Ultima Thule #354

Ideas That Changed the World

Dear friends of Daily Philosophy,

When I recently sent out the cash prizes to the winners of the Daily Philosophy Essay Contest, I used PayPal (in most cases). Now I don’t normally use my PayPal account for anything. It’s just sitting there, and very slowly accumulating a bit of small change every month from the ads on the main Daily Philosophy website. But I was surprised and delighted to see that, over the years, it had collected enough money to pay for all the contest’s cash prizes. I thought that I would mention this to make you perhaps feel better about watching ads on the Internet: occasionally, your little bit of annoyance at an ad can translate to a cash prize that, although the amount is only symbolic, may inspire a young student to work harder on their publications and create more valuable philosophy for all of us. So let’s thank the many anonymous readers who watched our ads (and did not use ad blockers) because they financed this contest and the prizes for the winning writers.

Let me also mention that one of our winners requested that their prize goes as a donation to Seed Mob Australia. Here is what the group says about themselves:

Our vision is for a strong and powerful network of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people who are connected, empowered to protect country and leading the fight for climate justice. We know that in order to create the power to take down the fossil fuel industry and vested interests that are holding back action on climate change we need to grow our movement in its size, capacity and reach. This means that the way we build power and grow our movement is to have small groups across the country that are able to create change in their local communities and be mobilised for strategic, political campaigns.

I have no other knowledge about this group, so I cannot personally recommend them, but if you feel like supporting them too, or if you just want to learn more about their work, here is a link to their website:

Seed Mob Australia

I apologise for the missing post of last week: my whole family lay in bed with a winter flu. But we’re slowly recovering now, and what better way to forget the winter than a look at the sunny shores of the Mediterranean Sea?

So let’s go there.

Our man in Marseille

In the books on Greek philosophy and history, one always reads of Athens, Miletus, Sparta, and maybe Elea. Sometimes Samos is mentioned, since Pythagoras came from there, and sometimes Delphi or Olympia, one the seat of the most powerful oracle of the ancient world; and the other the birthplace of the Games that we still celebrate today. And usually, things end there.

But in reality, by the 6th century, the Greeks had established over 500 colonies all over the Mediterranean shores, and had populated them with more than 60,000 colonists. Forty percent of all Greeks called one of these colonies their home [1]. Some were rich and prosperous, while others struggled to survive; some were peaceful, and others found themselves at the frontlines of never-ending conquests and wars.

The most famous colonies and Greek cities are those on what today is the Turkish coast of Asia Minor, the South Italian areas usually referred to as Magna Grecia, the Aegean islands, and places like Alexandria in Egypt. But we often overlook the more remote colonies: Corsica, Sardinia, the south of France, and the east coast of Spain were all harbouring Greek populations in ancient times.

By Regaliorum / Based on a map in The Times History Atlas of the World. Public Domain.

I find it interesting to see how places that we don’t usually connect are linked to each other: Marseille, then Massalia, was founded at around 600 BC by settlers from Phocaea, a place on today’s Turkish coast. Phocaea itself was founded by Athenian settlers at around the 9th century BC. Sixty years after Massalia, Phocaeans founded another colony: Elea in Italy, the place where Zeno and Parmenides lived.

Aristotle told the story of how Massalia was founded, but his original version of the text is lost today. Another version of the tale comes from Pompeius Trogus, summarised in the 3rd century AD by Justin, a Roman historian:

In the time of King Tarquin a party of young Phocaean warriors, sailing to the mouth of the Tiber, entered into an alliance with the Romans. From there, sailing into the distant bays of Gaul, they founded Massilia among the Ligurians and the fierce tribes of the Gauls; and they did mighty deeds, whether in protecting themselves against the savagery of the Gauls or in provoking them to fight—having themselves first been provoked. For the Phocaeans were forced by the meanness and poverty of their soil to pay more attention to the sea than to the land: they eked out an existence by fishing, by trading, and largely by piracy, which in those days was reckoned honourable. So they dared to sail to the furthest shore of the ocean and came to the Gallic gulf, by the mouth of the Rhone. Taken by the pleasantness of the place, they returned home to report what they had seen and enlisted the support of more people. The commanders of the fleet were Simos and Protis. So they came and sought the friendship of the king of the Segobrigii, by name Nannus, in whose territory they desired to found a city. It so happened that on that day the king was engaged in arranging the marriage of his daughter Gyptis: in accordance with the custom of the tribe, he was preparing to give her to be married to a son-in-law chosen at a banquet. So since all the suitors had been invited to the wedding, the Greek guests too were asked to the feast. Then the girl was brought in, and when she was asked by her father to offer water to the man she chose as her husband, she passed them all over and, turning to the Greeks, gave the water to Protis; and he, thus changed from a guest into a son-in-law, was given the site for founding the city by his father-in-law. So Massilia was founded near the mouths of the river Rhone, in a deep inlet, as it were in a corner of the sea. [2]

In ancient times, Massalia was well-known as a joke: its men, wearing long hair and long, perfumed robes, were considered less manly than was desirable at that time. Soft and effeminate Athenian men would be said to be “sailing to Marseille.” Interestingly, towards the late Middle Ages, Marseille again became famous for an article that fits the ancient cliche perfectly: high-quality, perfumed soap, produced in the city from around 1370 and up to the present.

But Marseilles also produced another article of importance: explorers. Euthymenes travelled along the west African coast in the late 6th century BC, describing a great river that filled the ocean with sweet water. And Pytheas explored northwestern Europe in the late 4th century BC, establishing a tradition that reached all the way through the Middle Ages to 20th century Nazi Germany.

The voyages of Pytheas

We don’t know why Pytheas left his city to go exploring. We know that he wasn’t rich, and that his trip wasn’t a military one. He may have been chartered by Massalia’s merchants, who wanted to discover new markets outside of the Pillars of Hercules, as they called Gibraltar back then. So, around 330 or 325 BC, he set out from Marseille on his trip to the north.

Pytheas’ route. From: The History of Exploration Podcast.

His journey didn’t start well. At the time, the Carthaginians had blocked the Strait of Gibraltar for all ships from other nations, so it’s not clear if he could even have left the Mediterranean on board his ship. He may have tried to circumvent the blockade by night, or the Massaliotes may have had a special arrangement with Carthage. If none of those was the case, then Pytheas and his men might have begun their journey crossing to the Atlantic coast of France over land (the blue arrows on the map).

Pytheas wrote a book about his travels, called either About the Ocean or Circumnavigation (Periplous in Greek), and the map shows why. Although his book is lost today, and it is difficult to reconstruct his voyage in detail from the mentions of others who refer to his book, he probably did sail all around Britain, justifying the work’s title.

The ancient historian Diodorus Siculus reports what Pytheas found out about life in Britain:

§5.21.5 And Britain, we are told, is inhabited by tribes which are autochthonous and preserve in their ways of living the ancient manner of life. They use chariots, for instance, in their wars, even as tradition tells us the old Greek heroes did in the Trojan War, and their dwellings are humble, being built for the most part out of reeds or logs. The method they employ of harvesting their grain crops is to cut off no more than the heads and store them away in roofed granges, and then each day they pick out the ripened heads and grind them, getting in this way their food. As for their habits, they are simple and far removed from the shrewdness and vice which characterize the men of our day. Their way of living is modest, since they are well clear of the luxury which is begotten of wealth. The island is also thickly populated, and its climate is extremely cold, as one would expect, since it actually lies under the Great Bear. It is held by many kings and potentates, who for the most part live at peace among themselves. [3]

I’m not sure how much Diodorus actually admires the simple and virtuous life of the Brits, or whether he pities them for being so far removed from all “luxury that is begotten by wealth.” The “Great Bear” is the constellation Ursa Major, which lies roughly to the north.

We know that Pytheas did not arrive in Britain with a military force because he reports that the locals were friendly and helpful to him and his men, which they probably wouldn’t have been otherwise. Diodorus again, based on Pytheas’ writings:

§ 5.22.1 ... The inhabitants of Britain who dwell about the promontory known as Belerium are especially hospitable to strangers and have adopted a civilized manner of life because of their intercourse with merchants of other peoples. They it is who work the tin, treating the bed which bears it in an ingenious manner. 2 This bed, being like rock, contains earthy seams and in them the workers quarry the ore, which they then melt down and cleanse of its impurities. Then they work the tin into pieces the size of knuckle-bones and convey it to an island which lies off Britain and is called Ictis; for at the time of ebb-tide the space between this island and the mainland becomes dry and they can take the tin in large quantities over to the island on their wagons. [3]

The end of the world

After sailing north along the British coast, Pytheas reports reaching what must have seemed like the end of the world. Pliny the Elder writes:

§ 2.77.1 ...as on summer days the sun approaches nearer to the top of the world, owing to a narrow circuit of light the underlying parts of the earth have continuous days for 6 months at a time, and continuous nights when the sun has withdrawn in the opposite direction towards winter. Pytheas of Marseilles writes that this occurs in the island of Thule, 6 days' voyage N. from Britain, and some declare it also to occur in the Isle of Anglesea, which is about 200 miles from the British town of Colchester.

Pytheas also encountered sea ice on his voyage north, something that must have truly looked like the borders of the universe to the Mediterranean sailor. The geographer Strabo writes:

...Pytheas reported that the coast-line of the island was more than forty thousand stadia, and added his story about Thule and about those regions in which there was no longer either land properly so‑called, or sea, or air, but a kind of substance concreted from all these elements, resembling a sea-lungs​ — a thing in which, he says, the earth, the sea, and all the elements are held in suspension; and this is a sort of bond to hold all together, which you can neither walk nor sail upon. Now, as for this thing that resembles the sea-lungs, he says that he saw it himself, but that all the rest he tells from hearsay. [The sea-lung is a kind of jellyfish.]

Strabo disliked Pytheas for some reason, and he does not make a secret of it:

...Pytheas, by whom many have been misled... Now Polybius says that, in the first place, it is incredible that a private individual — and a poor man too — could have travelled such distances by sea and by land; and that, though Eratosthenes was wholly at a loss whether he should believe these stories, nevertheless he has believed Pytheas' account of Britain, and the regions about Gades, and of Iberia; but he says it is far better to believe Euhemerus, the Messenian, than Pytheas. Euhemerus, at all events, asserts that he sailed only to one country, Panchaea, whereas Pytheas asserts that he explored in person the whole northern region of Europe as far as the ends of the world — an assertion which no man would believe, not even if Hermes​ made it.

Today, researchers tend to believe that Pytheas journey took place more or less as described. But because it is difficult to pinpoint real, unique places that correspond to those described by Pytheas, there is a lot of uncertainty about where he actually sailed. He might have circumnavigated Britain, or he may only have covered one side, and then sailed along the coast of north Germany. He may have reached the Hebrides, or he may even have reached Norway or Iceland. Perhaps one day parts of his book will be found, or more detailed mentions of it in other works -- but until then, we will not know for sure.

Thule

We already briefly saw Thule mentioned by Pytheas as the most northerly point where life was still possible, just at the borders of the frozen ocean. What place it was in real geography, we don’t know. It might have been Orkney, Shetland, Northern Scotland, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, or the island of Smøla in Norway [4].

Thule has long excited the imagination of readers and travellers. In ancient times and more so in the Middle Ages, it became symbolic for a place far away, a place that stood for the very end of the world. It was imagined as a place that was either in perpetual darkness or in never-ending sunshine:

Pliny the Elder wrote in AD 77:

The farthest [island] of all, which are known and spoke of, is Thule; in which there be no nights at all, as we have declared, about mid-summer, namely when the Sun passes through the sign Cancer; and contrariwise no days in mid-winter: and each of these times they suppose, do last six months, all day, or all night. [4]

A Roman poet, Silius Italicus (25–101 AD), wrote that the people of Thule were painted blue, which makes historians believe that he might have meant the Picts, a group of people living in northern Britain, who may have been extensively tattooed.

Vergil mentions “Ultima Thule” as a metaphorical place, the farthermost, unreachable land, or unattainable goal of human striving. Seneca the Younger hoped that one day, lands beyond Thule would be discovered, and this was later used to refer to the discoveries of Columbus.

In the 20th century, Pytheas’ frozen kingdom got its own role in the deadly machinery of Nazi ideology. Thule was seen as the mythical origin of the “Aryan race,” and the Thule Society, partly Germanic mythology study group, partly occultist congregation, enforced what the Nazis thought of as race purity among its members.

And today, when Trump wants to occupy Greenland, he is surely also thinking of the strategical value of what has been, for decades, called Thule Air Base: since 1953, a military base on Greenland, which is the northernmost military installation of the US, just a short flight away from the northern shores of Russia.

But perhaps the most beautiful, most resonant rendering of the Thule motif comes from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who wrote in 1880:

With favoring winds, o'er sunlit seas,
We sailed for the Hesperides,
The land where golden apples grow;
But that, ah! that was long ago.

How far, since then, the ocean streams
Have swept us from that land of dreams,
That land of fiction and of truth,
The lost Atlantis of our youth!

Whither, ah, whither? Are not these
The tempest-haunted Hebrides,
Where sea-gulls scream, and breakers roar,
And wreck and sea-weed line the shore?

Ultima Thule! Utmost Isle!
Here in thy harbors for a while
We lower our sails; a while we rest
From the unending, endless quest.

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Thanks for reading, and see you next weekend! Tell me if you like these occasional posts on wider aspects of ancient Greek culture, or would you prefer more narrowly-understood “philosophy”?

Notes

[1]: https://www.worldhistory.org/Greek_Colonization/
[2]: Justin XLIII, 3, summarising Pompeius Trogus. In: Philippic Histories (transl. Rivet 1988, p. 10).
[3]: https://topostext.org/work/133
[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule