General News
Meropi Kyriacou Honored as TNH Educator of the Year
NEW YORK – Meropi Kyriacou, the new Principal of The Cathedral School in Manhattan, was honored as The National Herald’s Educator of the Year.
PAMPLONA, SPAIN – “The Greeks not only reached India with Alexander the Great, but also discovered Iceland with the explorer Pytheas,” said Dr. Andrew Breeze, lecturer in the University of Navarra's Department of Philology, in a university news release dated February 18. Using methods of textual criticism, in an article in the latest issue of The Housman Society Journal, this expert in historical linguistics attempts to pinpoint the mythical island of Thule, discovered by the Greek explorer and geographer Pytheas some time before 300 BC. If Dr. Breeze's claim is true, the Greeks discovered Iceland a thousand years before the Vikings did.
He explains how Pytheas describes a voyage across the Atlantic from Massalia (Marseilles) to an island with ice floes near it, which he called 'Thule' and which took six days to reach from Britain. Although the original text by Pytheas has been lost, references to his voyage by later authors (Diodorus of Sicily, Strabo, Pliny) have inspired many others to try and locate Thule exactly, as the northernmost point of his odyssey. “For centuries there has been debate on where Thule is. Most people take it as Iceland; others, the Faroes; others again, Norway or the Shetlands,” Dr. Breeze explained.
‘Thymele’: The Vital Clue
In his research, which he has discussed with academics at British universities, who accept the hypothesis as plausible, the key to unlocking the mystery is in a linguistic crux. “It seems that the name which Pytheas gave the island has been corrupted with time, and become unintelligible. 'Thule' (or 'Thyle') is meaningless; but, if we add the letters M and E between the word's two syllables, the result is Thymele, and in Greek this means something: it signifies 'altar, altar-slab' and is common in the ancient language,” he argues.
In his article, Dr. Breeze maintains that “the name Thymele 'altar-slab' could have been given by Pytheas thanks to the landscape of Iceland, with cliffs of volcanic rock resembling the massive altars of Greek temples. Probably, when Pytheas and his men set eyes on Iceland for the first time, seeing clouds rise above it and perhaps columns of ash and smoke from volcanoes like Hekla, it reminded him of a temple altar.”
He adds that “in the ancient world an altar could be immense. The great altar of Pergamum was forty feet high, and others at Parium and Syracus were said to be six hundred feet long." He thus has no doubts that 'Thule' or Thymele was Iceland. “Greeks all over the world can now feel proud that their nation was the first to tread Icelandic soil,” he concludes.
Dr. Andrew Breeze is a lecturer in the Department of Philology, University of Navarra. He has been a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London since 1996 and of the Royal Historical Society since 1997. He has published various controversial books, and is a specialist in Celtic and other medieval languages.
NEW YORK – Meropi Kyriacou, the new Principal of The Cathedral School in Manhattan, was honored as The National Herald’s Educator of the Year.
MANILA, Philippines (AP) — A Filipino villager has been nailed to a wooden cross for the 35th time to reenact Jesus Christ’s suffering in a brutal Good Friday tradition he said he would devote to pray for peace in Ukraine, Gaza and the disputed South China Sea.
ATHENS - Disregarding the recommendation of a prosecutor who said there wasn’t enough evidence, an Athens Mixed Jury Court found a 55-year-old man guilty of raping a 12-year-old girl but found her mother innocent of pornography.
ATHENS - A 35-year-old mother from the western city of Patras was found guilty in the murder of her eldest daughter, who was 9 at the time - with trials pending for the deaths of her other two children.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Voters in the pivotal swing state of Wisconsin and three Northeastern states will have a chance to indicate their support or opposition to their parties’ presumptive nominees in presidential primaries Tuesday.