ANTIQUITY, BEFORE PYTHEAS

The learned world of early antiquity had nothing but a vague premonition of the North. Along the routes of traffic commercial relations were established at a very early time with the northern lands. At first these ran perhaps along the rivers of Russia and Eastern Germany to the Baltic, afterwards along the rivers of Central Europe as well. But the information which reached the Mediterranean peoples by these routes had to go through many intermediaries with various languages, and for this reason it long remained vague and uncertain.

What the people of antiquity did not know, they supplied by poetical and mythical conceptions; and in time there grew up about the outer limits of the world, especially on the north, a whole cycle of legend which was to lay the foundation of ideas of the polar regions for thousands of years, far into the Middle Ages, and long after trustworthy knowledge had been won, even by the voyages of the Norsemen themselves.

Long before people knew whether there were lands and seas far in the north, those who studied the stars had observed that there were some bodies in the northern sky which never set, and that there was a point in the vault of heaven which never changed its place. In time, they also found that, as they moved northwards, the circle surrounding the stars that were always visible became larger, and they saw that these in their daily movements described orbits about the fixed point or pole of the heavens. The ancient Chaldeans had already found this out. From this observation it was but a short step to the deduction that the earth could not be flat, as the popular idea made it, but must in one way or another be spherical, and that if one went far enough to the north, these stars would be right over one’s head. To the Greeks a circle drawn through the constellation of the Great Bear, which they called “Arktos,” formed the limit of the stars that were always visible. This limit was therefore called the Bear’s circle, or the “Arctic Circle,” and thus this designation for the northernmost regions of the earth is derived from the sky.

The world according to HecatÆus (BUNBURY)

According to the common Greek idea it was the countries of the Mediterranean and of the East that formed the disc of the earth, or “oecumene” (the habitable world). Around this disc, according to the Homeric songs (the Iliad was put into writing about 900 B.C.), flowed the all-embracing river “Oceanus,” the end of the earth and the limit of heaven. This deep, tireless, quietly flowing river, whose stream turned back upon itself, was the origin and the end of all things; it was not only the father of the Oceanides and of the rivers, but also the source whence came gods and men. Nothing definite is said of this river’s farther boundary; perhaps unknown lands belonging to another world whereon the sky rested were there; in any case we meet later, as in Hesiod, with ideas of lands beyond the Ocean, the Hesperides, Erythea, and the Isles of the Blest, which were probably derived from Phoenician tales. Originally conceived as a deep-flowing river, Oceanus became later the all-embracing empty ocean, which was different from the known sea (the Mediterranean) with its known coasts, even though connected with it. Herodotus (484-424 B.C.) is perhaps the first who used the name in this sense; he definitely rejects the idea of Oceanus as a river and denies that the “oecumene” should be drawn round, as though with a pair of compasses, as the Ionian geographers (HecatÆus, for example) thought. He considered it proved that the earth’s disc on the western side, and probably also on the south, was surrounded by the ocean, but said that no one could know whether this was also the case on the north and north-east. In opposition to HecatÆus[1] and the Ionian geographers (the school of Miletus) he asserted that the Caspian Sea was not a bay of the northern Oceanus, but an independent inland sea. Thus the “oecumene” became extended into the unknown on the north-east. He mentions several peoples as dwelling farthest north; but to the north of them were desert regions and inaccessible mountains; how far they reached he does not say.

The world according to the ideas of Herodotus (J. MURRAY)

He thus left the question undetermined, because, with the sound cool-headedness of the inquirer, which made him in a sense the founder of physical geography, he trusted to certain observations rather than to uncertain speculations; and therefore he maintained that the geographers of the Ionian school had not provided adequate proofs that the world was really surrounded by sea on all sides. But nevertheless, it was, perhaps, his final opinion that the earth’s disc swam like an island in Oceanus.

This common name for the ocean was soon dropped, and men spoke instead of the Outer Sea beyond the Pillars of Hercules in contradistinction to the Inner Sea (i.e., the Mediterranean). The Outer Sea was also called the Atlantic Sea after Atlas. This name is first found in Herodotus. South of Asia was the Southern Ocean or the ErythrÆan Sea (the Red Sea and Indian Ocean). North of Europe and Asia was the Northern Ocean; and the Caspian Sea was a bay of this, in the opinion of the majority. Doubtless, most people thought that these various oceans were connected; but the common name Oceanus does not reappear as applied to them until the second century B.C.[2]

According to the Homeric conception the universe was to be imagined somewhat as a hollow globe, divided in two by the disc of the earth and its encircling Oceanus; the upper hemisphere was that of light, or the heaven; the lower one Tartarus, hidden in eternal darkness. Hades lay beneath the earth, and Tartarus was as far below Hades as the sky was above the earth. The solid vault of heaven was borne by Atlas, but its extremities certainly rested upon Oceanus (or its outer boundary), or at least were contained thereby. According to Hesiod (about 800 B.C.) an anvil falling from heaven would not reach earth till the tenth day, and from the earth it would fall for nine days and nine nights and not reach the bottom of Tartarus until the tenth. This underworld is filled to the brim with triple darkness, and the Titans have been hurled into it and cannot come out. On the brink the limits of the earth, the waste Oceanus, black Tartarus, and the starry heaven all coincide. Tartarus is a deep gulf at which even the gods shudder; in a whole year it would be impossible to search through it.[3]

So early do we find three conceptions which two thousand years later still formed the foundation of the doctrine of the earth’s outer limits, especially on the north: (1) the all-embracing Oceanus or empty ocean; (2) the coincidence of sky, sea, land and underworld at the uttermost edge; and lastly (3) the dismal gulf into which even the gods were afraid of falling.

These or similar ideas still obtained long after the mathematical geographers had conceived the earth as a sphere. Pythagoras (568-about 494 B.C.) was probably the first to proclaim the doctrine of the spherical form of the earth. He relied less upon observation than upon the speculative idea that the sphere was the most perfect form. Before him Anaximander of Miletus (611-after 547 B.C.), to whom are attributed the invention of the gnomon or sun-dial, and the first representation of the earth’s disc on a map, had maintained that the earth was a cylinder floating in space; the inhabited part was the upper flat end. His pupil Anaximenes (second half of the sixth century B.C.) thought that the earth had the form of a trapezium, supported by the air beneath, which it compressed like the lid of a vase; while before him Thales of Miletus (640-about 548 B.C.) was inclined to hold that the earth’s disc swam on the surface of the ocean, in the middle of the hollow sphere of heaven, and that earthquakes were caused by movements of the waters.[4]

Parmenides of Elea (about 460 B.C.) divided the earth’s sphere into five zones or belts, of which three were uninhabitable: the zone of heat, or the scorched belt round the equator, and the two zones of cold at the poles. Between the warmth and the cold there were on either side of the hot zone two temperate zones where men might live. This division was originally derived from the five zones of the heavens, where the Arctic Circle formed the boundary of the northern stars that are always visible, and the tropics that of the zone dominated by the sun. Pythagoras seems to have been the first to transfer it to the globe, the centre of the universe.[5] This idea of the earth’s five habitable and uninhabitable zones was current till nearly the end of the Middle Ages; but at the same time one finds, often far on in the Middle Ages, the former conceptions of the empty ocean encircling all, and of the “oecumene” swimming in it as an island. Occasionally we meet with a vast unknown continent beyond this ocean, belonging to another world, which no one can reach.[6] Together with these theories, though not very conspicuously, the belief in the immeasurable gulf at the edge of the world also persisted; and this became the “Ginnungagap” of our forefathers.

The conception of the earth’s form and of its uttermost limits was thus by no means consistent, and on some points it was contradictory. We must always, and especially in dealing with past times, distinguish between the views of the scientific world and those of ordinary people, two aspects which were often hopelessly mixed together. And again in the scientific world we must distinguish between the mathematical-physical geographers and the historical, since the latter dealt more with descriptions and were apt to follow accounts and legends rather than what was taught by physical observations.

The world which the Greeks really knew was bounded in the earlier period on the north by the Balkans. These again gave rise to the mythical RhipÆan Mountains, which were soon moved farther to the north or north-east[7] as knowledge increased, and so they and the Alps were made the northern boundary of the known world. As to what lay farther off, the Greeks had very vague ideas; they seem to have thought that the frozen polar countries began there, where it was so cold that people had to wear breeches like the Scythians; or else it was a good climate, since it lay north of the north wind which came from the RhipÆan Mountains. But that some genuine information about the North had reached them as early as the time of the Odyssey seems to be shown by the tale of the LÆstrygons—who had the long day, and whose shepherds, driving their flocks in at evening, could call to those who were setting out in the morning, since the paths of day and night were with them so close to one another—and of the Cimmerians at the gates of the underworld, who lived in a land of fog, on the shores of Oceanus, in eternal cheerless night. It is true that the poet seems to have imagined these countries somewhere in the east or north-east, probably by the Black Sea; for Odysseus came from the LÆstrygons to the isle of ÆÆa “by the mansions and dancing-places of the Dawn and by the place where the sun rises.” And from ÆÆa the Greek hero steered right out into the night and the mist on the dangerous waters of Oceanus and came to the Cimmerians,[8] who must therefore have dwelt beyond the sunrise, shrouded in cloud and fogs. It might be supposed that it was natural to the poet to believe that there must be night beyond the sunrise and on the way to the descent to the nether regions; but it is, perhaps, more probable that both the long day and the darkness and fog are an echo of tales about the northern summer and the long winter night, and that these tales reached the Greeks by the trade-routes along the Russian rivers and across the Black Sea, for which reason the districts where these marvels were to be found were reported to lie in that direction. A find in the passage-graves of MycenÆ (fourteenth to twelfth century B.C.) of beads made of amber from the Baltic,[9] besides many pieces of amber from the period of the Dorian migration (before the tenth century) found during the recent English excavations of the temple of Artemis at Sparta,[10] furnish certain evidence that the Greek world had intercourse with the Baltic countries long before the Odyssey was put into writing in the eighth century, even though the northern lands of this poem seem to have been limited by a communication by sea between the Black Sea and the Adriatic, running north of the Balkan peninsula. Perhaps this imaginary communication may have been conceived as going by the Ister (Danube), which, at any rate later, was thought to have another outlet in the Adriatic. We may also find echoes of tales about the dark winter and light summer of the North in Sophocles’s tragedy, where we are told that Orithyia was carried off by Boreas and borne over

... the whole mirror of the sea, to the edge of the earth,
To the source of primÆval night, where the vault of heaven ends,
Where lies the ancient garden of Phoebus[11]

—though images of this sort may also be due to an idea that the sun remained during the night beyond the northern regions.

According to a comparatively late Greek conception there was in the far North a happy people called the Hyperboreans. They dwelt “under the shining way” (the clear northern sky) north of the roaring Boreas, so far that this cold north wind could not reach them, and therefore enjoyed a splendid climate. They did not live in houses, but in woods and groves. With them injustice and war were unknown, they were untouched by age or sickness; at joyous sacrificial feasts, with golden laurel-wreaths in their hair, and amid song and the sound of the cithara and the dancing of maidens, they led a careless existence in undisturbed gladness, and reached an immense age. When they were tired of life they threw themselves, after having eaten and drunk, joyfully and with wreaths in their hair, into the sea from a particular cliff (according to Mela and Pliny, following HecatÆus of Abdera). Among other qualities they had the power of flying, and one of them, Abaris, flew round the world on an arrow. While some geographers, especially the Ionians, placed them in the northern regions, beyond the RhipÆan Mountains,[12] HecatÆus of Abdera (first half of the third century B.C.), who wrote a work about the Hyperboreans, collected from various sources, and more like a novel than anything else, declares that they dwelt far beyond the accessible regions, on the island of Elixoea in the farthest northern Oceanus, where the tired stars sink to rest, and where the moon is so near that one can easily distinguish the inequalities of its surface. Leto was born there, and therefore Apollo is more honoured with them than other gods. There is a marvellous temple, round like a sphere,[13] which floats freely in the air borne by wings, and which is rich in offerings. To this holy island Apollo came every ninth year; according to some authorities he came through the air in a car drawn by swans. During his visit the god himself played the cithara and danced without ceasing from the spring equinox to the rising of the Pleiades. The Boreads were hereditary kings of the island, and were likewise keepers of the sanctuary; they were descendants of Boreas and Chione. Three giant brothers, twelve feet high, performed the service of priests. When they offered the sacrifice and sang the sacred hymns to the sound of the cithara, whole clouds of swans came from the RhipÆan Mountains, surrounded the temple and settled upon it, joining in the sacred song.

Theopompus (Philip of Macedon’s time) has given us, if we may trust Ælian’s account [“Varia,” iii. c. 18; about 200 A.D.], a remarkable variation of the Hyperborean legend in combination with others:

There can be no doubt that the regions which we hear of in this story, with the Hyperboreans, the enormous quantities of gold, the gulf without return, and so on, were imagined as situated beyond the sea in the North; and in the description of the warlike people of Machimos who came in great hordes southward over the sea, one might almost be tempted to think of warlike northerners, who were slain with stones and clubs, but not with iron, perhaps because they had not yet discovered the use of iron.[14]The legend of the happy Hyperboreans in the North has arisen from an error of popular etymology, and it has here been treated at some length as an example of how geographical myths may originate and develop.[15] The name in its original form was certainly the designation of those who brought offerings to the shrine of Apollo at Delphi (perhaps also in Delos). They were designated as “perpheroi” or “hyper-pheroi” (bringers over), which again in certain northern Greek dialects took the forms of “hyper-phoroi” or “hyper-boroi;” this, by an error, became connected in later times with “Boreas,” and their home was consequently transferred to the North, many customs of the worship of Apollo being transferred with it [see O. Crusius, 1890, col. 2830]. This gives at the same time a natural explanation of their many peculiarities, their sanctity, their power of flight and the arrow (Apollo’s arrow), their ceremonial feasts, and their throwing themselves from a certain cliff,[16] and so on, all of which is derived from the worship of Apollo. Apollonius of Rhodes (about 200 B.C.) relates that according to the legends of the Celts (in North Italy ?) amber originated from the tears of Apollo, which he shed by thousands when he came to the holy people of the Hyperboreans and forsook the shining heaven.

When, after the conquests of Alexander, the Greeks became acquainted with the mythical world of India, they naturally connected the Indians’ legendary country, “Uttara Kuru,” beyond the Himalayas, with the country of the Hyperboreans. “This land is not too cold, not too warm, free from disease; care and sorrow are unknown there; the earth is without dust and sweetly perfumed; the rivers run in beds of gold, and instead of pebbles they roll down pearls and precious stones.”

The mythical singer Aristeas of Proconnesus (sixth century ?)—to whom was attributed the poem “Arimaspeia”—is said (according to Herodotus) to have penetrated into the country of the Scythians as far as the northernmost people, the Issedonians. The latter told him of the one-eyed, long-haired Arimaspians, who lived still farther north, at the uttermost end of the world, before the cave from which Boreas rushes forth. On their northern border dwelt the Griffins, lion-like monsters with the wings and beaks of eagles;[17] they were the guardians of the gold which the earth sends forth of itself. But still farther north, as far as the sea, were the Hyperboreans.

But the learned Herodotus (about 450 B.C.) doubted that the Hyperboreans dwelt to the north of Boreas; for, said he, if there are people north of the north wind, then there must also be people south of the south wind. Neither did he credit the Scythians’ tales about goat-footed people[18] and Sleepers far in the North. Just as little did this sceptic believe that the air of Scythia was full of feathers which prevented all seeing and moving; it was, he thought, continuous snowfall that the Scythians described thus. On the other hand, he certainly believed in the Amazons, though whether they dwelt in the North, as later authors considered, he does not say.

The idea of the Sleepers, who slept for six months, may very probably be due to legendary tales of the long northern winter-night, the length of which was fixed at six months by theoretical speculations, these tales being confused with reports that the people of Scythia slept a great part of the winter, as even to-day the peasants are said to do in certain parts of Russia, where they almost hibernate. Nor must the possibility be overlooked of stories about the winter’s sleep of animals, bears, for example, being transferred to men.

Later learned geographers, in spite of the scepticism of Herodotus, occupied themselves in assigning to the Hyperboreans a dwelling-place in the unknown. The founder of scientific geography, Eratosthenes of Cyrene (275-195 B.C.), declared that Herodotus’s method of disproving the existence of the Hyperboreans was ridiculous. [Cf. Strabo, i. 61.]

Even so long as five hundred years after Herodotus, Pliny declared the Hyperboreans to be a historical people, whose existence could not be doubted; and on the maps of the Middle Ages we always find them in the most northern inhabited regions, together with the Amazons and other peoples; we even find the Hyperborean Mountains (“Hyperborei Montes”) in Northern Europe and the Hyperborean Sea (“Oceanus Hyperboreus”) to the north of them. Adam of Bremen (eleventh century) thought that the Scandinavians were the Hyperboreans.

Trade-routes between the Mediterranean and the North

ArchÆological finds show that as long ago as the Scandinavian Bronze Age, or before, there must have been some sort of communication between the Mediterranean and the northern lands. One of the earliest trade-routes between the Mediterranean and the Baltic certainly went from the Black Sea up the navigable river Borysthenes (Dnieper), of which early mention is made by the Greeks, thence along its tributary the Bug to the Vistula, and down the latter to the coast. We also find this route in common use in later antiquity. When we first meet with the Goths in history they are established at both ends of it, by the mouths of the Vistula and of the Borysthenes. The Eruli, who came from the North, are also mentioned by the side of the Goths on the Black Sea. What the wandering nation of the Cimmerians was we do not know, but, as before remarked (p. 14), they may have been Cimbri who in those early times had migrated to the northern shore of the Black Sea by this very route. This trade-route was well known in its details to our forefathers in Scandinavia, which likewise points to an ancient communication. Somewhat later it is probable that men travelled from the Baltic up the Vistula and across to the March, a tributary of the Danube, and so either down this river to the Black Sea or overland to the Adriatic. A similar line of communication certainly ran between the North Sea and the Mediterranean along the Elbe to the Adriatic, and up the Rhine across to the Rhone and down this to the coast, or across the Alps to the Po.

Cromlechs: on the right, in Portugal (after Cartailhac); on the left, in Denmark (after S. MÜller)

But very early there was also communication by sea along the coasts of western Europe between the Mediterranean and the North. This is shown amongst other things by the distribution, about 2000 B.C., of cromlechs over Sicily, Corsica, Portugal and the north of Spain, Brittany, the British Isles, the North Sea coast of Germany, Denmark and southern Scandinavia as far as Bohuslen [cf. S. MÜller, 1909, p. 24 f.], and perhaps farther. Somewhat later, in the middle of the second millennium B.C., the passage-graves or chambered barrows followed the same route northward from the Mediterranean. That this sea-communication was comparatively active in those far-off times is proved by the fact that cromlechs, which originated in the grave-chambers of the beginning of the MycenÆan period in the eastern Mediterranean, reached Denmark, by this much longer route round the coast, before the single graves, which were an older form in the Mediterranean countries, but which spread by the slower route overland, through Central Europe.

On account of the many intermediaries, speaking different languages, through which it passed, the information which reached the Mediterranean by these various routes was very defective. According to Herodotus [iv. 24] the Scythians on their trading journeys to the bald-headed AgrippÆans required no fewer than seven different interpreters to enable them to barter with the peoples on the way. Their first more direct knowledge of northern and western Europe must certainly have reached the Mediterranean peoples through the tin trade and the amber trade. It is worth remarking that it was precisely these two articles, representing two powerful sides of human nature, utility and the love of ornament, that were to be of such great importance also as regards knowledge of the North.

Ancient Egyptian ship; from a grave in western Thebes (after R. Lepsius)

We do not know when, where, or how tin first came into use, the metal which, together with copper, was as important in the Bronze Age as iron is in our time. In Egypt it is found in the oldest pyramid-graves, and in the third millennium B.C. bronze was in general use there, though we know not whence the tin came to make it. Tin-ore occurs in comparatively few places on the earth, and if China, which formed a world by itself, be excluded, the only places where we know that the metal was obtained in ancient times are north-west Spain, the Cassiterides (probably in Brittany) and Cornwall,[19] which still possesses rich deposits; and as far as we can trace history back, the civilised peoples of the Mediterranean and the Orient obtained their tin from western Europe.[20] If the first tin in Egypt and in the valley of the Euphrates also came from there, the civilisation of western Europe, implied by regular working of mines, would be given a venerable age which could almost rival the oldest civilisations of the Mediterranean. But this is difficult to believe, as we should expect to find traces of this early connection with Egypt along the trade-routes between that country and the place of origin of the tin; and no archÆological evidence to prove this is at present forthcoming.[21]

In the Iliad tin is spoken of as a rare and costly metal, used for the decoration of weapons, and it appears that arms were then made of copper, bronze not being yet in general use, as was the case in the later time of the Odyssey. But in the excavations at Troy, curiously enough, bronze objects were found immediately above the neolithic strata, which would seem to show that the Bronze Age reached the Greeks from Egypt without any intervening copper age.

The Homeric songs do not allude to tin as a Phoenician commodity, like amber. This may mean that the Greeks even in the earliest times obtained it through their own commercial relations with Gaul, without employing the Phoenicians as middlemen.

Possibly the Greek word for tin, “kassiteros,” and the name of the tin-islands, “Kassiterides,” themselves point to this direct connection. The same word is also found in Sanscrit, “kastÎra,” and in Arabic, “qazdir.” Professor Alf Torp thinks that the word both in Greek and in Sanscrit “must be borrowed from somewhere, but whence or when is not known. ‘Kassiteros,’ of course, occurs as early as Homer, ‘kastÎra’ is in Indian literature much later, but as far as that goes it may well be old in Sanscrit. I do not know of any Celtic word one could think of; a ‘cassitÍr’ (woodland) is hardly to the point; it is true that ‘tÍr’ means ‘land,’ but no other ‘cass’ is known to me except one that means ‘hair’” (in a letter of November 9, 1909). We may therefore look upon it as certain that “kassiteros” is not an original Greek word; it must in all probability have come from the country whence the Greeks first obtained tin (analogous cases are the name of copper from the island of Cyprus, that of bronze from Brundisium, etc.). That this country was India, as some have thought, is improbable, since it is stated in the “Periplus Maris ErythrÆi” [xlix.], confirmed by Pliny [xxxiv. 163], that tin was imported into India from Alexandria in exchange for ivory, precious stones and perfumes; we must therefore suppose that the name reached India with the tin from the Greeks, and not vice versÂ. It is very possible that the word consists of two parts, of which the second “-teros” may be connected with the Celtic word “tÍr” for land (Latin “terra”). The first part, “kassi,” occurs in many Celtic words and names. Ptolemy [ii. 8] mentions in Gaul, in or near Brittany: “Bidu-kasioi,” “Uenelio-kasioi,” “Tri-kasioi,” and “Uadi-kasioi.” As mentioned by Reinach [1892, p. 278], there was a people in Brittany called “Cassi” (a British king, “Cassi-vellaunos,” an Arvernian chief, “Ver-cassi-vellaunos,” etc.). It may be supposed that the country was named after these people, or was in some other way referred to by such a word and called “Kassi-tÍr.” In this case the Cassiterides might be sought for in Brittany, and this agrees with what we have arrived at in another way. But this would entail the assumption that the Celts were already in Gaul at the time of the Iliad.

Professor Alf Torp has called attention to the remarkable circumstance that “the Cymric word for tin, ‘ystaen,’ resembles ‘stannum,’ which cannot be genuine Latin. I am inclined to think that both words are derived from an Iberian word; the Romans would in that case have got it from Galicia, and the Cymri doubtless from a primitive Iberian population in the British Isles. In some way or other our word ‘tin’ must be connected with this word, though the ‘i’ is curious in the face of the Cymric ‘a’” (letter of November 9, 1909). In connection with this hypothesis of Professor Torp, it may be of interest to notice that in the tin district of Morbihan in Brittany, by the mouth of the Vilaine, is “Penestin,” where the deposits still contain much tin, and the name of which must come from the Celtic “pen” (== head, cape) and “estein” (== tin).[23] It is conceivable that the Latin “stannum” was derived from Brittany rather than from Galicia.

In ancient Egyptian there is no word for tin; as in early Latin, it is described as white lead (dhti hs), which may point to a common western origin for these two metals.

There has been great diversity of opinion as to where the Cassiterides of the Greeks were to be found. Herodotus [iii. 115] did not know where they were: “in spite of all his trouble, he had not been able to learn from any eye-witness what the sea is like in that region [that is, on the north side] of Europe. But it is certain that tin comes from the uttermost end, as also amber.” Posidonius mentioned the islands as lying between Spain and Britain (see above, p. 23). Strabo says [iii. 175]:

Places where tin is found in western Europe (marked with crosses),
and routes of the tin-trade in ancient times (after L. Siret, 1908)

It is unlikely that the Cassiterides were Cornwall, as has been commonly supposed, since this peninsula can with difficulty be regarded as a group of islands; moreover this would not agree with the descriptions which always mention them as separate from Britain, and usually farther south. The Scilly Isles, lying far out in the sea, where tin has never been worked to any great extent, and whose waters are dangerous to navigate, are out of the question. On the other hand, it may almost be regarded as certain that the Cassiterides are the same as the “Œstrymnides” (see below), and these must be looked for on the coast of Gaul. Furthermore tin is mentioned as “Celtic” by several Greek authorities; in the “Mirabiles auscultationes” of Aristotle or Pseudo-Aristotle [i. 834, A. 6] it is so called, and Ephorus (about 340 B.C.) speaks [in Scymnus of Chios] of Tartessus [i.e., Gadir], “the famous city,” as “rich in alluvial tin from Celtica [Gaul], in gold, as also in copper.”[25] It may further be mentioned that Mela referred to the Cassiterides[26] as “Celtican,” which would mean that they belonged to the north-west coast of Spain, unless it is confused with Celtic; and in his description of the islands of Europe, going from south to north, he puts them immediately before “Sena,” or the Île de Seine at the western extremity of Brittany, which means in any case that they would be to the south of that island. Everything points to the islands being situated on the south coast of Brittany, and there is much in favour of Louis Siret’s assumption [1908] that they are the islands of Morbihan (“Les Îles du Morbraz”), west of the mouth of the Loire, exactly where “Penestin” is situated. This agrees very well, as we shall see later, with the description of Himilco’s voyage to the Œstrymnides. The free alluvial deposits along the shore in this district, near the mouth of the Vilaine, still contain a good deal of tin, together with gold and other precious metals; but in those distant times they may have been very rich in tin, and as they lie on the very seashore they were naturally discovered early and became the most important source of tin until they were partly exhausted. In the meantime the rich tin deposits of Cornwall had begun to be utilised, and they became in turn the most important, while the Cassiterides were gradually forgotten.

We do not know how or at what period this tin industry first developed. Perhaps it was as early as the end of the neolithic period; but it is improbable that it should have been independently developed by the Iberian aborigines who lived in the tin districts of Iberia, and doubtless also of Brittany; it is far more likely to be due to communication with the Mediterranean through a seafaring, commercial people, and we know of none other than the Phoenicians. How early they began their widespread commerce and industry is unknown; but they must have reached this part of the world long before Gadir was founded by the Tyrians about 1100 B.C. It is conceivable that in their search for gold and silver they discovered these deposits of tin and knew how to take advantage of them. As already remarked, there was as early as 2000 B.C. a continuous communication by sea along the coasts of western Europe, and it is probable that there arose at a very early time efficient navigators on the coasts of northern Spain and Brittany, just those districts which are rich in tin, where there are many good harbours. For a long time the tin trade was carried on by sea, southward along the coast to Tarsis in southern Spain; but by degrees an overland trade-route also came into use, going up the Loire and down the Rhone to the Mediterranean. This route became known to the Greeks, and the PhocÆan colony Massalia was founded upon it about 600 B.C.; later the Greek colony of Corbilo was possibly founded at its other extremity, by the mouth of the Loire (?). Later still another trade-route ran along the Garonne overland to the Roman Narbo (Narbonne). On the development of the Cornish tin industry, the same routes by sea and land continued to be used. Thus it was that the tin trade furnished one of the first and most important steps in the path of the exploration of the North.

When PhaËthon one day had persuaded his father Helios to let him drive the chariot of the sun across the sky, the horses ran away with him and he first came too near the vault of heaven and set fire to it, so that the Milky Way was formed; then he approached too near the earth, set the mountains on fire, dried up rivers and lakes, burned up the Sahara, scorched the negroes black, until, to avoid greater disasters in his wild career, Zeus struck him down with his thunderbolt into the river Eridanus. His sisters, the daughters of the sun, wept so much over him that the gods in pity changed them into poplars, and their tears then flowed every year as amber on the river’s banks. “For this reason amber came to be called ‘electron,’ because the sun has the name of ‘Elector.’” In this way the Greeks, in their poetry, thought that amber was formed. The mythical river Eridanus, which no doubt was originally in the north (cf. Herodotus), was later identified sometimes with the Rhone, sometimes with the Po. Herodotus [iii. 115] says of northern Europe: “I do not suppose that there is a river which the barbarians call Eridanus, and which flows into the sea to the northward, from whence amber may come.... For in the first place the name Eridanus itself shows that it is Hellenic and not barbarian, and that it has been invented by some poet or other”; and in the second, he was not able to find any eye-witness who could tell him about it (cf. p. 27); but in any case he thought that amber as well as tin came from the uttermost limits of Europe.

Places where amber is found (marked with crosses)

The most important sources of amber in Europe are the southern coast of the Baltic, especially Samland, and the west coast of Jutland with the North Frisian islands. It is also found in small quantities in many places in western and central Europe, on the Adriatic, in Sicily, in South Africa, Burmah, the west coast of America, etc. Northern amber, from the Baltic and the North Sea, is distinguished from other kinds that have been investigated, by the comparatively large proportion of succinic acid it contains, and it seems as though almost all that was used in early antiquity in the Mediterranean countries and in Egypt was derived from the north. Along the coasts of the Baltic and North Sea the amber is washed by the waves from the loose strata of the sea-bottom and thrown up on the beach. When these washed-up lumps were found by the fishers and hunters of early times they naturally attracted them by their brilliance and colour and by the facility with which they could be cut. It is no wonder, therefore, that amber was used as early as the Stone Age for amulets and ornaments by the people on the Baltic and North Seas, and spread from thence over the whole of the North. In those distant times articles of amber were still rare in the South; but in the Bronze Age, in proportion as gold and bronze reach the north, they become rarer there, but more numerous farther south. In the passage-graves of MycenÆ (fourteenth to twelfth centuries B.C.) there are many of them, as also in Sparta at the time of the Dorian migration (twelfth to tenth centuries B.C.; cf. p. 14). It is evident that amber was the medium of exchange wherewith the people of the North bought the precious metals from the South, and in this way it comes that the two classes of archÆological finds have changed their localities. The neolithic ornaments of amber at Corinth, already referred to, the amber beads of the Fifth Dynasty in Egypt, and those of the neolithic period in Spain, show, however, if they are northern, that this connection between South and North goes back a very long way. But the Greek tribes among whom the Iliad originated do not appear to have known amber, as it is not mentioned in the poem, and it is first named in the more recent portions of the Odyssey (put into writing in the eighth century B.C.). Among the jewels which the Phoenician merchant offered to the Queen of Syria was “the golden necklace hung with pieces of amber” [Od. xv. 460]. We must therefore believe that the Phoenicians were the middlemen from whom the Greeks obtained it at that time. But it was not so much esteemed by the Greeks of the classical period as it became later, and they rejected it in their art industries, for which reason it is seldom mentioned by Greek authors. Thales of Miletus (600 B.C.) discovered that when rubbed it attracted other bodies, and from this important discovery made so long ago has sprung the knowledge of that force which dominates our time, and which has been named from the Greek word for amber, “electron.”

Among the Romans of the Empire this substance was so highly prized that Pliny tells us [xxxvii., chap. 12] that “a human likeness made of it, however small, exceeds the price of a healthy living person.” This was both on account of its beauty and of its occult properties; when worn as an amulet it was able to ward off secret poisons, sorcery and other evils. It therefore naturally became an article that was in great demand, and for which merchants made long voyages.

It has been thought that the North Sea amber came into the southern market before that of the Baltic, and as the Eridanus of the myth was sometimes taken for the Rhone and sometimes for the Po, it was believed that in early times amber was carried up the Rhine and across to both these rivers, later also up the Elbe to the Adriatic [cf. Schrader, 1901, “Bernstein”]. It was thought that the archÆological finds also favoured this theory; but it must still be regarded as doubtful, and it is scarcely probable that the Phoenicians obtained it from the mouths of the Rhone and the Po, while they may have brought it by sea at an early period. By what routes amber was distributed in the earliest times is still unknown.

Phoenician warship, according to an Assyrian representation

Even though the Phoenicians were for the most part a commercial and industrial people, who were not specially interested in scientific research, there can be no doubt that by their distant voyages they contributed much geographical knowledge to their age, and in many ways they influenced Greek geography, especially through Miletus, which from the beginning was partly a Phoenician colony, and where the first Greek school of geographers, the Ionian school, developed. Thales of Miletus was himself probably a Semite. How far they attained on their voyages is unknown. Hitherto no certain relics of Phoenician colonies have been found along the coasts of western Europe farther north than south-west Spain (Tarsis), and there is no historically certain foundation for the supposition that these seafaring merchants of antiquity, the Phoenicians, Carthaginians and Gaditanians, on their voyages beyond the Pillars of Hercules and northwards along the coasts of western Europe, should have penetrated beyond the tin country and as far as the waters of northern Europe, even to Scandinavia and the Baltic, whence they themselves might have brought amber.[27] But a hypothesis of this sort cannot be disproved, and is by no means improbable. Everything points to the Phoenicians having been uncommonly capable seamen with good and swift-sailing ships; and a seafaring people who achieved the far more difficult enterprise of circumnavigating Africa, and of sailing southwards along its west coast with whole fleets to found colonies, cannot have found it impossible to sail along the west and north coast of Europe, where there are plenty of natural harbours. It would then be natural for them to try to reach the North Sea and the Baltic, if they expected to find the precious amber there, and on this point they certainly had information from the merchants who brought it either by land or by sea. It has already been remarked that it is first mentioned in history as a Phoenician article of commerce.[28] It may be supposed that the Phoenicians at an early period obtained amber from their harbours on the Black Sea;[29] but after having pursued this prosperous carrying-trade from their harbours here and in the west, it is not improbable that they themselves tried to penetrate to the amber countries with their ships.[30] The Phoenicians, however, tried to keep their trade-routes secret from their dangerous and more warlike rivals the Greeks, and it is therefore not surprising that no mention of these routes should be extant, even if they really undertook such voyages; but it is undeniably more remarkable still that no certain trace of them has been found along the coasts of western Europe.

The only thing we know is that about the year 500 B.C. the Carthaginians are said to have sent out an expedition under Himilco through the Pillars of Hercules and thence northwards along the coast. This is the first northern sea voyage of which mention is to be found in literature. At that time Tyre, the mother-city of Gadir, had been destroyed. Until then she had controlled the trade of the west. It was natural that Gadir in her isolated position should seek support from Carthage, which was now rising into power. To strengthen her trade communications, therefore, this flourishing city sent out Hanno’s great expedition along the west coast of Africa, and Himilco to the tin country in the north. Himilco seems to have written an account of the journey; but of this all that has been preserved is a few casual pieces of information in a poem (“Ora Maritima”) by the late Roman author Rufus Festus Avienus[31] (of the end of the fourth century A.D.). The only other place where Himilco’s name is mentioned is in Pliny [Hist. Nat. ii. 67, 169], who merely says that he made a voyage to explore the outer coast of Europe, contemporary with Hanno’s voyage to the south along the west coast of Africa, and in addition he names him in the list of his authorities. But Pliny himself probably never saw his work; it cannot be seen that he has made use of it.

It is true that Avienus makes a pretence of having used Himilco’s original account, but certainly he had never seen it. He may have utilised a Greek authority of about the time of the Christian era [cf. Marx, 1895]. This again was a compound of Greek tales, of which a part may have been taken from a Punic source, but of the latter no trace is found in any other known classical writer, with the exception of Pliny. Unfortunately the information given us by Avienus shows little intelligence in the use of his authorities, and his poem is often obscure.

In the description of the coast of western Europe [vv. 90-129] we read:

It may be difficult to decide how much of this is really derived from Himilco. The name “Œstrymnis” is not found elsewhere in literature, and may be taken from him.[33] The supposition that it was Cape Finisterre and that the Œstrymnic Bay (“sinus Œstrymnicus”) was the Bay of Biscay is improbable; a bay so open and wide could scarcely have been described in terms which a Latin author would have rendered by “sinus”; besides which there would be difficulties with the Œstrymnides which were widely spread therein. Œstrymnis is certainly in Brittany, and since it “turns chiefly towards the warm south wind,” we may suppose it to be a headland on the south coast. That the Œstrymnic Bay opens out beneath this headland (“sub hujus”) agrees with all that we know of it. As already stated, the tin-producing Œstrymnides are undoubtedly the Cassiterides, which may probably be the islands in the bay by the mouth of the Vilaine and Quiberon, on the south side of Brittany, where tin occurs.

Thus a comparison of the various statements points definitely to Brittany as the place where we must look for the tin-bearing islands. That it was two days’ voyage thence to the holy island of Hierne, and that near to it lay the land of Albion, also agrees; but too much weight must not be laid upon this, as we do not know for certain whether this is really derived from Himilco.

The sea-monsters may be taken as accessories put in to make the voyage terrible; but on the other hand they may be the great whales of the Bay of Biscay, of which there were many in those days, before whaling was undertaken there. The exaggerated description of the length and difficulties of the voyage fits in badly with the information that the men of Tartessus and the Carthaginians were in the habit of trading there. How much of this is due to misunderstanding of the original, or to downright interpolation, we do not know. With the universal desire of the Carthaginians and Phoenicians to keep the monopoly of their trade-routes, Himilco may have added this to frighten others. It is also possible that he made a longer voyage in four months, but that Avienus’s authority gave an obscure and bungled account of it.

The description of the shallow water, and of the seaweed which holds the ships back, etc., seems to correspond to the actual conditions. In another part of the poem something similar occurs, where we read [v. 375]: “Outside the Pillars of Hercules along the side of Europe the Carthaginians once had villages and towns. They were in the habit of building their fleets with flatter bottoms, since a broader ship could float upon the surface of a shallower sea.”[34] One is reminded of the shallow west coast of France, where the tide lays large tracts alternately dry (covered with seaweed) and under water, so that it might well be said that “the surface of the earth is barely covered by a little water.” Ebb and flood were, of course, an unknown phenomenon in the Mediterranean. In this respect also the description suits the voyage to Brittany, where the sea is shallow. It has been asserted that the expression “seaweed among the waves” might show that Himilco had been near to or in the Sargasso Sea; but there is no reason whatever for supposing this; the explanation given above is more natural, besides which the Sargasso Sea could hardly be described as shallow and as lying on the way to Œstrymnis.[35]

On the Atlantic Ocean Avienus has the following [vv. 380-389]:

If we may believe Avienus that this description is derived from Himilco, it possesses great interest, since here and in the description (above) of the voyage to Œstrymnis we find the same ideas of the western sea and of the uttermost sea which appear later, after Pytheas’s time, in the accounts of the thick and sluggish sea without wind round Thule, and in this case it shows that already at that early period ideas of this sort had developed. MÜllenhoff [1870, pp. 78, 93 f.], it is true, takes it for granted that these descriptions in Avienus cannot be derived from Himilco, but his reasons for so doing do not appear convincing. Aristotle says [“Meteorologica,” ii. 1, 14] that the sea beyond the Pillars of Hercules was muddy and shallow, and little stirred by the winds. This shows clearly enough that ideas of that kind were current among the Greeks even before Pytheas, and they must doubtless have got them from the Phoenicians.

That some very ancient authority is really the basis of the description of the west coast of Europe as far as the Œstrymnides, which we find in Avienus, is proved again by the fact that the regions farther to the north or north-east are clearly enough represented as entirely unknown, when we read [vv. 129-145]:

MÜllenhoff thinks [1870, pp. 86 f.] that this mention of the expulsion of the Ligurians by the Celts is necessarily a late addition by a man from the district of Massalia where the Ligurians lived; but it seems more probable that the name is here used as a common designation for the pre-Celtic people who dwelt in these north-western regions; and if it is the north side of Brittany which is here spoken of, the Ligurians of southern Gaul will not be so far away after all. It is clear that in ancient times the people of west and north-west Europe were called “Ligyans.” Hesiod mentioned them as the people of the west in contradistinction to the Scythians of the east [cf. Strabo, vii. 300], and in the legend of PhaËthon occurs the Ligyan king Cycnus at the mouth of the amber-producing river Eridanus, which doubtless was originally supposed to fall into the sea on the north or north-west. We may interpret it as meaning that the aborigines, Ligyans or Ligurians, were driven by the immigrant Celts up into the bush-covered mountainous parts of Brittany. In any case this passage in Avienus, which assumes that the districts farther north are unknown, is a strong proof that his information is ancient and derived from Himilco, and that the latter penetrated as far as the north coast of Brittany, or the south of Britain, but no farther.