Pytheas may also have heard of, or visited, a country or a large island (Jutland ?), which lay three days’ sail from the coast he was sailing along, and he may likewise have referred to it as a king’s island (βασίλεια). Timæus, or others, may have taken this for a name, both for Abalus and for this larger and more distant island, which has later been assumed to be the same as Balcia, a name that may be derived either from Pytheas or from some later writer.
As the Gutones resemble the Gytoni (Goths) of Tacitus, who lived on the Vistula, and as further Basilia and Balcia were the same country, the name of which was connected with that of the Baltic Sea, and as this country was identified with the south of Sweden, it was thought that Pytheas must have been in the amber country on the south coast of the Baltic, and even in Skåne. This view may appear to be supported by the fact that Strabo says he lied about the “Ostiæi,” who might then be the Esthonians. But as already remarked this word may be an error for “Ostimians”; and Gutones may further be an error for Teutones, since a carelessly written Τευ may easily be read as Γου [cf. Hergt, 1893, p. 33], and immediately afterwards it is stated that the Teutones (not Gutones) lived near Abalus. Whether Pytheas really mentioned “Balcia” or “Baltia” is, as already remarked, extremely doubtful; but even if he did so, and even if it lay in the Baltic, it is not certain that he was there, and he may only have been told about it. We need not therefore believe that he went farther than the coast of the North Sea. “Abalus” may have been Heligoland [cf. Hergt], or perhaps rather one of the islands of Sleswick,[72] where beach-washed amber is common, as along the whole west coast of Jutland. The statement that the natives used amber as fuel is a misunderstanding, which may be due to a discovery of Pytheas that amber was combustible. If he had really sailed past the Skaw and through the Belts into the Baltic, it is unlikely that he should only have mentioned one amber island Abalus, and another immense island farther off. We should expect him to have changed the ideas of his time about these regions to a greater extent than this. It is true that he might have travelled overland to the south coast of the Baltic; but neither is this very probable. It must nevertheless be borne in mind, as will be pointed out later, that until Strabo’s time no other voyages in these regions were known in literature, and it is, therefore, possible that much of what we find in Mela and Pliny on the subject was originally derived from Pytheas. If we did not possess this one chance passage in Pliny about Abalus and the amber, we should not know that Pytheas had said anything about it. But of how much more are we ignorant for want of similar casual quotations?
Importance of Pytheas
Little as we know of Pytheas himself, he yet appears to us as one of the most capable and undaunted explorers the world has seen. Besides being the first, of whom we have certain record, to sail along the coasts of northern Gaul and Germany, he was the discoverer of Great Britain, of the Scottish isles and Shetland, and last, but not least, of Thule or Norway, as far north as to the Arctic Circle. No other single traveller known to history has made such far-reaching and important discoveries.
But Pytheas was too far in advance of his time; his description of the new lands in the North was so pronouncedly antagonistic to current ideas that it won little acceptance throughout the whole succeeding period of antiquity. His younger contemporary, Dicæarchus, doubted him, and Polybius and Strabo, who came two hundred and three hundred years later, endeavoured, as we have seen, to throw suspicion upon Pytheas and to stamp him as an impostor. The two eminent geographers and astronomers, Eratosthenes and Hipparchus, seem to have valued him more according to his deserts. Polybius’s desire to lessen the fame of Pytheas may perhaps be explained by the fact that the former, a friend of Scipio, had taken part in many Roman campaigns, and claimed to be more widely travelled than any other geographer. But as his farthest north was the south of Gaul, he did not like the idea that an earlier traveller, who enjoyed great renown, should have penetrated so much farther into regions which were entirely unknown to himself. Men are not always above such littleness.
The World according to Strabo (K. Kretschmer, 1892)