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The Greek explorer Pytheas of the Greek city of Massalia (now Marseille, France) is the first to have written of Thule, after his travels between 330 and 320 BC.Pytheas mentioned going to Thule in his now lost work, On The Ocean Τὰ περὶ τοῦ Ὠκεανοῦ (ta peri tou Okeanou).
Pytheas also spoke of the waters around Thule and of those places where land properly speaking no longer exists, nor sea nor air, but a mixture of these things, like a "marine lung", in which it was said that earth and water and all things are in suspension as if this something was a link between all these elements, on which one can neither ...
Pytheas (4th century BC), a Greek explorer from Massalia , was the first to circumnavigate Great Britain, explore Germany, and reach Thule (most commonly thought to be the Shetland Islands or Iceland). Under Augustus, Romans reached and explored all the Baltic Sea.
Pytheas is the first known person to describe the Midnight Sun, [Note 2] polar ice, Germanic tribes and possibly Stonehenge. Pytheas also introduced the idea of distant "Thule" to the geographic imagination and his account is the earliest to state that the Moon is the cause of the tides.
The Greek explorer and merchant Pytheas of Massalia made a voyage to Northern Europe c. 330 BC. Part of his itinerary has survived to this day thanks to the accounts by Polybius, Strabo and Pliny. Pytheas had visited Thule, which lay a six-day voyage north of Britain. There "the barbarians showed us the place where the sun does not go to sleep.
Articles relating to the island of Thule and its depictions, the most northerly location mentioned in ancient Greek and Roman literature and cartography. By the Late Middle Ages and the early modern period , the Greco-Roman Thule was often identified with the real Iceland or Greenland .
Thule is first mentioned by Pytheas of Massilia when he visited Britain sometime between 322 and 285 BC, but it is unlikely he meant Shetland as he believed it was six days sail north of Britain and one day from the frozen sea (a description that seems to refer, more or less, to Iceland).
The location of "Thule", first mentioned by Pytheas of Massilia when he visited Britain sometime between 322 and 285 BC [121] is not known for certain. When Tacitus mentioned it in AD 98 it is clear he was referring to Shetland.