Gale - Science and Its Times Vol 01 (2000 BC to AD 699).pdf

Background
The career of Nearchus (360-312 B.C.), who
came from Crete, is inexorably tied with that of
his friend and leader, Alexander the Great (356-
323 B.C.) Alexander’s father, Philip II of Macedon
(r. 359-336 B.C.), conquered the Greek citystates
with the aim of uniting all of Greece and
going on to subdue the dying empire of the Perdescribed
Britain as triangular, accurately estimated
its circumference at 4,000 miles (6,437
km), and approximated the distance from northern
Britain to Massalia at 1,050 miles (1,690
km), only slightly less than the actual distance of
1,120 miles (1,802 km).
Most writers of antiquity, though, viewed
Pytheas as an imaginative liar. The Greek geographer
Strabo (c. 63 B.C.-c. A.D. 24) criticized
Pytheas because his reports of the far north conflicted
with long-accepted theories about uninhabitable
torrid and frigid zones. Strabo further
ridiculed Pytheas’s description of gigantic tides
and the “sea lung.” Despite being largely discounted,
Pytheas’s tale opened Hellenistic eyes
to western Europe.
Ironically, many details that gave early critics
reason to doubt Pytheas now lend credence
to his story. His description of flora and fauna,
meteorological conditions, and geographic features
all comport well with what is known of
these areas today. Perhaps not so surprisingly,
the Arctic explorer Fridtjof Nansen (1891-1930)
recognized in his “sea lung” an accurate description
of the ice sludge and fog that forms at the
edge of drift ice. All this confirms Pytheas’s place
as one of the world’s great explorers.
Further Reading
STEPHEN D. NORTON
Books
Carpenter, Rhys. Beyond the Pillars of Heracles. New York:
Delacorte Press, 1966.
Cary, Max, and E. H. Warmington. The Ancient Explorers.
Rev. ed. Baltimore, MD: Penguin Books, 1963.
Romm, J. S. The Edges of the Earth in Ancient Thought: Geography,
Exploration and Fiction. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1992.
Roseman, Christian Horst. Pytheas of Massalia: On the
Ocean. Chicago: Ares Publishers, Inc., 1994.
Articles
Diller, Aubrey. “Pytheas of Massalia.” In C. C. Gillispie,
ed., Dictionary of Scientific Biography. New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1975: 225-26.
Whitaker, Ian. “The Problem of Pytheas’ Thule.” Classical
Journal 77 (Dec.-Jan. 1981-1982): 148-64.
Exploration
& Discovery
2000 B.C.
to A.D. 699
Nearchus Discovers a Sea Route
from India to the Arabian Peninsula
Overview
In 325 B.C. the Greek military commander
Nearchus undertook a naval expedition from the
mouth of the Indus River in what is now Pakistan
to that of the Euphrates River in Mesopotamia, or
modern Iraq. His voyage served a number of purposes,
not least of which was to ferry a large portion
of Alexander the Great’s fighting force from
India back to Greece; but his principal mission
was to find a sea route between the Indian subcontinent
and the Near East. This he did, in the
process making possible much greater trade and
exchange between India and lands to the west.
sians. But he was assassinated before he could
undertake his mission, so it fell to his son to become
the greatest military leader the world has
ever known.
In 335 B.C. Alexander began moving his vast
army into Asia Minor, and soon won an engagement
against pro-Persian forces led by a Greek
mercenary named Memnon. He then moved into
Cilicia, where he scored a decisive victory against
the Persian emperor Darius III (d. 330 B.C.) at
Issus. As a result, the Greeks gained control of
the entire western portion of the Persian Empire,
and during the period from 334 to 331 B.C.,
Alexander’s forces secured their hold over southwestern
Asia and Egypt. In October 331 B.C. they
met a Persian force at Gaugamela in Assyria, this
time scoring a complete victory over the enemy.
Alexander moved eastward to claim his empire,
but he was not content merely to subdue
Persia itself: between 330 and 324 B.C. his
armies conquered what is now Afghanistan and
Pakistan, and ventured into India. But in July
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