Ethnic makeup of legionaries

[Aemilius Paulus]

Why was it thought to be fairytales? How can someone of ancient time make this up? I mean this is really scary stuff what he tells and I can't see how someone from Greece should invent the midnight sun...

Also wasn't there a Greek expedition which circumnavigated Africa and told after the return that they had been "so far south that the sun was in the north at midday"?

Oh trust me, there were plenty of people making up wild stories about far-off lands in the times of Antiquity. Take Herodotus for example. He is my favorite historian and is probably the most accurate as well as the most objective one in all of Classical Greece. His accounts of Persia show virtually no bias against it. On the contrary, the praises them. However, just read his tales of India. Fairy Tales... he talks about various half-men, half-animals as well as other things. It was very common in the ancient times to make things up like that. Not only this, but the ice sludge seemed very odd to the Greek mariners who have seen water for their entire life and never as Pytheas described it. On the other hand, they have never been to India, and were well aware that animals can be very different. They have also heard of half apes, half men living in Africa (gorillas found by Hanno as well as other Phoenicians expeditions), making the fanciful descriptions of Herodutus not so unlikely. The Greeks as well as the other ancient people believed that the Far North was eternally dark because it was almost always winter there, and during winter, the days grow shorter. That is why the Greeks and later the romans as well as Medieval historians did not believe Pytheas.

As for the Greek circumnavigation, I have not heard of Hellenes doing that, but nevertheless it is quite possible, especially during the Ptolemaic rule of Egypt. Since the Phoenicians ad tight control over the Herculean Pillars (Gibraltar), Greeks could no use it (Pytheas slipped by during on of the Punic Wars, second one I believe, when the Phoenician Qarthadastim were busy fighting the Romans), the Red - Mediterranean Sea canal would have been a likely route. When I said Hellenes going beyond Sahara, I meant by land. The Greek circumnavigation of Africa didn't teach the Greeks much about the dry part of Africa very much. That Hellenic expedition had little time to spend on land. They never ventured very far ashore.