Ictis, or Iktin, is or was an island described as a tin trading centre in the ''

Bibliotheca historica ''Bibliotheca historica'' (, ) is a work of Universal history (genre), universal history by Diodorus Siculus. It consisted of forty books, which were divided into three sections. The first six books are geographical in theme, and describe the h ...

'' of the Sicilian-Greek historian

Diodorus Siculus Diodorus Siculus or Diodorus of Sicily (; 1st century BC) was an ancient Greece, ancient Greek historian from Sicily. He is known for writing the monumental Universal history (genre), universal history ''Bibliotheca historica'', in forty ...

, writing in the first century BC. While Ictis is widely accepted to have been an island somewhere off the southern coast of what is now England, scholars continue to debate its precise location. Candidates include

St Michael's Mount St Michael's Mount (, meaning "Hoarfrost, hoar rock in woodland") is a tidal island in Mount's Bay near Penzance, Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The island is a Civil parishes in England, civil parish and is linked to the town of Marazion ...

and

Looe Island Looe Island nature reserve (, meaning ''Island of the Monk's Enclosure''), also known as St George's Island, and historically St Michael's Island is a small Islands of the world, island nature reserve a mile from the mainland town of Looe off C ...

off the coast of

Cornwall Cornwall (; or ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is also one of the Celtic nations and the homeland of the Cornish people. The county is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, ...

, the

Mount Batten Mount Batten is a 24-metre (80-ft) tall outcrop of rock on a 600-metre (2000-ft) peninsula in Plymouth Sound, Devon, England, named after Sir William Batten (c.1600-1667), MP and Surveyor of the Navy; it was previously known as How Stert. Af ...

peninsula in

Devon Devon ( ; historically also known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by the Bristol Channel to the north, Somerset and Dorset to the east, the English Channel to the south, and Cornwall to the west ...

, and the

Isle of Wight The Isle of Wight (Help:IPA/English, /waɪt/ Help:Pronunciation respelling key, ''WYTE'') is an island off the south coast of England which, together with its surrounding uninhabited islets and Skerry, skerries, is also a ceremonial county. T ...

further to the east.

Primary sources

Diodorus Siculus, who flourished between about 60 and about 30 BC, is supposed to have relied for his account of the geography of

Britain Britain most often refers to: * Great Britain, a large island comprising the countries of England, Scotland and Wales * The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, a sovereign state in Europe comprising Great Britain and the north-eas ...

on a lost work of

Pytheas Pytheas of Massalia (; Ancient Greek: Πυθέας ὁ Μασσαλιώτης ''Pythéās ho Massaliōtēs''; Latin: ''Pytheas Massiliensis''; born 350 BC, 320–306 BC) was a Greeks, Greek List of Graeco-Roman geographers, geographer, explo ...

, a Greek geographer from

Massalia Massalia (; ) was an ancient Greek colonisation, Greek colony (''apoikia'') on the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean coast, east of the Rhône. Settled by the Ionians from Phocaea in 600 BC, this ''apoikia'' grew up rapidly, and its population se ...

who made a voyage around the coast of Britain near the end of the fourth century BC, searching for the source of

amber Amber is fossilized tree resin. Examples of it have been appreciated for its color and natural beauty since the Neolithic times, and worked as a gemstone since antiquity."Amber" (2004). In Maxine N. Lurie and Marc Mappen (eds.) ''Encyclopedia ...

. The record of the voyage of Pytheas was lost in antiquity but was known to some later writers, including Timaeus,

Posidonius Posidonius (; , "of Poseidon") "of Apameia" (ὁ Ἀπαμεύς) or "of Rhodes" (ὁ Ῥόδιος) (), was a Greeks, Greek politician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, historian, mathematician, and teacher native to Apamea (Syria), Apame ...

, and

Pliny the Elder Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/24 79), known in English as Pliny the Elder ( ), was a Roman Empire, Roman author, Natural history, naturalist, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the Roman emperor, emperor Vesp ...

. Their work is contradictory, but from it deductions can be made about what was reported by Pytheas. This “represents all that was known about the tin trade in the ancient classical world”.ICTIS INSVLA
at roman-britain.co.uk Diodorus gives an account that is generally supposed to be a description of the working of Cornish tin at about the time of the voyage of Pytheas. He says: In the Greek text of Diodorus the name appears, in the

accusative case In grammar, the accusative case ( abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to receive the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: "me", "him", "he ...

, as "Iktin", so that translators have inferred that the

nominative In grammar, the nominative case ( abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case, or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb, or (in Latin and formal variants of E ...

form of the name was "Iktis", rendering this into the medieval ''

lingua franca A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, link language or language of wider communication (LWC), is a Natural language, language systematically used to make co ...

'' of

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

(which only rarely used the letter 'k') as "Ictis". However, some commentators doubt that "Ictis" is correct and prefer "Iktin".

Gavin de Beer Sir Gavin Rylands de Beer (1 November 1899 – 21 June 1972) was a British evolutionary embryologist, known for his work on heterochrony as recorded in his 1930 book ''Embryos and Ancestors''. He was director of the Natural History Museum, Lond ...

, "Iktin", in ''The Geographical Journal'' vol. 126 (June 1960) pp. 160–167, at p. 162 In Book IV of his ''

Natural History Natural history is a domain of inquiry involving organisms, including animals, fungi, and plants, in their natural environment, leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study. A person who studies natural history is cal ...

'', Pliny quotes Timaeus and refers to "''insulam Mictim''" (the island of Mictis, or perhaps of Mictim): It has been suggested that "''insulam Mictim''" was a copying error for ''insulam Ictim'', and Diodorus and Pliny probably both relied on the same primary source. However, while it is possible that "Mictim" and "Iktin" are one and the same, it is also possible that they are different places. The word "inwards" (''introrsus'') can be interpreted as meaning "towards our home", and six days' sail from Britain could take a boat to somewhere on the Atlantic coast of what is now France.

Strabo Strabo''Strabo'' (meaning "squinty", as in strabismus) was a term employed by the Romans for anyone whose eyes were distorted or deformed. The father of Pompey was called "Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo, Pompeius Strabo". A native of Sicily so clear-si ...

, a contemporary of Diodorus, stated in his ''Geography'' that British tin was shipped from

on the Mediterranean coast of

Gaul Gaul () was a region of Western Europe first clearly described by the Roman people, Romans, encompassing present-day France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and parts of Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany, and Northern Italy. It covered an area of . Ac ...

Julius Caesar Gaius Julius Caesar (12 or 13 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC) was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in Caesar's civil wa ...

, in his '' De Bello Gallico'', says of the Veneti: "This last-named people were by far the most powerful on the coast of

Armorica In ancient times, Armorica or Aremorica (Gaulish: ; ; ) was a region of Gaul between the Seine and the Loire that includes the Brittany Peninsula, and much of historical Normandy. Name The name ''Armorica'' is a Latinized form of the Gauli ...

: they had a large fleet plying between their own ports and Britain; they knew more about the handling of ships and the science of navigation than anyone else thereabouts."

Debate

William Camden William Camden (2 May 1551 – 9 November 1623) was an English antiquarian, historian, topographer, and herald, best known as author of ''Britannia'', the first chorographical survey of the islands of Great Britain and Ireland that relates la ...

, the

Elizabethan The Elizabethan era is the epoch in the Tudor period of the history of England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603). Historians often depict it as the golden age in English history. The Roman symbol of Britannia (a female per ...

historian, took the view that the name "Ictis" was so similar to "Vectis", the

name for the Isle of Wight, that the two were probably the same island. The Cornish antiquary William Borlase (1696–1772) suggested that Ictis must have been near the coast of Cornwall and could have been a general name for a peninsula there. In 1960,

concluded that the most likely location of Iktin (the form of the name he preferred) was

, a

tidal island A tidal island is a raised area of land within a waterbody, which is connected to the larger mainland by a natural isthmus or man-made causeway that is exposed at low tide and submerged at high tide, causing the land to switch between being ...

near the town of Marazion in Cornwall. Apart from the effect of the tide being consistent with what is said by Diodorus, de Beer considered the other benefits of St Michael's Mount for the Britons. This identification is supported by the Roman Britain website. In 1972, I. S. Maxwell weighed up the competing claims of no fewer than twelve possible sites. In 1983, after excavations, the archaeologist Barry W. Cunliffe proposed the

peninsula A peninsula is a landform that extends from a mainland and is only connected to land on one side. Peninsulas exist on each continent. The largest peninsula in the world is the Arabian Peninsula. Etymology The word ''peninsula'' derives , . T ...

near

Plymouth Plymouth ( ) is a port city status in the United Kingdom, city and unitary authority in Devon, South West England. It is located on Devon's south coast between the rivers River Plym, Plym and River Tamar, Tamar, about southwest of Exeter and ...

as the site of Ictis.Barry W. Cunliffe, "Ictis: Is it here?" in ''Oxford Journal of Archaeology'', vol. 2, issue 1 (March 1983), pp. 123–126 (se
abstract
Near the mouth of the River Erme, not far away, a shipwreck site has produced ingots of ancient tin, which indicates a trade along the coast, although dating the site is difficult and it may not belong to the

Bronze Age The Bronze Age () was a historical period characterised principally by the use of bronze tools and the development of complex urban societies, as well as the adoption of writing in some areas. The Bronze Age is the middle principal period of ...

.''Erme Ingot Wreck Site Summary'' (

English Heritage English Heritage (officially the English Heritage Trust) is a charity that manages over 400 historic monuments, buildings and places. These include prehistoric sites, a battlefield, medieval castles, Roman forts, historic industrial sites, Lis ...

, 2000) The assessment of Miranda Aldhouse-Green in ''The Celtic World'' (1996) was that

Primary sources

Debate

See also

Notes

Further reading