Note 2346 — THE CASSITERIDES, ICTIS, AND THE BRITISH TRADE IN TIN

Nat. Hist., iv, 16(30), § 104.—Timaeus historicus a Britannia introrsum sex dierum navigatione abesse dicit insulam Mictim in qua candidum plumbum proveniat; ad eam Britannos vitilibus navigiis corio circumsutis navigare. E. H. Bunbury (Hist. of Anc. Geogr., i, 1879, p. 603, n. 9) remarks that ‘it is impossible to say what sense we are to attach to the word “introrsus”, upon which the interpretation of the whole passage, in a geographical sense, depends’. I shall show presently (p. 505, infra) that only one sense which is not nonsense can be attributed to introrsum.

Müllenhoff (Deutsche Altertumskunde, i, 1890, p. 471) holds that Pliny confused the distance of Ictis from Britain with that of Thule, which, as he says in an earlier passage (Nat. Hist., ii, 75 [77], § 187), was ‘six days’ sail northward from Britain’ (sex dierum navigatione in septentrionem a Britannia). See p. 505, infra.