“It is this last writer who states that he travelled all over Britain on foot, and that the island is above 40,000 stadia in circumference.[3] It is likewise he who describes Thule and other neighbouring places, where, according to him, neither earth, water, nor air exist separately, but a sort of concretion of all these, resembling marine sponge, in which the earth, the sea, and all things were suspended, this forming, as it were, a link to unite the whole together. It can neither be travelled over nor sailed through. As for the substance, he affirms that he has beheld it with his own eyes; the rest he reports on the authority of others. So much for the statements of Pytheas, who tells us besides, that after he had returned thence, he traversed the whole coasts of Europe from Gades to the Don. Polybius asks, ‘How is it possible that a private individual, and one too in narrow circumstances, could ever have performed such vast expeditions by sea and land?[4] And how could Eratosthenes, who hesitates whether he may rely on his statements in general, place such entire confidence in what the writer relates concerning Britain, Gades, and Iberia?’ Says he, ‘It would have been better had Eratosthenes trusted to the Messenian (Euhemerus or Evemerus) rather than to this writer. The former merely pretends to have sailed into one [unknown] country, viz., Panchæa, but the latter that he has visited the whole of the north of Europe, as far as the ends of the earth; which statement, even had it been made by Mercury, we should not have believed. Nevertheless Eratosthenes, who terms Euhemerus a Bergæan, gives credit to Pytheas, although even Dicærchus would not believe him.’”
In book ii., chap. 5, § 8, we have a further notice of Thule:
“It is true that Pytheas Massiliensis affirms that the farthest country north of the British Islands is Thule; for which place, he says, the summer tropic and the Arctic circle is all one. But he records no other particulars concerning it; [he does not say] whether Thule is an island, or whether it continues habitable up to the point where the summer tropic becomes one with the Arctic circle. For myself, I fancy that the northern boundaries of the habitable earth are greatly south of this. Modern writers tell us of nothing beyond Ierne which lies just north of Britain, where the people live miserably and like savages, on account of the severity of the cold. It is here, in my opinion, the bounds of the habitable earth ought to be fixed.”
Finally, in book iv., chap. 5, § 5, we have the most important notice of all:
“The description of Thule is still more uncertain on account of its secluded situation; for they consider it the northernmost of all lands, of which the names are known. The falsity of what Pytheas has related concerning this and neighbouring places, is proved by what he has asserted of well-known countries. For if, as we have shown, his descriptions of these is in the main incorrect, what he says of far distant countries is still more likely to be false. Nevertheless, as far as astronomy and mathematics are concerned,[5] he appears to have reasoned correctly that people bordering on the frozen zone would be destitute of cultivated fruits and almost deprived of the domestic animals; that their food would consist of millet, herbs, fruits, and roots; and that where there was corn and honey they would make drink of these. That having no bright sun they would thresh their corn and store it in vast granaries, threshing-floors being useless on account of the rain and want of sun.”
The whole question evidently hinges upon the credibility of Pytheas Massiliensis, who travelled about the time of Alexander the Great. It has been ably argued, pro and con, by a host of writers, and in our day by the late Sir G. C. Lewis (Astronomy of the Ancients, p. 467, et seq.), and by Sir John Lubbock (Prehistoric Times, p. 59). But the dispute has not been settled. I would remark that the old traveller’s account is consistent enough. He appears to place Thule under N. lat. 66° (assuming, as Strabo does, the tropic at 24°), a parallel which would pass through the north of Iceland. He is quite right about the absence of fruits. His spongy matter may have been ice-brash, Medusæ, the German meer-lungen, or even pumice-stone, which modern travellers have found floating in such quantities upon the sea, within reach of volcanoes, that their movements were arrested. We read that about a month before the eruption of A.D. 1783, a submarine vent burst forth at a distance of nearly seventy miles in a south-westerly direction off Cape Reykjanes, and ejected such immense quantities of pumice that the surface of the ocean was covered with it to the distance of 150 miles, and the spring ships were impeded in their course. Also when Herodotus, a Greek—whose world embraced the Eridanus or Amber River, the Tin Isles, the Arimaspians and the Hyperboreans—could confound snow with feathers, Pytheas, a Marseillais, might be allowed some latitude in describing glaciers. Poverty has not prevented the most audacious journeys; and discovery has been mainly the work of individuals. Geminus (Isagoge, etc., cap. 5) opines that Pytheas was taken to Iceland against his will. The barbarians showed him where the sun set on the shortest day, and rose again after a short interval. Then the sea began to thicken “pulmonis marini (πνεὑμονι θαλαττἱῳ) simile.” He afterwards heard that where the sun does not set, is the uttermost part of the world, and cannot be travelled over. Greek outrecuidance evidently hated to be taught by a kind of Gaul like Pytheas. Strabo, with his captious, bilious, and acrid criticism, is wrong, and Pytheas is right, in a highly important part of the question, the inhabitability of the island. In fact, sundry modern writers have declared that, as far as we have the means of judging, Strabo’s predecessors, Pytheas and Eratosthenes, were more correctly informed than he was concerning the geography of the western parts of Europe.[6] The learned Isaac Casaubon (Commentaries upon Strabo) thus decides the question clean against his author: “Thule—non esse aliam quæ Islandia hodie dicitur, facile doctis viris assentior.” He adds that Eratosthenes held Pytheas to be an oracle, but when Polybius and others found his geography loose in points familiar to the Greeks, they pronounced him a liar, and rejected all he wrote.
I must therefore conclude that Pytheas, with all his fables, by Thule meant Iceland, and Iceland only; moreover, that he had acquired some knowledge of the island. Indeed Gosselin opined that both Pytheas and Eratosthenes had had access to the memoirs of some unknown ancient people to whom Europe and its seas were as well known as to ourselves. He argues that this people could not have been Babylonians, Phœnicians, Carthaginians, nor Egyptians. Bailly (Hist. de l’Astr. An., 1-3), entertaining a similar opinion, supposes them, after the fashion of the day, to be Antediluvians.
Mela.
Pomponius Mela (A.D. 41-54; De Situ Orbis, iii. 6) is our next authority. After mentioning Britannia and Iverna, the thirty islands of the Orcades, the seven Hæmodæ (Shetlands) fronting Germany,[7] and the Scandinavian Isle held by the Teutons,[8] he says:
“Thule fronts the seaboard of the Belcæ (alii Belgæ and Bergæ),[9] an island celebrated in the Greek poetry and in our own. There, as the sun rises to set afar off, the nights are indeed short; but during winter, as in other places, obscure; in summer they are light, because throughout that season (the sun), already raising himself higher (above the horizon), despite not being seen, yet illuminates the nearest parts by his approaching splendour. At the solstices there is no darkness, because then (the sun), becoming more manifest, shows not only his rays, but the greater part” (of his disc).