I.

CHAP. IV.

On the knowledge which the Greeks had of the British Islands. — And on the Tradition of the Trojan Colony.

1

BOOK THE Grecian knowledge of Europe was gradually obtained. The calamities experienced at sea, by the conquerors of Troy on their return, dispersed them into many parts of the maritime regions of Europe. The subsequent settlements of several Grecian colonies in Italy, as well as that already noticed at Marseilles, from which they pursued distant navigations; and the visits of Grecian travellers and philosophers to the Phenician cities in Spain, led them to some knowledge of its western and northern seas, shores, and islands. The attack of Darius, the Persian king, on the Scythians in Europe, revealed more knowledge of these people than former ages had acquired; and the expeditions of Alexander, before his eastern adventure, disclosed to the Greeks all the north of Europe, up to the Danube. In the same manner, the restless enterprises of Mithridates made known to both Greeks and Romans the various tribes that inhabited the sea of Azoph and its vicinity."

1 Strabo, p. 223. 236. Plutarch in Nic. p. 238.

2 Of which we have an instance in Posidonius. See Strabo, 264. 3 Herodotus.

4 Strabo, p. 26. Several of the Greeks wrote on the ancient geography of Europe, whose works we have lost, as Dicæarchus, Messenius, Eratosthenes, and Posidonius, whom Strabo mentions, p. 163., and whom he seems too fond of censuring, which is one of

Hence the Grecians had much information of the ancient chorography of Europe, though they were unacquainted, as Polybius intimates, with many of its inland regions. 5

BUT that Britain and Ireland were known to the Greeks, at least by name, is an unquestionable fact. The ancient Argonautica, ascribed to Orpheus, but of much later origin, describes the voyage of the Argonauts, on their return to Greece. In this curious work, they are made to sail round the north of Europe, from the Kimmerian Bosphorus. In coming southward, the author says, "they passed by the island Iernida." Whether the next island they noticed, which is described as full of pine-trees, was any part of Britain, cannot be ascertained. As this work, if not written in the time of Pisistratus, which many assert it to have been, is at least of great antiquity; it is an evidence that Ireland was known to the ancient Greeks.

the faults of Strabo. It was a favourite point with him to attack all former geographers. He comes within the remark of "bearing no brother near the throne."

5 Polybius, lib. iii. remarks this of the tract between Narbonne and the Tanais.

6 Suidas says, the Argonautica was written by an Orpheus of Crotona, whom Asclepiades, in the sixth book of his Grammaticæ, declared to be the friend of Pisistratus, vol. ii. p. 339. Some other works, published under the name of Orpheus, he attributes to Onomacritus, ib. 338.

7 Apyorautina, v 1179. p. 156. ed. Lips. 1764. Strabo, lib. iv. p. 307., calls Ireland Iɛpy, and Diodorus Siculus gives it a name that approaches very near its native appellation. Its name in the Gaelic is Erin; in Diodorus it is Iov, lib. v. p. 309.

The antiquity of the Agyovauti has been ably vindicated by D. Ruhnkenius. He shows that it was quoted by two ancient grammarians, Orus and Draco Stratonicensis. He gives his own critical judgment of its antiquity in strong terms; Is, qui Argonautica et Hymnos Orpheo subjecit, sive Onomacritus fuerit, ut plures traducit, sive alius, scriptor certe meo judicio Vetustissimus est ; in quo quamvis

CHAP.

IV.

Britain

known to

the Greeks.

BOOK

I.

In the book de Mundo, which is ascribed to Aristotle, the British islands are mentioned, with their specific names, Albion and Ierne.

11

THE Voyage of Pytheas, which was in existence in the fifth century, must have transmitted much information to the Greeks concerning our islands. He seems to have lived about the time of Aristotle. 10 He sailed from Marseilles, where he made an observation to determine its latitude, which enabled Eratosthenes and Hipparchus to calculate it with a precision which modern astronomers have found exact. He coasted Spain, Portugal, and France, into the British Channel. He passed along the eastern shore of Britain, to the north, till he reached the island which he has called Thule. He is the first navigator that penetrated so far into the Northern Ocean. After this, he made a voyage to the German Ocean; passed the Sound into the Baltic Sea, and sailed on to a river, which he thought the Tanais, the boundary of Europe. 12 In all his course, he made many observations on the climate, the people, and the productions of the

animum diligenter attenderim ne levissimum quidem recentioris ætatis vestigium reperi; contra, proba omnia et antiquitatem redolentia." Epist. Crit. 2. p. 128. ed. 1782.

9 He is quoted by Stephanius, Voc. WσTIVES, who lived at this period.

10 See M. Bougainville's very able Memoir on his Life and Voyages, Mem. Ac. des Inscript. v. xxx. p. 285.

11 Bougainville, p. 289. Pytheas referred the cause of the tides to the agency of the moon. Plut. de placit. Phil. His description of the stars in the north was cited with approbation by Hipparchus, in his Commentary on Aratus.

12 Bougainville has collected the passages from Pytheas' Voyage, in Strabo and Pliny, which express these circumstances; and has vindicated him from the angry invectives of Strabo, who, though occasionally erring himself, is very unsparing in his censure of Pytheas.

countries he visited, of which only a very few fragments have descended to us; and it is evident, from what has been transmitted to us of his opinions, that Britain was a principal object of his examination. 13

14

IN the third book of his history, Polybius has intimated that the British islands, and the manner of making tin, would be one of his subjects for a future composition. His friend, the great Scipio, made enquiries concerning Britain 15, of the merchants of Narbonne and Marseilles; but though he could obtain, from their ignorance or their jealousy, nothing worthy of memory, yet, as Polybius mentions that many authors before him had treated fully, though variously, on this and the other subjects which he postpones; and as he himself had travelled through Spain and Gaul, and had sailed over the ocean which bounds them 16; the remarks of an author, so inquisitive and judicious, would have been an invaluable present to our curiosity. If they were ever written", time has deprived us of them. We have equally lost the works of Timæus, Isidorus, Artemidorus, Messenius, Eratosthenes, Hipparchus, and Posidonius,

13 See Pliny, lib. ii. c. 77. & c.99.; lib. iv. c. 27. & c. 30.; and Strabo, p. 163. & 175. Pytheas has had a singular fortune: he has been attacked by Strabo and Polybius, and followed by Eratosthenes and Hipparchus.

14 Hist. lib. iii. c. 5.

15 Strabo, lib. iv. p. 289. 16 Polybius, lib. iii. c. 5.

17 In speaking of the British islands, Polybius rather expresses a treatise which he had it in his contemplation to compose, than one which he had made. From this passage, it is not certain, whether he fulfilled his intentions; and yet some allusions of Strabo seem to have been taken from such a work.

CHAP.

IV.

BOOK

I.

who are all mentioned to have noticed the British islands.

18

INDEED it is evident that the Grecian geographers directed their attention to the northern and western parts of Europe. Cæsar mentions, that the great Hercynian forest of Germany was known to Eratosthenes, and some other Grecians, who called it Orcynia. ' 19 But that Grecian colonies were in Britain, cannot be believed on the vague intimation of St. Jerome. That Hiero, king of Sicily, had the main-mast of his ship from England, rests on a passage in Atheneus 21, which has been thought corrupted; because a sentence of Polybius, if it had not been corrected, would have made Hannibal to have fought in Britain. 22 Later Greek stories are mere random fictions. 23 But that Bri

20

18 Pliny, lib. iv. c. 30. Strabo, lib. ii. p. 163.; lib. iv. p. 304.; lib. i. p. 111. We find from Tacitus, Vit. Agr., that Livy and Fabius Rusticus, "Eloquentissimi auctores," had also treated of Britain before him.

19 Cæsar, lib. vi. c. 22.

20 St. Jerome, in his questions on Genesis referring to Varro Sisinius Capito and Phlegon, but without giving their precise words, says, that the Greeks possessed all the sea coasts from the mountains Amanus and Taurus to the British Ocean. But these writers may have meant no more than the Grecian colony at Marseilles.

21 Athenæus describes at length the celebrated ship which Archimedes made for Hiero, because he had just read very carefully the book which Moschion had written upon it. After giving a full detail of its various parts, he comes to its masts. He says, the second and third were easily found, but the first was obtained with difficulty. It was found by a herdsman, εν τοις ορεσιν της Βρεττανίας, and Phileas the Tauromenian, the mechanist, brought it down to the sea. Deip. lib. v. p. 208. Camden suggests that this may be a corruption for Βρεττιανης, or the Brutii in Italy.

22 The corrupt passage of Polybius occurs in the eclogue of the 11th book. The corruption here is manifest, as Camden has remarked. The passage applies wholly to Italy.

23 There have been some absurd fancies about the earlier intercourse of the Greeks and Romans with Britain. That Alexander the