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No statuary I, that I should fashion images to rest idly on their pedestals, nay but by every trading-ship and plying boat forth from Aigina fare, sweet song of mine, and bear abroad the news, how that Lampon's son, the strong-limbed Pytheas, hath won at Nemea the pankratiast's crown, while on his cheeks he showeth not as yet the vine-bloom's mother, mellowing midsummer.
According to Strabo, he considered the island of Thule as the most western part of the then known world, and reckoned his longitude from thence. With respect to the extent and discoveries of his voyage to the north, there is great difference of opinion. The veracity of Pytheas is utterly denied by Strabo and Polybius, and is strongly suspected by Dr.
It was about the year B.C. 340 that Pytheas set out from the columns of Hercules with a single vessel, but instead of taking a southerly course like his Carthaginian predecessors, he went northwards, passing by the coasts of Iberia and Gaul to the furthest points which now form the Cape of Finisterre, and then he entered the English Channel and came upon the English coast the British Isles of which he was to be the first explorer.
The account is, that Pytheas departed from Marseilles, coasted Spain, France, and the east or north-east side of Britain, as far as its northern extremity. Taking his departure from this, he continued his voyage, as he says, to the north, or perhaps to the north-east; and after six days' navigation, he arrived at a land called Thule, which he states to be 46,300 stadia from the equator.
This Phylakidas was a son of Lampon, and a brother of the Pytheas for whom the fifth Nemean was written. This ode must have been written shortly after the battle of Salamis, probably B.C. 478, and was to be sung at Aigina, perhaps at a festival of the goddess Theia who is invoked at the beginning.
The former bears a great resemblance to the ridge N. of Madler, and, like this, appears to traverse the N. border. The interior of Pytheas, which is depressed more than 2000 feet below the Mare, includes a brilliant central peak. LAMBERT. A ring-plain, 17 miles in diameter, presenting many noteworthy features.
He was very rarely heard to speak off-hand, but though he were by name frequently called upon by the people, as he sat in the assembly, yet he would not rise unless he had previously considered the subject, and come prepared for it. So that many of the popular pleaders used to make it a jest against him; and Pytheas once, scoffing at him, said that his arguments smelt of the lamp.
We are not assisted in finding out the truth, if, instead of founding our calculations and conjectures on the distance sailed in the six days, we take for their basis the distance which Pytheas states Thule to be from the equator.
The account of Pytheas, that near Thule, the sea, air, and earth, seemed to be confounded in one element, is supposed by Malte Brun to allude to the sandy downs of Jutland, whose hills shift with the wind; the marshes, covered with a crust of sand, concealing from the traveller the gulf beneath, and the fogs of a peculiarly dense nature which frequently occur.
Good naturalists as they were, and experienced breeders of farm-stock, they accepted white, brown, and black men; and were prepared to accept any other breed that Nearchus or Pytheas might confront them with, as members of one brotherhood, just as they accepted white, brown, or black sheep, with horns of Ammon or with none.
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