Note 2291 — THE CASSITERIDES, ICTIS, AND THE BRITISH TRADE IN TIN

The theory of Mr. Cecil Torr, who holds that the Cassiterides never existed, is virtually identical with that of M. Hildebrand. ‘In the Phoenician language’, he remarks, ‘the word for island is the same as in the Hebrew ... and this word אי is used repeatedly in the Bible for places beyond the sea, as well as ... islands. Most probably the Phoenicians used this word when speaking of the Cassiterides, meaning thereby that these were places beyond the sea [which he identifies with ‘the north-west corner of Spain’]: but the Greeks understood it in another sense, and thus turned these places into islands’ (Academy, xlviii, Oct. 26, 1895, pp. 342-3). To the objection that Publius Crassus reached the Cassiterides by sea, Mr. Torr replies that ‘there is nothing to show that his destination was an island’ (ib., Nov. 9, p. 390); but Mr. Talfourd Ely (ib., Nov. 16, p. 414) pertinently asks whether the word διαβάς, which Strabo uses in describing the voyage of Crassus, can be used of coasting from one point to another on the same shore. Moreover, it is absurd to contend that ‘there is nothing to show’ that Crassus sailed to an island; for Strabo says that the Cassiterides were ten islands; and Mr. Torr is therefore forced, as we have seen (p. 488), to make the incredible assumption that Strabo’s account of the voyage of Crassus is pure fiction.