ANTIQUITY, AFTER PYTHEAS

There was a long interval after the time of Pytheas before the world’s knowledge of the North was again added to, so far as we can judge from the literature that has come down to us. The mist in which for a moment he showed a ray of light settled down again. That no other known traveller can have penetrated into these northern regions during the next two or three centuries appears from the unwillingness of Polybius and Strabo to believe in Pytheas, and from the fact that Strabo pronounces him a liar [i. 63], because “all who have seen Britain and Ierne say nothing about Thule, though they mention other small islands near Britain”; furthermore, he says expressly [vii. 294] that “the region along the ocean beyond Albis [the Elbe] is entirely unknown to us. For neither do we know of any one among the ancients who made this voyage along the coast in the eastern regions to the opening of the Caspian Sea, nor have the Romans ever penetrated into the countries beyond Albis, nor has any one yet traversed them by land.” If any other traveller had been currently mentioned in literature it is incredible that the well-read Strabo should not have known it. He therefore ascribed all that he found about these regions to Pytheas.

There are nevertheless indications that the Greeks had commercial relations with the coasts of the Baltic and North Sea, and fresh obscure statements, which may be derived from such a connection, appear later in Pliny, and to some extent also in Mela. It may be supposed that enterprising Greek traders and seamen, enticed by Pytheas’s accounts of the amber country, attempted to follow in his track, and succeeded in reaching the land of promise whence this costly commodity came. And if they had once found out the way, they would certainly not have relinquished it except upon compulsion. But it must be remembered that the voyage was long, and that they had first to pass through the western Mediterranean and the Pillars of Hercules, where the Carthaginians had regained their power and obtained the command of the sea. The overland route was easier and safer; it ran through the country of tribes which in those distant times may have been comparatively peaceful. The trade communication between the Black Sea and the Baltic countries seems, as mentioned above, to have developed early, and it may be thought that the active Greek traders would try it in order to reach a district where so much profit was to be expected; but no certain indication of this communication can be produced from any older author of note after Pytheas’s time, so far as we know them, and even so late an author as Ptolemy has little to tell us of the regions east of the Vistula.

The founder of scientific geography, Eratosthenes (275-circa 194 B.C.),[73] librarian of the Museum of Alexandria, based what he says of the North chiefly on Pytheas. He divided the surface of the earth into climates (zones) and constructed the first map of the world, whereon an attempt was made to fix the position of the various places by lines of latitude and meridians. He started with seven known points, along the old meridian of Rhodes. They were: Thule, the Borysthenes, the Hellespont, Rhodes, Alexandria, Syene, and Meroe. Through these points he laid down lines of latitude (see the map). He also made an attempt to calculate the circumference of the globe by measurement, and found it 250,000 stadia (== 25,000 geographical miles), which is 34,000 stadia (== 3400 geographical miles) too much. He placed the island of Thule under the Arctic Circle,[74] far out in the sea to the north of Brettanice. This was to him the uttermost land and the northern limit of the “oecumene,” which he calculated to be 38,000 stadia (== 3800 geographical miles) broad,[75] which according to his measurement of the circumference of the earth is about 54° 17', since each of his degrees of latitude will be about 700 stadia. His “oecumene” thus extended from the latitude of the Cinnamon Coast (Somaliland) and Taprobane (Ceylon), 8800 stadia north of the equator, to the Arctic Circle. South of it was uninhabitable on account of the heat, and north of it all was frozen.

Eratosthenes was especially an advocate of the island-form of the “oecumene,” and thought that it was entirely surrounded by the ocean, which had been encountered in every quarter where the utmost limits of the world had been reached. By a perversion of the journey of Patrocles to a voyage round India and the east coast of the continent into the Caspian Sea, he again represented the latter as an open bay of the northern ocean, in spite of the fact that Herodotus, and also Aristotle, had asserted that it was closed. The view that the Caspian Sea was a bay remained current until the time of Ptolemy. Eratosthenes also held that the occurrence of tides on all the outer coasts was a proof of the continuity of the ocean. He said that “if the great extent of the Atlantic Ocean did not make it impossible, we should be able to make the voyage from Iberia to India along the same latitude.” This was 1700 years before Columbus.

Reconstruction of Eratosthenes’ map of the world (K. Miller, 1898)

With the scientific investigator’s lack of respect for authorities, he had the audacity to doubt Homer’s geographical knowledge, and gave offence to many by saying that people would never discover where the islands of Æolus, Circe, and Calypso, described in the Odyssey, really were, until they had found the tailor who had made the bag of the winds for Æolus.

Hipparchus (circa 190-125 B.C.) also relies upon Pytheas, and has nothing new to tell us of the northern regions. Against Eratosthenes’ proof of the continuity of the ocean, to which allusion has just been made, he objected that the tides are by no means uniform on all coasts, and in support of this assertion he referred to the Babylonian Seleucus.[76] But it is not clear whether Hipparchus was an opponent of the doctrine of the island-form of the “oecumene,” as has been generally supposed; probably he merely wished to point out that the evidence adduced by Eratosthenes was insufficient. Hipparchus calculated a continuous table of latitude, or climate-table, for the various known localities, as far north as Thule. He introduced the division into degrees. It is also probable that he was the first to use a kind of map-projection with the aid of converging meridians, which he drew in straight lines; but as he was more an astronomer than a geographer it is unlikely that he constructed any complete map of the world.

Terrestrial globe, according to Crates of Mallus (K. Kretschmer)

Polybius (circa 204-127 B.C.), as we have seen, pronounced against the trustworthiness of Pytheas, and declared that all the country north of Narbo, the Alps, and the Tanais was unknown. Like Herodotus, he left the question open whether there was a continuous ocean on the north side; but he appears to have inclined to the old notion of the “oecumene” as circular.

The Stoic and grammarian Crates of Mallus (about 150 B.C.), who was not a geographer, constructed the first terrestrial globe, in which he made the Atlantic Ocean extend like a belt round the world through both the poles, and with the Stoic’s worship of Homer he thought he could follow in this ocean Odysseus’s voyage to the regions of the LÆstrygons’ long day and the Cimmerians’ polar night. Since the school of the Stoics considered it necessary that there should be ocean in the torrid zone, so that the sun might easily keep up its warmth by the aid of vapours from the sea—for warmth was supported by moisture—Crates placed a belt of ocean round the earth between the tropics, which formed the limits of the sun’s path. These two belts of water left four masses of land of which only one was known to men.

The physical geographer Posidonius of Apamea in Syria (135-51 B.C.), who lived for a long time at Rhodes, took the RhipÆan Mountains for the Alps, and speaks of the Hyperboreans to the north of them. He thought that the Ocean surrounded the “oecumene” continuously:

A ship sailing with an east wind from the Pillars of Hercules must reach India after traversing 70,000 stadia, which he thought was the half-circumference of the earth along the latitude of Rhodes. The greatest circumference he calculated at 180,000 stadia. These erroneous calculations were adopted by Ptolemy, and were afterwards of great significance to Columbus.

He made a journey as far as Gadir in order to see the outer Ocean for himself, to measure the tides and to examine the correctness of the generally accepted idea that the sun, on its setting in the western ocean, gave out a hissing sound like a red-hot body being dipped into water. He rightly connected the tides with the moon, finding that their monthly period corresponded with the full moon; whereas others had thought, for instance, that they were due to changes in the rivers of Gaul.

CÆsar’s Gallic War and his invasion of Britain (55-45 B.C.) contributed fresh information about these portions of Western Europe; but it cannot be seen that they gave anything new about the North. CÆsar describes Britain as a triangle. This is undoubtedly the same idea that we find in his contemporary Diodorus Siculus, and is derived from Pytheas. CÆsar merely gives different proportions between the sides from those of Diodorus. He puts Hibernia to the west of Britain, not to the north like Strabo, and makes its size about two-thirds of the latter, from which it is separated by a strait of about the same breadth as that between Gaul and Britain. Between Ireland (Hibernia) and Britain is an island, “Mona” (Anglesey), and scattered about it many other islands. In some of them there was said to be a month of unbroken night at the winter solstice; but of this CÆsar was unable to obtain certain information. This must be an echo of the tales about Thule, which he had got from older Greek or Roman authors.

CÆsar is a good example of the Romans’ views of and sense for geography. In spite of this military nation having extended their empire to the bounds of the unknown in every direction, they never produced a scientific geographer, nor did they send out anything that we should call a voyage of exploration, as the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, and Greeks had done. They were above all a practical people, with more sense for organisation than for research and science, and in addition they lacked commercial interests as compared with those other peoples. But during their long campaigns under the Empire, and by their extensive communications with the most distant regions, they brought together an abundance of geographical information hitherto unknown to the classical world. It is natural that it should have been a Greek who, in one of the most important geographical works that have come down to us from ancient times, endeavoured to collect a part of this information, together with the knowledge already acquired by the Greeks, into a systematic statement.

This man was the famous geographer Strabo, a native of Asia Minor (about 63 B.C.-25 A.D.). But unfortunately this critic has nothing to tell us about the North, and in his anxiety to avoid exaggeration he has, like Polybius, been at great pains to discredit Pytheas, of whose statements he will take no account; nor has he made use of the knowledge of the northernmost regions which we see, from Pliny among others, that other Greek authors possessed. He has not even made use of the geographical knowledge which was gained in his own time during the Roman campaign in Northern Germania under Augustus, if indeed he knew of it. To him the Ister (Danube), the mountainous districts of the Hercynian Forest, and the country as far as the TyregetÆ formed, roughly, the northern boundary of the known world. He thinks it is only ignorance of the more distant regions that has made people believe the fables “of the RhipÆan Mountains and the Hyperboreans, as well as all that Pytheas of Massalia has invented about the coast of the ocean, making use of his astronomical and mathematical knowledge as a cloak.” “Ierne” (Ireland) was placed by Strabo out in the ocean to the north of Britain. He took it for the most northern land, and thought that its latitude (which would have to be about 54° N.) formed the boundary of the “oecumene.”

Strabo evidently attributes to a cold climate a remarkable capacity for brutalising people, and he considers that the reports of the still more distant Thule must be even more uncertain.

The breadth of the “oecumene,” from north to south, he made only 30,000 stadia, and thought that Eratosthenes, deceived by the fables of Pytheas, had put the limit 8000 stadia (== 11° 26') too far north. Of the countries beyond the Albis (Elbe), he says, nothing is known. Nevertheless he mentions the Cimbri as dwelling on a peninsula by the northern ocean; but he has no very clear idea of where this peninsula is.

Strabo thought that besides the world known to the Greeks and Romans, other continents or worlds, where other races of men dwelt, might be discovered.

In a work called “SuasoriÆ” (circa 37 A.D.) of the Spanish-born rhetorician Seneca there are preserved fragments of a poem, written by Albinovanus Pedo (in the time of Augustus), which described an expedition of Germanicus in the North Sea. It has been thought that this may have been the younger Germanicus’s unfortunate campaign in 16 A.D., when he sailed out from the Ems with a fleet of a thousand ships. This supposition is strengthened by the fact that Tacitus mentions a cavalry leader, Albinovanus Pedo, under the same commander in 15 A.D., and it is easy to believe that he was the poet.[78] But as this unhappy fleet did not get far from the coast, and the poem describes a voyage into unknown regions, others have thought that it might be an expedition undertaken by Drusus, the elder Germanicus, in some year between 12 and 9 B.C.[79] How this may be is of less importance to us, as the poem does not mention any fresh discoveries. It is interesting because it gives us a picture of the ideas current at that time about the northern limits of the world. Where the fragments commence, the travellers have long ago left daylight and the sun behind them, and, having passed beyond the limits of the known world, plunge boldly into the forbidden darkness towards the end of the western world. There they believe that the sea, which beneath its sluggish (“pigris”) waves is full of hideous monsters, savage whales (“pistris”), and sea-hounds (“Æquoreosque canes” == seals ?), rises and takes hold of the ship—the noise itself increases the horror—and now they think the ships will stick in the mud, and the fleet will remain there, deserted by the winds[80] of the ocean—now that they themselves will be left there helpless and be torn to pieces by the monsters of the deep. And the man who stands high in the prow strives with his eyes to break through the impenetrable air, but can see nothing, and relieves his oppression in the following words: “Whither are we being carried? The day itself flees from us, and uttermost nature closes in the deserted world with continual darkness. Or are we sailing towards people on the other side, who dwell under another heaven, and towards another unknown world?[81] The gods call us back and forbid the eyes of mortals to see the boundary of things. Why do we violate strange seas and sacred waters with our oars, disturbing the peaceful habitations of the gods?”

This last conception is clearly derived from the “Isles of the Blest” of the Greeks (originally of the Phoenicians), which were situated in the deep currents of Oceanus and are already referred to in Hesiod.

Seneca, on the other hand, says of the outer limits of the world: “Thus is nature, beyond all things is the ocean, beyond the ocean nothing” (“ita est rerum natura, post omnia oceanus, post oceanum nihil”), and Pliny speaks of the empty space (“inane”) that puts an end to the voyage beyond the ocean.

In the year 5 A.D. the emperor Augustus, in connection with Tiberius’s expedition to the Elbe, sent a Roman fleet from the Rhine along the coast of Germania; it sailed northward by the land of the Cimbri (Jutland), past its northern extremity (the Skaw), probably into the Cattegat, and perhaps to the Danish islands. Augustus himself, in the Ancyra inscription, tells us of the voyage of this fleet, and says that it came “even to the people of the Cimbri, whither before that time no Roman had penetrated either by land or sea,[82] and the Cimbri and the Charydes (Harudes, Horder), and the Semnones, and other Germanic peoples in those districts sent ambassadors to ask for my friendship and that of the Roman people.”[83] Velleius [ii. 106] also gives an account of this voyage, and Pliny [ii. 167] gives the following description of it: “The Northern Ocean has also been in great part traversed; by the orders of the divine Augustus a fleet sailed round Germania to the Cimbrian Cape, and saw therefrom a sea that was immeasurable, or heard that it was so, and came to the Scythian region and to places that were stiff [with cold] from too much moisture. It is therefore very improbable that the seas can run short where there is such superfluity of moisture.” MÜllenhoff thinks [iv., 1900, p. 45] that on this voyage they saw the Norwegian mountains, the immense “Mons SÆvo” (see later under Pliny), rising out of the sea. This is not impossible, but we read nothing about it; nor indeed is it very probable. On the other hand, it is likely that the voyage resulted in fresh knowledge about the North, and that at any rate some of the statements in Mela and Pliny may be derived from this source.

The oldest known Latin geography, “De Chorographia,” was written about 43 A.D. by an otherwise unknown Pomponius Mela, of Tingentera, in Spain. With the strange mental poverty of Roman literature, Mela bases his work chiefly on older Greek sources (e.g., Herodotus and Eratosthenes) which are several centuries before his time; but in addition he gives much information not found elsewhere. Whether this is also for the most part taken from older writers it is impossible to say, as he nowhere gives his authorities. His descriptions, especially those of more distant regions, are sometimes made obscure and contradictory by his evidently having drawn upon different sources without combining them into a whole.

The world according to Mela

He begins with these words of wisdom: “All this, whatever it is, to which we give the name of universe and heaven, is one and includes itself and everything in a circle (‘ambitu’). In the middle of the universe floats the earth, which is surrounded on all sides by sea, and is divided by it from west to east [that is, by the equatorial sea, as in Crates of Mallus] into two parts, which are called hemispheres.” Whether one is to conclude from this that the earth in his opinion was a sphere or a round disc, he seems to leave the reader to determine. He divides the earth into the five zones of Parmenides. The two temperate or habitable zones seem, according to Mela, to coincide with the two masses of land, while the uninhabitable ones, the torrid and the two frigid zones, are continuous sea. On the southern continent dwell the Antichthons, who are unknown, on account of the heat of the intervening region. On the northern one we dwell, and this is what he proposes to describe.Europe is bounded on the west by the Atlantic, and on the north by the British Ocean. Asia has on the north the Scythian Ocean.

Mela has many ancient fables to tell of the peoples in the northern districts of Germania, Sarmatia and Scythia, which last was his name for what is now Russia and for the north of Asia. It appears that he too was of the opinion that a cold climate develops savagery and cruelty.

But this increasing savagery towards the north had a limit, as in the early Greek idea, after which things became better again; for beyond the country of the Amazons [i. c. 19] and other wild races, like the ThyssagetÆ and TurcÆ who inhabited immense forests and lived by hunting,[87] there extended, apparently towards the north-east (?), a “great desert and rugged tract, full of mountains, as far as the AremphÆans, who had very just customs and were looked upon as holy.”[88] “Beyond them rise the RhipÆan Mountains and behind them lies the region that borders on the Ocean.” In addition, the happy “Hyperboreans” dwelt in the north. In his description of Scythia he says of them [iii. c. 5]: “Then [i.e., after Sarmatia] come the neighbouring parts of Asia [or the parts bordering on Asia ?]. Except where continual winter and unbearable cold reigns, the Scythian people dwell there, almost all known by the name of ‘BelcÆ’ (?). On the shore of Asia come first the Hyperboreans, beyond the north wind and the RhipÆan Mountains under the very pivot of the stars” [i.e., the pole]. In their country the sun rose at the vernal equinox and set at the autumnal equinox, so that they had six months day and six months night. “This narrow [or holy ?] sunny land is in itself fertile.” He goes on to give a description of the happy life of the Hyperboreans, taken from Greek sources.

Europe according to the description of Mela

On north-western Europe Mela has much information which is not met with in earlier authors. The tin-islands, the Cassiterides, lay off the north-west of Spain, where the “Celtici” lived [iii. c. 6]. “Beyond (‘super’) Britain is Juverna [Ireland], nearly as large, with a climate unfavourable to the ripening of corn, but with such excellent pastures that if the cattle are allowed to graze for more than a small part of the day, they burst in pieces. The inhabitants are rude and more ignorant than other peoples of all kinds of virtue. Religion is altogether unknown to them.”

“The Orcades are thirty in number, divided from each other by narrow straits; the HÆmodÆ seven, drawn towards Germany” (“septem HÆmodÆ contra Germaniam vectÆ”). This is the first time, so far as is known, that these two groups of islands are mentioned in literature. Diodorus, it is true, had already spoken of “Orkan” or “Orkas,” but not as a group of islands. As this name is probably derived from Pytheas, it is likely that the other, “HÆmodÆ,” is also his. Possibly the groups were re-discovered under the emperor Claudius (about 43 A.D.) or more definite information may have been received about them; but on the other hand, Mela says that the knowledge of Britain that was acquired during this campaign would be brought back by Claudius himself in his triumph. It will be most reasonable to suppose that Mela’s thirty Orcades are the Orkneys—the number is approximately correct—and not the Orkneys and Shetlands together. The seven HÆmodÆ, on the other hand, must be the latter, and can hardly be the Hebrides, as many would believe, since Mela mentions the islands off the west coast of Europe in a definite order, and he names first “Juverna,” then the “Orcades,” and next the “HÆmodÆ,” which are “carried (‘vectÆ’) towards Germany”[89] (cf. also Pliny later).

In his description of Germania [iii. c. 3] Mela says:

The meaning of this description, which seems to be as involved as the many sounds he is talking about, must probably be that in the immense bay of Codanus there are a number of islands with many narrow straits between them, like rivers. Along the shore of the mainland there is formed, by the almost continuous line of islands lying outside, a long curving strait, which is nearly everywhere of the same narrowness. In this sea—that is to say, on the peninsulas and islands in this bay—dwell the Cimbri and Teutons, and farther away in Germania the Hermiones.

Island with Hippopod
or horse-footed man
(from the Hereford map)

In his account of the islands along the coast of Europe, Mela says further [iii. c. 6]:

Thus we see here, as in so many of the classical authors, and later in Pliny, old legends and more trustworthy information hopelessly mixed together. The legends, whose Greek origin is disclosed by the form of the names, may be old skippers’ tales, or the romances of merchants who went northward from the Black Sea, but they may also in part be derived from Pytheas. A fable like that of the long-eared Sanali (otherwise called Panoti) originally came from India and is later than his time. The statement about the ŒneÆ, or, doubtless more correctly, ŒonÆ (i.e., egg-eaters), who live on eggs and oats, may, on the other hand, have reached him from the north, where the eggs both of fen-fowl (plovers’ eggs, for example) and of sea-birds were eaten from time immemorial. CÆsar had heard or read of people who lived on birds’ eggs and fish on the islands at the mouth of the Rhine, but he may indeed have derived his knowledge from Greek sources [cf. MÜllenhoff, i., 1870, p. 492].

Island with long-eared man
(from the Hereford map)

What Mela says about Thule probably comes from Pytheas, as already mentioned (p. 90), and it is very possible that the remarkable statements about the immense bay of Codanus are likewise derived from him, although they may also be ascribed to the circumnavigation of the Skaw under Augustus, or to other voyages in these waters of which we have no knowledge.

Whether Codanovia (which is not found in any other known author) is the same name as the later Scadinavia in Pliny, must be regarded as uncertain. It is the first time that such an island or that the bay of Codanus is mentioned in literature. This “immense bay” must certainly be the Cattegat with the southern part of the Baltic; and the numerous islands which close it in to a curved strait or sound must be for the most part the Danish islands and perhaps southern Sweden. Whence the name is derived we do not know for certain.[91]

That the Cimbri lived in Codanus suits very well, as their home was Jutland;[95] on the other hand, we know less about the country inhabited by the Teutons. They must have been called in Germanic “*Þeodonez” (Gothic “*Þiudans” means properly kings), and the name has been connected with Old Norse “ÞiÓd,” now Thy (Old Danish “Thythesyssel”) with its capital Thisted, and the island Thyholm, in north-western Jutland [cf. Much, 1893, pp. 7 ff.; 1905, p. 100].

Whether the Vistula had its outlet into Codanus or farther east Mela does not say, nor does he tell us whether Sarmatia was bounded by this gulf; but this is not impossible, although Codanus is described at the end of the chapter on Germania. Strangely enough, he says, according to the MSS. [iii. c. 4], that “Sarmatia is separated from the following [i.e., Scythia] by the Vistula”; it would thus lie on the western side of the river, which seems curious. It might be possible that the islands off the coast of Sarmatia are among the many which lay in Codanus (?). As Sarmatia lay to the east of Germania, these islands would in any case be as far east as the Baltic, if not farther; but there is no ebb and flood there by which the connecting land between them might be alternately covered and left dry; on the other hand, the description suits the German North Sea coast. Either Mela’s authority has heard of the low-lying lands—the Frische Nehrung and the Kurische Nehrung, for instance—off the coast of the amber country, and has added the tidal phenomena from the North Sea coast, or, what is more probable, the Frisian islands, for example, may by a misunderstanding have been moved eastwards into Sarmatia, since older writers, who as yet made no distinction between Germania, Sarmatia and Scythia, described them as lying far east, off the Scythian coast (perhaps taken from the voyage of Pytheas).[96]

The emperor Nero’s (54-68 A.D.) love of show led, according to Pliny [Nat. Hist., xxxvii. 45], to the amber coast of the Baltic becoming “first known through a Roman knight, whom Julianus sent to purchase amber, when he was to arrange a gladiatorial combat for the emperor Nero. This knight visited the markets and the coasts and brought thence such a quantity that the nets which were hung up to keep the wild beasts away from the imperial tribune had a piece of amber in every mesh; indeed the weapons, the biers, and the whole apparatus of a day’s festival were heavy with amber. The largest piece weighed thirteen pounds.” This journey must have followed an undoubtedly ancient trade-route from the Adriatic to Carnuntum (in Pannonia), the modern Petronell on the Danube, where the latter is joined by the March, and from whence Pliny expressly says that the distance was 600,000 paces to the amber coast, which agrees almost exactly with the distance in a straight line to Samland. From Carnuntum the route lay along the river March, thence overland to the upper Vistula, and so down this river to Samland. It may easily be understood that much fresh knowledge reached Rome as a result of this journey.

The elder Pliny’s (23-79 A.D.) statements about the North, in his great work “Naturalis Historia” (in thirty-seven books), are somewhat obscure and confused, and so far are no advance upon Mela; but we remark nevertheless that fresh knowledge has been acquired, and it is as though we get a clearer vision of the new countries and seas through the northern mists. He himself says, moreover, that he “has received information of immense islands which have recently been discovered from Germania.” His work is in great part the fruit of an unusually extensive acquaintance with older writers, mostly Greek, but also Latin. He repeats a good deal of what Mela says, or draws from the same sources, probably Greek.His information about the North must have been obtained, so far as I can see, mainly in three different ways: (1) Directly through the Romans’ connection with Germania and through their expeditions to its northern coasts (under Augustus and Nero, for example). Pliny himself lived in Germania for several years (45-52 A.D.) as a Roman cavalry commander, and may then have collected much information. (2) He has drawn extensively from Greek sources, whose statements about the North may have come partly by sea, chiefly through Pytheas (perhaps also through later trading voyages); partly also by land, especially through commercial intercourse between the Black Sea and the Baltic.[97] (3) Finally he received information from Britain about the regions to the north. This may be derived partly from Greek sources, partly also from later Roman connection with Britain. Mela expressly says of this country that new facts will soon be known about it, “for the greatest prince [the Emperor Claudius] is now opening up this country, which has so long been closed ... he has striven by war to obtain personal knowledge of these things, and will spread this knowledge at his triumph.” The information obtained by Pliny through these different channels is often used by him uncritically, without remarking that different statements apply to the same countries and seas.

His theory of the universe was the usual one, that the universe was a hollow sphere which revolved in twenty-four hours with indescribable rapidity. “Whether by the continual revolution of such a great mass there is produced an immense noise, exceeding all powers of hearing, I am no more able to assert than that the sound produced by the stars circulating about one another and revolving in their orbits, is a lovely and incredibly graceful harmony.” The earth stood in the centre of the universe and had the form of a sphere. The land was everywhere surrounded by sea, which covers the greater part of the globe.

In his description of the North [iv. 12, 88 f.] Pliny begins at the east, and relies here entirely on Greek authorities.

Having then mentioned several districts bordering on the Black Sea, Pliny continues [iv. 13, 94 f.]:

This mention of lands and seas in the North is of great interest. But in attempting to identify any of them in Pliny’s description we must always remember that to him and his Greek authorities, and to all writers even in much later times, all land north of the coasts of Scythia, Sarmatia and Germania was nothing but islands in the northern ocean. Further, it must be remembered that the ancient Greeks did not know the name Germania, which was not introduced until about 80 B.C. To them Scythia and Celtica (Gaul) were conterminous, and their Scythian coast might therefore lie either on the Baltic or the North Sea.

It has not been possible to decide where the name “Rusbeas” (called by Solinus “Rubeas”) comes from;[101] but it is best understood if we take it to be southern Norway or Lindesnes. As the description begins at the east on the Scythian coast, it follows that “Amalcium” is the Baltic as far as the Danish islands and the land of the Cimbri. “Morimarusa,”[102] which extends from Amalcium to Lindesnes, will be the Cattegat (in part, at any rate) and the Skagerak. Cronium will be the North Sea and the Northern Ocean beyond Lindesnes.[103] We must believe that Philemon has obtained his information about the Cimbri (at the Skaw), about Morimarusa, and about Rusbeas either from Pytheas—whose mention thereof we must then suppose to have been accidentally omitted by other authors—or else from later Greek merchants. In the same way Xenophon must have got his Balcia, which is here named for the first time in literature. As these two Greek authors (probably of about 100 B.C.) are expressly mentioned as authorities, the statements cannot be derived from the circumnavigation of the Skaw in the time of Augustus, nor from any other Roman expedition. It is clear enough that Pliny himself did not know where Rusbeas and Balcia were, but simply repeated uncritically what he had read. On the other hand, he knew from another source that the sea he calls Cronium lay far north of Britain, and must therefore be sought for to the north-west of the Scythian coast.Balcia must be looked for most probably in the Baltic. As already mentioned (p. 72) it may be Jutland; but as it is described as an island of immense size and three days’ sail from the Scythian coast, it suits southern Sweden better, although Pliny has also the name Scadinavia for this from another source.

After these doubtful statements about the north coast of Scythia, taken from Greek sources and interwoven with fables, Pliny reaches firmer ground in Germania, when he continues [iv. 13, 96]:

Here are a number of new names and pieces of information. The form of some of the names shows that here too Pliny has borrowed to some extent from Greek authors; but his information must also partly be derived from Roman sources, and from Germany itself. His “Codanus” must be the same as that of Mela, and is the sea adjacent to the country of the Cimbri, which is here for the first time clearly referred to as a promontory (promunturium). It is the Cattegat, and, in part at any rate, the Skagerak. The enormous mountain “SÆvo” will then be most probably the mountains of Scandinavia, especially southern Norway, which forms the bay of Codanus in such a way that the latter is bounded on the other side by the Cimbrian Promontory.[105] It will then be in the same mountainous country that we should look for the promontory of Rusbeas (see above).

The name “Scatinavia” or “Scadinavia” (both spellings occur in the MSS. of Pliny) is found here certainly for the first time; but, curiously enough, we also find the name “Scandia” in Pliny; it is used of an island which is mentioned as near Britain (see below, p. 106). “Scandia” has often been taken for a shortened form of “Scadinavia”; but if we consider the occurrence of both names in Pliny in conjunction with the fact that Mela has not yet heard either, but has, on the other hand, a large island, “Codanovia,” in the bay of Codanus, then it may seem possible that originally there were two entirely different names: “Codanovia,” for Sealand (and perhaps for south Sweden), and “*SkÂnovia” (“SkÁney,” latinised into “Scandia”) for SkÅne. By a confusion of these two the form “Scadinavia” for south Sweden may have resulted in Pliny, instead of Mela’s “Codanovia,” while at the same time he got the name “Scandia” from another source. The latter is the only one used by Ptolemy both for south Sweden and the Danish islands; he has four “ScandiÆ,” three smaller ones and one very large one farther east, “Scandia” proper (see below, p. 119). By further confusion of the two names, “Scadinavia” has become “Scandinavia” in later copyists and authors.[106]

What may be the meaning of the name “Hilleviones” in Scadinavia is difficult to make out; it does not occur in any other writer, but is in all likelihood a common term for all Scandinavians. One is reminded of the “Hermiones” who occur in Mela in the same connection, but a little later Pliny mentions these also. “Æningia,” which is said to be no smaller than Scadinavia, is a riddle. Could it be a corruption of a Halsingia or Alsingia (the land of the Helsingers), a name for northern Sweden, which thus lay farther off and was less known than Scadinavia?[107] When we read that these regions were supposed to extend as far as the Vistula, this might indicate a vague idea that Scadinavia and Æningia were connected with the mainland, whereby a bay of the sea was formed, called “Cylipenus,”[108] which will thus be yet another name for the Baltic, taken from a new source; but the whole may be nothing more than an obscure statement.

“Latris,” which lay at the mouth of Cylipenus, may be one of the Danish islands, and one may perhaps be reminded of Sealand with the ancient royal stronghold of “Lethra” or Leire, Old Norse “Hleidrar.” The bay of “Lagnus,”[109] which borders on the Cimbri, must then be taken as a new name for the Cattegat, while “Tastris” may be Skagen. According to the sources Pliny has borrowed from, we thus get the following names for the same parts: for the Baltic or parts thereof, “Amalcium” and “Cylipenus,” and perhaps in part “Codanus”; for the Cattegat, “Lagnus” and “Codanus”; for the Skagerak, “Morimarusa,” in part also “Codanus”; for south Sweden, “Scadinavia” and “Balcia”; for Jutland or Skagen, “Promunturium Cimbrorum” and “Tastris.” At any rate, this superfluity of names discloses increased communication, through many channels, with the North. Communication with the North is also to be deduced from Pliny’s mention [viii. c. 15, 39] of an animal called “achlis,” as a native of those countries.

Finally, Pliny had a third source of knowledge about the North through Britain, which to him was a common name for all the islands in that ocean. Some of the statements from this quarter originated with Pytheas; but later information was added; Pliny himself mentions Agrippa as an authority. Among the British Isles he mentions [iv. 16, 103]: “40 ‘Orcades’ separated from each other by moderate distances, 7 ‘AcmodÆ,’ and 30 ‘Hebudes.’” His 7 “AcmodÆ” (which in some MSS. are also called “HÆcmodÆ”) are, clearly enough, Mela’s 7 HÆmodÆ, and probably the Shetland Islands, while the 30 “Hebudes” are the Hebrides, which are thus mentioned here for the first time in any known author.

After referring to a number of other British islands “and the ‘GlÆsiÆ,’ scattered in the Germanic Ocean, which the later Greeks call the ‘Electrides,’ because amber (electrum) is found in them,”[110] Pliny continues [iv. 16, 104]: “The most distant of all known islands is ‘Tyle’ (Thule), where at the summer solstice there is no night, and correspondingly no day at the winter solstice.”[111]... “Some authors mention yet more islands, ‘Scandia,’ ‘Dumna,’ ‘Bergos,’ and the largest of all, ‘Berricen,’ from which the voyage is made to Tyle. From Tyle it is one day’s sail to the curdled sea which some call ‘Cronium.’” We do not know from what authors Pliny can have taken these names, nor where the islands are to be looked for; but as Thule is mentioned, we must suppose that in any case some of them come originally from Pytheas. As Scandia comes first among these islands, one is led to think that Dumna and the two other enigmatical names are of Germanic origin. “Dumna” might then remind us of Scandinavian names such as Duney, DÖnna (in Nordland), or the like; but it is more probable that it comes from the Celtic “dubno” or “dumno” (== deep), and may be the name of an island off Scotland. “Bergos” may remind us of the Old Norse word “bjarg” or “berg.”[112] It is not so easy with the strange name “Berricen,” which in some MSS. has the form “Verigon” or “Nerigon” (cf. above, p. 58). If the first reading is the correct one, it suggests an origin in an Old Norse “ber-ig” (“ber” == bear; the meaning would therefore be “bear-y,” full of bears), not an unsuitable name for southern Norway, whence the journey was made to Thule or northern Norway; but this is doubtful. If “Nerigon” is the correct reading, it will not be impossible, in the opinion of Professor Torp, that this, as Keyser supposed, may be the name Norway, which in Old Norse was called, by Danes for example, “*NorÞravegaR” (like “AustravegaR” and “VestravegaR”). If any of the names of these islands are really Germanic, like Scandia, then they cannot, as some have thought, refer to islands off Scotland or to the Shetlands, as these were not yet inhabited by Norsemen. The islands in question must therefore be looked for in Norway. It is important that Scandia is mentioned first among them in connection with Britain, and that at the same time another is described as the largest of them all, and as lying on the way to Thule. This again points to communication by sea between the British Isles and Scandinavia, of which we found indications four hundred years earlier.

In 84 A.D. Agricola, after his campaign against the Caledonians, sent his fleet round the northern point of Scotland, “whereby,” Tacitus[113] tells us, “it was proved that Britain is an island. At the same time the hitherto unknown islands which are called ‘Orcadas’ (the Orkneys) were discovered and subdued. Thule also could be descried in the distance; but the fleet had orders not to go farther, and winter was coming on. Moreover the water is thick and heavy to row in; it is said that even wind cannot stir it to much motion. The reason for this may be the absence of land and mountains, which otherwise would give the storms increased power, and that the enormous mass of continuous ocean is not easy to set in motion.” This Thule must have been Fair Island or the Shetland Isles, and this is the most northern point reached by the Romans, so far as is known. The idea of the heavy sea, which is not moved by the winds, is the same that we met with in early antiquity (see pp. 40, 69).

Cornelius Tacitus, who wrote his “Germania” in the year 98 A.D., was a historian and ethnographer, not a geographer. His celebrated work has not, therefore, much to say of the northern lands; he has not even a single name for them. On the other hand, he has some remarkable statements about the peoples, especially in Sweden, which show that since the time of Pliny fresh information about that part of the world must have reached Rome.

The nations of Tacitus (after K. Miller)

Tacitus makes the “Suebi,” or “Suevi,” inhabit the greater part of Germany as far as the frontier of the Slavs (Sarmatians) and Finns on the east (and north ?). The name, which possibly means the “hovering” people and is due to their roving existence, is perhaps rather to be regarded as a common designation for various Germanic tribes. After them he called the sea on the eastern coast of Germany, i.e., the Baltic, the Suebian Sea (“Suebicum mare”). On its right-hand (eastern) shore dwelt the “Æstii” (i.e., Esthonians; perhaps from “aistan” == to honour, that is, the honourable people [?]). “Their customs and dress are like those of the Suevi, but their language more nearly resembles the British” (!). “The use of iron is rare there, that of sticks [i.e., clubs, fustium] common. They also explore the sea and collect amber in shallow places and on the shore itself. But they do not understand its nature and origin, and it long lay disregarded among things cast up by the sea, “until our luxury made it esteemed.” “They have no use for it,[115] they gather it in the rough, bring it unwrought, and are surprised at the price they receive” [c. 45]. From this it may be concluded that there was constant trading communication between the Mediterranean and the Baltic, and that Roman merchants had probably penetrated thither.

Boat found at Nydam, near Flensburg. Third century A.D. 70 feet long (after C. Engelhardt)

“In the Ocean itself (ipso in Oceano) lie the communities of the Suiones, a mighty people not only in men and arms, but also in ships.” The Suiones, who are first mentioned by Tacitus, are evidently of the same name as the Svear (Old Norse “svÍar,” Anglo-Saxon “sveon”) or Swedes.[116] Their ships were remarkable for having a prow, “prora,” at each end (i.e., they were the same fore and aft); they had no sail, and the oars were not made fast in a row, but were loose, so that they could row with them now on one side, now on the other, “as on some rivers.”[117] In other words, they had open rowlocks, as in some of the river boats of that time, and as is common in modern boats; the oars were not put out through holes as in the Roman ships, and as in the Viking ships (the Gokstad and Oseberg ships). The boat of the Iron Age which was dug up at Nydam had just such open rowlocks.

The Suiones (unlike the other Germanic peoples) esteemed wealth, and therefore they had only one lord; this lord governed with unlimited power, so much so that arms were not distributed among the people, but were kept locked up, and moreover in charge of a thrall,[118] because the sea prevented sudden attacks of enemies, and armed idle hands (i.e., armed men unemployed) are apt to commit rash deeds [c. 44].

The neighbours of the Suiones, probably on the north, are the “Sitones” [c. 45], whom Tacitus also regards as Germanic. “They are like the Suiones with one exception, that a woman reigns over them; so far have they degenerated not only from liberty, but also from slavery. Here Suebia ends (Hic SuebiÆ finis).” Suebia was that part of Germany inhabited by the Suevi. It looks as though Tacitus considered that courage and manliness decreased the farther north one went. The Suiones allow themselves to be bullied by an absolute king, who sets a thrall to guard their weapons, and the Sitones are in a still worse plight, in allowing themselves to be governed by a woman. The Sitones are not mentioned before or after this in literature, and it seems as though the name must be due to some misunderstanding.[119] It has been supposed that they were Finns (“KvÆns”)[120] in northern Sweden, and their name may then have been taken as the word for woman (“kvÆn,” or “kvÁn,” mostly in the sense of wife [cf. English queen]), and from this the legend of womanly government may have been formed[121] in the same way as Adam of Bremen later translates the name Cvenland (KvÆnland) by “Terra feminarum,” and thus forms the myth of the country of the Amazons. But this explanation of the statement of Tacitus may be doubtful.[122] We have already seen that Mela mentions a people in Scythia, the “MÆotides,” who were governed by women, and, as we have said, it would not have seemed unreasonable to him that the government of women increased farther north.

Of the regions on the north Tacitus says: “North of the Suiones lies another sluggish and almost motionless sea (mare pigrum ac prope immotum); that this encircles and confines the earth’s disc is rendered probable by the fact that the last light of the setting sun continues until the sun rises again, so clearly that the stars are paled thereby. Popular belief also supposes that the sound of the sun emerging from the ocean can be heard, and that the forms of the gods are seen and the rays beaming from his head. There report rightly places the boundaries of nature.” As mentioned above (see p. 108), he thought that even to the north of the Orkneys the sea was thick and sluggish.

Tacitus is the first author who mentions the Finns (Fenni), but whether they are Lapps, KvÆns or another race cannot be determined. He says himself: “I am in doubt whether to reckon the Peucini, Venedi and Fenni among the Germans or Sarmatians (Slavs).” He speaks of the Fenni apparently as dwelling far to the north-east, beyond the Peucini, or BastarnÆ, from whom they are separated by forests and mountains, which the latter overrun as robbers.

These Fenni of Tacitus consequently live near the outer limits of the world, where all begins to be fable. The name itself carries us to northern Europe, or rather Scandinavia, for it was certainly only the North Germans, especially the Scandinavians, who used the word as a name for their non-Aryan neighbours. No doubt it appears from the description that they lived in northern Russia, and were only separated from the Peucini by forests and mountains; but, as was said above, Tacitus had neither sense for nor interest in geography. If he heard of a savage and barbarous Finn-people far in the North, and if it suited him on other grounds to bring them in beyond the Peucini or BastarnÆ, but before the Hellusii and Oxiones, who not only led the life of beasts, but even had their bodies and limbs, then certainly no geographical difficulties would stop him. It is of interest that these Fenni are described as a typical race of hunters, using the bow as their special weapon. As Tacitus only states that they had no horses, he had doubtless heard of no other domestic animals amongst them. Consequently it is not likely that they were reindeer-nomads. The interweaving of branches that the children were hidden in, to which the men returned, and which was the dwelling of the old men, must be the tent of the Finns, which was raised upon branches or stakes. As early as Herodotus [iv. 23] we read of the ArgippÆans, who were also Mongols, that “every man lived under a tree, over which in winter he spread a white, thick covering of felt.” It is clearly a tent that is intended here also [cf. MÜllenhoff, ii., 1887, pp. 40, 352]. The idea that among the barbarians men and women frequently did the same work does not seem to have been uncommon in antiquity, and it can scarcely have been regarded as something peculiar to the Finns; in this connection it is no doubt derived from the legends of the Amazons. Herodotus, and after him Mela (see above, pp. 87 f.), describes such a similarity between men and women among the Scythian people and the Sauromatians; and Diodorus [iv. 20, v. 39] says of the Ligurians that men and women shared the same hard labour.

The so-called Dionysius Periegetes wrote in the time of the emperor Hadrian (117-138 A.D.) a description of the earth in 1187 verses, which perhaps on account of its simple brevity and metrical form was used in schools and widely circulated [cf. K. Miller, vi., 1898, p. 95]. But unfortunately the author has merely drawn from obsolete Greek sources, such as Homer, HecatÆus, Eratosthenes and others, and has nothing new to tell us. The whole continent was surrounded by ocean like an immense island; it was not quite circular, but somewhat prolonged in the direction of the sun’s course (i.e., towards the east and west).

After Greek scientific geography had had its most fruitful life in the period ending with Eratosthenes and Hipparchus it still sent out such powerful shoots as the physical-mathematical geographer Posidonius and the descriptive geographer Strabo; but after them a century and a half elapses until we hear of its final brilliant revival in Marinus of Tyre and Claudius Ptolemy, whose work was to exercise a decisive influence upon geography thirteen centuries later.

Marinus’s writings are lost, and we know nothing more of him than is told us by his younger contemporary Ptolemy, who has relied upon him to a considerable extent, and whose great forerunner he was. He must have lived in the first half of the second century A.D. He made an exhaustive attempt to describe every place on the earth according to its latitude and longitude, and drew a map of the world on this principle. He also adopted Posidonius’s insufficient estimate of the earth’s circumference (instead of that of Eratosthenes), and his exaggerated extension of the “oecumene” towards the east; and as this was passed on from him to Ptolemy he exercised great influence upon Columbus, amongst others, who thus came to estimate the distance around the globe to India at only half its real length. In this way Marinus and Ptolemy are of importance in the discovery not only of the West Indies, but also of North America by Cabot, and in the earliest attempts to find a north-west passage to China. Thus “accidental” mistakes may have far-reaching influence in history.

Claudius PtolemÆus marks to a certain extent the highest point of classical geographical knowledge. He was perhaps born in Egypt about 100 A.D. He must have lived as an astronomer at Alexandria during the years 126 to 141, and perhaps longer; and he probably outlived the emperor Antoninus Pius, who died in 161 A.D., but we do not know much more of him. In his celebrated astronomical work, most generally known by its Arabic title of “Almagest” (because it first reached mediÆval western Europe in an Arabic translation), he gave his well-known account of the universe and of the movements of the heavenly bodies, which had such great influence in the later Middle Ages, and on Columbus and the great discoveries. His celebrated “Geography” in eight books (written about 150 A.D.) is, as he himself tells us, for the most part founded upon the now lost work of Marinus, and shows a great advance in geographical comprehension upon the practical but unscientific Romans. With the scientific method of the Greeks an attempt is here made to collect and co-ordinate the geographical knowledge of the time into a tabulated survey, for the most part dry, of countries, places and peoples, with a number of latitudes and longitudes, mostly given by estimate. His information and names are in great part taken from the so-called “Itineraries,” which were tabular and consisted chiefly of graphic routes for travellers with stopping-places and distances, and which were due for the most part to military sources (especially the Roman campaigns), and in a less degree to merchants and sailors.

Cartographical representation was by him radically improved by the introduction of correct projections, with converging meridians, of which a commencement had already been made by Hipparchus. His atlas, which may originally have been drawn by himself, or by another from the detailed statements in his geography, gives us the only maps that have been preserved from antiquity, and thus has a special interest.

As to the North, we find remarkably little that is new in Ptolemy, and on many points he shows a retrogression even, as it seems, from Pytheas; but the northern coast of Europe begins to take definite shape past the Cimbrian Peninsula to the Baltic. His representation of Britain and Ireland (Ivernia), which is based upon much new information,[124] was certainly a great improvement on his predecessors, even though he gives the northern part of Scotland (Caledonia) a strange deflection far to the east, which was retained on later maps (in the fifteenth century). He mentions five Ebudes (Hebrides) above Ivernia, and says further [ii. 3]:

Ptolemy calculates his degrees of longitude eastwards from a meridian 0 which he draws west of the Fortunate Isles (the Canaries), the most western part of the earth. It will be seen that he gives Thule no very great extent. His removing it from the Arctic Circle south to 63° is doubtless due to the men of Agricola’s fleet having thought they had sighted Thule north of the Orkneys. In his eighth book [c. 3] he says:

It is evident that these “hours” are found by calculation, and are merely a way of expressing degrees of latitude and longitude; they cannot therefore be referred to any local observation of the length of the longest day, etc. It is curious that Ptolemy only mentions Ebudes and Orcades, and not the Shetland Isles; perhaps they are included among his thirty Orcades.

The northern part of Ptolemy’s map of the world, Europe and Asia.

From the Rome edition of Ptolemy of 1490 (NordenskiÖld, 1889)

He represents the Cimbrian Peninsula (Jutland) with remarkable correctness, though making it lean too much towards the east, like Scotland. Upon it “dwelt on the west the Sigulones, then the Sabalingii, then the Cobandi, above them the Chali, and above these again and farther west the Phundusii, and more to the east the Charudes [Harudes or Horder; cf. p. 85], and to the north of all the Cimbri.” It was suggested above (p. 94) that possibly the name Cobandi might be connected with the Codanus of Mela and Pliny. The Sabalingii, according to Much [1905, p. 11], may be the same name as Pytheas’s Abalos (cf. p. 70), which may have been written Sabalos or Sabalia, and may have been inhabited by Aviones. To the north of the Cimbrian Chersonese Ptolemy places three islands, the “AlociÆ,” which may be taken from the Halligen islands, properly “Hallagh” [cf. Detlefsen, 1904, p. 61], off the coast of Sleswick.[125]

It will be seen that Scandia would not be much larger than Thule: 20' longer from west to east, and only 10' longer from north to south.

The Scandinavian North according to Ptolemy.
The most northern people in Scandinavia, the Phinni, are omitted in this map, as in most MSS.

The “ChÆdini” must be the Norwegian “HeiÐnir” or “Heinir,” whose name is preserved in HeiÐmork, Hedemarken [cf. Zeuss, 1837, p. 159; Much, 1893, p. 188; MÜllenhoff, 1900, p. 497]. This is the first time that an undoubtedly Norwegian tribe is mentioned in known literature. “Phinni” (Finns) is only found in one MS.; but as Jordanes (Cassiodorus) says that Ptolemy mentions seven tribes in Scandia, it must have been found in ancient MSS. of his work, and it occurs here for the first time as the name of a people in Scandinavia. Ptolemy also mentions “Phinni” in another place as a people in Sarmatia near the Vistula (together with Gythones or Goths); but these must be connected with the “Fenni” of Tacitus, and doubtless also belong originally to Scandinavia. The “GutÆ” must be the Gauter or GÖter, unless they are the Guter of Gotland (?). The “Dauciones,” it has been supposed, may possibly be the Danes, and the “Levoni” might perhaps be the Hilleviones mentioned by Pliny, whose name does not otherwise occur. Thus a knowledge of Scandinavia slowly dawns in history.

Ptolemy’s map of Europe, etc., compared with the true conditions (in dotted line)

To the north of the known coasts and islands of Europe there lay, according to Ptolemy and Marinus, a great continuous ocean, which was a continuation of the Atlantic. On the extreme north-west was “the Hyperborean Ocean, which was also called the Congealed (p?pe???) or ‘Cronius’ or the Dead (?e????) Sea.” North of Britain was the Deucaledonian Ocean, and east of Britain the Germanic Ocean as far as the eastern side of the Cimbrian Chersonese, that is, the North Sea and a part of the Baltic. This was joined by the Sarmatian Ocean, with the Venedian (i.e., Wendish) Gulf, from the mouths of the Vistula north-eastwards. The Baltic was still merely an open bay of the great Northern Ocean. But whether the latter extended farther to the east, round the north of the oecumene, making it into an island, was unknown. Ptolemy and Marinus therefore put the northern boundary of the known continent at the latitude of Thule, and made this continent extend into the unknown on the north-east and east; they thus furnish the latest development of the doctrine that the oecumene was not an island in the universal ocean, since they considered that guesses about the regions beyond the limits of the really known were inadmissible, and no one had reached any coast in those directions; for the Caspian Sea was closed and not connected with the Northern Ocean. In the same way the extent of Africa towards the south was uncertain, and they connected it possibly with south-eastern Asia, to the south of the Indian Ocean, which thus also became enclosed.

Ptolemy’s tribes in Denmark and South Sweden

Ptolemy wrote at a time when the Roman Empire was at its height, and he had the advantage of being able, as a Greek, to combine the scientific lore of the older Greek literature with the mass of information which must inevitably have been collected from all parts of the world by the extensive administration of this gigantic empire. His work, like that of Marinus, was therefore a natural fruit which grew by the stream of time. But the stream had just then reached a backwater; he belonged to a languishing civilisation, and represents the last powerful shoot which Greek science put forth. Some thirteen centuries were to elapse before, by the changes of fate, his works at last made their mark in the development of the world’s civilisation. In the centuries that succeeded him the Roman Empire went steadily backwards to its downfall, and literature degenerated rapidly; it sank into compilation and repetition of older writers, without spirit or originality. It is therefore not surprising that the literature of later antiquity gives us nothing new about the North, although communication therewith must certainly have increased.

The geographical author of antiquity most widely read in the Middle Ages was C. Julius Solinus (third century A.D.), who for the most part repeated passages from Pliny, with a marked predilection for the fabulous. All that is to be found in the MSS. of his works about Thule, the Orcades and the Hebudes, beyond what we read in Pliny, consists, in the opinion of Mommsen [1895, p. 219], of later additions by a copyist (perhaps an Irish monk) of between the seventh and ninth centuries, and as this has a certain interest for our country it will be dealt with later under this period.

Rufus Festus Avienus lived in the latter half of the fourth century A.D. and was proconsul in Africa in 366 and in AchÆa in 372. His poem “Ora Maritima” is mainly a translation of older Greek authors and, as mentioned above (p. 37), is of interest from his having used an otherwise unknown authority of very early origin. His second descriptive poem is a free translation of Dionysius Periegetes.

Amongst other authors who in this period of literary degeneration compiled geographical descriptions may be named: Ammianus Marcellinus (second half of the fourth century) in his historical works, Macrobius[126] (circa 400 A.D.), the Spaniard Paulus Orosius, whose widely read historical work (circa 418 A.D.) has a geographical chapter, Marcianus of Heraclea (beginning of the fifth century), Julius Honorius (beginning of the fifth century), Marcianus Capella (about 470 A.D.), Priscianus CÆsariensis (about 500 A.D.) and others.

Their statements about the northern regions are repetitions of older authors and contain nothing new.

Much of the geographical knowledge of that time was included in the already mentioned (p. 116) “Itineraries,” which were probably illustrated with maps of the routes. Partial copies of one of them are preserved in the so-called “Tabula Peutingeriana” [cf. K. Miller, vi. 1898, pp. 90 ff.], which came to be of importance in the Middle Ages.Thus at the close of antiquity the lands and seas of the North still lie in the mists of the unknown. Many indications point to constant communication with the North, and now and again vague pieces of information have reached the learned world. Occasionally, indeed, the clouds lift a little, and we get a glimpse of great countries, a whole new world in the North, but then they sink again and the vision fades like a dream of fairyland. It seems as though no one felt scientifically impelled to make an effort to clear up these obscure questions.

Then followed restless times, with roving warlike tribes in Central Europe. The peaceful trading communication between the Mediterranean and the northern coasts was broken off, and with it the fresh stream of information which had begun to flow in from the North. And for a long time men chewed the cud of the knowledge that had been collected in remote antiquity. But Greek literature was more and more forgotten, and it was especially the later Roman authors they lived on.

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Map of the World from a ninth-century MS. (in the Strasburg Library)