was brought overland to Massilia and Narbo. 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. Strabo says that a Publius Crassus was the first Roman to visit the Tin Islands and write a first-hand report. This Crassus is thought to be either the Publius Licinius Crassus who was a governor in Hispania in the 90s, or his grandson by the same name, who in 57–56 BC commanded Julius Caesar's forces in Armorica (Brittany), which places him near the mouth of the Loire river. Modern attempts at identification Modern writers have made many attempts to identify them. Small islands off the northwest coast of the Iberian Peninsula, the headlands of that same coast, the Isles of Scilly, Cornwall, and the British Isles as a whole, have all in turn been suggested, but none suits the conditions. Neither the Iberian islands nor the Isles of Scilly contain tin, at least in significant quantities. It seems most probable, therefore, that the name Cassiterides represents the first vague knowledge of the Greeks that tin was found overseas, somewhere in, off, or near Western Europe. Gavin de Beer has suggested that Roger Dion had solved the puzzle by bringing to bear a chance remark in Avienius' late poem Ora maritima, which is based on early sources: the tin isles were in an arm of the sea within sight of wide plains and rich mines of tin and lead, and opposite two islands — a further one, Hibernia, and a nearer one, Britannia. "Before the estuary of the Loire became silted up in late Roman times, the Bay of Biscay led into a wide gulf, now represented by the lower reaches of the river Brivet and the marshes of the Brière, between Paimboeuf and St. Nazaire, in which were a number of islands. The islands and shores of this gulf, now joined together by silt, are crowded with Bronze Age foundries that worked tin and lead; Pénestin and the tin headland are just north of them; and there can be no doubt that the famous tin islands were there." De Beer confirms the location from Strabo: the Cassiterides are ten islands in the sea, north