“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.
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.
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 βασίλεια νῆσος, 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.