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The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek: The Man Who Discovered Britain
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The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek: The Man Who Discovered Britain Customer Reviews
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♥♥♥♥♥ |
Readable, holds interest
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There seems to be a subgenre of history and biography for which the objective is to raise a personage, event or culture out of the deep obscurity of few extant facts and construct a sensible non-fictional narrative. Barry Cunliffe chose a particularly difficult subject. All that is known about a 4th century B.C. Greek named Pytheas is that he was the first literate traveler to leave the Mediterranean region and head north to the British Isles, northern Europe and possibly Iceland. This is known because he wrote a long-lost book, an expanded periplus (navigational tool), "On The Ocean," that is only known today because subsequent generations of writers referenced him and it. His work enjoyed high respect for a few centuries before later writers began dismissing him and he disappeared from the conversation as the Dark Ages set in. As the science of archeology came into its own in the 19th century, collateral evidence began to accumulate, verifying the information in the fragments of his work that survived through others. Today, his contribution to the world continues to be endorsed by science.
Cunliffe sorts through the path of the journey, what Pytheas must have found, the contributions he made to later scientists and historians and how eventually he disappeared from view. Fortunately, Pytheas left enough clues that could be aligned with presentday astronomical, geographical, geological and anthropological studies that Cunliffe can make reasonable assumptions, which are continuing to be born out by archeological activity. So, he unearths a lot about the amber and tin trade that Pytheas traced northward, and he takes a look at the Celts as the Greek would have found them. What Cunliffe does not attempt is a closer look at Pytheas himself. We know he was from the Greek port Massilia, which is today's Marseilles, France, and that, obviously, he was literate. Other than that, there is no speculation on what kind of class he would have belonged to or any of his life circumstances.
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