Demetrios: The Ancient Greek Who Traveled to England

A man called Demetrios was among the first of the ancient Greeks to have traveled to England more than two millennia ago.

Two small copper-alloy tablets almost two thousand years old in the Yorkshire Museum in Central England have provided evidence of his travel to the far-flung outpost at the edge of the known world.

They date from the first century AD, when the Romans had only just arrived to found the Roman city of Eboracum (York).

Demetrios dedicated something to two other men. His inscription, which was found under the railway station in today’s city of York, reads:

”ΩΚΕΑΝΟΙ ΚΑΙ ΤΗΘΥΙ ΔΕΜΗΤΡΙΟΣ,” which is Greek for ”Demetrios (dedicates this) to Oceanus and Tethys.”

It has long been thought that Demetrios might be the very Demetrius of Tarsus, who, according to the ancient Greek historian Plutarch, had been sent to Britain by the Roman emperor to observe for himself how the empire’s newest and most far-flung province was getting on.

That inscription certainly looks suspiciously like a vote of thanks to the gods for a safe arrival across the sea to these far-flung shores, admits York archaeologist Peter Addyman.

Speaking to York Press, Addyman said: “It’s quite extraordinary,” he said. “There’s this chap from way, way across the empire, sent by the emperor, and he must have come to York, and he is thanking the gods for crossing the ocean!”

Ancient Greek Demetrios inscribed the tablets in England

But is the Demetrios who inscribed those tablets nearly two thousand years ago really the same one who was sent by the emperor on a mission to Britain?

A scholarly article by academic Kelsey Koon in the latest edition of The Archaeological Journal concludes that he probably was.

The tablets were discovered in 1840 during archaeological investigations connected with the building of the old railway station inside York’s city walls.

They appear to be of about the right age to have been dedicated by Demetrios of Tarsus, a man who, according to Plutarch, had “by the emperor’s order…made voyage for inquiry and observation” and who had recently journeyed “homeward to Tarsus from Britain.”

The debate over whether they were inscribed by Demetrios of Tarsus himself has aged in scholarly circles for over a century.

But in her paper in The Archaeological Journal, Koon marshals impressive evidence to conclude that they were. “The use of the Greek language, the military-style inscription format…bring to mind a native Greek speaker embedded in the military enclave of York,” she writes.

“Demetrios of Tarsus, an educated scholar with Greek roots on an official imperial mission… would certainly fit the bill,” she added. Further evidence lies in the punched dots used for the Greek inscription.

The York plaques are the only known examples of this in Britain, but the style is similar to that used in tablets found in the Near Eastfrom where Demetrios hailed.

As a Greek, Demetrios would also have been familiar with Alexander the Great’s alters in India, which bore similar inscriptions.

He “perhaps saw himself doing the same thing at the western edge of the known world that Alexander had done at its eastern limit,” Koon writes.

“Given the uniqueness of these votives…it seems that these tablets can in fact be attributed to Demitrius of Tarsus.”

Pytheas of Massalia considered the first Greek to visit England

Despite the fact that Great Britain is on the opposite end of the European continent from the nation of Greece, it has always been a place where Greeks had their own presence. For centuries, their numbers were relatively small, but their influence was quite significant throughout history.

Pytheas of Massalia, a geographer from the Greek colony of Massalia, the modern-day city of Marseille in southern France, was the first Greek to have been known to visit Great Britain.

He was also the first-ever Mediterranean to reach and explore the totality of Britain, including the wilderness and coasts of what is now Ireland in the early third century BC.

Pytheas is believed to be the man who first used the term ”Britain.”

In his work ”Periplous” (”Circumnavigation”), he is quoted using the term ”Bretannike,” which is Greek for Britannic.

This was a Greek transliteration of what some of the Celts who lived on the island during these years called their land: ”Ynys Prydein,” most likely from Welsh for ”the island of Britain.”