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Pytheas of Massalia - c. 350 BC to c. 285 BC - was a Greek geographer and explorer from the Greek colony of Massalia - modern-day Marseille, France - that made a voyage of exploration to northwestern Europe in about 325 BC. His account of it, known widely in Antiquity, has not survived and is now known only through the writings of others. Pytheas introduced the idea of distant Thule - Thule is the farthest north location mentioned in ancient Greek and Roman literature and cartography - to the geographic imagination, and his account of the tides is the earliest one known that suggests the moon as their cause.

A lot of what is known about Pytheas comes from commentary written by historians during the classical period hundreds of years after Pytheas's journeys occurred. Pliny said that Timaeus believed Pytheas' story of the discovery of amber. First century BC Strabo said that Dicaearchus did not trust the stories of Pytheas. That is all the information that survives concerning the date of Pytheas' voyage. Henry Fanshawe Tozer wrote that Pytheas' voyage was about 330 BC - but we are not certain of the date -.

Pytheas described his travels in a work that has not survived; only excerpts remain, quoted or paraphrased by later authors, most familiarly in Strabo's Geographica, Pliny's Natural History and passages in Diodorus of Sicily's history. Most of the ancients, including the first two just mentioned, refer to his work by his name: "Pytheas says …".

Pytheas was the first documented Mediterranean mariner to reach the British Isles.

The start of Pytheas's voyage is unknown. The carthaginians had closed the Strait of Gibraltar to all ships from other nations. Some historians, mainly of the late 19th century and before, therefore speculated that he must have traveled overland to the mouth of the Loire or the Garonne. Others believed that, to avoid the carthaginian blockade, he may have stayed close to land and sailed only at night, or taken advantage of a temporary lapse in the blockade. An alternate theory is that by the 4th century BC, the western greeks, especially the massaliotes, were on amicable terms with Carthage. In 348 BC, Carthage and Rome came to terms over the "Sicilian Wars" with a treaty defining their mutual interests. Rome could use sicilian markets, Carthage could buy and sell goods at Rome, and slaves taken by Carthage from allies of Rome were to be set free. Rome was to stay out of the western Mediterranean, but these terms did not apply to Massalia, which had its own treaty. During the second half of the 4th century BC, the time of Pytheas' voyage, Massaliotes were presumably free to operate as they pleased; there is, at least, no evidence of conflict with Carthage in any of the sources that mention the voyage.

Strabo reported that Pytheas said he "travelled over the whole of Britain that was accessible". Because there is scant first hand sources available regarding Pytheas's journey, historians have looked at the etymology for clues about the route he took up the north Atlantic. The word "epelthein", at root "come upon", does not imply any specific method, and Pytheas did not elaborate. He did use the word "whole" and he stated a perimetros -perimeter - of more than 40,000 stadia. Using Herodotus' standard of 600 feet - 180 m - for one stadium gives 4,545 miles - 7,314 km -; however, there is no way to tell which standard foot was in effect. The English foot is an approximation. Strabo wanted to discredit Pytheas on the grounds that 40,000 stadia is outrageously high and cannot be real.

The first known written use of the word Britain was an ancient Greek transliteration of the original P-Celtic term. It is believed to have appeared within a periplus by the geographer and explorer Pytheas of Massalia, but no copies of this work survive. The earliest existing records of the word are quotations of the periplus by later authors, such as those within Strabo's Geographica, Pliny's Natural History and Diodorus of Sicily's Bibliotheca historica.[19] According to Strabo, Pytheas referred to Britain as Bretannikē, which is treated a feminine noun. Diodorus based on Pytheas reported that Britain is cold and subject to frosts, being "too much subject to the Bear" - Ursa Major constellation -. The numerous population of natives, he says, live in thatched cottages, store their grain in subterranean caches and bake bread from it. They are "of simple manners" - ēthesin haplous - and are content with plain fare. They are ruled by many kings and princes who live in peace with each other. Their troops fight from chariots, as did the greeks in the "Trojan War".

Strabo related, taking his text from Polybius, that "Pytheas asserts that he explored in person the whole northern region of Europe as far as the ends of the world". Strabo did not believe it but he explained what Pytheas meant by the ends of the world. "Thoulē", he said, is the most northerly of the British Isles. Thule was described as an island "six days' sailing north of Britain, near the frozen sea" - pepēguia thalatta, "solidified sea" -. From the time of the Roman Empire all the possibilities were suggested repeatedly by each generation of writers: Iceland, Shetland, the Faroe Islands, Norway and later Greenland.

Pytheas was a central source of information on the North Sea and the subarctic regions of western Europe to later periods, and possibly the only source.

In resume, Pytheas should be more widely known for:

"Earliest Greek voyage to Britain, and the Arctic Circle for which there is a record"

This post was made with the intention of clarifying to those who study history, the perception that the ancient greek world was only the Mediterranean, the Middle East, the Balkans, and the Black Sea. The classical greeks already knew Iceland - or if you look at the evidence, Greenland - and that they were much more advanced - in the fields of geography, navigation, and marine engineering - than we normally think.