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Cassiterides
The Cassiterides, meaning ''Tin Islands'' (from the Greek word for tin: Κασσίτερος/Kassiteros), are an ancient geographical name of islands that were regarded as situated somewhere near the west coasts of Europe.〔George Smith, ''The Cassiterides: An Inquiry Into the Commercial Operations of the Phoenicians in Western Europe'', 1860, a response to W. D. Cooley's published scepticism about the cherished opinion of the role of Cornwall as source of Phoenician tin, was reprinted in 2008.〕 The traditional assumption, ignoring Strabo, is that Cassiterides refer to Great Britain, based on the significant tin deposits in Cornwall.〔Professor Iain Stewart, BBC series "How the Earth Made Us", episode 1: Deep Earth (2010)〕
==Ancient geography==
Herodotus (430 BC) had only vaguely heard of the Cassiterides, "from which we are said to have our tin," but did not discount the islands as legendary.〔Herodotus, iv.〕 Later writers — Posidonius, Diodorus Siculus,〔Diodorus, v.38.4, places the Cassiterides off the northern coast of Hispania〕 Strabo〔Strabo, III.5.11, calls them "islands in the sea" "opposite" Hispania to the north and twice goes out of his way to enumerate them separately from Britain (II.5.30; III.5.11).〕 and others – call them smallish islands off ("some way off," Strabo says) the northwest coast of the Iberian Peninsula, which contained tin mines or, according to Strabo, tin and lead mines. A passage in Diodorus derives the name rather from their nearness to the tin districts of Northwest Iberia. Ptolemy and Dionysios Periegetes mentioned them – the former as ten small islands in Northwest Iberia far off the coast and arranged symbolically as a ring, and the latter in connection with the mythical Hesperides. The islands are described by Pomponius Mela〔De Chorographia, III.39〕 as rich in lead; they are mentioned last in the same paragraph he wrote about Cadiz and the islands of Lusitania, and placed ''in Celtici''. Following paragraphs describe the Île de Sein and Britain.
Probably written in the first century BC, the verse ''Circumnavigation of the World'', whose anonymous author is called the "Pseudo-Scymnus," places two tin islands in the upper part of the Adriatic Sea and mentioned the marketplace Osor on the island of Cres, where extraordinarily high quality tin could be bought.〔CHURCH AND STATE REVIEW, edited by the VENERABLE ARCHDEACON DENISON, Volume III., page 36, published at the Office, No. 13, Burleigh Street, Strand, W.C., London 1863.〕〔Jadranski Zbornik, svezak 8, str. 356, Povijesno društvo Istre, Povijesno društvo Rijeke, Povijesno društvo Hrvatske, Izdavačko poduzeće "Otokar Keršovani", 1973.〕 Pliny the Elder, on the other hand, represents the ''Cassiterides'' as fronting Celtiberia.
At a time when geographical knowledge of the West was still scanty, and when the secrets of the tin trade were still successfully guarded by the seamen of Gades (modern Cadiz) and others who dealt in the metal, the Greeks knew only that tin came to them by sea from the far West, and the idea of tin-producing islands easily arose. Later, when the West was better explored, it was found that tin actually came from two regions: Galicia, in the Northwest of the Iberia, and Cornwall. Diodorus reports: "For there are many mines of tin in the country above Lusitania and on the islets which lie off Iberia out in the ocean and are called because of that fact the Cassiterides." According to Diodorus tin ''also'' came from Britannia to Gaul and thence was brought overland to Massilia and Narbo.〔Diodorus, v.38.4: "And tin is brought in large quantities also from the island of Britain to the opposite Gaul,55 where it is taken by merchants on horses through the interior of Celtica both to the Massalians and to the city of Narbo, as it is called." '〕 Neither of these could be called small islands or accurately described as off the northwest coast of Iberia, and so the Greek and Roman geographers did not identify either as the Cassiterides. Instead, they became a third, ill-understood source of tin, conceived of as distinct from Iberia or Britain.
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