
Pliny says that Timaeus (born about 350 BC) believed Pytheas' story of the discovery of amber. Strabo says that Dicaearchus (died about 285 BC) did not trust the stories of Pytheas.
That is all the information that survives concerning the date of Pytheas' voyage. Presuming that Timaeus would not have written until after he was 20 years old in about 330 BC and Dicaearchus would have needed time to write his most mature work, after 300 BC, there is no reason not to accept Henry Fanshawe Tozer's window of 330 BC – 300 BC for the voyage.[3] Some would give Timaeus an extra 5 years, bringing the voyage down to 325 BC at earliest. There is no further evidence.
If one presumes that Pytheas would not have written before reaching age 20, he would have been a contemporary and competitor of Timaeus and Dicaearchus. As they read his writings he must have written toward the earlier years of the window.
1620 edition of Strabo's Geographica.
Pytheas described his travels in a work that has not survived; only excerpts remain, quoted or paraphrased by later authors, most familiarly in Strabo's Geographica, Pliny's Natural History and passages in Diodorus of Sicily's history.
Most of the ancients, including the first two just mentioned, refer to his work by his name: "Pytheas says ..." Two late writers give titles: the astronomical author Geminus of Rhodes mentions τὰ περὶ τοῦ Ὠκεανοῦ (ta peri tou Okeanou), literally "things about the Ocean", sometimes translated as "Description of the Ocean", "On the Ocean" or "Ocean"; Marcianus, the scholiast on Apollonius of Rhodes, mentions περίοδος γῆς (periodos gēs), a "trip around the earth" or περίπλους (periplous), "sail around".
Scholars of the 19th century tended to interpret these titles as the names of distinct works covering separate voyages; for example, Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology hypothesizes a voyage to Britain and Thule written about in "Ocean" and another from Cadiz to the Don River, written about in "Sail Around".
As is common with ancient texts, multiple titles may represent a single source, for example, if a title refers to a section rather than the whole. The mainstream today recognizes periplus as a genre of navigational literature and concedes that there was only one work, "on the Ocean", which was based on a periplus.
Diodorus does not mention Pytheas by name. The connection is made as follows: Pliny reports that "Timaeus says there is an island named Mictis... where tin is found, and to which the Britons cross." Diodorus says that tin is brought to the island of Ictis, where there is an emporium. The last link is supplied by Strabo, who says that an emporium on the island of Corbulo in the mouth of the Loire was associated with the Britain of Pytheas by Polybius. Assuming that Ictis, Mictis and Corbulo are the same, Diodorus appears to have read Timaeus, who must have read Pytheas, whom Polybius also read.
Greeks in pre-Roman Gaul
Pytheas was not the first Mediterranean mariner to reach the British Isles. The Massaliote Periplus is a more extensive fragment preserved in paraphrase in the Ora Maritima, a poem of the 4th century AD written by the Roman, Avienus. This periplus of a ship from Marseilles on which the poem relies is uncertain in date, but is believed to be possibly from the 6th century BC, not long after the founding of the city. It primarily describes the coasts of southern Spain and Portugal, but makes brief mention of a visit to "the sacred isle" (Ireland, Ierne) located across from Albion (an early name for Britain).
The start of Pytheas's voyage is unknown. The Carthaginians had closed the Strait of Gibraltar to all ships from other nations. Some historians, mainly of the late 19th century and before, therefore speculated (on no evidence) that he must have traveled overland to the mouth of the Loire or the Garonne. Others believed that, to avoid the Carthaginian blockade, he may have stuck close to land and sailed only at night, or taken advantage of a temporary lapse in the blockade.
An alternate theory holds that by the 4th century BC, the western Greeks, especially the Massaliotes, were on amicable terms with Carthage. In 348 BC, Carthage and Rome came to terms over the Sicilian Wars with a treaty defining their mutual interests. Rome could use Sicilian markets, Carthage could buy and sell goods at Rome, and slaves taken by Carthage from allies of Rome were to be set free. Rome was to stay out of the western Mediterranean, but these terms did not apply to Massalia, which had its own treaty. During the second half of the 4th century BC, the time of Pytheas' voyage, Massaliotes were presumably free to operate as they pleased; there is, at least, no evidence of conflict with Carthage in any of the sources that touch on the voyage.
The early part of Pytheas' voyage is outlined by statements of Eratosthenes that Strabo says are false because taken from[clarification needed] Pytheas.
Apparently, Pytheas said that tides ended at the "sacred promontory" (Hieron akrōtērion, or Sagres Point), and from there to Gades is said to be 5 days' sail. Strabo complains about this distance, and about Pytheas' portrayal of the exact location of Tartessos. Mention of these places in a journal of the voyage indicates that Pytheas passed through the Straits of Gibraltar and sailed north along the coast of Portugal.
A 1490 Italian reconstruction of the map of Ptolemy. The map is a result of a combination of the lines of roads and of the coasting expeditions during the first century of Roman occupation. One great fault, however, is a lopsided Scotland, which in one hypothesis is the result of Ptolemy using Pytheas' measurements of latitude (see below).
Whether Ptolemy would have had Pytheas' real latitudes at that time is a much debated issue.
Strabo reports that Pytheas says he "travelled over the whole of Britain that was accessible".
The word epelthein, at root "come upon", does not imply any specific method, and Pytheas does not elaborate. He does use the word "whole" and he states a perimetros ("perimeter") of more than 40,000 stadia. Using Herodotus' standard of 600 feet for one stadium gives 4,545 miles; however, there is no way to tell which standard foot was in effect.
The English foot is an approximation. Strabo wants to discredit Pytheas on the grounds that 40,000 stadia is outrageously high and cannot be real.
Diodorus Siculus gives a similar number: 42,500 stadia, about 4,830 miles, and explains that it is the perimeter of a triangle around Britain. The consensus has been that he probably took his information from Pytheas through Timaeaus. Pliny gives the circuitus reported by Pytheas as 4,875 Roman miles.
The explorer Fridtjof Nansen explains this apparent fantasy of Pytheas as a mistake of Timaeus.
Strabo and Diodorus Siculus never saw Pytheas' work, says Nansen, but they and others read of him in Timaeus.
Pytheas reported only days' sail. Timaeus converted days to stadia at the rate of 1,000 per day, a standard figure of the times.
However, Pytheas only sailed 560 stadia per day for a total of 23,800, which in Nansen's view is consistent with 700 stadia per degree. Nansen goes on to point out that Pytheas must have stopped to obtain astronomical data; presumably, the extra time was spent ashore. Using the stadia of Diodorus Siculus, one obtains 42.5 days for the time that would be spent in circumnavigating Britain.
The perimeter, according to Nansen based on the 23,800 stadia, was 2,375 miles.
This number is in the neighborhood of what a triangular perimeter ought to be, but it cannot be verified against anything Pytheas may have said, nor is Diodorus Siculus very precise about the locations of the legs. The "perimeter" is often translated as "coastline", but this translation is misleading.
The coastline, following all the bays and inlets, is 12,429 kilometres (7,723 mi) (see Geography of the United Kingdom). Pytheas could have travelled any perimeter between that number and Diodorus'. Polybius adds that Pytheas said he traversed the whole of Britain on foot,of which he, Polybius, is skeptical. Despite Strabo's conviction of a lie, the perimeter said to have been given by Pytheas is not evidence of it. The issue of what he did say can never be settled until more fragments of Pytheas turn up.
The first known written use of the word was an ancient Greek transliteration of the original P-Celtic term. It is believed to have appeared within a periplus by the geographer and explorer Pytheas of Massalia, but no copies of this work survive. The earliest existing records of the word are quotations of the periplus by later authors, such as those within Strabo's Geographica, Pliny's Natural History and Diodorus of Sicily's history.
According to Strabo, Pytheas referred to Britain as Bretannikē, which is treated a feminine noun.
Form from a Pictish stone dated to the Middle Ages, but reflecting the custom surviving from the ancient Picts.
"Britain" is most like Welsh Ynys Prydein, "the island of Britain", in which is a P-Celtic allophone of Q-Celtic Cruithne in Irish Cruithen-tuath, "land of the Picts". The base word is Scottish/Irish cruth, Welsh pryd, "form".
The British were the "people of forms", thought to refer to their practice of tattooing or war painting.
The Roman word Picti, "the Picts", means "painted".
This etymology shows that Pytheas interacted not so much with Irish or Scots, as they used Q-Celtic. Rather, Pytheas brought back the P-Celtic form from more geographically accessible regions where Welsh or Breton are spoken today. Furthermore, some proto-Celtic was spoken over all of Greater Britain, and this particular spelling is prototypical of those more populous regions.
Reconstruction of a Celtic thatched hut in Wales
Diodorus based on Pytheas reports that Britain is cold and subject to frosts, being "too much subject to the Bear", and not "under the Arctic pole", as some translations say. The numerous population of natives, he says, live in thatched cottages, store their grain in subterranean caches and bake bread from it.They are "of simple manners" (ēthesin haplous) and are content with plain fare. They are ruled by many kings and princes who live in peace with each other. Their troops fight from chariots, as did the Greeks in the Trojan War.
The three corners of Britain: Kantion, Belerion and Orkas
opposite Europe in Diodorus is the promontory (akrōtērion) of Kantion (Kent), 100 stadia, about 11 miles, from the land, but the text is ambiguous: "the land" could be either Britain or the continent. Four days' sail beyond that is another promontory, Belerion, which can only be Cornwall, as Diodorus is describing the triangular perimeter and the third point is Orkas, presumably the main island of the Orkney Islands.
The tin trade
The inhabitants of Cornwall are involved in the manufacture of tin ingots. They mine the ore, smelt it and then work it into pieces the shape of knuckle-bones, after which it is transported to the island of Ictis by wagon, which can be done at low tide. Merchants purchasing it there pack it on horses for 30 days to the river Rhône, where it is carried down to the mouth. Diodorus says that the inhabitants of Cornwall are civilised in manner and especially hospitable to strangers because of their dealings with foreign merchants.
Discovery of Thule
Grain field in modern Trondheim, Norway
Strabo relates, taking his text from Polybius, "Pytheas asserts that he explored in person the whole northern region of Europe as far as the ends of the world." Strabo does not believe it but he explains what Pytheas means by the ends of the world. Thoulē, he says (today spelled Thule), is the most northerly of the British Isles.
There the circle of the summer tropic is the same as the Arctic Circle (see below on Arctic Circle). Moreover, says Strabo, none of the other authors mention Thule, a fact which he uses to discredit Pytheas, but which to moderns indicates Pytheas was the first explorer to arrive there and tell of it.
Thule is described as an island of six days' sailing north of Britain, near the frozen sea (pepēguia thalatta, "solidified sea").
Pliny adds that it has no nights at midsummer when the sun is passing through the sign of the Crab (at the summer solstice), a reaffirmation that it is on the Arctic Circle. He adds that the crossing to Thule starts at the island of Berrice, "the largest of all", which may be Lewis in the outer Hebrides. If Berrice was in the outer Hebrides, the crossing would have brought Pytheas to the vicinity of Trondheim, Norway, explaining how he managed to miss the Skagerrak. If this is his route, in all likelihood he did not actually circumnavigate Britain, but returned along the coast of Germany, accounting for his somewhat larger perimeter.
Concerning the location of Thule, a discrepancy in data caused subsequent geographers some problems, and may be responsible for Ptolemy's distortion of Scotland. Strabo reports that Eratosthenes places Thule at a parallel 11500 stadia (1305 miles, or 16.4°) north of the mouth of the Borysthenes.
The parallel running through that mouth also passes through Celtica and is Pytheas' base line. Using 3700 or 3800 stadia (approximately 420–430 miles or 5.3°-5.4°) north of Marseilles for a base line obtains a latitude of 64.8° or 64.9° for Thule, well short of the Arctic Circle. It is in fact the latitude of Trondheim, where Pytheas probably made land.
A statement by Geminus of Rhodes quotes On the Ocean as saying:... 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.
Nansen points out that according to this statement, Pytheas was there in person and that the 21- and 22-hour days must be the customary statement of latitude by length of longest day. He calculates the latitudes to be 64° 32′ and 65° 31′, supporting Hipparchus' statement of the latitude of Thule. And yet Strabo says:
Pytheas of Massalia tells us that Thule ... is farthest north, and that there the circle of the summer tropic is the same as the Arctic[31] Circle.
Eratosthenes extends the latitudinal distance from Massalia to Celtica to 5000 stadia (7.1°), placing the base line in Normandy. The northernmost location cited in Britain at the Firth of Clyde is now northern Scotland.
To get this country south of Britain to conform to Strabo's interpretation of Pytheas, Ptolemy has to rotate Scotland by 90°.
The 5000 stadia must be discounted: it crosses the Borysthenes upriver near Kiev rather than at the mouth.
It does place Pytheas on the Arctic Circle, which in Norway is just south of the Lofoten islands. On the surface it appears that Eratosthenes altered the base line to pass through the northern extreme of Celtica. Pytheas, as related by Hipparchus, probably cited the place in Celtica where he first made land. If he used the same practice in Norway, Thule is at least the entire northwest coast of Norway from Trondheim to the Lofoten Islands.
The explorer, Richard Francis Burton, in his study of Thule points out that it has had many definitions over the centuries. Many more authors have written about it than remembered Pytheas. The question of the location of Pytheas' Thule remains. The latitudes given by the ancient authors can be reconciled. The missing datum required to fix the location is longitude: "Manifestly we cannot rely upon the longitude."[33]
Pytheas crossed the waters northward from Berrice, in the north of the British Isles, but whether to starboard, larboard, or straight ahead is not known. From the time of the Roman Empire all the possibilities were suggested repeatedly by each generation of writers: Iceland, Shetland, the Faroe Islands, Norway and later Greenland. A manuscript variant of a name in Pliny has abetted the Iceland theory: Nerigon instead of Berrice, which sounds like Norway. If one sails west from Norway one encounters Iceland. Burton himself espoused this theory.
The standard texts have Berrice today, as well as Bergos for Vergos in the same list of islands.
The Scandiae islands are more of a problem, as they could be Scandinavia, but other islands had that name as well. Moreover, Procopius says that the earlier name of Scandinavia was Thule and that it was the home of the Goths. The fact that Pytheas returned from the vicinity of the Baltic favors Procopius's view.
The fact that Pytheas lived centuries before the colonization of Iceland and Greenland by European agriculturalists makes them less likely candidates, as Thule was populated and its soil was tilled.
Concerning the people of Thule Strabo says of Pytheas, but grudgingly he might possibly seem to have made adequate use of the facts as regards the people who live close to the frozen zone, when he says that, ... the people live on millet and other herbs, and on fruits and roots; and where there are grain and honey, the people get their beverage, also, from them.
As for the grain, he says, – since they have no pure sunshine – they pound it out in large storehouses, after first gathering in the ears thither; for the threshing floors become useless because of this lack of sunshine and because of the rains.
What he seems to be describing is an agricultural country that uses barns for threshing grain rather than the Mediterranean outside floor of sun-baked mud and manufactures a drink, possibly mead.
Encounter with drift ice
Pancake ice in the Baltic in spring near the Swedish coast.
After mentioning the crossing (navigatio) from Berrice to Tyle, Pliny makes a brief statement that:
A Tyle unius diei navigatione mare concretum a nonnullis Cronium appellatur.
"One day's sail from Thule is the frozen ocean, called by some the Cronian Sea."
The mare concretum appears to match Strabo's pepēguia thalatta and is probably the same as the topoi ("places") mentioned in Strabo's apparent description of spring drift ice, which would have stopped his voyage further north and was for him the ultimate limit of the world. Strabo says:
Pytheas also speaks of the waters around Thule and of those places where land properly speaking no longer exists, nor sea nor air, but a mixture of these things, like a "marine lung", in which it is said that earth and water and all things are in suspension as if this something was a link between all these elements, on which one can neither walk nor sail.
The term used for "marine lung" (pleumōn thalattios) appears to refer to jellyfish of the type the ancients called sea-lung. The latter are mentioned by Aristotle in On the Parts of Animals as being free-floating and insensate.[38] They are not further identifiable from what Aristotle says but some pulmones appear in Pliny as a class of insensate sea animal;[39] specifically the halipleumon ("salt-water lung").[40] William Ogle, Aristotle's translator and annotator, attributes the name sea-lung to the lung-like expansion and contraction of the Medusae, a kind of Cnidaria, during locomotion.
The ice resembled floating circles in the water. The modern term for this phenomenon is pancake ice.
The association of Pytheas' observations with drift ice has long been standard in navigational literature, including Nathaniel Bowditch's American Practical Navigator, which begins Chapter 33, Ice Navigation, with Pytheas. At its edge, sea, slush, and ice mix, surrounded by fog.
Discovery of the Baltic
Amber
Strabo says that Pytheas gave an account of "what is beyond the Rhine as far as Scythia", which he, Strabo, thinks is false.[43] In the geographers of the late Roman Republic and early Roman Empire, such as Ptolemy, Scythia stretches eastward from the mouth of the Vistula; thus Pytheas must have described the Germanic coast of the Baltic sea; if the statement is true, there are no other possibilities. As to whether he explored it in person, he said that he explored the entire north in person (see under Thule above). As the periplus was a sort of ship's log, he probably did reach the Vistula.
According to The Natural History by Pliny the Elder:
Pytheas says that the Gutones, a people of Germany, inhabit the shores of an estuary of the Ocean called Mentonomon, their territory extending a distance of six thousand stadia; that, at one day's sail from this territory, is the Isle of Abalus, upon the shores of which, amber is thrown up by the waves in spring, it being an excretion of the sea in a concrete form; as, also, that the inhabitants use this amber by way of fuel, and sell it to their neighbours, the Teutones.
The "Gutones" is a simplification of two manuscript variants, Guttonibus and Guionibus, which would be in the nominative case Guttones or Guiones, the Goths in the mainstream view.
The second major manuscript variant is either Mentonomon (nominative case) or Metuonidis (genitive case). A number of etymologies have been proposed but none very well accepted. Amber is not actually named.
It is called the concreti maris purgamentum, "the leavings of the frozen sea" after the spring melt. Diodorus uses ēlektron, the Greek word for amber, the object that gave its name to electricity through its ability to acquire a charge.
Pliny is presenting an archaic view, as in his time amber was a precious stone brought from the Baltic at great expense, but the Germans, he says, use it for firewood, according to Pytheas.
"Mentonomon" is unambiguously stated to be an aestuarium or "estuary" of 6000 stadia, which using the Herodotean standard of 600 feet per stadium is 681 miles. That number happens to be the distance from the mouth of the Skagerrak to the mouth of the Vistula, but no source says explicitly where the figure was taken. Competing views, however, usually have to reinterpret "estuary" to mean something other than an estuary, as the west of the Baltic Sea is the only body of estuarial water of sufficient length in the region.
Earlier Pliny says that a large island of three days' sail from the Scythian coast called Balcia by Xenophon of Lampsacus is called Basilia by Pytheas.
It is generally understood to be the same as Abalus. Based on the amber, the island could have been Heligoland, Zealand, the shores of Bay of Gdansk, Sambia or the Curonian Lagoon, which were historically the richest sources of amber in northern Europe. This is the earliest use of Germania.
Voyage to the Don
Pytheas claimed to have explored the entire north; however, he turned back at the mouth of the Vistula, the border with Scythia. If he had gone on he would have discovered the ancestral Balts. They occupied the lands to the east of the Vistula. In the west they began with the people living around Frisches Haff, Lithuanian Aismarės, "sea of the Aistians", who in that vicinity became the Baltic Prussians.
On the east Herodotus called them the Neuri, a name related to Old Prussian narus, "the deep", in the sense of water country. Later Lithuanians would be "the people of the shore". The Vistula was the traditional limit of Greater Germany. Place names featuring *ner- or *nar- are wide-ranging over the vast Proto-Baltic homeland, occupying western Russia before the Slavs.
Herodotus says that the Neuri had Scythian customs, but they were at first not considered Scythian.
During the war between the Scythians and the Persian Empire, the Scythians came to dominate the Neuri. Strabo, younger contemporary of Pytheas, denies that any knowledge of the shores of the eastern Baltic existed. He had heard of the Sauromatai, but had no idea where to place them.
Herodotus had mentioned these Sauromatai as a distinct people living near the Neuri. Pliny the Elder, however, is much better informed. The island of Baunonia (Bornholm), he says lies a days' sail off Scythia, where amber is collected.
To him the limit of Germany is the Vistula. In contrast to Strabo, he knows that the Goths live around the Vistula, but these are definitely Germans.
By the time of Tacitus, the Aestii have emerged.
The former Scythia is now entirely Sarmatia. Evidently the Sarmatians have conquered westward to the Vistula. The Goths have moved to the south. That the Balts lived east of the Vistula from remote prehistoric times is unquestioned. The Baltic languages, however, are only known from the 2nd millennium AD. They are known to have developed in tribal contexts, as they were originally tribal. The first mention of any tribes is in Ptolemy's description of European Sarmatia, where the main Prussian tribes are mentioned for the first time.
In Tacitus, only the language of the Aestii is mentioned. Strabo distinguishes the Venedi, who were Slavs. From these few references, which are the only surviving evidence apart from place name analysis, it would seem that the Balts Pytheas would have encountered were past the Common Balto-Slavic stage, but still spoke one language, which would have been Proto-Baltic. By turning back at what he thought was the limit of Germany, he not only missed the Balts, but did not discover that more Germans, the Goths, had moved into the Baltic area.
Polybius relates: "... on his return thence (from the north), he traversed the whole of the coast of Europe from Gades to the Tanais." Some authors consider this leg a second voyage, as it does not seem likely he would pass by Marseilles without refitting and refreshing the crew. It is striking that he encountered the border of Scythia, turned around, and went around Europe counter-clockwise until he came to the southern side of Scythia on the Black Sea. It is possible to speculate that he may have hoped to circumnavigate Europe, but the sources do not say.
In other, even more speculative interpretations, Pytheas returned north and the Tanais is not the Don but is a northern river, such as the Elbe river.
Pytheas' measurements of latitude
Latitude by the altitude of the sun
In discussing the work of Pytheas, Strabo typically uses direct discourse: "Pytheas says ..." In presenting his astronomical observations, he changes to indirect discourse: "Hipparchus says that Pytheas says ..." either because he never read Pytheas' manuscript (because it was not available to him) or in deference to Hipparchus, who appears to have been the first to apply the Babylonian system of representing the sphere of the earth by 360°.
Strabo uses the degrees, based on Hipparchus. Neither say that Pytheas did. Nevertheless, Pytheas did obtain latitudes, which, according to Strabo, he expressed in proportions of the gnōmōn ("index"), or trigonometric tangents of angles of elevation to celestial bodies. They were measured on the gnōmōn, the vertical leg of a right triangle, and the flat leg of the triangle. The imaginary hypotenuse looked along the line of sight to the celestial body or marked the edge of a shadow cast by the vertical leg on the horizontal leg.
Pytheas took the altitude of the sun at Massalia at noon on the longest day of the year and found that the tangent was the proportion of 120 (the length of the gnōmōn) to 1/5 less than 42 (the length of the shadow).
Hipparchus, relying on the authority of Pytheas (says Strabo, states that the ratio is the same as for Byzantium and that the two therefore are on the same parallel. Nansen and others prefer to give the cotangent 209/600, which is the inverse of the tangent, but the angle is greater than 45° and it is the tangent that Strabo states. His number system did not permit him to express it as a decimal but the tangent is about 2.87.
It is unlikely that any of the geographers could compute the arctangent, or angle of that tangent. Moderns look it up in a table. Hipparchos is said to have had a table of some angles. The altitude, or angle of elevation, is 70° 47’ 50″ but that is not the latitude.
At noon on the longest day the plane of longitude passing through Marseilles is exactly on edge to the sun. If the Earth's axis were not tilted toward the sun, a vertical rod at the equator would have no shadow. A rod further north would have a north-south shadow, and as an elevation of 90° would be a zero latitude, the complement of the elevation gives the latitude. The sun is even higher in the sky due to the tilt. The angle added to the elevation by the tilt is known as the obliquity of the ecliptic and at that time was 23° 44′ 40″.
The complement of the elevation less the obliquity is 43° 13′, only 5′ in error from Marseilles's latitude, 43° 18′.
Latitude by the elevation of the north pole
A second method of determining the latitude of the observer measures the angle of elevation of a celestial pole, north in the northern hemisphere. Seen from zero latitude the north pole's elevation is zero; that is, it is a point on the horizon. The declination of the observer's zenith also is zero and therefore so is his latitude.
As the observer's latitude increases (he travels north) so does the declination. The pole rises over the horizon by an angle of the same amount. The elevation at the terrestrial North Pole is 90° (straight up) and the celestial pole has a declination of the same value. The latitude also is 90.
Moderns have Polaris to mark the approximate location of the North celestial pole, which it does nearly exactly, but this position of Polaris was not available in Pytheas' time, due to changes in the positions of the stars.
Pytheas reported that the pole was an empty space at the corner of a quadrangle, the other three sides of which were marked by stars.
Their identity has not survived but based on calculations these are believed to have been α and κ in Draco and β in Ursa Minor.
Pytheas sailed northward with the intent of locating the Arctic Circle and exploring the "frigid zone" to the north of it at the extreme of the earth. He did not know the latitude of the circle in degrees. All he had to go by was the definition of the frigid zone as the latitudes north of the line where the celestial arctic circle was equal to the celestial Tropic of Cancer, the tropikos kuklos (refer to the next subsection). Strabo's angular report of this line as being at 24° may well be based on a tangent known to Pytheas, but he does not say that. In whatever mathematical form Pytheas knew the location, he could only have determined when he was there by taking periodic readings of the elevation of the pole (eksarma tou polou in Strabo and others).
Today the elevation can be obtained easily on ship with a quadrant. Electronic navigational systems have made even this simple measure unnecessary. Longitude was beyond Pytheas and his peers, but it was not of as great a consequence, because ships seldom strayed out of sight of land. East-west distance was a matter of contention to the geographers; they are one of Strabo's most frequent topics. Because of the gnōmōn north-south distances were accurate often to within a degree.
It is unlikely that any gnōmōn could be read accurately on the pitching deck of a small vessel at night. Pytheas must have made frequent overnight stops to use his gnōmōn and talk to the natives, which would have required interpreters, probably acquired along the way. The few fragments that have survived indicate that this material was a significant part of the periplus, possibly kept as the ship's log. There is little hint of native hostility; the Celts and the Germans appear to have helped him, which suggests that the expedition was put forward as purely scientific. In any case all voyages required stops for food, water and repairs; the treatment of voyagers fell under the special "guest" ethic for visitors.
Location of the Arctic Circle
The ancient Greek view of the heavenly bodies on which their navigation was imported from Babylonia by the Ionian Greeks, who used it to become a seafaring nation of merchants and colonists during the Archaic period in Greece. Massalia was an Ionian colony. The first Ionian philosopher, Thales, was known for his ability to measure the distance of a ship at sea from a cliff by the very method Pytheas used to determine the latitude of Massalia, the trigonometric ratios.
The astronomic model on which ancient Greek navigation was based, which is still in place today, was already extant in the time of Pytheas, the concept of the degrees only being missing. The model divided the universe into a celestial and an earthly sphere pierced by the same poles. Each of the spheres were divided into zones (zonai) by circles (kukloi) in planes at right angles to the poles. The zones of the celestial sphere repeated on a larger scale those of the terrestrial sphere.
The basis for division into zones was the two distinct paths of the heavenly bodies: that of the stars and that of the sun and moon. Astronomers know today that the Earth revolving around the sun is tilted on its axis, bringing each hemisphere now closer to the sun, now further away. The Greeks had the opposite model, that the stars and the sun rotated around the earth. The stars moved in fixed circles around the poles. The sun moved at an oblique angle to the circles, which obliquity brought it now to the north, now to the south. The circle of the sun was the ecliptic. It was the center of a band called the zodiac on which various constellations were located.
The shadow cast by a vertical rod at noon was the basis for defining zonation.
The intersection of the northernmost or southernmost points of the ecliptic defined the axial circles passing through those points as the two tropics (tropikoi kukloi, "circles at the turning points") later named for the zodiacal constellations found there, Cancer and Capricorn. During noon of the summer solstice (therinē tropē) rods there cast no shadow.
The latitudes between the tropics were called the torrid zone (diakekaumenē, "burned up").
Based on their experience of the Torrid Zone south of Egypt and Libya, the Greek geographers judged it uninhabitable. Symmetry requires that there be an uninhabitable Frigid Zone (katepsugmenē, "frozen") to the north and reports from there since the time of Homer seemed to confirm it. The edge of the Frigid Zone ought to be as far south from the North Pole in latitude as the Summer Tropic is from the Equator. Strabo gives it as 24°, which may be based on a previous tangent of Pytheas, but he does not say.
The Arctic Circle would then be at 66°, accurate to within a degree.
Seen from the equator the celestial North Pole (boreios polos) is a point on the horizon. As the observer moves northward the pole rises and the circumpolar stars appear, now unblocked by the Earth. At the Tropic of Cancer the radius of the circumpolar stars reaches 24°. The edge stands on the horizon. The constellation of mikra arktos (Ursa Minor, "little bear") was entirely contained within the circumpolar region. The latitude was therefore called the arktikos kuklos, "circle of the bear". The terrestrial Arctic Circle was regarded as fixed at this latitude. The celestial Arctic Circle was regarded as identical to the circumference of the circumpolar stars and therefore a variable.
When the observer is on the terrestrial Arctic Circle and the radius of the circumpolar stars is 66° the celestial Arctic Circle is identical to the celestial Tropic of Cancer.
That is what Pytheas means when he says that Thule is located at the place where the Arctic Circle is identical to the Tropic of Cancer.
At that point, on the day of the Summer Solstice, the vertical rod of the gnōmōn casts a shadow extending in theory to the horizon over 360° as the sun does not set. Under the pole the Arctic Circle is identical to the Equator and the sun never sets but rises and falls on the horizon. The shadow of the gnōmōn winds perpetually around it.
Latitude by longest day and shortest solar elevation
Strabo uses the astronomical cubit (pēchus, the length of the forearm from the elbow to the tip of the little finger) as a measure of the elevation of the sun. The term "cubit" in this context is obscure; it has nothing to do with distance along either a straight line or an arc, does not apply to celestial distances, and has nothing to do with the gnōmōn. Hipparchus borrowed this term from Babylonia, where it meant 2°. They in turn took it from ancient Sumer so long ago that if the connection between cubits and degrees was known in either Babylonia or Ionia it did not survive. Strabo states degrees in either cubits or as a proportion of a great circle. The Greeks also used the length of day at the summer solstice as a measure of latitude. It is stated in equinoctial hours (hōrai isēmerinai), one being 1/12 of the time between sunrise and sunset on an equinox.
Based partly on data taken from Pytheas, Hipparchus correlated cubits of the sun's elevation at noon on the winter solstice, latitudes in hours of a day on the summer solstice, and distances between latitudes in stadia for some locations.
Pytheas had proved that Marseilles and Byzantium were on the same parallel (see above). Hipparchus, through Strabo, adds that Byzantium and the mouth of the Borysthenes, today's Dnepr river, were on the same meridian and were separated by 3700 stadia, 5.3° at Strabo's 700 stadia per a degree of meridian arc. As the parallel through the river-mouth also crossed the coast of "Celtica", the distance due north from Marseilles to Celtica was 3700 stadia, a baseline from which Pytheas seems to have calculated latitude and distance.
Strabo says that Ierne (Ireland) is under 5000 stadia (7.1°) north of this line.
These figures place Celtica around the mouth of the Loire river, an emporium for the trading of British tin. The part of Ireland referenced is the vicinity of Belfast. Pytheas then would either have crossed the Bay of Biscay from the coast of Spain to the mouth of the Loire, or reached it along the coast, crossed the English channel from the vicinity of Brest, France to Cornwall, and traversed the Irish Sea to reach the Orkney Islands. A statement of Eratosthenes attributed by Strabo to Pytheas, that the north of the Iberian Peninsula was an easier passage to Celtica than across the Ocean, is somewhat ambiguous: apparently he knew or knew of both routes, but he does not say which he took.
At noon on the winter solstice the sun stands at 9 cubits and the longest day on the summer solstice is 16 hours at the baseline through Celtica.[70] At 2500 stadia, approximately 283 miles, or 3.6°, north of Celtica, are a people Hipparchus called Celtic, but whom Strabo thinks are the British, a discrepancy he might not have noted if he had known that the British were also Celtic. The location is Cornwall. The sun stands at 6 cubits and the longest day is 17 hours. At 9100 stadia, approximately 1032 miles, north of Marseilles, 5400 or 7.7° north of Celtica, the elevation is 4 cubits and the longest day is 18 hours. This location is in the vicinity of the Firth of Clyde.
Here Strabo launches another quibble. Hipparchus, relying on Pytheas, according to Strabo, places this area south of Britain, but he, Strabo, calculates that it is north of Ierne. Pytheas, however, rightly knows what is now Scotland as part of Britain, land of the Picts, even though north of Ierne. North of southern Scotland the longest day is 19 hours. Strabo, based on theory alone, states that Ierne is so cold[27] that any lands north of it must be uninhabited. In the hindsight given to moderns Pytheas, in relying on observation in the field, appears more scientific than Strabo, who discounted the findings of others merely because of their strangeness to him. The ultimate cause of his skepticism is simply that he did not believe Scandinavia could exist. This disbelief may also be the cause of alteration of Pytheas' data.
Pytheas on the tides
Pliny reports that "Pytheas of Massalia informs us, that in Britain the tide rises 80 cubits."
The passage does not give enough information to determine which cubit Pliny meant; however, any cubit gives the same general result. If he was reading an early source, the cubit may have been the Cyrenaic cubit, an early Greek cubit, of 463.1 mm, in which case the distance was 37 metres (121 ft). This number far exceeds any modern known tides.
The National Oceanography Centre, which records tides at tidal gauges placed in about 55 ports of the UK Tide Gauge Network on an ongoing basis, records the highest mean tidal change between 1987 and 2007 at Avonmouth in the Severn Estuary of 6.955 m (22.82 ft).
The highest predicted spring tide between 2008 and 2026 at that location will be 14.64 m (48.0 ft) on 29 September 2015.
Even allowing for geologic and climate change, Pytheas' 80 cubits far exceeds any known tides around Britain. One well-circulated but unevidenced answer to the paradox is that Pytheas is referring to a storm surge.
Matching fragments of Aëtius in pseudo-Plutarch and Stobaeus attribute the flood tides (πλήμμυραι plēmmurai) to the "filling of the moon" (πλήρωσις τῆς σελήνης plērōsis tēs sēlēnēs) and the ebb tides (ἀμπώτιδες ampōtides) to the "lessening" (μείωσις meiōsis). The words are too ambiguous to make an exact determination of Pytheas' meaning, whether diurnal or spring and neap tides are meant, or whether full and new moons or the half-cycles in which they occur. Different translators take different views.
That daily tides should be caused by full moons and new moons is manifestly wrong, which would be a surprising view in a Greek astronomer and mathematician of the times. He could have meant that spring and neap tides were caused by new and full moons, which is partially correct in that spring tides occur at those times. A gravitational theory (objects fall to the center) existed at the time but Pytheas appears to have meant that the phases themselves were the causes (αἰτίαι aitiai). However imperfect or imperfectly related the viewpoint, Pytheas was the first to associate the tides to the phases of the moon.
Pytheas was a central source of information on the North Sea and the subarctic regions of western Europe to later periods, and possibly the only source. The only ancient authors we know by name who certainly saw Pytheas' original text were Dicaearchus, Timaeus, Eratosthenes, Crates of Mallus, Hipparchus, Polybius, Artemidorus and Posidonius.
Notably the list does not include Strabo or Tacitus, though Strabo discusses him and Tacitus may likely have known about his work. Either of the two could have known him through other writers or have read his work in the original.
Strabo, citing Polybius, accuses Pytheas of promulgating a fictitious journey he could never have funded, as he was a private individual (idiōtēs) and a poor man (penēs).
Markham proposes a possible answer to the funding question: seeing that Pytheas was known as a professional geographer and that north Europe was as yet a question mark to Massalian merchants, he suggests that "the enterprise was a government expedition of which Pytheas was placed in command."
In another suggestion the merchants of Marseilles sent him out to find northern markets.
These theories are speculative but perhaps less so than Strabo's contention that Pytheas was a charlatan just because a professional geographer doubted him.
Strabo does explain his reasons for doubting Pytheas' veracity.
Citing numerous instances of Pytheas apparently being far off the mark on details concerning known regions, he says: "however, any man who has told such great falsehoods about the known regions would hardly, I imagine, be able to tell the truth about places that are not known to anybody."
As an example he mentions that Pytheas says Kent is several days' sail from Celtica when it is visible from Gaul across the channel. If Pytheas had visited the place he should have verified it personally.
The objection although partially true is itself flawed. Strabo interjects his own view of the location of Celtica, that it was opposite to Britain, end to end.
Pytheas, however, places it further south, around the mouth of the Loire (see above), from which it might justifiably be several days' sail.
The people across from Britain in Caesar's time are the Germani in the north and the Belgae in the south. Still, some of the Celtic lands were on the channel and were visible from it, which Pytheas should have mentioned but Strabo implies he did not.
Strabo's other objections are similarly flawed or else completely wrong. He simply did not believe the earth was inhabited north of Ierne. Pytheas however could not then answer for himself, or protect his own work from loss or alteration, so most of the questions concerning his voyage remain unresolved, to be worked over by every generation. To some he is a daring adventurer and discoverer;[79] to others, a semi-legendary blunderer or prevaricator.
The logical outcome of this tendency is the historical novel with Pytheas as the main character and the celebration of Pytheas in poetry beginning as far back as Virgil. The process continues into modern times; for example, Pytheas is a key theme in Charles Olson's Maximus Poems. Details of Pytheas’ voyage also serve as the backdrop for Chapter I of Poul Anderson’s science fiction novel, The Boat of a Million Years.
ANCIENT ROADS AND TRACKS.
The road system of Constantine is not merely medieval, it is prehistoric. This is not intended to be a criticism of those who have charge of the roads but merely a statement of fact. There are no
roads in the parish worth mentioning that have been made in modern times .We have seen that the principal roads leading northwards from the Helford River are ridgeways. The most westerly is still in use as the main road from Gweek to the Helston-Truro road ( itself a ridgeway ) at Buttres Gate. Beyond that it once continued by Stythians, Bissoe and Baidu till it joined the principal ridgeway running along the watershed from one end of Cornwall to the other. This road brought the tin bearing region of Stythians into communication with the port of Gweek. It enters Constantine parish at a place called Ponstreath or Ponstrays , which is possibly a corruption of Penstrase , i.e., Street-end, the word strase or strad being used for a paved way, a relic of the Roman strata . At Carloggas a fortification adjoined it . At Tolvan it was crossed by the principal track leading across the parish, and the meeting place of the roads was doubtless suggested by the presence of the Tolvan
Quoit2.
The second ridgeway from Gweek runs up to Carwythenack Chase, where an earthwork lies on its left hand3. Then it went straight up over the top of Brill hill, to Trevease, passing the stone cross at the ford, and so out to join the other ridgeway at Buttres Gate. This road is only used in its lower part, but it can be traced through the crofts on Brill hill by a double line of hedges.
Ancient Roads and Tracks 17
The third ancient ridgeway is that coming from the Quay at Merthen Hole, up through the woods, across the old deer park, where it passes through the ditch of the earthworks, so out over the Downs, across the fields to Brill. Then to Trewardreva and over the ford (Ret) which gave name to Retallack. So up the hill along past the site of Maen Rock, skirting Treworvac, across the fields to the “ Dead lane” , where it proves its antiquity by being a part of the parish boundary, then into the Lestraines lane and out to the Turnpike from Helston to Truro at Rame. The “ Dead lane ” is a strip of this ridgeway which has not been used for over a century, and is so called because It is now a cul-de-sac. On either side of it is a tumulus, for barrows, like ancient roads, are found on ridges. It is remarkable that this lane, about three-quarters of a mile in length, is the only piece of road which forms part of the Constantine parish boundary. All the rest of the boundary is formed by creeks, streams, or, for a very small distance, by hedges. At Merthen Hole it is a typical pack-horse track cut out of the rock. Its paving stones remain beneath the fields and make ploughing Impossible.The fourth main ridgeway is the present main road from Penryn, entering the parish near Bossawsack and continuing past High Cross down to the river atCalamansack. There are two principal tracks across the parish from east to west, 2nd as the lower has to traverse six deep valleys, it affords a good example of the precipitous nature of old roads.
This enters the parish from Mawnan at Tregarne Mill, passes the steep hill to Treworval , by what is now a rough lane, continues across the fields to Driff and Treviades, then down past Gwealllin to the creek-head at Polwheveral. This part bore the name Clodgy lane in 1649, a common name in Cornwall, derived, in all zbability, from Clud, a carriage, or perhaps from Clodding, meaning trenched ” or “ embanked5.” At the bottom stood two grist mills, d • Tucking or Fulling Mill. The bridge over the stream was built as appears from the contract between the parish and Roger Urd, a mason, of Tregoney, entered into the old Vestry Book . It appears to continue on the other side of the river through Tremayne and Henforth ( =Old road ) to St. Martins. ‘, Clodgy lane at Helston. Mr. Henderson later changed his mind, and Came to the conclusion that Clodgy meant a Lazar-house. a copy of this interesting document in the present writer’s Old Cornish Bridges,
TIN. COPPER. was not, as some writers imagine, limited by the western parts of Somersetshire. It is not to be imagined, that they could neglect a corner of our island, productive of a metal so useful in mechanics as tin, and which it yielded in such plenty, as to receive from that circumstance the name.
So great was the intercourse that foreign nations had with the inhabitants bordering on Belerium,
as to give them a greater scavoir vivre, and more extensive hospitality, than was to be found in other parts of the island. They were equally expert in working the mines, and preparing the ore, which
lay in earthy veins within the rocky strata. They melted and purified it, then cast it into rows of cubes, and carried it to let is, the modern Mount St. Michael: from thence it was transported into Gaul; conveyed from the place it was landed at, on horses’ backs, a journey of thirty days, to the mouth of the Rhone, and also to the Massylians, and the town of Narbonne".
Copper.
Did not Caesar and Strabo agree in their account, I should never have believed it possible
that the Britons could have neglected their rich mines of copper, and have been obliged at first to import that metal. Perhaps the ore was less
accessible, and the art of fusion unknown; for islands, from their very situation, must remain
Rivers and navigable creeks, p. 36. Tamar, Lynher, p. 38. Tide, or Tidi, p. 40. Seaton, ib.
Loo, or Eaft-Loo, ibid. ProfpoCt of Loo Bridge," ib. Duloo, or Weft Loo river, p. 41. fawy, ib.
Fal, 42, and it’s harbour. Hel, or Heyl river in Kerricr, p. 43. Lo or Low river in Kerrier, p 44.
A1
Heyl in Penwith, ibid. Ganal creek, p. 45. River Alan, al Lamel, ibid. Wade navigable rivers in
may be made notbeneficial, p. 47. Subject: to obftrudtions, p. 49.
