One great fault, however, is a lopsided Scotland, which in one hypothesis is the result of Ptolemy using Pytheas ' measurements of latitude ( Pytheas # Pytheas ' measurements of latitude | see below ).

Manuscript variants however offer a P-alternating with B -, and there is good reason for thinking that the name learned by Pytheas had P -, as in * Pretania or * Pritannia, etc.

Pytheas claimed to have explored the entire north ; however, he turned back at the mouth of the Vistula, the border with Scythia.

Citing numerous instances of Pytheas apparently being far off the mark on details concening known regions, he says: " however, any man who has told such great falsehoods about the known regions would hardly, I imagine, be able to tell the truth about places that are not known to anybody.

Pytheas, however, places it further south, around the mouth of the Loire ( see above ), from which it might justifiably be several days ' sail.

Pytheas however could not then answer for himself, or protect his own work from loss or alteration, so most of the questions concerning his voyage remain unresolved, to be worked over by every generation.

This number is in the neighborhood of what a triangular perimeter ought to be but it cannot be verified against anything Pytheas may have said, nor is Diodorus Siculus very precise about the locations of the legs.

The issue of what he did say can never be settled until more fragments of Pytheas turn up.

" Strabo does not believe it but he explains what Pytheas means by the ends of the world.

Strabo says that Pytheas gave an account of " what is beyond the Rhine as far as Scythia ", which he, Strabo, thinks is false.

That is what Pytheas means when he says that Thule is located at the place where the Arctic Circle is identical to the Tropic of Cancer.

Pytheas description of Thule as a land six days sailing north of Britain, where there is no nightfall in summer, might be the first written reference to what we today know as Norway.

At around 320 BC, Pytheas of Massalia sailed around Britain and along the northern coast of Europe, and what he found on his journeys was so strange that later writers refused to believe him.

Another early reference to Amber was Pytheas ( 330 BC ) whose work " On the Ocean " is lost, but was referenced by Pliny.

Pytheas says that the Gutones, a people of Germany, inhabit the shores of an estuary of the Ocean called Mentonomon, their territory extending a distance of six thousand stadia ; that, at one day's sail from this territory, is the Isle of Abalus, upon the shores of which, amber is thrown up by the waves in spring, it being an excretion of the sea in a concrete form ; as, also, that the inhabitants use this amber by way of fuel, and sell it to their neighbors, the Teutones.

Pliny is presenting an archaic view, as in his time amber was a precious stone brought from the Baltic at great expense, but the Germans, he says, use it for firewood, according to Pytheas.

Earlier Pliny says that a large island of three days ' sail from the Scythian coast called Balcia by Xenophon of Lampsacus is called Basilia by Pytheas.

It is possible that Pliny refers to an island named Basilia (" kingdom " or " royal ") in On the Ocean by Pytheas.

Fosite has been suggested to be a loan of Greek Poseidon into pre-Proto-Germanic, perhaps via Greeks purchasing amber ( Pytheas is known to have visited the area of Heligoland in search of amber ).

In this passage, Pytheas states that the " Gutones, a people of Germany ," inhabit the shores of an estuary of at least 6, 000 stadia ( the Baltic Sea ) called Mentonomon, where amber is cast up by the waves.

As those Gutones are put forward as Pliny's interpretation, not Pytheas ’, the early date is unconfirmed, but not necessarily invalid.

The first historical mention of the region is from the Massaliote Periplus, a sailing manual for merchants thought to date to the 6th century BCE, and Pytheas of Massilia wrote of his exploratory voyage to the island around 325 BC.

The Carthaginian sailor Himilco is said to have visited the island in the 5th century BC and the Greek explorer Pytheas in the 4th.

Pytheas is the first known scientific visitor and reporter of the arctic, polar ice, and the Germanic tribes.

That is all the information that survives concerning the date of Pytheas ' voyage.

The last link is supplied by Strabo, who says that an emporium on the island of Corbulo in the mouth of the Loire was associated with the Britain of Pytheas by Polybius.

During the last half of the 4th century BC, the time of Pytheas ' voyage, Massaliotes were presumably free to operate as they pleased ; there is, at least, no evidence of conflict with Carthage in any of the sources that touch on the voyage.

The early part of Pytheas ' voyage is outlined by statements of Eratosthenes that Strabo says are false because taken from Pytheas.

Apparently, Pytheas said that tides ended at the " sacred promontory " ( Ieron akrōtērion, or Sagres Point ), and from there to Gades is said to be 5 days ' sail.

Whether Ptolemy would have had Pytheas ' real latitudes at that time is a much debated issue.

The allusion to Heracles ’ fight with the lion is also meant to incite why it is that Pytheas fights for the wreaths of the games: to obtain the undying glory that the heroes of old now possess for their deeds.

The Greek explorer Pytheas is the first to have written of Thule, doing so in his now lost work, On the Ocean, after his travels between 330 BC and 320 BC.

Both men had access to the now lost texts of the ancient Greek geographer Pytheas, who visited the island in the fourth century BC.

Archaeologists believe that Saint-Nazaire is built upon the remnants of Corbilo, an Armorican Gaulish city populated by the Namnetes tribe, which ( according to the Greek navigator Pytheas ) was the second-largest Gaulish city, after Massilia ( now Marseilles ).

The only surviving pre-Roman account of Scotland originated with the Greek Pytheas of Massalia who circumnavigated the British islands ( which he called Pretaniké ) in 325 BC, but the record of his visit dates from much later.

To get this country south of Britain to conform to Strabo's interpretation of Pytheas, Ptolemy has to rotate Scotland by 90 °.

Pytheas is a small lunar impact crater located on the southern part of the Mare Imbrium, to the south of the crater Lambert.

Strabo reports that Pytheas says he " travelled over the whole of Britain that was accessible.

Polybius adds that Pytheas said he traversed the whole of Britain on foot, of which he, Polybius, is skeptical.

For " Britain " Pytheas through Strabo uses Bretannikē as a feminine noun, although its form is that of an adjective: " the Britannic.

Diodorus based on Pytheas reports that Britain is cold and subject to frosts, being " too much subject to the bear ," and not " under the Arctic pole ," as some translations say.

Hipparchus, relying on Pytheas, according to Strabo, places this area south of Britain, but he, Strabo, calculates that it is north of Ierne.

Pliny reports that " Pytheas of Massalia informs us, that in Britain the tide rises 80 cubits.

Even allowing for geologic and climate change, Pytheas ' 80 cubits far exceeds any known tides around Britain.

Around 340 BC, the Greek navigator Pytheas of Massalia ventured from Greece to Western Europe and Great Britain.

The Lizard peninsula's original name may have been the Celtic name " Predannack " (" British one "); during the Iron Age ( Pytheas c. 325 BC ) and Roman period, Britain was known as Pretannike ( in Greek ) and as Albion ( and Britons the " Pretani ").

* The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek: The Man Who Discovered Britain ( 2001 ), Walker & Co ; ISBN 0-8027-1393-9 ( 2002 Penguin ed.

Polybius in his Histories ( c. 140 BC ), Book XXXIV, cites Pytheas as one " who has led many people into error by saying that he traversed the whole of Britain on foot, giving the island a circumference of forty thousand stades, and telling us also about Thule, those regions in which there was no longer any proper land nor sea nor air, but a sort of mixture of all three of the consistency of a jellyfish in which one can neither walk nor sail, holding everything together, so to speak.

Strabo in his Geography ( c. 30 ), Book I, Chapter 4, mentions Thule in describing Eratosthenes ' calculation of " the breadth of the inhabited world " and notes that Pytheas says it " is a six days ' sail north of Britain, and is near the frozen sea.

" But he then doubts this claim, writing that Pytheas has " been found, upon scrutiny, to be an arch falsifier, but the men who have seen Britain and Ierne ( Ireland ) do not mention Thule, though they speak of other islands, small ones, about Britain.

Nearly a half century later, in 77, Pliny the Elder published his Natural History in which he also cites Pytheas ' claim ( in Book II, Chapter 75 ) that Thule is a six-day sail north of Britain.

The location of " Thule ", first mentioned by Pytheas of Massilia when he visited Britain sometime between 322 and 285 BC is not known for certain.

30 BCE ), supposedly quoting or paraphrasing the 4th-century BCE geographer Pytheas, who had sailed to Britain: