Note 6 — II. STRABO, MELA, PLINY, PTOLEMY.

See Rerum Script. Hiberniæ (Prolog., i., xii.), quoted at the end of this section. Of Pytheas we know little, except that he was a Phocæan or Massilian Greek, who is supposed to have made two voyages between B.C. 350 and B.C. 300. In the first, he sailed round Albion and reached Thule. In the second, he set out from Gadira (Cadiz) to the Tanais, which is popularly supposed to have been the Elbe. Both his works, “On the Ocean,” and the “Periplus,” are lost. Even Strabo, who seems to have had “that charlatan Pytheas on the brain,” does not deny his knowledge of astronomy, mathematics, and navigation. G. G. Bredow (Untersuchungen, etc., ii. 122-129, Altona, 1800), C. H. Tzschuckius (P. Melæ, lib. tres, Lipsiæ, 1806, vol. iii., pp. 223-230), and J. I. Pontanus (Chorographica Daniæ Descriptio, Amstelodami, 1631, folio, p. 741), give many references to Pytheas. See also Histoire Littéraire de France, i. 71, et seq.; Bougainville (Mémoires de Paris, xix. 146); D’Anville (Mém. de Paris, xxxii. 436, and his objections to the traveller having visited Iceland, 50, 441); Murray (Nov. Comm. Soc. Goetting, vi. 59-63, 82-86); Fournier (Hydrographie, 322, et seq.); and Wagner (Ad Guthrie Allgem. Welt. Gesch., xvi. 4). Forbiger (Handbuch der Alt. Geog., iii., Leip. 1848) also quotes a multitude of authors, including Mannert, Humboldt, and Lelewel (Pytheas u. die Geo. Sein. Zeit., s. 30).