Barry Cunliffe · 2001 · sea

Barry Cunliffe's reconstruction of a voyage made around 325 BC by an astronomer from Marseille, whose own book is lost and survives only in fragments quoted by ancient writers who thought he was lying. The route below is Cunliffe's reading of those fragments, not a document anyone has.

1. 1
   Massalia

   The Greek colony at Marseille, around 325 BC, and an astronomer who had already measured the latitude of his own city accurately enough that we can still check it - setting out to find where the tin and amber came from.

2. 2
   Narbonne

   West along the coast and into the Aude corridor - because Carthage held the Strait of Gibraltar, and the only way to the Atlantic was to walk across Gaul.

3. 3
   The Gironde

   The Atlantic at last, reached overland through the Carcassonne gap and down the Garonne - Cunliffe's reconstruction, since Pytheas's own book is lost and survives only in fragments quoted by people who disbelieved him.

4. 4
   Ushant

   The Breton headland and the Armorican tin route - and the first of the latitude measurements taken with a gnomon that let him fix positions no Greek had ever fixed.

5. 5
   Belerion

   Land's End, and the Cornish tin workings described in detail - the earliest written account of Britain, and of a people Pytheas found unexpectedly civilised and said so.

6. 6
   Ierne

   Ireland, sighted across the sea - and the beginning of a circuit of Britain that produced a coastline measurement within a few per cent of the real figure.

7. 7
   Orkney

   The northern isles, and the point where the sailing directions stop being checkable - Pytheas reporting a place where the summer night lasts two hours, which is correct and was not believed.

8. 8
   Thule

   Six days' sail north of Britain, where the sun does not set and the sea, the land and the air become a substance like a sea-lung that cannot be walked on or sailed through - Iceland, Norway or Shetland, and still argued over.

9. 9
   The amber coast

   East to the estuary where amber washes up and is sold to the tribes inland - Heligoland or the Jutland coast, and the second commodity that made the whole journey commercially worth doing.

10. 10
    Massalia

    Home, and a book called On the Ocean that Polybius and Strabo read, disbelieved and quoted at length while calling its author a liar - which is the only reason we know any of it happened.