| The Celts had no
written language of their own, so most of what we
know of them comes from the writings of the
ancient Greeks and Romans, and later the Irish Monks, who meticulously copied
down old Irish legends and stories. The ancient Celts
inhabited central and western Europe. From the 2d
millennium to the 1st century BC, these nomadic
people, who spoke Indo-European dialects later
classified as Celtic Lanuages, spread through
much of Europe.
From a heartland
in central Europe, they settled the area of
France (Gaul), moved through northern Spain, and
crossed into the British Isles in around the 8th
and 7th centuries BC. Moving south and southwest,
they sacked Rome c.390 BC and attacked Delphi in
279 BC. One group then crossed into Anatolia and
established the state of Gatatia. The modern
populations of Ireland, Scotland, Wales,
Cornwall, and Brittany retain strong Celtic
elements.
Accounts of the
ancient Celts come most notably from the Roman
and Greek writers, Julius Caesar (in his "Commentaries
on the Gallic Wars,"), Strabo, and Diodorus,
who probably based much of their Celtic
ethnography on the now lost writings of
Posidonius. These records are supplemented and
corroborated by early Irish Literature scribed by
the early Monks, including the epic tales of the
Ulster Cycle.
And yet these
accounts are somewhat one-sided in their
portrayal, as the Romans viewed the Celts as a
barbaric rabble, uncouth and uncivilized. The
ancient Celts didn't write their history down, at
least in any media that has survived. We are
dependent on Roman accounts, as well as the
writings of the Monks, who added their own,
Christian slant to the tales.
From these
sources inferences may be drawn regarding the
structure of Celtic society--its social
institutions, classes, and obligations, as well
as Celtic customs and beliefs. Recurrent themes
include the high-spirited and boastful character
of the Celtic warrior, the convention of the
champion's portion at the feast, the practice of
single combat, and the prizing of the severed
heads of defeated foes. Druids and seers feature
prominently in the sources, both classical and
Celtic, and many of the traditions and tales of
the Celts are imbued with supernatural aspects.
The first
historical recorded encounter of a people
displaying the cultural traits associated with
the Celts comes from northern Italy around 400
BC, when a previously unkown group of barbarians
came down from the Alps and displaced the
Etruscans from the fertile Po valley, a
displacment that helped to push the Etruscans
from history's limelight. The next encounter with
the Celts came with the still young Roman Empire,
directly to the south of the Po. The Romans in
fact had sent three envoys to the beseiged
Etruscans to study this new force. We know from
Livy's The Early History of Rome
that this first encounter with Rome was quite
civilized:
[The Celts
told the Roman envoys that] this was indeed
the first time they had heard of them, but
they assumed the Romans must be a courageous
people because it was to them that the
[Etruscans] had turned to in their hour of
need. And since the Romans had tried to help
with an embassy and not with arms, they
themselves would not reject the offer of
peace, provided the [Etruscans] ceded part of
their seperfluous agricultural land; that was
what they, the Celts, wanted.... If it were
not given, they would launch an attack before
the Romans' eyes, so that the Romans could
report back how superior the Gauls were in
battle to all others....The Romans then asked
whether it was right to demand land from its
owners on pain of war, indeed what were the
Celts going in Etruria in the first place?
The latter defiantly retorted that their
right lay in their arms: To the brave belong
all things.
The Roman envoys
then preceded to break their good faith and
helped the Etruscans in their fight; in fact, one
of the envoys, Quintas Fabius killed one
of the Celtic tribal leaders. The Celts then sent
their own envoys to Rome in protest. They demanded
that the Romans hand over to them all members of the Fabian
family, (to which all three of the original Roman
envoys belonged,) a
move completely in line with current Roman
protocol. This of course presented problems for
the Roman senate, since the Fabian family was
quite powerful in Rome. Indeed, Livy says that:
The party
structure would allow no resolution to be
made against such noblemen as justice would
have required. The Senate...therefore passed
examination of the Celts' request to the
popular assembly, in which power and
influence naturally counted for more. So it
happened that those who ought to have been
punished were instead appointed for the
coming year military tribunes with consular
powers (the highest that could be granted).
The Celts saw
this as a mortal insult and a host marched south
to Rome. The Celts tore through the countryside
and several battalions of Roman soilders to lay
seige to the Capitol of the Roman Empire. Seven
months of seige led to negotiations wherby the
Celts promised to leave their seige for a tribute
of one thousand pounds of gold, which the
historian Pliny tells was very difficult
for the entire city to muster. When the gold was
being weighed, the Romans claimed the Celts were
cheating with faulty weights. It was then that
the Celtic leader, Brennus, threw his
sword into the balance and and uttered the words vae
victis "woe to the defeated".
Rome never withstood another more humiliating
defeat and the Celts made a magnificent initial step
into history.
Other Roman
historians tell us more of the Celts. Diodorus
notes that:
Their aspect
is terrifying...They are very tall in
stature, with ripling muscles under clear
white skin. Their hair is blond, but not
naturally so: they bleach it, to this day,
artificially, washing it in lime and combing
it back from their foreheaads. They look like
wood-demons, their hair thick and shaggy like
a horse's mane. Some of them are cleanshaven,
but others - especially those of high rank,
shave their cheeks but leave a moustache that
covers the whole mouth and, when they eat and
drink, acts like a sieve, trapping particles
of food...The way they dress is astonishing:
they wear brightly coloured and embroidered
shirts, with trousers called bracae
and cloaks fastened at the shoulder with a
brooch, heavy in winter, light in summer.
These cloaks are striped or checkered in
design, with the seperate checks close
together and in various colours.
[The Celts]
wear bronze helmets with figures picked out
on them, even horns, which made them look
even taller than they already are...while
others cover themselves with breast-armour
made out of chains. But most content
themselves with the weapons nature gave them:
they go naked into battle...Weird, discordant
horns were sounded, [they shouted in chorus
with their] deep and harsh voices, they beat
their swords rythmically against their
shields.
Diodorus also
describes how the Celts cut off their enemies'
heads and nailed them over the doors of their
huts, as Diodorus states:
In exactly
the same way as hunters do with their skulls
of the animals they have slain...they
preserved the heads of their most
high-ranking victims in cedar oil, keeping
them carefully in wooden boxes.
Celtic culture
was largely extinguished by the onslaught of the
Romans from the south and the Germanic and other
groups from the north and east. Pressure from
Germanic populations began in the late 2d
century, as did the Roman invasions. Gaul was
subjugated by Julius Caesar in the Gallic Wars
(58-51 BC), and the Romans conquered Britain in
the 1st century AD.
Later, as Roman
power declined, the Germanic tribes renewed their
drive westward into the former Celtic lands. Only
along the fringe of Europe did Celtic culture
survive in distinct form.
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