The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek

Author - Barry Cunliffe ... [Goo?] [Posters]

This Hardcover Book item from Walker & Company was reviewed on 16-Oct-2008.

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1) Hardcover Book The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek by Walker & Company.
Pytheas was a native of the Greek colony of Massalia (Marseilles), who may have made a remarkable journey around the Atlantic coast of Europe 2,300 years ago. His book has been lost, no fragments survive, and he is known to us only through commentators. He apparently visited Britain -- the "man who discovered Britain" according to the subtitle -- and traveled to Iceland and Denmark.

Others had traveled outside the Mediterranean in that era. The Pharaoh Necho II in about 600 BC arranged for some Phoenician ships to circumnavigate Africa. Several hundred years later Carthaginians sailed as far as the the Sargasso Sea.

The Greeks were concerned about their supplies of tin and amber. The Carthaginians threatened the closure of the straits of Gibraltar as the Greeks expanded westward. Cunliffe seeks to recreate Pytheas´ book "On the Ocean" from fragments quoted by other writers in later centuries, and arguments between his supporters and those who considered him a fraud. (Shades of Marco Polo´s reception many centuries later!)

Cunliff posits that Pytheas went north-west by land across southern France and down the Garonne valley. Then he took to the sea to Brittany and then around England and Scotland, visiting the Isle of Man, the Orkneys and Iceland. He may also have explored the estuaries of Holland and Flanders, the mouth of the Baltic and the Jutland peninsula.

From references to Pytheas by later geographers, we know that his book described tin mines of Cornwall and the amber beaches of the north. He also described local craft - hide boats with 16 oarsmen that crossed across the Irish Sea - and the midnight sun. "The barbarians pointed out... places where the sun lies down... the night is extremely short: two hours in some places, three in others."

Polybius read the book a hundred years later and was incredulous at Pytheas´s description of the "congealed sea", those parts "where neither earth was in existence by itself nor sea nor vapor, but instead a sort of mixture of these rather like a marine lung in which... the earth and the sea and all things are together suspended". Others found him an outright liar. But Geminus of Rhodes (around 50 C. E.) quoted from him extensively, and Pliny the Elder, who died in the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 C. E., accepted him "as an entirely reliable observer".

Some of the most fascinating parts of the book are Cunliff´s descriptions of sites that he himself has excavated in Jutland, Cornwall, Brittany and the south of France. And, there is one tantalizing hint that Pytheas was real; Alexander the Great is quoted during his final illness in Babylonia as planning an invasion of Britain. Could he have heard of Pytheas´ journey?

I enjoyed the history, but really enjoyed the sense of curiosity and fun that Cunliffe displays.

Robert C. Ross 2008¤

2) Hardcover Book The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek by Walker & Company. I couldn´t help feeling, as the book progressed, that Barry Cunliffe was filling-out, what little is known about Pytheas, with anything that would fill the space. "...and if Pytheas had landed at this spot he may have been impressed by the view, and might have taken tea and scones at the local tea-shop (if one were nearby, and had he arrived a couple of millenia later)This is the kind of stuff that, although he didn´t write these exact words, he may as well have. A long digression would then follow on some local custom or trade (sometimes pre-dating Pytheas by centuries).
The worst thing about this book was that a modern author could give such a dry account that, I am certain, would have been far more enjoyable in Pytheas´ own words, as all the translations of the ancients I have ever read flow more easily (including Thucydides).
¤

3) Hardcover Book The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek by Walker & Company. Anyone interested in archaeology would enjoy this book because it ties the more well known classical greco-roman world with its "barbarian" neighbors. Though people may read the title expecting to find some sort of firsthand account that would be to miss the point. What you get is a colorful interpretation (sometimes based on archaeological finds) of the life of ancient Celts and Britons and the ways in which their trade with the Mediterranean may have functioned.
However, towards the end of the book the reader might start to notice that Professor Cunliffe´s understanding of Roman history in particular is a bit loose. He has Pompey outliving his own murder by a year and engaging Caesar in the Alexandrian interlude to the Civil War. Later, he makes the same mistake again and further errs that Pompey was occupying the Palace in Alexandria against the siege of Caesar (in reality it was Caesar who was besieged by the Egyptian general Achillas). Anyone interested in the more accurate firsthand version ought to give Caesar´s own words a chance in his "Civil War."
The above was not meant to be pedantic. It was simply to point out that if the author doesn´t possess an understanding of some of the sources he so often quotes, then the rest of his arguments pertaining to the sources that quote Pytheas seem a little less stable. Still, this book is sure to spark the reader to learn more about ancient history!¤

4) Hardcover Book The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek by Walker & Company. Native Americans and Pacific Islanders who get annoyed by stories of their countries being "discovered" might feel vindicated by this account of the first civilized explorer of the British Isles, where he encountered cannibals who "openly have intercourse not only with other women but with their mothers and sisters"which Cunliffe thinks may be "accurate anthropological observation."
No full copy of Pytheas´s book survives so his voyage has to be reconstructed from quotations in other writers. These seem consistent enough and to contain enough valid observations about tides and sun movements to indicate that there was some truth in his story. The material is so sparse that in order to fill his book Cunliffe fleshes it out with a lot of speculation and archeological data. He is evidently an authority in many fields. For example he is able to detect that Polybius´s attack on Pytheas "has all the hallmarks of intense academic jealousy." (Cunfiffe is a professor of European archeology at Oxford). An interesting speculation is whether Pytheas reached Iceland. Cunliffe thinks he did, and presents interesting evidence. It does appear likely that Iceland was inhabited before the Vikings got there.¤

5) Hardcover Book The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek by Walker & Company. With a title like THE EXTRAORDINARY VOYAGE OF PYTHEAS THE GREEK, I was expecting an interesting, readable account. Instead, I got convoluted bits and pieces of info. Not a whole lot of it had to do with Pytheas.

I won´t even go into the historical relevance of this book, because frankly I didn´t pay a lot of attention to it. As an ancient history grad student & writer myself, I really wish that historians paid more attention to writing well.¤

6) Hardcover Book The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek by Walker & Company. Around 330 b.c., a remarkable adventurer named Pytheas set out from the Greek colony of Massalia (now Marseille) on the Mediterranean Sea to explore the fabled, terrifying lands of northern Europe. Renowned archaeologist Barry Cunliffe here re-creates Pytheas´s unprecedented journey, which occurred almost 300 years before Julius Caesar landed in Britain. Beginning with an invaluable pocket history of early Mediterranean civilization, Cunliffe illuminates what Pytheas would have seen and experienced-the route he likely took to reach Brittany, then Britain, Iceland, and Denmark; and evidence of the ancient cultures he would have encountered on shore. The discoveries Pytheas made would reverberate throughout the civilized world for years to come, and in recounting his extraordinary voyage, Cunliffe chronicles an essential chapter in the history of civilization.¤

Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 13-Nov-2008, , 320-660-790-730-590-UYB-8

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