Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/107

Rh modern village of Couveron. From this evidence we must infer that a current of Greek influence at one time spread upward from Southern Gaul westwards to Armorica, the Channel Islands, and thence to the southern coast of Britain. This evidence, then, points unmistakably to a route direct from Armorica to the southern coast of Britain, or, in other words, supports strongly the doctrine that the Isle of Wight was the island called Ictis by Diodorus, and Mictis by Timæus, where the tin was brought by the natives.

To support the view here put forward of the spread of the anthropocephalous figure from Emporiæ through the land of the Tectosages we can adduce further numismatic evidence of a striking kind. I have already mentioned that the town of Rhoda struck coins for a short time; these bore on their reverse a conventional representation of a rose, a type parlant (such as is found on the coins of Rhodes, Phocæa, Melitæus), alluding to the name of the city, but perhaps a development of the incuse square, which became on the antique obols of Massalia a four-spoked wheel. The Celtiberians and Gauls imitated this type of Rhoda, and these copies are especially found in the region of Narbo (Narbonne which was a chief city of the Tectosages. This fact proves the influence exercised in this part of Gaul by the coins of the Greek cities at the foot of the Pyrenees, and adds certainty to our tracing of the spread of the man-headed horse through this region. Be it likewise borne in mind that those traders from Narbo, who were questioned by Scipio as likely to be conversant with the trade to Britain, were in all probability of the tribe of the Tectosages. Greek traders did not pass along the ancient caravan routes, but the various articles of commerce were passed on from tribe to tribe of the barbarians. Such was the case with the amber of the Baltic, such as we have