[25] Pliny [xxxiv. 162] mentions the tinning of copper objects as a Gaulish invention.
[26] Strabo’s repeated statement [ii. 120 and 175] that the Cassiterides lay north of the land of the Artabri [north-west Spain] also points decisively to Brittany. The idea must be derived from Eratosthenes, who borrowed from Pytheas, and the latter placed Cabæum, the promontory of Brittany, farther west than Cape Finisterre. Diodorus [v. 38] says that the islands lay opposite Iberia in the Ocean. That they are always mentioned in connection with the Artabri or north-west Spain shows that the voyage to them was made from that country.
[27] Georg Mair [1899, p. 20, f.] has allowed himself to be led astray by Sven Nilsson’s fanciful pictures [1862, 1865] into regarding it as a historical fact that the Phœnicians had permanent colonies in Skane and regular communication with Scandinavia, even so far north as the Lofoten isles, whose rich fisheries are supposed to have attracted them.
[28] In a translation of the cuneiform inscription on the obelisk of the Assyrian king Asurnasirabal (885-860 B.C.) the Assyriologist J. Oppert has the following remarkable passage, which is taken as referring to this king’s great predecessor Tiglath Pileser I., of about 1100 B.C.: “In the seas of the trade-winds his fleets fished for pearls, in the seas where the pole-star stands in the zenith they fished for the saffron which attracts.” [Cf. Schweiger-Lerchenfeld, 1898, p. 141.] Oppert has since altered the latter part of his translation to “fished for that which looks like copper.” Both interpretations might mean amber, and if the translation were correct this inscription would furnish a remarkable piece of evidence for direct communication between Assyria and the Baltic as early as the ninth century B.C., and in that case we might suppose it established by means of the Phœnicians. But unfortunately another eminent Assyriologist, Professor Schrader, has disputed the correctness of the translation given above, which he thinks is the result of a false reading of the inscription. According to Schrader there is no mention of pearls, or amber, or fleets, or pole-star, or zenith; the whole refers merely to this ancient king’s hunting in the mountains of Assyria which took place “in the days when the star Sukud shone, gleaming like bronze.” [Cf. Verhandl. d. Berliner Gesellsch. f. Anthrop. Ethnol. u. Urgesch, 1885, pp. 65, 66, 306, 372; and Mair, 1903, p. 47.] The last interpretation is undeniably more probable than the first, and it may well be thought that the bronze-coloured star which shone may have been Venus.
[29] That amber may have followed this route in early times is made probable by the finds of ornaments of amber in graves of the Bronze Age (Halstatt period) in the Caucasus, at Koban and Samthavro.
[30] Franz Mathias [1902, p. 73] draws attention to the statement of Von Alten [“Die Bohlwege im Gebiet der Ems und Weser,” p. 40 and Pl. V.; this paper has not been accessible to me] that in 1818 there was found a piece of amber with a Phœnician inscription on one of the oldest and deepest-lying bog causeways (“Moorbrücken”) on the prehistoric trade-route from the district of the Weser and Ems to the Rhine. As one would expect amber to be carried from the countries in the north-east towards the south, and not in the reverse direction, this find, if properly authenticated, might show that there were Phœnicians on the coast to the north. But the piece, if it be Phœnician, may also have come from the south by chance.
[31] See on this subject specially Müllenhoff, 1870, i. pp. 73-203. Also W. Christ, 1866; Marx, 1895; G. Mair, 1899; and others.
[32] This epithet, which constantly recurs when Ireland is mentioned, may perhaps in ancient times be due to the resemblance between the Greek words “hieros” (holy) and “Hierne” (Ireland), which latter may be derived from the native name of the island, “Erin.” In later times, of course, it is due to Ireland’s early conversion to Christianity and its monastic system.
[33] In spite of Müllenhoff’s contrary view [1870, p. 92], it does not appear to me altogether impossible that it may have arisen through a corruption of the name of the people whom Pytheas calls “Ostimians” or “Ostimnians,” and which in some manuscripts of Strabo [iv. 195] also takes the forms “Osismians” [cf. also Mela, iii. 2, 7; Pliny, iv. 32; Ptolemy, ii. 8, 5; Orosius, 6, 8] and “Ostidamnians” [i. 64], and who lived in Brittany.
[34] In Cæsar’s description [B.G., iii. 13] of the ships of the Veneti it is also stated that “the keels were somewhat flatter than in our ships, whereby they were better able to cope with the shallows and the falling tides.”