Ictis British tin was shipped from Massalia on the Mediterranean coast of Gaul. Julius Caesar, in his "De Bello Gallico", says of the Veneti: "This last-named people were by far the most powerful on the coast of Armorica: 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." William Camden, the Elizabethan historian, took the view that the name "Ictis" was so similar to "Vectis", the Latin name for the Isle of Wight, that the two were probably the same island. The
Great Britain he gave the islands the names "Alwion", "Iwernia", and "Mona" (the Isle of Man), suggesting these may have been the names of the individual islands not known to him at the time of writing "Almagest". The name "Albion" appears to have fallen out of use sometime after the Roman conquest of Britain, after which "Britain" became the more commonplace name for the island. After the Anglo-Saxon period, "Britain" was used as a historical term only. Geoffrey of Monmouth in his pseudohistorical "Historia Regum Britanniae" ("c." 1136) refers to the island as "Britannia major" ("Greater Britain"), to distinguish it from "Britannia