Pytheas of Massalia

Pytheas of Massalia
Statue of Pytheas outside the Palais de la Bourse, Marseilles.
Born	Approximately 350 BC Massalia
Died	Approximately 285 BC
Nationality	Greek
Citizenship	Massaliote
Known for	Earliest voyage to Britain, the Baltic, and the Arctic Circle for which there is a record, author of Periplus.
Scientific career
Fields	Geography, exploration, navigation
Influenced	Subsequent classical geographers and explorers

Pytheas of Massalia (Ancient Greek: Πυθέας ὁ Μασσαλιώτης Pythéas ho Massaliōtes; Latin: Pytheas Massiliensis; fl. 4th century BC), was a Greek geographer and explorer from the Greek colony of Massalia (modern-day Marseille). He made a voyage of exploration to northwestern Europe in about 325 BC, but his description of it, widely known in Antiquity, has not survived.

In this voyage he circumnavigated and visited a considerable part of Great Britain. He is the first person on record to describe the Midnight Sun. The theoretical existence of a Frigid Zone, and temperate zones where the nights are very short in summer and the sun does not set at the summer solstice, was already known. Similarly, reports of a country of perpetual snow and darkness (the country of the Hyperboreans) had reached the Mediterranean some centuries before. Pytheas is the first known scientific visitor and reporter of the Arctic, polar ice, and the Germanic tribes. He introduced the idea of distant Thule to the geographic imagination, and his account of the tides is the earliest known to suggest the moon as their cause. Pytheas may have also reached Iceland.

Pliny says that Timaeus (born about 350 BC) believed Pytheas' story of the discovery of amber. Strabo says that Dicaearchus (died about 285 BC) did not trust the stories of Pytheas. That is all the information that survives concerning the date of Pytheas' voyage. Presuming that Timaeus would not have written until after he was 20 years old in about 330 BC and Dicaearchus would have needed time to write his most mature work, after 300 BC, there is no reason not to accept Henry Fanshawe Tozer's window of 330 BC – 300 BC for the voyage. Some would give Timaeus an extra 5 years, bringing the voyage down to 325 BC at earliest. There is no further evidence.