Chapter VIII: The Results of Caesar’s Invasions of Britain (6)

II. Diodorus Siculus,[2255] after stating that tin was produced in Britain and in many parts of Iberia, goes on to say that there are many tin mines in the islands called Cassiterides, which are situated in the ocean, off the coast of Iberia and above the country of the Lusitani.[2256] Strabo mentions the Cassiterides four times. In the first passage[2257] he says that the extremity of the Pyrenees is opposite the western parts of Britain, and that the Cassiterides, which are situated in the same latitude as Britain, are in the open sea, opposite to and north of the Artabri. In the second[2258] he mentions both the Cassiterides and the British Isles, clearly distinguishing the two groups. In the third[2259] he says that, according to Posidonius, tin was produced in the country beyond [that is to say, north of] the Lusitani, and also in the Cassiterides; that tin was conveyed from the British Isles to Massilia, and that, according to the same authority, tin, silver, and gold were produced in the country of the Artabri, the most remote tribe of Lusitania, who face the north-west. In the fourth[2260] he says that the Cassiterides are ten in number and lie close together in the open sea, north of the harbour of the Artabri; that one of them is uninhabited; and that the inhabitants of the rest wear black robes reaching down to their feet, and walk about with staves in their hands, ‘like the Furies in tragedy.’ They are, he says, nomadic, and live upon flesh meat; and they barter tin and hides with merchants for pottery, salt, and articles of bronze. Formerly, he adds, the Phoenicians monopolized the trade from Gades, or Cadiz, with the islanders; and they kept the route a close secret, which, however, the Romans, after numerous attempts, succeeded in discovering. Finally, Publius Crassus sailed across (διαβάς) to the islands, ascertained that the tin lay near the surface, and indicated the route for the benefit of traders, ‘although the passage was longer than that [from the continent] to Britain.’ In another passage[2261] Strabo says that the Artabri dwell in the neighbourhood of the north-western promontory of Iberia, which he identifies with the Nerian promontory.[2262] Pomponius Mela,[2263] himself a Spaniard, immediately after speaking of Baetica and Lusitania, and immediately before mentioning the island of Sena, which was off the coast of Brittany, states that the Cassiterides are situated _in Celticis_. Pliny[2264] says that the Cassiterides, so called from the abundance of tin which they produce, are situated over against Celtiberia, and that opposite the promontory of the Arrotrebae are ‘the six islands of the Gods’, which some call ‘the Fortunate Isles’. In another passage[2265] he says that tin was first fetched from ‘the island Cassiteris’ (or from ‘the tin island’) by Midacritus, whom M. d’Arbois de Jubainville,[2266] wrongly, according to M. Salomon Reinach,[2267] identifies with ‘Melkarth, who personified the Phoenician race’. In a third passage[2268] Pliny says that tin has been fabulously reported to have been obtained from islands in the Atlantic. ‘Now,’ he continues, ‘it is certainly known to be produced in Lusitania and Galicia.’ By ‘islands in the Atlantic’ Pliny certainly did not, as Professor Ridgeway supposes,[2269] consciously mean the British Isles; for in his geographical system the northern limit of the Atlantic was marked by the north-western promontory of Spain.[2270] Ptolemy[2271] says that the Cassiterides are ten in number, and are situated in the western Ocean. Finally, Dionysius Periegetes[2272] says that ‘the western isles’, which produce tin, and are situated below the Sacred Promontory, or Cape St. Vincent, are inhabited by Iberians.

From a comparison of these statements it is clear, first, that the ancient geographers who mentioned the Cassiterides regarded them as distinct from the British Isles; secondly, that they believed them to be situated somewhere off the coast of Spain (although, as we shall presently see, the words of Strabo are not inconsistent with the theory that he identified them with the Scilly Islands, or even, unconsciously, with the British Isles); thirdly, that of those who attempted to define their position one associated them with the south-western, the others with the north-western coast; fourthly, that one writer mentioned _an_ island, Cassiteris, from which tin was fetched; and, lastly, that this same writer, having affirmed that the tin islands were opposite Celtiberia, nevertheless denied that any islands in the Ocean which extended as far north as the north-western promontory of Spain produced tin.

III. Assume, for the sake of argument, that the Cassiterides were off the north-western coast of Spain. What, then, are the islands with which they are to be identified?

1. Unger[2273] remarks that it may be inferred from Ptolemy’s statement that they were south of the Nerian promontory and off the western coast of Galicia. Strabo, it is true, places them northward of the northern coast: but, says Unger,[2274] Strabo is wrong; for on the northern coast there are no islands distant more than one German mile [or between four and five English miles] from the shore, whereas Strabo himself says that the Cassiterides were further from the continent than Britain. Dionysius Periegetes was, by common consent, mistaken. Let us see then what islands we can find off North-Western Spain. The coast between Cape Ortegal and the mouth of the Douro is broken by several inlets or fiords, which are called Rias. East of Cape Finisterre, in the Ria de Corcubion, are three very small islands; and off the south-eastern entrance of this Ria, by Cape Minarzo, are six tiny islets. About 20 miles south-east of Cape Finisterre is the Ria of Muros and Noya: on the west of Mount Louro, which dominates the entrance of this fiord on its northern side, are the four small islands of Bruyos; and there are others within the fiord itself and south of it. Unger[2275] remarks that the small size of all these islands harmonizes with the word νησῖδες, or ‘islets’, which Diodorus applies to the Cassiterides; and that the smallest of them may have been left out of account when the number was given as ten. Off Pontevedra Bay, which is north of Vigo Bay, are the islands of Ons and Orcela.

Strabo says that the harbour of the Artabri, north of which he places the Cassiterides, was formed by a gulf on which were situated numerous cities.[2276] Mela[2277] describes a gulf in the country of the Artabri as having a narrow entrance and a wide circuit, and adds that four streams flowed into it; and Ptolemy,[2278] having first mentioned a harbour of the Artabri, immediately south of the Nerian promontory, speaks, in the next section but one, of ‘the Great Harbour’, on the shore of which he places Brigantium. The gulf mentioned by Mela and Ptolemy’s ‘Great Harbour’ correspond with the Ria of Betanzos and Ferrol, which is between Cape Finisterre and Cape Ortegal; but there are no islands north of this harbour. The identification of the harbour of the Artabri which Ptolemy places immediately south of the Nerian promontory depends of course upon the identification of the promontory itself. The latter is generally identified with Cape Finisterre; and if this view is correct, the harbour must have been the Ria de Corcubion. Unger, however, identifies the Nerian promontory with the bluff of land, between Cape Finisterre and Corunna, from which project the headlands of Punta del Roncudo, Punta de Nariga, and Cape de S. Adrian;[2279] and if he is right, Ptolemy’s harbour was the Ria of Corme and Lagos. But, as Unger points out, there are no islands off this harbour or north of it.[2280] It is clear, then, that if the Cassiterides really lay in Spanish waters and on the north of a harbour of the Artabri, that harbour must be looked for further south. Now Unger[2281] observes that Posidonius, as quoted by Strabo,[2282] makes the territory of the Artabri extend southward as far as the river Douro; for he says that their territory produced gold; and, says Unger, in the country of the Artabri, in the narrower sense, there are no auriferous streams. Accordingly, Unger identifies the harbour for which he has been searching with the Puerto de Bayona,--the southernmost inlet north of the Douro; and from this harbour he maintains that Crassus sailed to the Cassiterides, which he identifies with the islands of Bruyos. He points out that the distance from the northern entrance of the harbour, opposite the island of Bayona, to the islands of Bruyos is eight German miles. This distance exceeds that of the shortest passage between Britain and the continent; and accordingly Unger insists that it harmonizes with the statement of Strabo. But the point which he most strenuously labours is that ‘in this case only is explicable the circumstance, strikingly calculated to cause such a mistake as Strabo made, that Crassus sailed northward from a harbour on the west coast [of Galicia], and yet sailed in the open sea’.[2283]

Mr. Cecil Torr,[2284] on the other hand, insists that ‘unless it can be shown that there were tin mines on the islands [near Vigo], the story [of the voyage of Crassus] cannot be used to show that Crassus visited those islands’. Strabo, he adds, states precisely that the Cassiterides ‘lay to the north of Ἀρτάβρων λιμήν’, which ‘is obviously the gulf that now holds Ferrol and Corunna’. Here, as we have seen, there are, _in Spanish waters_, no islands; and Mr. Torr argues that ‘Strabo is so very accurate in his description of this part of Spain that his account of the Cassiterides cannot be explained away as an inaccurate description of the islands at Vigo.... It must be a bit of downright fiction repeated in good faith.’[2285] To this latter argument it might be replied, first, that just as Strabo was mistaken in supposing that the direction of the Pyrenees was from north to south, so he may have been mistaken in supposing that the Cassiterides were on the north of Spain; and, secondly, that the other writers whose testimony has been quoted place them off the west coast. No other reply, indeed, could be made by those who hold, like Unger, that the Cassiterides were in Spanish waters. But, for reasons which shall presently be given, I agree with Mr. Torr that Ἀρτάβρων λιμήν must have been ‘the gulf that now holds Ferrol and Corunna’, and also that Strabo’s ‘account of the Cassiterides cannot be explained away as an inaccurate description of the islands at [or rather near] Vigo’. Only I believe that he is wrong in regarding that account as ‘fiction’. Strabo’s Cassiterides _were not in Spanish waters at all: they were, as he says, in the open sea, and far to the north of Corunna_. Mr. Torr’s other objection rests upon the fact that tin was never produced in any island off the coast of Spain, except, possibly, in Ons,[2286] which, for reasons obvious to any one who consults the map of Spain, Unger does not include among the Cassiterides. The only possible answer to this objection has been already suggested in this article: it is that the islands may have served as depots to which the tin was conveyed from the mainland opposite, and that they may have been confounded with the districts in which the tin was actually produced. This suggestion, however, leaves unexplained the definite statement of Strabo, that Crassus sailed across to the islands and found that the islanders worked the tin easily because it lay near the surface. There remain three other objections, which, unless Strabo’s authority is to be absolutely discarded, appear insuperable. First, Strabo, I repeat, distinctly states that the islands were ‘in the open sea’ (πελαγιαι); and of the islands which Unger identifies with the Cassiterides not one is more than four statute miles from the mainland, while the nearest is not more than two. Secondly, as they are all within sight of land, their situation could never have been kept secret. Lastly, since it was unnecessary for those who desired to reach them to sail from the harbour of Vigo, and easy to sail across from the neighbouring Ria of Muros and Noya, it is difficult to understand why Strabo should have said that the distance which separated them from the mainland was greater than the distance from Gaul to Britain. It is true that the islanders, according to Strabo, dressed in black, and that, according to the same authority,[2287] the inhabitants of Lusitania did likewise; but any one who regards this as an argument for identifying the Cassiterides with the islands near Vigo must make up his mind to reject nearly all the details which are given by Strabo, and to pin his faith to the undoubted fact that the Cassiterides are placed by most of the ancient authorities off the coast of Spain. M. Salomon Reinach, however, with whom I agree, argues that ‘the fact that numerous [ancient] writers place the Cassiterides in geographical connexion with Spain only proves--what we knew before--that Phoenician Spain had commercial relations with those islands’.[2288]

2. M. Hans Hildebrand[2289] thinks that the Cassiterides were headlands of the Galician coast. He argues that if they are to be located ‘in England’, the name Cassiterides must be applied to headlands in Cornwall; accordingly, he says, ‘je demande la même concession pour ma théorie espagnole, savoir que ce nom désigne des caps.’[2290] But Cornwall is part of an island which is itself one of a group of islands: Spain is not an island at all. M. Hildebrand’s theory can by no ingenuity be defended except on the assumption that the ancient writers were misled by the fact that in the language of the Phoenicians, from whom the earliest notions about the Cassiterides may be supposed to have been derived, there was no word which specially denoted islands; and if it is accepted, not only must all the statements of those writers which relate to the situation of the islands, their number, their inhabitants, the mode in which the tin was extracted, and the voyage of Crassus, be rejected as absolutely fictitious, but it is utterly impossible to conceive how they should have originated.[2291]

3. The old-fashioned view, which identified the Cassiterides with the Scilly Islands, has even of late years had adherents of high reputation, such as Dr. von Gutschmid,[2292] Emil Hübner,[2293] and Mommsen.[2294] Although the bulk of the tin which supplied the wants of ancient Europe came from Cornwall and Spain, it is nevertheless not improbable that some came from the Scilly Islands.[2295] If so, the real Cassiterides were the Scilly Islands and ‘the adjacent island’ of Great Britain. But of the ancient writers there were only two of whom it can be maintained that when they referred to the Cassiterides they were thinking either of the Scilly Islands or of Cornwall,--Festus Avienus and Strabo.

Festus Avienus was a writer of the fourth century, whose _Ora maritima_ was based either upon a Greek version of the Carthaginian account of the voyage of Himilco,[2296] or, as seems more probable, upon a Greek poem, which had itself been compiled from two distinct Greek narratives of different dates, the latter being assignable to the period between 240 and 150 B.C.[2297] After describing the rocky peninsula, Oestrymnis, he says that in the gulf formed by it lie the islands called Oestrymnides, which are widely scattered and rich in tin.[2298] He does not mention the Cassiterides at all. The Oestrymnides, however, are generally, and, if Festus was right in saying that they produced tin, necessarily identified with the Cassiterides: the peninsula is rightly identified with Brittany,[2299] or, more strictly speaking, with the promontory formed by Finistère; and therefore the gulf is either the Bay of Biscay, or the gulf in which lie the Channel Islands. After describing the Oestrymnides, Festus goes on to say that ‘from here it is two days’ sail to the Sacred Island’, that is to say, Ireland (_hinc duobus in sacram sic insulam Dixere prisci solibus cursus rati est_[2300]); and then, remarking that ‘the island of the Albiones’, or Britain, is near, he says that the Tartesii used to resort for trade to the Oestrymnides, and that the Carthaginians also used to sail ‘these seas’.[2301]

The question of the identity of the gulf is discussed by Friedrich Marx in an article on the _Ora maritima_,[2302] of which a summary has been given by Mr. W. H. Stevenson.[2303] Marx, says Mr. Stevenson, ‘explains the _sub vertice_ [of the promontory or peninsula, Oestrymnis] of Avienus[2304] as referring to the maps of antiquity, and as having the sense of “northwards of”, so that the Tin Islands are conceived of as north of the promontory of Finistère.... The Tin Islands must therefore be the mainland of Britain and the Isle of Wight (which Marx considers to be included among the _laxe iacentes insulae_ of Avienus), and cannot be explained as the Scilly Islands, which have nothing beyond their insular nature to favour the identification.’ But why ‘therefore’? What has the Isle of Wight beyond _its_ ‘insular nature’ to ‘favour the identification’? If Marx is right in his interpretation of _sub vertice_, the gulf (_sinus_) lay north of ‘the promontory of Finistère’; and since it can hardly be maintained that this gulf was the English Channel, it must have been the gulf in which lie the Channel Islands. If it was the English Channel, Marx can hardly venture to argue that ‘the mainland of Britain’ is _in_ the Channel. If any conclusion can be drawn from the words of Festus, it must be either that the _laxe iacentes insulae_ were the Channel Islands and the _sinus_ the gulf in which they are situated, or that the _sinus_ was the Bay of Biscay and the _insulae_ Ushant and the adjacent islets. But I agree with Mr. Stevenson that ‘the Tin Islands [of Avienus] ... cannot be explained as the Scilly Islands’, unless the indications which Avienus gives of their situation are utterly misleading.

Strabo, as we have seen, says that the Cassiterides were in the open sea northward from the harbour of the Artabri; and Mr. H. F. Tozer[2305] argues that, according to Strabo’s ‘idea of the relative position of these countries [Spain and Britain] this would place them a great distance to the west of the Scilly Islands’. This objection, however, assumes that Strabo was aware that the Scilly Islands were comparatively close to the Land’s End. Strabo imagined that the direction of the Pyrenees was from north to south; that the coast of Gaul extended in a straight line from the northern extremity of the Pyrenees to the mouth of the Rhine; and that the southern coast of Britain extended from a point nearly opposite and close to the northern extremity of the Pyrenees, parallel with the coast of Gaul.[2306] He expressly states that the Cassiterides were in the same latitude as Britain; and therefore, if he had intended to identify the Cassiterides with the Scilly Islands, it would have been quite natural for him to say that they lay north of the harbour of the Artabri.[2307] Müllenhoff[2308] indeed dismisses the claims of the Scilly Islands with contempt; but all that he has to say against them is that they never produced tin, and that they are small. The former objection is, as we have seen, unfounded; the latter is irrelevant, for small islands may contain mines, and the islands off the coast of Spain are smaller still.

But I am not concerned to argue that the sailors from whom the ancient writers, directly or indirectly, derived their information intended to convey that the Cassiterides were the Scilly Islands and the Scilly Islands alone; for, although the Scilly Islands did produce some tin, by far the greater part of the British supply of that metal doubtless came from Cornwall. Professor von Gutschmid indeed explains that ‘the tin was supposed [by the ancient writers] to be produced where it was exchanged,--a very common case’;[2309] and although the place where the Cornish tin was exchanged by the merchants who used the overland route was Ictis, or St. Michael’s Mount,[2310] the Phoenicians may possibly have found it convenient to occupy one of the Scilly Islands.[2311] But it seems to me safer to conclude that the Scilly Islands may have been originally included with Britain under the designation, _Cassiterides_.

The late distinguished geographer, H. Kiepert, maintained that although the name, _Cassiterides_, had been originally used by the Greeks to denote the tin-producing districts of Britain, it was erroneously applied by Strabo to the Scilly Islands. ‘Only to this group’, he insists, ‘can Strabo’s account of the discovery of the ten small _Cassiterides_-islands on the north of Hispania by ... Publius Crassus refer, as there are no other islands in this part of the ocean.’[2312]

4. George Smith, for whom the Cassiterides represented simply the Cornish peninsula,[2313] observed, anticipating a similar argument of Mr. Cecil Torr,[2314] that ‘the Hebrew, Phoenician, and cognate languages had no terms which distinctly specified islands, peninsulas, &c.; one word being used to signify islands, sea-coasts, and even remote countries. In these languages the whole coast of Cornwall and Devonshire might be termed island or islands.’ It may be objected that the very same argument might be used to show that the name, _Cassiterides_, really denoted the headlands on the coast of Galicia.[2315] But it is easier to conceive how the misconception should have arisen in the case of Cornwall, part of a remote island in the northern ocean and close to the Scilly Islands, than in the case of Galicia; and, moreover, the Galician theory leaves the story of Crassus’s voyage unexplained. But the problem of the Cassiterides cannot be satisfactorily solved by the simple statement that they were Cornwall.

5. Müllenhoff,[2316] M. Salomon Reinach, and various other writers identify the Cassiterides with the British Isles. According to M. Reinach,[2317] ‘the whole question resolves itself into this:--what islands in western Europe produce tin? The British Isles alone fulfil this condition; therefore we must recognize in them the archipelago of the Cassiterides.’ ‘If,’ he adds, ‘Strabo does not identify them with the British Isles, though he mentions both the one group and the other, this is because in the different chapters [of his work] he follows different authorities, some of whom allude to the Cassiterides from hearsay evidence collected in Spain, while the others describe the British Isles from experience derived on the spot.’ Then, remarking that the alleged derivation of κασσίτερος (the Greek word meaning ‘tin’) from a Sumerian word and from an Assyrian word have been proved to be fanciful, he argues that κασσίτερος did not, as most ancient and modern writers have supposed, give its name to the Cassiterides, but on the contrary derived its name from theirs. Similarly, he points out, at least four names of metals have been derived from the names of places which produced them, namely, copper from Cyprus; silver (in Gothic _silubr_) from the town of Salybe in Pontus;[2318] bronze from Brundisium; and _Kalay_, the Turkish word for tin, from Kalah in the peninsula of Malacca. M. Reinach goes on to argue that as the Greeks derived their knowledge of the Cassiterides from the Phoenicians, the termination ιδες must have been added by them. There remains therefore _cassiteros_, of which the first part is found in numerous Celtic words, for example, _Cassi_, _Cassi_-vellaunus, Velio-_casses_, &c. M. Reinach gives reasons, which appear to me unsatisfactory, for the conjecture that _Cassiterides_ means the same as _insulae extimae_ (‘the remotest isles’); and he holds that the name was given to the British Isles by the Celts of Western Gaul.[2319]

Whatever M. Reinach’s argument may be worth, he and Müllenhoff are unquestionably right in one sense: the British Isles, taken as a whole, were the only islands from which the ancients derived tin. But this truism did not require demonstration. The question is, whether the identification of the Cassiterides with the British Isles can be reconciled with what was written about them by the ancient geographers.

IV. The story which Strabo tells about Publius Crassus presents some difficulty. As we have seen, he says that after the Romans had discovered the route to the Cassiterides in spite of the efforts which the Phoenicians made to conceal it, Crassus sailed across to the islands, ascertained that the tin lay near the surface, and indicated the new route for the benefit of traders. The first question is, who was Crassus? Unger[2320] maintains that he was the consul of 95 B.C. who conquered the Lusitanians. If so, he must have sailed from the mainland to the islands near Vigo which Unger identifies with the Cassiterides. But, as I have already pointed out, these islands are quite close to the coast: their distance from the mainland is not greater, but many times less than the distance of Britain from the Continent; their whereabouts could never have been kept secret; and they have never produced tin. Therefore, if Publius Crassus was the consul of 95 B.C., Strabo’s story is utterly untrustworthy. Mommsen[2321] holds that Crassus was Caesar’s lieutenant of that name, and that he sailed from Gaul to the Scilly Islands before Caesar’s first invasion of Britain.[2322] How then are we to account for the ignorance of Caesar, who tells us that tin was produced ‘in the midlands’ (_in mediterraneis regionibus_[2323]) of Britain? Professor Ridgeway, who believes that the Cassiterides were the islands near Vigo, also identifies Crassus with Caesar’s lieutenant, who, as he reminds us, invaded Aquitania--the south-western division of Gaul--in 56 B.C. ‘He is all the more likely,’ writes Professor Ridgeway,[2324] ‘to have passed into Northern Spain, inasmuch as the people of that region had given great assistance to the Aquitani ... (_B. G._, iii, 23). Without doubt he was fully aware of the mineral wealth of that country, as is shown by Caesar’s remark (iii, 21) on their skill in defending cities, in consequence of their having numerous copper mines and other works in that region. As is plain from Strabo’s words, the Romans already knew how to reach the tin islands by sea, coasting round from the Mediterranean and up from Gades on the old Phoenician track. Crassus, then, by opening up a far shorter route, that of a short sea voyage from the Cassiterides to the coast of Gaul (possibly to the Garonne), at once developed this trade. The ore lay near the surface. The distance by sea was greater than that across the English Channel, but the readiness with which the tin was obtained, combined with the shorter land transit, more than compensated this. Strabo is evidently contrasting the rival tin-producing regions when he introduces the allusion to Britain.... From this achievement of Crassus and its results we can now understand in its proper light the famous expression of Pytheas, that “the northern parts of Iberia are more accessible towards Keltiké than for those who sail by the ocean”.... He found, as Publius Crassus found three centuries later, that the mineral regions and islands of North-Western Spain were far more accessible for the Massaliotes by a land journey across Gaul and a short sea voyage than by the long and perilous route round by Gibraltar.’ But Professor Ridgeway mistranslates ‘the famous expression of Pytheas’,--τὰ προσαρκτικὰ μέρη τῆς Ἰβηρίας εὐπαροδώτερα εἶναι [τοῖς] πρὸς τὴν Κελτικὴν ἢ κατὰ τὸν ὠκεανὸν πλέουσι.[2325] He fails to see that the word πλέουσι refers to πρὸς τὴν Κελτικήν as well as to κατὰ τὸν ὠκεανόν. The passage simply means that it is easier to sail along the northern coast of Iberia (Spain) from west to east in the direction of Keltiké (Gaul) than to sail along the southern coast from east to west in the direction of the Atlantic.[2326] This, as Müllenhoff[2327] observes, is perfectly true, owing to the set of the current and the prevalence of westerly winds. Moreover, Professor Ridgeway does not seem to be aware that there are no ‘tin islands’ off the coast of Spain: he does not explain how Crassus could have found time in 56 B.C. to make the ‘short sea voyage’ of five hundred miles or more from the mouth of the Garonne to the neighbourhood of Vigo, when he was campaigning in Aquitania until the approach of winter;[2328] nor, finally, does he explain how the Massaliotes would have gained by conveying tin five hundred miles from the neighbourhood of Vigo to the mouth of the Garonne, and then considerably more than three hundred miles across Gaul to Massilia, instead of overland across Spain. Mr. Tozer[2329] disposes of the difficulty by simply discrediting Strabo’s account. ‘There is no reason,’ he says, ‘to doubt that Crassus made such an expedition; but whatever the place was to which he went, his account is quite untrustworthy, because he represents the Cassiterides as producing tin, whereas that metal is not found in any of the groups of islands which lie off the coasts of Gaul, or Britain, or Spain. The explicit character of his statements, however, seems to have deceived his contemporaries, and Strabo among them.’ But what theory can Mr. Tozer frame to account for the gratuitous mendacity which he imputes to Crassus, who, by the way, was not Strabo’s contemporary?[2330] Strabo’s story is, in any case, obviously inaccurate:[2331] but I agree with Mr. Tozer that it contains a kernel of truth; and I can only suppose that Crassus, when he was in Brittany in 57-56 B.C.,[2332] was directed by Caesar to visit and report upon the tin-producing districts of the British Isles.[2333] And if I am asked how I account for the mistake which Caesar made when he said that tin was produced in the interior of Britain, I offer the following suggestion. Crassus may have contented himself with landing on the coast, perhaps at or near St. Michael’s Mount, where the tin was delivered to the merchants:[2334] if so, he was doubtless informed that the tin was actually won in the interior, as, in literal truth, it of course was;[2335] and Caesar may have hastily concluded from his report that the tin mines were far from the coast. As to the details with which Strabo embellished his story, it would be idle to conjecture from what source they were obtained. We may be sure that he did not invent them; but he may have confused items of information furnished by different authorities.[2336]

V. The conclusion of the matter is this. The statements of Strabo are most satisfactorily explained on the hypothesis that those from whom he, directly or indirectly, derived his information referred to the Scilly Isles and probably also the Cornish peninsula, or (which is less probable) to islands off the coast of Brittany, at which trading vessels may have touched on the voyage. All the other ancient writers, except perhaps Polybius, undoubtedly associated the Cassiterides with Spain. In so doing they were mistaken; for no islands in Spanish waters, except Ons, which is out of the question, have ever produced tin. The real Cassiterides--the ‘tin islands’ which were known to the mariners from whom the ancient writers ultimately derived their notions--were, speaking generally, the British Isles, and particularly, the tin-producing districts of Cornwall and perhaps also the Scilly Islands. It is possible that Polybius[2337] may have held this view; for he does not mention the Cassiterides, and names the British Isles as the source of tin.

How the ancients came to entertain such vague notions about the Cassiterides, is not difficult to conceive. Evidently, when they first heard of them, all that they could learn was that they were somewhere in the western ocean. Knowing that Gades was the centre of the tin trade, they would naturally assume that they were in Spanish waters[2338]; and even when they learned that tin came from Britain and from Galicia, they would cling to the idea that it came also from islands, the geographical position of which the crafty Phoenicians had striven to keep secret. Mr. Tozer[2339] may possibly be right in suggesting that ‘when the nations about the Mediterranean obtained more accurate information concerning the north-western coasts of Europe, it was natural that they should affix the name to one or other of the groups of islands with which they found the trade to be associated’. ‘Thus,’ he continues, ‘by some writers it may have been attached to the Oestrymnides, by others to the islands of the Galician coast, and even the Scillies may in some cases have been intended.’ But is it not likely that the writers in question, when they attempted to locate the Cassiterides, were not identifying them with any group of islands the existence of which was certainly known to them, and the whereabouts of which they knew? M. Salomon Reinach puts the matter well, though he fails to perceive that Strabo was not referring to islands in Spanish waters. ‘There were two traditions,’ he says, ‘relating to the tin islands,--one Phoenician, of which the starting-point was Southern Spain; the other Greek, which originated at Marseilles. With that respect for the written word which characterized them, the ancients accepted the two traditions side by side.... Even after the expedition of Crassus ... Pliny dared not reject the geographical legend which connected the islands with Spain; and a century later Ptolemy persisted in the same error.’[2340]

Mr. W. H. Stevenson explains that Müllenhoff, of whose conclusions respecting the Cassiterides he gives a lucid summary, holds that they ‘were marked by guess-work on the early Greek maps ... off the north-west coast of Spain ... and that they there remained on the maps (much like the mythical island of Brazil in fifteenth-century maps), although they had been known since the time of Pytheas, under the names of Britannia, Albion, Ierne, &c., without their identity being suspected. In a precisely similar manner the Electridae, which had been put into the maps by guess-work, were retained long after it was known that amber came from the shores of the Baltic, and not from islands in the North Sea.’[2341]

Thus the important point to bear in mind is that the name _Cassiterides_, which must, as Kiepert says, have been originally applied to the British Isles, was afterwards misapplied to imaginary islands, and applied by Strabo, not perhaps without some foundation in fact, to the Scilly group.

II. ICTIS AND THE BRITISH TRADE IN TIN

Let us now consider the British trade in tin.

I. Diodorus Siculus[2342] states, on the authority of Timaeus, who derived his information on this matter from Pytheas,[2343] that tin was conveyed by the people of Belerium (the Land’s End) in wagons at low tide from the British mainland to an island called Ictis; purchased there by merchants from the natives; carried to Gaul; and transported on pack-horses to the mouth of the Rhône,[2344] the overland journey lasting thirty days. In another chapter[2345] he says, following Posidonius, that tin was carried from Britain to Gaul, and then conveyed on horseback to Massilia and to Narbo. Pliny[2346] states, quoting Timaeus as his authority, that there was an island called Mictis, six days’ sail from Britain, which produced tin, and to which the Britons sailed in coracles. Strabo tells us that Corbilo in the estuary of the Loire[2347] ‘was formerly an emporium’; and, as we learn from Polybius, who couples it with Narbo and Massilia, that in the time of Scipio Aemilianus it was one of the principal towns of Gaul,[2348] it is probable that it was at one period the Gallic port to which British tin, destined for the Mediterranean markets, was conveyed.[2349]

II. Now the first thing to do is to identify Ictis or Mictis; for it is admitted that they were the same.[2350] According to Elton[2351] and Professor Rhys,[2352] Ictis was the Isle of Thanet. ‘The important point’, says Elton, ‘remains that the tin ... was stored at some place, which was supposed to have lain at six days’ voyage from the mineral district; and it seems reasonable to identify it with the Isle of Thanet, at which the marts were established from which the merchants made the shortest passage to Gaul.’ But there is no evidence that ‘the marts were established’ in the Isle of Thanet, or that ‘the merchants made the shortest passage to Gaul’; nor is there one word in Pliny (whose statement shall be considered presently) to justify Elton in stating as a ‘fact’ that the tin was ‘stored at some place which was supposed to have lain at six days’ voyage from the mineral district’.[2353] The view that Ictis was the Isle of Thanet is absolutely untenable. ‘If,’ says Professor Ridgeway,[2354] ‘it was Thanet, it follows that the tin was brought all the way from Devon, which was impossible, as the great forest of Anderida stretched right from Hampshire into Kent.’ Formerly the professor held that ‘the only difficulty in identifying Ictis with the Isle of Wight is the statement of Diodorus ... that the tin was conveyed across to the island at low water’; for ‘geologists maintain that Wight could not have been joined to the mainland in historic times’. Geologists, however, as we shall presently see, have changed their minds; and accordingly Professor Ridgeway has changed his. I shall therefore only take account of those parts of his argument which are not obsolete. ‘Mr. Elton,’ he observes, ‘seems to forget that if the Britons brought the tin a six days’ voyage from Cornwall to Thanet, there would be no need to bring it overland by waggons across the estuary at low water.... Diodorus and Timaeus are substantially agreed that there was an island where the tin came to market, and that its name was Ictis or Mictis.... The tin could not be carried overland on account of the forests, and they certainly would not convey it all round the south and south-east coasts to the Straits, and then round the coast of Gaul to Corbilo, if it was at all possible to get across at a nearer point. The passage from the Isle of Wight to the Channel Islands, and thence to Armorica and Corbilo, would best attain this object.’ Professor Ridgeway then invokes numismatic evidence. He states that Gallic coins of a peculiar type have been found in the southern and western parts of England, in the Channel Islands, and in the territories of the Turones, Pictones, Redones, Namnetes, all the tribes of the Armorican peninsula, and the Volcae Tectosages. ‘Follow the peoples enumerated above on the map,’ he says, ‘and we shall find them all lying in the basins of the Garonne and Loire.... This evidence, then, points unmistakably to a route direct from Armorica to the southern coast of Britain, or, in other words, supports strongly the doctrine that the Isle of Wight was the island called Ictis.’[2355]

Professor Ridgeway’s arguments, as directed against the theory of Elton and Professor Rhys, are conclusive. Ictis was certainly not Thanet. But the argument which he adduces from numismatic evidence in favour of its identification with the Isle of Wight rests upon the assumption that the coins in question could not have found their way to the Channel Islands except in the course of the tin trade. The Dumnonii, in whose country the tin was produced, had no coinage of their own, and apparently made little use of money:[2356] the coins to which Professor Ridgeway alludes were far later than the time of Pytheas; and the professor himself affirms that in the time of Posidonius, whom he wrongly regards as Diodorus’s authority for the description of Ictis, the route from Ictis to Corbilo had been abandoned. Nor is it easy to understand why the traders who conveyed tin from Cornwall to Marseilles should have needlessly added between 300 and 400 miles to the length and a corresponding amount to the expense of the journey. Professor Ridgeway has himself made use of this very argument to prove that Ictis was not the Isle of Thanet: can he not see that it tells with equal force against his own theory, that Ictis was the Isle of Wight?[2357]

Mr. Alfred Tylor[2358] insists that ‘St. Michael’s Mount’, which was formerly identified with Ictis, ‘is a steep rock, and does not form a harbour at all.’ What if it is a steep rock? Does not Thucydides[2359] tell us that the Phoenicians ‘fortified headlands on the sea-coast [of Sicily], and settled in the small islands adjacent, for the sake of trading with the Sicels’?[2360] Nobody who knows St. Michael’s Mount will contend that there would have been the slightest difficulty in conveying tin on to the small plain on its landward side,[2361] or in loading with tin vessels moored beneath it. Diodorus Siculus does not mention any harbour in connexion with Ictis; but, as a writer who knew every inch of the Cornish coast long ago pointed out, St. Michael’s Mount afforded perfect shelter for shipping.[2362] ‘It still,’ says Sir Charles Lyell,[2363] ‘affords a good port, daily frequented by vessels, _where cargoes of tin are sometimes taken on board, after having been transported, as in the olden time, at low tide across the isthmus_.[2364] Colliers of 500 tons’ burden can now enter the harbour, which is on the landward or sheltered side of the Mount.’

But the Isle of Wight has recently found a new champion,--the eminent geologist, Mr. Clement Reid.[2365] He affirms that at the time when tin was shipped at Ictis, ‘St. Michael’s Mount must have been an isolated rock rising out of a swampy wood.’ By an interesting process of reasoning, based upon evidence which he collected while revising ‘the geological map of the northern part of the Isle of Wight’, and afterwards while mapping ‘the whole of the adjacent parts of the mainland’, he arrives at the conclusion that about 100 B.C. a limestone causeway, over which wagons could pass at low tide, extended from the western side of the river Yar to the coast of Hampshire opposite Pennington Marshes. He explains that the tin was transported by this causeway to the Isle of Wight instead of being shipped in one of the Hampshire harbours because the latter ‘are all more or less exposed to the prevalent south-west wind, and are sheltered by no high land’, and, moreover, ‘the harbours outside the Solent were probably always rendered dangerous by bars of sand and shingle.’ Finally, he contends that the identification of Ictis with the Isle of Wight shows that ‘the ancient writers can be literally depended on, and that their descriptions are thoroughly in keeping with each other’. Pliny was right in saying that Mictis ‘is distant inwards from Britain six days’ voyage’, for ‘six days’ coasting from the mouth of the Exe would amply suffice to bring boats to the Isle of Wight’; and since ‘a coasting trade of this sort would go direct to the Isle of Wight side of the Solent’, Pliny’s account, which is based on Timaeus, naturally makes ‘no mention of the causeway alluded to by Diodorus, writing at a later date’. (Mr. Reid presumably means, not that Diodorus wrote later than Pliny, but that Posidonius, whom he assumes to have been Diodorus’s authority, wrote later than Timaeus.) Caesar is right in saying that tin was found in the interior, ‘for he refers to the British part of the trade-route,’ that is to say, the (assumed) overland journey from Cornwall to the Hampshire coast. Diodorus is right because the limestone causeway answers to his description.

I submit that whoever is right, Mr. Clement Reid is wrong, because the only equipment which he brings to the discussion is the special knowledge of the geologist. Doubtless he has proved the former existence of a causeway between Hampshire and the Isle of Wight; but it does not follow that the Isle of Wight was Ictis unless it can be proved that ‘St. Michael’s Mount must have been an isolated rock rising out of a swampy wood’.

Can this be proved? I have searched all the relevant geological and geographical literature, and have failed to find any evidence in support of Mr. Reid’s assertion. The testimony of geologists, except Mr. Reid, is all the other way. Sir Charles Lyell,[2366] Mr. Pengelley,[2367] and Mr. Ussher[2368] of the Geological Survey all hold that since the time when tin was shipped at Ictis, St. Michael’s Mount has undergone no sensible change. But Mr. Reid has recently been revising the old geological survey of Cornwall; and he tells me that he reached his conclusion by calculating the rate at which the sea washed away alluvium which once connected St. Michael’s Mount with the mainland. Moreover, although he does not actually rely upon the hoary fable, demolished by Max Müller, of ‘the Hoar Rock in the Wood’, he laid stress in conversation with me upon the prevalence in Cornwall of a tradition which supported his conclusion,--a tradition which, Max Müller’s readers know, is simply worthless.[2369]

Now I would ask geologists whether it is not dangerous to strive after chronological precision in geological inquiries by reasoning which assumes that nature worked during a long period of remote time at a uniform rate of speed. The calculations by which Sir Archibald Geikie laboured years ago to estimate the time which the Thames occupied in excavating its valley,[2370] the calculations which geologists have made as to the time required for the deposition of the layers of stalagmite in caves,[2371] have been proved to be futile. This much at all events is certain: if Mr. Reid’s calculation is accurate, it stultifies the testimony of the ancient authors to whom he appeals.

For I would ask Mr. Reid how he proposes to reconcile his own statement, ‘that the ancient writers can be literally depended on,’ with the assumption, which he admits that he is compelled to make in order to show ‘the perfect consistency of the accounts’, that ‘Mictis and Ictis were the same island as Vectis’. Is he not aware that in Pliny’s _Natural History_[2372] [M]ictis and Vectis are distinguished? If he had studied Müllenhoff’s great work, he would not have attempted to reconcile Pliny’s account of the six days’ voyage to [M]ictis with Diodorus’s account, which ‘mentions only the causeway to Ictis’, by assuming that the writer whom Diodorus followed lived two centuries later than Timaeus. For Diodorus’s account was not, as Mr. Reid fancies, based upon Posidonius; he also, like Pliny, derived his information immediately from Timaeus, ultimately from Pytheas. Not less hopeless is Mr. Reid’s attempt to explain Pliny’s account of the voyage to [M]ictis. How could the Isle of Wight be described as ‘distant inwards from Britain six days’ voyage’? Because, says Mr. Reid, ‘the Isle of Wight and more easterly parts of the south of England were politically part of Gaul perhaps even at that early date [300 B.C.]; the tin-producing “Britain” was apparently outside the dominion of the Belgae, and must have been Devon and Cornwall.’ This argument rests upon a doubtful ‘perhaps’, an obscure ‘apparently’, a desperate ‘must have been’, and the baseless assumption that the Belgae had established dominion in Britain in the time of Pytheas: it leaves the word ‘inwards’ unexplained; and it is pulverized by the mere fact that in the very chapter from which Mr. Reid is quoting and everywhere else Pliny uses the word Britain not in the sense of ‘Devon and Cornwall’, but simply in the sense of Britain. To any man who is not obliged to distort the plain meaning of words it is clear that, from Pliny’s point of view, Ictis was six days’ sail from Britain, and that by ‘inwards’ he meant, speaking from the standpoint of an Italian, ‘northward.’ Thus London might be intelligibly described as fifty-two miles ‘inwards’ from Brighton; but to say that Brighton is a day’s sail ‘inwards’ from Portsmouth would be gibberish. As Müllenhoff has pointed out, Pliny confounded the distance of Ictis from Britain with that of Thule.[2373]

Enough of Mr. Reid’s attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable. Like Professor Ridgeway, he does not explain why men of business preferred to pay the cost of the long voyage from the Isle of Wight to the mouth of the Loire, when they need only have paid for the shorter voyage from Cornwall, or why they chose to saddle themselves with the cost of the overland transport from Cornwall to Hampshire. Nor does he explain why this imaginary and expensive overland transport was substituted for the imaginary coasting voyage. Nor again does he explain how wagons, loaded with tin (for Diodorus does not speak of pack-horses except in connexion with the journey across Gaul), were able to travel two hundred miles along unmetalled trackways. The rate at which they crawled, the numerous breaks down, the curses of the drivers, and the wear and tear of the cattle I leave to Mr. Reid’s imagination. The eminent archaeologist, Mr. C. H. Read, who accepts Mr. Reid’s conclusions, assures us that a voyage from St. Michael’s Mount to the mouth of the Loire is not to be thought of, for it would have involved a ‘long and dangerous sea passage’.[2374] Is he serious? This long sea passage was far shorter than the passage from the Isle of Wight: why it was more dangerous than a passage which involved navigation in the neighbourhood of the Channel Islands as well as of Ushant no seaman will be able to understand. The passage which seems so terrible to Mr. Read was made by Pytheas.[2375] The passage from Italy to Sardinia was longer: several times longer was the passage from Britain to Iceland, which was made long before the invention of the compass;[2376] as long or longer the passage from Scandinavia to Britain, which was made, according to Mr. Read himself,[2377] in the Bronze Age. That the Veneti should have been quite willing to sail from the Isle of Wight to the Loire, but so afraid of sailing in their stout ships from Cornwall that they deliberately added more than a hundred miles to the length of their voyage, is a mystery which Mr. Read must be left to explain.

But Mr. Reid, in the conversation which passed between us, urged reasons in favour of his theory which are omitted in his paper and to which I shall endeavour to do justice. Archaeological evidence, he remarked, shows that the people of Cornwall were far more uncivilized than those of Hampshire: even supposing that St. Michael’s Mount was an island, it had no real harbour; and it would have been very dangerous for mariners to attempt to get there especially in a fog or a south-westerly gale. I reply that it would also have been dangerous in such weather to attempt to fetch the coast of the Isle of Wight, as the ship would have incurred the risk of running a-tilt against the limestone causeway; that in a fog the skipper would have anchored; and that, notwithstanding the lack of a proper harbour, the ship would have lain snugly in sheltered water under the lee of St. Michael’s Mount. The comparative barbarism of the people of Cornwall is irrelevant: as they wanted to sell their tin, there was no danger that they would molest their customers. Besides, Mr. Reid seems to forget that the people who produced the tin delivered it to the traders at Ictis. The traders transacted business directly with them; and, assuming that Ictis was the Isle of Wight, they were as barbarous when they had crossed the limestone causeway as they had been when they left the tin mines. Mr. Reid’s argument compels him once more to throw overboard the ancient authority, who, as he insists, ‘can be literally depended on’; for Diodorus distinctly states that the tin-mining inhabitants of Belerium were friendly to strangers, and _from their intercourse with foreign merchants_ had become comparatively civilized.[2378] This passage proves that, according to Diodorus, Ictis was in the territory of Belerium, and by itself demolishes Mr. Reid’s theory. For how could the inhabitants have become civilized by their commercial dealings if the merchants never came near Belerium, and the only inhabitants who came in contact with them were wagoners or boatmen?

It is clear then that the case for the Isle of Wight rests upon the geological evidence, such as it is, that at the time when Ictis was a trading station, St. Michael’s Mount was ‘an isolated rock rising out of a swampy wood’. Common sense and the historical evidence are all on the other side. If St. Michael’s Mount had not been available, there would have been nothing to prevent the traders from shipping the tin at Falmouth or in Plymouth Sound; and acceptance of Mr. Reid’s theory involves, besides other insuperable difficulties, the assumption that the tin-merchants were ignorant of the first principles of business.

III. We now come to the question, When did the overland trade in tin between Corbilo and Massilia begin, and how long did it last? That it existed before the time of Pytheas--that is to say, at least as early as the fourth century before Christ--is certain;[2379] for, as we have seen, Pliny and Diodorus Siculus derived their information about Ictis ultimately from him.[2380] Müllenhoff,[2381] indeed, contends for a still earlier date. Only on this hypothesis, he argues, can we explain the remarkable fact that the great Celtic immigration at the beginning of the fourth century B.C. not only did no harm to Massilia but actually increased its prosperity, the profits of the trade being appreciated by the Celts themselves. Still, there is no evidence that it existed (except in the form of intertribal barter) before the foundation of Massilia, or even that it had begun long before Pytheas visited Britain.