\'The myth of Celtic and Roman Britain\'

[LvpvsRomanvs]

Pytheus was the first to mention trade with the island of britain, in fact, unless this was total fabrication, he was the first recorded person to discuss theexistance of Britian......he never seems to get a mention though. :?

Well, he is now I've just spent the last few hours re-searching him and have included him in the first chapter (which will be on Britain before the Romans) of an assignment I'm doing on the Roman conquest of Britain. I've found a good section on him in 'Caesar's Invasion of Britain' (1978) By P.B.Ellis.

I've had a look through the ancient sources about him also. Most of Pytheus' writings on Britain have not survived, but he is mentioned by other writers. Strabo and Polybius give him a hard time though:

" It is remarkable, that a private individual- and a poor one at that- could have travelled such distances by land and by sea.’ (Strabo - Geographica.II.4)

Mind you, Pytheus' theory that there is a place in the world that is made of neither land, air or sea and has the consistence of a jelly-fish sounds a bit mad. However, I think that a lot of what he said seems genuine.

He seems to have landed in the territory of the Dumnonii, and gave quite a good description of their lifestyle too. Firstly, he mentions that the British were agricultural and pastoral farmers, whose main produce consisted of wheat. This wheat was threshed in barns as there was little sunshine but so much rain. Further inland, the natives kept large herds of cattle and sheep, from which they could collect
their wool to spin. The British were skilful workers of Iron and Bronze, were able to craft fine pottery, and were also weavers of cloth.

Pytheus then moved on to describe the island’s geography. He says that ‘a stormy straight divides the shores of Britain, which the Dumnonii hold, from the island of the Silures’. This shows that Pytheus, if he did land in Britain, would have first arrived in the territory of the Dumnonii tribe, and also had mistaken the Bristol Channel for a sea that separated the lands of the Silures.
‘This people (the Dumnonii)’ says Pytheus, ‘still preserve their ancient traditions. They refuse to accept coin and insist on bartering, preferring to exchange necessities rather than fix prices.’

Diodorus Siculus also gives a good description about the people of Britain too:

" The inhabitants of that part of Britain [i think he's talking about Cornwall too] which is called Belerion [Land's End] are very fond of strangers, and form their intercourse with foreign merchants, are civilised in their manner of life.
They prepare Ttin, working very carefully the earth in which it is produced. The ground is rocky, but it contains earthy veins, the produce of which is ground down, smelted and purified. They beat the metal into masses like astragali and carry it to a certain island of Britain called Ictis...here, then, the merchants buy the tin from the natives and carry it over to Gaul, and after travelling over land for about 30 days, they finally bring their loads on horse to the mouth of the Rhone.'

Quite a different picture to what Iulius Caesar paints.

- Lorenzo.