Vergil's "Ultima Thule"

Duane Roller (The Ohio State University)

Near the beginning of the Georgics (1.30), Vergil described the wide reach of the Augustan world, introducing a number of mythical and real toponyms.  Among these is Thule, categorized as “ultima,” the farthest place on earth.  This is probably the earliest use of the name in Latin.  Vergil’s citation set in motion a lengthy process, still evolving in modern times, where Thule became the formula for remoteness, both a mythical place that could not be discovered and a place that must be discovered.  From ancient to modern times, from Vespasian to Columbus to modern Arctic explorers, many have claimed to have found Thule.

The name Thule was positioned in the Georgics among mythical toponyms (e. g. Tartarus, the Elysian Fields), but it was not a myth.  It was an actual place in the far north reached by the explorer and scientist of the fourth century BC, Pytheas of Massalia.  Pythias’ epic voyage to the north, which came to be equated with the journey of the Argonauts, resulted in the discovery of Thule, a unique and mystical place where the world was not yet fully formed, where the sea boiled and also was frozen, and where the sun rarely set.  Pytheas’ published account, On the Ocean, although widely discredited by Hellenistic geographical authors, nevertheless was quoted by numerous sources.  Vergil probably learned about Pytheas from the writings of the Hellenistic polymath Poseidonios, who was active perhaps a generation before Vergil wrote the Georgics.  Pytheas already had an epic connotation, and Vergil’s use of Poseidonios’ account is testimony to his own wide reading, even in unexpected places.

Vergil transformed Thule from an obscure toponym, whose very existence was rejected by most, to a cultural paradigm.  Were it not for the Georgics, Thule would be no better known than hundreds of other toponymic obscurities that emanated from Hellenistic geographical research.  Yet in transfering Thule from the real to the mythic, Vergil ironically gave it a greater reality, not only as the ultimate formula for remoteness, but as a place to be sought ever thereafter, becoming one of the most recognizable place names of classical antiquity.