The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek by Barry Cunliffe, Penguin, 拢6.99, ISBN 0140297847 Reviewed by Mark Pitts
A TRAVELLER publishes his experiences on a website. It is so popular that other sites around the world link to it, translating his work into many languages. Years pass, however, and the original story fades. Sections are copied and pasted into other sites, sometimes acknowledged, sometimes not. The author is remembered, occasionally with affection, often in heated arguments, but the original website disappears.
More than 2000 years later 鈥� here our analogy demands a little imagination 鈥� when the Internet as we know it has disappeared, another author attempts to reconstruct the original story.
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The correspondence between the system of early Mediterranean publishing 鈥� manuscripts on real scrolls, copied, plagiarised and archived in a few central libraries that periodically burnt to the ground 鈥� and the modern Internet offers novel insight into these classical works. We can appreciate all the more Barry Cunliffe鈥檚 achievement in compiling the tale of Pytheas, the Greek from Marseille, the 鈥渟ailor, merchant, scientist, explorer鈥� who around 325 BC toured Britain, Iceland and the Baltic.
On the Ocean, Pytheas鈥檚 lost work emerges here as a guide with the enthusiasm for remoteness of a Lonely Planet and the quest for accuracy of a Michelin. Cunliffe leads us on a double journey, exploring strange lands and puzzling out the ancient script. It is wonderfully effective, unnerving even, as we see our own ancestors 鈥� primitive, picturesque and prehistoric 鈥� from the perspective of a different, and dominant, culture.
At his adventure鈥檚 northern limit, Pytheas described a strange, transcendental vision where 鈥渘either earth was in existence by itself nor sea nor vapour, but instead a sort of mixture of these鈥�. Even shortly after his death, commentators puzzled over this description. Where was he? Ultima Thule: but where was that?
Cunliffe worries out the possibilities. We consider migrating birds, three Roman coins lost in Iceland and Scottish stone circles. We learn that for Pytheas the Arctic Circle was the 鈥淐ircle of the Bear鈥�, because beyond there the constellation of that name was always visible. Thule, he says, is a place where the night light is so strong you can see to pick the lice from your shirt.
It is a long time since I have enjoyed a book so much. Adventure, detection, insight, humour, knowledge, experience and beautiful writing are all here. If you take only one book with you on your Mediterranean holiday, this should be it.