Primary-source dossier
The excerpts below are reproduced from the Ictis Anthology — a working paper produced during research for the project. Some of the results were spun off into New Perspectives on the Ictis of Pytheas of Massalia.
“Although no one of all the Massiliotes who conversed with Scipio was able, when questioned by Scipio about Britain, to tell anything worth recording, nor yet any one of the people from Narbo or of those from Corbilo, though these were the best of all the cities in that country, still Pytheas had the hardihood to tell all those falsehoods about Britain.”
Scipio Africanus was a Roman general responsible for victories against Carthage during the Punic Wars and a contemporary of Polybius. In short, he of all people should have been able to ascertain information about trade with the British Isles from the people of Massalia, Pytheas’ home. Context for this event can be found in Roller (2013, xviii)1
An analysis of Polybius’ historical method can be found here2, and commentary on his criticisms of Pytheas as a reliable source here3.
Book 3, Chapter 57
“Now that I have brought my narrative and the war the two generals into Italy, desire, before entering upon the struggle, to say a few words on what I think proper to my method in this work. 2 Some readers will perhaps ask themselves why, since most of what I have said relates to Africa and Spain, I have not said a word more about the mouth of the Mediterranean at the Pillars of Hercules, or about the Outer Sea and its peculiarities, or about the British Isles and the method of obtaining tin4, and the gold and silver mines in Spain itself, all matters concerning which authors dispute with each other at great length. I have omitted these subjects not because I think they are foreign to my history, but in the first place because I did not wish to be constantly interrupting the narrative and distracting readers from the actual subject, 5 and next because I decided not to make scattered and casual allusions to such matters, but assigning the proper place and time to their special treatment to give as true an account of all as is in my power”5
Note Polybius never went on to mention the British Isles again in his surviving works. He also wrote a geography, not surviving, which probably made more mention to the British Isles; ostensibly, Strabo appears to reference Polybius’s lost work.
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Roller, D.W. (2013) Through the Pillars of Herakles: Greco-Roman Exploration of the Atlantic. Routledge.
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Farrington, S. (2015) ‘A Likely Story Rhetoric and the Determination of Truth in Polybius’ Histories.pdf’, Histos, 9, pp. 29–66. (Online)
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Roller, D.W. (2010) Eratosthenes’ ‘Geography’. Princeton University Press. p32
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“τόπων οὔτε περὶ τοῦ καθ᾽ Ἡρακλέους στήλας στόματος οὐδὲν ἐπὶ πλεῖον εἰρήκαμεν οὔτε περὶ τῆς ἔξω θαλάττης καὶ τῶν ἐν ταύτῃ συμβαινόντων ἰδιωμάτων, [3] οὐδὲ μὴν περὶ τῶν Βρεττανικῶν νήσων καὶ τῆς τοῦ καττιτέρου κατασκευῆς,” Perseus
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Online at: Bill Thayer
Bibliography and editions
Critical editions and further reading
- Critical edition / translation. W. R. Paton, Polybius: The Histories, Loeb Classical Library (1922), vol. II, Book 3. Open reference.
- Standard study. F. W. Walbank, A Historical Commentary on Polybius, vol. I, commentary on Book 3. Google Books: Walbank vol. I.
Supplemental digital resources
- Primary text online. Perseus Digital Library, Polybius. Open resource
Rights boundary. Ancient texts and public-domain images are not relicensed by Kassiteros. Modern editions and translations retain their own rights. Only Kassiteros-authored commentary and original project metadata are intended to fall under the project’s CC BY 4.0 policy.
Why this source matters
Polybius is unusually valuable because he names the British Isles and “the method of obtaining tin” as a subject on which writers disagreed, then postpones the topic to a specialist geographical treatment that does not survive. The anthology uses this as evidence both for the existence of a developed discourse about British tin and for the limits of the surviving corpus.