176 On St Michael’s Mount and the Phenicians. 
As Mountsbay is the only place that answers to the de- 
scription referred to by Diodorus, so the Mount which gives 
name to that bay is the only place that coincides with 
Diodorus’ description of Iktin. Isay Iktin, because Diodorus 
calls it by no other name. His translators (French and 
English as well as Latin), assuming this barbarous name to 
be declinable, and finding it in the accusative case, have 
concluded Iktis to be the nominative, although, if it were 
declinable, Iktin might have been the nominative with as 
much grammatical propriety as Iktis,—particularly as the 
Greek word ézs does not give tim at all for the accusative, 
but tna. Had they any doubt which it should be, a 
moment's reflection would have shown that the nominative 
here must, in order to agree with Diodorus’ account of the 
mount, be Jktin, ‘‘ Tin-port,” inasmuch as Iktis has no 
reference whatever to tin. Were it not for this misnomer in 
the translations, no author probably would ever have con- 
tended that the Isle of Wight, the ancient Vectis, was the © 
Iktin of Diodorus. Many have done so, at various times ; 
but after the richly deserved criticisms by Dr Smith, to 
which they have been subjected, none; I think, will venture 
to do so again; not even the very bold writer in the 
Saturday Review of 8th November 1862 (p. 563), who, 
finding no place but St Michael’s Mount to agree with 
Diodorus’ description of Iktin, tries to stultify that author 
by alleging that he says, ‘“ not only the Isle of Wight, but 
all the islands between Gaul and Britain, can be reached 
from the mainland at low water,” although, as we shall pre- 
sently see, Diodorus says no such thing. The reviewer, in 
giving us what he thought the meaning of the author, seems 
to have forgotten that Diodorus Siculus lived in an island of 
the Mediterranean, and wrote for those who knew nothing 
about the ebbing and flowing of the sea, so that after having 
described the Isle of Iktin as accessible by carts “ during 
the recess of the tide,” he was obliged to explain himself, 
and to illustrate the effects of the tides, by adding,—‘‘ and 
it ig something peculiar that happens to the islands in these 
parts lying between Europe and Britain; for at the full 
tide, the intervening passage being overflowed, they appear 
islands, but when the sea retires a large space is left dry, 
