Ancient Britain and the Invasions of Julius Caesar

by T. Rice Holmes

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]