Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/91

Rh and then to Narbo. This implies that there were either two distinct routes, or that the tin first passed to Narbo and thence to Massalia. For a glance at the map will show the absurdity of the third alternative, that is, to suppose that the tin passed round by Massalia and then to Narbo. That our first alternative is probably the true one for the epoch when Posidonius wrote, we shall adduce evidence hereafter. On the other hand, it is probable that in earlier times there was only one route, that from Narbo.

The greatest loss which early English history has sustained was the destruction of the Travels of Pytheas, that clever Massaliote, whom Polybius and Strabo called the “arch-liar”, because he related certain matters connected with the climate and geography of Northern Europe which the modern world knows to be undoubted facts. Pytheas went on a voyage round the west and north of Europe, probably about 330 B.C. What the circumstances were under which the voyage was undertaken we have no means of knowing. The statement that he was sent out by “a committee of merchants” is of course a mere piece of romance, like much more which has been written about his expedition. All that we know about it is contained in a few broken fragments embedded chiefly in the writings of Polybius and Strabo, who quoted him usually for the purpose of holding up his mendacity to execration. One of these quotations is given by Strabo (iv, 190) from Polybius: “The Liger (Loire) debouches between the Pictones and Namnitæ. Formerly Corbilo was an emporium on this river of which Polybius has spoken, when he made mention of the fables told by Pytheas, that none of the Massaliotes who conversed with Scipio could tell anything worth recording, when questioned by Scipio about Britain, nor yet any of those from Narbo, nor of those from Corbilo.”

It may be observed that the experience of modern times entirely explains the statement of Pytheas. When we know that it is only within very recent years that we have found out the sources and plants from which some of our