Note 1066 — Chapter XCVIII · OUTLYING HELLENIC CITIES.

See the Fragmenta Pytheæ collected by Arfwedson, Upsal, 1824. He wrote two works—1. Γῆς Περιόδος. 2. Περὶ Ὠκεανοῦ. His statements were greatly esteemed, and often followed, by Eratosthenes; partially followed by Hipparchus; harshly judged by Polybius, whom Strabo in the main follows. Even by those who judge him most severely, Pytheas is admitted to have been a good mathematician and astronomer (Strabo, iv. p. 201)—and to have travelled extensively in person. Like Herodotus, he must have been forced to report a great deal on hearsay; and all that he could do was to report the best hearsay information which reached him. It is evident that his writings made an epoch in geographical inquiries; though they doubtless contained numerous inaccuracies. See a fair estimate of Pytheas in Mannert, Geog. der Gr. und Römer, Introd. i. p. 73-86.

The Massaliotic Codex of Homer, possessed and consulted among others by the Alexandrine critics, affords presumption that the celebrity of Massalia as a place of Grecian literature and study (in which character it competed with Athens towards the commencement of the Roman empire) had its foundations laid at least in the third century before the Christian era.