Now the evidence that Professor Haverfield offers of its having reappeared is simply the discovery of one inscribed ingot of Cornish tin, which belonged to the fourth century; and if no inscribed ingots of an earlier date have been found, their absence hardly proves that the Romans had not worked the mines before. This Professor Haverfield admits; but, he insists, ‘it does prove that we have no right to say that mining was going on.’[2393] Possibly: but if so, the absence of inscribed ingots of tin in Spain[2394] equally proves that we have no right to say that mining was going on there. Yet, if it was suspended in Cornwall, it must have been contemporaneously active in Spain. It is true that no Roman antiquities of earlier date than the third century have been found in Cornwall, except some Samian ware and coins of Trajan and Vespasian;[2395] and it may be true that, as the professor says, these discoveries ‘prove no Roman influence or occupation’:[2396] but, on the other hand, Cornwall has very few Roman antiquities even of the third and fourth centuries,[2397] and no Roman or Romanized towns or villas.[2398] Is it not then possible that, as Professor Gowland suggests, the mines were worked throughout the whole period of the Roman occupation of Britain, but not under Roman control?[2399] He points out that ‘the stamps had been impressed [upon the solitary ingot] when the metal was cold, and hence not necessarily at the mine, but very probably by a Roman trader or officer at the coast’.[2400] Professor Haverfield indeed states that the ingot was found not more than a mile and a half from ‘an old working’, which has yielded Roman coins:[2401] but Professor Gowland supports his own view by the argument that ‘at the Roman lead mines in Britain the inscriptions were always cast on the ingots of lead when they were made, and at the copper mines were stamped on the cakes of copper while they were red hot’. ‘The real site of the Cassiterides’ was not, as Professor Haverfield thinks, ‘in N. W. Spain,’ but in the British Isles. ‘The silence of the writers after Caesar’ in regard to the British trade in tin, on which he lays stress, really resolves itself into the silence of Strabo; for although the professor is quite right in saying that ‘later authors [namely, Diodorus, Strabo, and Pliny] merely include it in quotations from earlier literature’, those who are familiar with their writings will admit that there was no reason why any of them, except Strabo, should have expressly added to those quotations the information that the British tin trade continued in their own time. We should certainly have expected that Strabo would have included tin in his list of British exports if it had been exported in his time; and I will not attempt to explain away his silence: but can it outweigh the extreme improbability that for two centuries the civilized world should have been entirely cut off from one of the two sources from which its supply of tin had previously been derived? And when Professor Haverfield suggests that ‘as iron took the place of bronze in many lands, tin was no longer in such demand’, does he not momentarily forget that not only in the lands round the Mediterranean but also in those of Northern and Western Europe iron had taken the place of bronze for many purposes several centuries before the Christian era, and that, on the other hand, those implements and ornaments which were still made wholly or in part of bronze were probably in greater demand than before?
IV. We have now to deal with the Phoenicians. Sir George Cornewall Lewis[2402] and various other writers have endeavoured to prove that the Phoenicians (including the Carthaginians) never traded directly with Britain for tin; and in 1896 Dr. Arthur Evans remarked that ‘the days are gone past when it could be seriously maintained that the Phoenician merchant landed on the coast of Cornwall’.[2403]
Now Dr. Evans’s distinguished father, who holds that the Cassiterides ‘are rightly identified with Britain’, observes that ‘the traces of Phoenician influence in this country are ... at present imperceptible. But,’ he continues, ‘it may well be that their system of commerce or barter was such as intentionally left the barbarian tribes with whom they traded in much the same stage of civilization as that in which they found them, always assuming that they dealt directly with Britain and not through the intervention of Gaulish merchants.’[2404]
Some merchants certainly landed, if not on the coast of Cornwall at all events on that of Ictis: is there any reason in the nature of things why Phoenician merchants should not have done so? To the old-fashioned view there are only two objections worth considering, namely, first, that ‘the tin trade was carried on overland through Gaul’,[2405] and, secondly, that the tin which was shipped to Gades may have come not from Britain but from the mines of North-Western Spain. But, as we have seen, there is no evidence that the overland trade had begun before 600 B.C.,—the approximate date of the foundation of Massilia; nor is there any evidence that the Phoenicians took part in it. From Gades to Cornwall the voyage, as George Smith observes, was shorter than the voyages ‘from Tyre to Malta, Carthage, or Sicily, which they were performing continuously’.[2406] If Desjardins[2407] is right in affirming that ‘the name Corbilo unquestionably looks Phoenician’, and that a Phoenician inscription has been found near Guérande, it may be inferred that the carrying trade between Britain and Corbilo was at one time either wholly or partly in Phoenician or Carthaginian hands. That tin was obtained in ancient times from the mines of North-Western Spain must be admitted: not only is the fact attested by the statements of Strabo and Pliny,[2408] but it has been proved by the researches of Mr. W. C. Borlase.[2409] But there is some evidence that tin also came from Cornwall to Gades. Festus Avienus[2410] tells us, ultimately, it may be assumed, on the authority of the Carthaginian traveller, Himilco, that both the Carthaginians and the people of Gades used to sail to the British seas.[2411] Sir George Cornewall Lewis,[2412] indeed, argues that ‘if the date of the voyages of Hanno and Himilco is correctly fixed, it follows that at a period subsequent to the expedition of Xerxes, the Carthaginians ... had not carried their navigation far along the coasts of the Atlantic; and that they sent out two voyages of discovery—one to the south, the other to the north—at the public expense’. All that we know about the date of Himilco’s voyage is that it was not later than the fifth, probably in the sixth century B. C.,[2413] and, according to Pliny,[2414] its object was ‘to explore the outer parts of Europe’. Anyhow the evidence remains that after Himilco’s time, if not before, the Carthaginians traded by sea with Britain.[2415] Dr. Arthur Evans, I know, warns us that ‘a truer view of primitive trade as passing on by inter-tribal barter has superseded the idea of a direct commerce between remote localities’.[2416] But the testimony of Diodorus, that is to say of Pytheas, proves that traders purchased tin off the Cornish coast from the natives who had prepared it for market, carried it across the Channel, and unloaded it on the coast of Gaul, whence it was conveyed overland to the mouth of the Rhône. If this was not ‘direct commerce’, what was? That there was ‘inter-tribal barter’ in ancient times, no well-informed person would deny; but that there was also ‘direct commerce between remote localities’ is as well attested as any fact of ancient history can be.
Mr. C. T. Newton indeed argues that ‘if the Phoenicians frequented any portion of the British coast, it is probable that they would have given names to the more important harbours and promontories, as they did in Africa and Spain’.[2417] But is it not also probable that they found it sufficient to hold, or even to occupy temporarily, as occasion required, one or more of the Scilly Islands, or perhaps St. Michael’s Mount, and that they may have given names to these places, although the names have not survived.[2418] Their settlements in Africa and Spain were not temporary but permanent.
I freely admit that the testimony of Festus Avienus is not conclusive; but I see no reason for rejecting the statement of Strabo that the Phoenicians traded directly for tin with the Cassiterides—that is to say, the British Isles—and that they originally monopolized the trade.
M. Salomon Reinach,[2419] who supports the view that the Phoenicians traded directly with Cornwall, insists, referring to a well-known passage in Thucydides,[2420] that the overland route must have been earlier than the maritime. ‘Corinth,’ says Thucydides, ‘being seated on an isthmus, was naturally from the first a centre of commerce; for the Hellenes within and without the Peloponnese, in the old days when they communicated chiefly by land, had to pass through her territory in order to reach one another.’[2421] M. Reinach argues that ‘nothing could have suggested to the Phoenicians the idea of going with their ships in search of tin if they had not already known the existence not only of the metal but also of the distant country which produced it ... the Phoenicians of Spain no more discovered the Cassiterides and tin than the Portuguese discovered India and spices’. This may be freely admitted. But the Phoenicians may well have acquired the knowledge upon which they acted long before the direct overland trade which Diodorus describes began. Tin was probably conveyed in very early times from Cornwall to Gaul for the use of tribes who inhabited that country before the immigration of the Celtic-speaking invaders; and, since Gaul was in communication with Britain from the beginning of the Bronze Age,[2422] the knowledge that tin was to be obtained in Britain might have reached Phoenician ears even before Gades was founded.
But the most striking contribution which M. Reinach has made to the literature of this subject is the suggestion that the traders who first sailed from the Mediterranean into the English Channel were not Phoenicians but Phrygians. Speaking of the well-known passage, which I have already quoted, in which Pliny says that Midacritus was the first who imported tin from ‘the tin island’,[2423] he argues that the generally accepted identification of Midacritus with the Phoenician Melcarth is erroneous. He points out that in Pliny’s list of discoverers all except the most famous names are accompanied by a complementary designation, for example (Toxius), Caeli filius[2424]. Therefore, even if, as has been supposed, what Pliny wrote was not Midacritus but Melicertus (Melcarth), that unfamiliar name would have been followed by some explanatory addition. M. Reinach then quotes two passages from Hyginus[2425] and Cassiodorus[2426] respectively. In the former we read that ‘King Midas, the Phrygian, son of Cybele, was the first to discover lead and tin’ (Midas rex Cybeles filius Phryx plumbum album et nigrum primus invenit); in the latter, that ‘Midas, the ruler of Phrygia, discovered tin’ ([Aes enim Ionos Thessaliae rex], plumbum Midas regnator Phrygiae reppererunt). It is clear then, says M. Reinach, that, as the Jesuit scholar, Hardouin, perceived more than two centuries ago, for Midacritus in the MSS. of Pliny we ought to read Midas Phryx. He adds that from a fragment of the Seventh Book of Diodorus, preserved in the Chronicle of Eusebius, we learn that the maritime supremacy of the Phrygians began about 903 B.C., and that of the Phoenicians in 824.[2427]