Editing Pytheas (section)

== Thule ==
Strabo, taking his text from Polybius, related that "Pytheas asserts that he explored in person the whole northern region of Europe as far as the ends of the world."<ref name=straboII-4-2>''Geographica'' [https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Strabo/2D*.html II.4.2].</ref> Strabo did not believe it but he explained what Pytheas meant by the ends of the world.<ref name=straboII-5-8>''Geographica'' [https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Strabo/2E1*.html II.5.8].</ref> ''Thoulē'', he said (now spelled [[Thule]]; [[Pliny the Elder]] uses ''Tyle''; [[Vergil]] references ''ultima Thule'' in [[Georgic]] I, Line 30, where the ''ultima'' refer to the end of the world<ref>{{harvnb|Burton|1875|p=2}}</ref>) 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, said Strabo, none of the other authors mention Thule, a fact which he used to discredit Pytheas, but which to moderns indicates Pytheas was the first explorer to arrive there and tell of it.

Thule was described as an island six days' sailing north of Britain, near the frozen sea (''pepēguia thalatta'', "solidified sea").<ref name=straboI-4-2>''Geographica'' [https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Strabo/1D*.html I.4.2].</ref> [[Pliny the Elder|Pliny]] added that it had no nights at midsummer when the sun was passing through the sign of the [[Cancer (constellation)|Crab]] (at the summer solstice),<ref name=plinyIV-30 /> a reaffirmation that it is on the Arctic Circle. He added that the crossing to Thule started at the island of ''Berrice'', "the largest of all", which may be [[Isle of Lewis|Lewis]] in the outer [[Hebrides]]. If ''Berrice'' was in the outer Hebrides, the crossing would have brought Pytheas to the coast of [[Møre og Romsdal]] or [[Trøndelag]], [[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 reported that [[Eratosthenes]] places Thule at a parallel 11500&nbsp;stadia (1305&nbsp;miles, or 16.4°) north of the mouth of the [[Borysthenes]].<ref name=straboI-4-2 /> The parallel running through that mouth also passes through Celtica and is Pytheas' base line. Using 3700 or 3800 stadia (approximately 420–430&nbsp;miles or 5.3°–5.4°) north of [[Marseille]] 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 may have reached land.

A statement by [[Geminus of Rhodes]] quotes ''On the Ocean'' as saying:<ref>{{harvnb|Nansen|1911|p=53}}; Geminus, ''Introduction to the Phenomena'', vi.9.</ref>
<blockquote>
... 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.
</blockquote>

Nansen claimed 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°&nbsp;32′ and 65°&nbsp;31′, partially confirming Hipparchus' statement of the latitude of Thule. And yet Strabo said:<ref name=straboII-5-8 /> <blockquote>
Pytheas of Massalia tells us that Thule&nbsp;... is farthest north, and that there the circle of the summer tropic is the same as the Arctic<ref>Page 54.</ref> Circle.
</blockquote>

Eratosthenes extended 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 [[Kyiv]] rather than at the mouth.<ref>The mouth was further north than it is today; even so, 48.4° is near [[Dnipro]]. The Greeks must be allowed some inaccuracy for their measurements. In any case damming has changed the river a great deal and a few thousand years has been enough to change the courses of many rivers.</ref> It does place Pytheas on the Arctic Circle, which in Norway is south of the [[Lofoten islands]]. It seems 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 somewhere on the entire northwest coast of Norway from [[Møre og Romsdal]] to the Lofoten Islands.

In his study of Thule, the explorer [[Richard Francis Burton]] stated that it had 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."<ref>{{harvnb|Burton|1875|p=10}}.</ref>

Pytheas crossed the waters northward from Berrice, in the north of the British Isles, but whether to [[Port and starboard|starboard, port]], 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'' presently, 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 (''De Bello Gothico'', Chapter 15) 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 opinion. The fact that Pytheas lived centuries before the colonization of Iceland and Greenland by European agriculturalists makes them less likely candidates, as he stated that Thule was populated and its soil was tilled.

Concerning the people of Thule Strabo says of Pytheas, but grudgingly:<ref>''Geographica'' [https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Strabo/4E*.html IV.5.5].</ref>
<blockquote>
... 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,&nbsp;... 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,&nbsp;– since they have no pure sunshine&nbsp;– 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.
</blockquote>

What he seems to be describing is an agricultural country that used [[barn (building)|barns]] for threshing grain rather than the Mediterranean outside floor of sun-baked mud and manufactured a drink, possibly [[mead]].<ref>Nelson points out that this passage in Strabo contains "ambiguity": he could mean either one drink made from grain and honey, in which case it would have to be mead unless one classified it as a combination of mead and beer, or two drinks, mead and beer. Strabo used the singular ''pōma'' for "beverage" but the neuter singular does not exclude a type of which there are two specifics. Some mead also is and was made with hops and is strained briefly through grain (see [[mead]]) The issue remains. See {{cite book|first=Max|last=Nelson|title=The Barbarian's Beverage: A History of Beer in Ancient Europe|publisher=Routledge|date=2005|isbn=0-415-31121-7|page=64}}</ref>