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Did Herodotus unwittingly describe the Artic Circle?

firefly08 · 2012-05-17 21:18:12

I just finished reading Herodotus' Histories. At one point, he lists all that is known about the various people to the north, and after describing all the known people, he gets to the unlikely rumors regarding people with goat's feet, and with this he throws in "and that after one has passed beyond these, others are found…

17-05-2012 9:18pm

#1

firefly08

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I just finished reading Herodotus' Histories. At one point, he lists all that is known about the various people to the north, and after describing all the known people, he gets to the unlikely rumors regarding people with goat's feet, and with this he throws in

"and that after one has passed beyond these, others are found who sleep through six months of the year"

The footnotes to that text claim that what is meant by "beyond" in this context is really "north".

Was Herodotus describing the Artic Circle, maybe Norway or Russia?

It seems to me a simple, almost trivial mistake that "6 months of night" could be confused with "6 months of sleeping". If it reached Herodotus like this, I can see how he would have dismissed it as nonsense. I'm curious about this because the book is full of descriptions of things that Herodotus himself regarded as untrue, with warnings that he was only repeating what he was told - but which subsequently turned out to be correct (eg. the flooding of Nile and the circumnavigation of Africa).

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