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The passage provides a chronology of Celtic history from around 1000 BC to the 1st century AD, outlining their expansion, conflicts with Rome, and eventual subjugation under Roman rule.

During the first millennium BC, the Celts dominated areas from Ireland in the west to Turkey in the east, and from Belgium in the north to Spain and Italy in the south.

The capture of Caratacos in 51 AD by the Romans marked the end of Celtic resistance in southern Britain for the time being.

The Celtic Empire By Peter Berresford Ellis The First Millennium of Celtic History (c.

1000 BC - 51 AD) ------------------------Fighting retail, they were beaten wholesale. Had they been inseparable, they would have been insuperable. Publius Cornelius Tacitus on the Celts (AD 56/47-c.117) (paraphrased by Harri Webb) ------------------------Contents: List of Illustrations Preface Introduction 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 The Origins of the Celts The Celts in Italy The Iberian Peninsula Cisalpine Gaul The Sack of Delphi Galatia The Celts in North Africa The Province Caesar in Gaul Britain Caesar's Invasion of Britain Insurrection in Gaul Ireland The Roman Conquest of Britain

Epilogue: Celts, Etruscans and the New World Chronology Select Bibliography (Removed) Index (Removed) ------------------------------Illustrations Colour Pictures: Map (Inside Jacket Cover) - Expansion of the Celts during the first millennium B .C. 1. - Bowl found at Schwarzenbach, Germany (Staatliche Museum, Berlin] 2. - Brooch in the shape of a cockerel found at Reinheim, Saarbruken, West Germa ny (Landesinstitut fur Padagogik und Medien, Dudweiler, West Germany)

3. - Jug found at Basse-Yutz, Moselle, France (British Museum] 4. - Celtiberian brooch showing an armed warrior (British Museum] 5. - Glass dog found near the Rhine at Wallertheim, West Germany (Landesmuseum, Mainz) 6. - Decoration from a horse's harness found at Paillart, Oise, France (Musee ar cheologique de Breteuil] 7. - Coin of the Veneti of Gaul (Musees des Rennes) 8. - Coin of Tasciovanus (British Museum) 9. - Coin of Cunobelinos (British Museum) 1c. - The Gundestrup cauldron (National Museum, Copenhagen) Scabbard plate of a sword found at Isleham, Cambridge (British Museum) 11. - The Aylesford bucket (British Museum) Dragonesque brooch (British Museum) ---Black and White Pictures: Staigue Fort, Co. Kerry, Ireland (Bord Failte) The Broch at Mousa (Royal Commission on the Ancient & Historical Monuments of Sc otland) Dun Aengus, Aran Isles, Ireland (Bord Failte) Chysauster, near Madron, Cornwall (English Heritage] Maiden Castle, Dorset (English Heritage) Remains of a Celtic defender slain by a Roman ballista arrow (Society of Antiqua ries) War-chariot burial at Garton Slack, East Yorkshire (East Riding Archaeological R esearch Committee) The Uffington white horse, Oxfordshire (English Heritage) The Urnfield bronze swords (Badisches Landesmuseum, Kalsruhe; Wurttembergisches Landesmuseum, Stuttgart) The Hallstatt scabbard (Naturhistoriches Museum, Vienna) The Witham shield (British Museum) Helmet found at Agris, Charente, France (Musee d'Angouleme) Sculpture of a warrior hunting wild boar found in Merida, Spain (Musee St Germai n-en-Laye) 'The Dying Gaul' (Capitoline Museum, Rome) The Waterloo helmet (British Museum)

The Snettisham tore (British Museum) The Desborough mirror (British Museum) Set of glass gaming pieces found at Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire (British M useum) -----------------------------Preface The Celts were the first European people north of the Alps to emerge into record ed history. At one time they dominated the ancient world from Ireland in the wes t to Turkey in the east, and from Belgium in the north, south to Spain and Italy . They even made their presence felt in the Egypt of the Ptolemy pharaohs, where they attempted, according to one ancient chronicler, a coup d'etat to gain cont rol of the country. They sacked Rome, invaded Greece and destroyed every army th e Greek city states could throw at them. Their sophisticated weapons and sturdy war-chariots devastated all adversaries. According to Titus Livius (5980-AD 17), popularly known as Livy, at the time whe n Tarquinius Superbus was King of Rome (c.534-508 BC), Ambigatos of the Biturige s ruled over a Celtic empire 'so abounding in men and in the fruits of the earth that it seemed impossible to govern so great a population'. This statement, acc ording to the Celtic scholar Dr Eoin Mac Neill (Phases of Irish History, 1919), was the basis on which many nineteenth-century historians wrote about 'a Celtic empire' in ancient Europe. I have chosen the title The Celtic Empire for this history perhaps somewhat misc hievously. Any resemblance to empires as we know them, such as the Roman empire or more recent examples, is in fact spurious. There emerges no known sustained s eries of Celtic emperors having supreme and extensive political dominion over nu merous subject peoples. However, I believe there is some justification for my co ntentious title, as will be demonstrated by this book, in that, during the perio d of Celtic expansion, Celtic tribes and confederations of tribes spread through the ancient world challenging all who opposed them and settling as the dominant people in the areas they conquered. In this fashion they spread down the Iberian peninsula, into northern Italy and east through what is now Czechoslovakia, along the Danube valley as far as the B lack Sea, moving on into Asia Minor, where they established the Galatian state i n the third century BC, which state gives us our first information about Celtic political institutions. The Celtic Empire is not just another work on the linguistic, cultural and socia l aspects of early Celtic society. In recent years there have been numerous stud ies from that viewpoint, some good, some bad. There has, however, been a singula r lack of an historical survey of the Celtic peoples in the ancient world aimed at a general readership. Most of the peoples of the ancient world have, over the years, become the subject of such general histories - the Greeks, Phoenicians, Etruscans, Carthaginians and Romans. It is time that the Celts were accorded suc h a record and this volume is an attempt to fill that need. The Celtic Empire, therefore, is a history for the general reader. It outlines t he first millennium of Celtic history, tracing the Celtic peoples from their ear liest-known appearance to the start of the Christian era, when they were being c rushed by the Roman empire, the time when their civilization began to recede to the north-western seaboard of Europe. Here, today, the inheritors of nearly 3,00 0 years of unbroken cultural tradition are surviving precariously. Of the popula tions still regarded as Celtic - the Irish, Scots, Manx, Welsh, Bretons and Corn

ish only two millions still speak a Celtic language, the only meaningful hallmar k of their Celtic identity. These descendants of the ancient Celtic civilization struggle hard to survive and maintain their individuality in these days of incr easing cultural uniformity. Soon, very soon, if the same cultural, economic and political pressures continue to be applied to them, the Celts will disappear fro m the fabric of Europe. They will go the same way as the Etruscan civilization. And so it is to these survivors, the inheritors of 3,000 years of a cultural con tinuum and history, that this book is dedicated. One word of explanation about the spelling of Celtic names in this volume for th e linguistically minded: in the recording of some Celtic names by Latin writers, the Latin us ending was usually used. I have reasserted the Celtic -os ending, following the argument of Henri Hubert, Kenneth Jackson and other leading Celtic scholars. For instance, Professor Jackson used the example of the name of the B ritish King usually recorded by Latin writers as Cunobelinus, the Cymbeline of S hakespeare. Professor Jackson pointed out that in British, the ancestor language of the Brythonic group (Welsh, Breton and Cornish) and close relative to contin ental Celtic (Gaulish), the name would have been recorded as Cunobelinos (meanin g, the 'hound of Belinos'). When used as the subject of the verb, the name would appear as Cunobelinos; when the object, it became Cunobelinon; when 'of Cunobel inos', it became Cunobelini; and when 'to Cunobelinos' it became Cunobelinus. Th is form of declension is similar to the Latin. Thus the accusative form of the n ame Virgilius in Virgilium, genitive form Virgilii and dative form Virgilio. ---[Insert Pic p000] Expansion of the Celts during the first millennium B.C. --------------------------------Introduction Crowds gathered in the streets of Rome in the year 804 of the foundation of the city (AD 51). Most of the crowds thronged around the foot of the Capitoline Hill , where the Emperor Claudius and his new Empress Agrippina were seated in imperi al splendour on viewing platforms set up on the parade ground of the Praetorian Guard. Behind them were platforms bearing the senate of Rome, their ladies and a ttendants and leading dignitaries of the empire. Rome was in a festive mood for she was celebrating a triumph, a state thanksgiving the like of which had not be en seen for many years. Not since the Numidian King Syphax, the ally of the Cart haginian General Hannibal, had been brought in chains to Rome nearly Z5o years b efore, had the Roman crowds anticipated such festivities. Caratacos, son of Cunobelinos, the British King who had held out against the mig ht of Rome's armies for nine years, had finally been made captive. With his fami ly and retinue he had been brought to Rome to be displayed in chains before her people in imperial triumph. Tacitus, the Roman historian, commented: 'His fame h ad spread beyond the British Isles, had penetrated the western provinces, and wa s well known in Italy itself. All were eager to see the man who had so long defi ed Roman power.' The victory had not been an entirely military one. The capture of Caratacos had been a rather sordid affair. He had been betrayed by a fellow British Celtic rul er, Cartimandua, Queen of the Brigantes, and handed over to the Roman commander, Publius Ostorius Scapula. However, as Tacitus remarked, the Emperor Claudius wa s 'willing to magnify the glory of the conquest'. Rome needed celebrations to tu

rn the attention of her citizens away from internal political strife. The parade of the Celtic prisoners from Britain was guided through the magnifice nt thoroughfares of the imperial capital. According to Dio Cassius, Caratacos is said to have gazed at the towering marble edifices around him and to have remar ked with cynicism to his guards: 'And when you have all this, do you still envy us our hovels in Britain?' When they reached the foot of the Capitoline, where t he Emperor and his senators waited, Tacitus says that the followers of the Celti c King were made to precede him. The military accoutrements, the harness and rich collars which he had gained in various battles, were displayed with pomp. The wife of Caratacos, his daughter a nd his brother, followed next; he himself closed the melancholy train. The rest of the prisoners, struck with terror, descended to mean and abject supplications . Caratacos alone was superior to misfortune. Well might Caratacos' followers have been apprehensive. It was well known what R ome did to its prisoners displayed in ceremonial triumphs in the city. For zoo y ears or more Celtic chieftains, those taken prisoner in battle, had been brought to Rome for execution. After the major celebrations they were usually taken to the Tullianum, the underground execution chamber at the foot of the Capitoline H ill where most state prisoners met their end. Had not the great Vercingetorix of Gaul, having surrendered to Julius Caesar, been brought in chains to this spot and eventually executed in 46 BC? Caratacos and his followers must surely have b een aware of what fate awaited them. According to Tacitus, Caratacos marched up to the dais and raised his head to ga ze on the mighty Emperor of Rome 'with a countenance still unaltered, not a symp tom of fear appearing, no sorrow, no condescension, he behaved with dignity even in ruin.' Was he aware that 400 years before Celts had stood on this very spot as conquerors, when Brennos had stormed and sacked the city? Caratacos asked per mission to address the Emperor and his senate. Permission was granted. 'If to the nobility of my birth,' Caratacos began, and the splendour of exalted station, I had united the virtues of moderation, Ro me had beheld me, not in captivity, but a royal visitor and a friend. The allian ce of a prince, descended from an illustrious line of ancestors; a prince, whose sway extended over many nations, would not have been unworthy of your choice. A reverse of fortune is now the lot of Caratacos. The event to you is glorious, a nd to me humiliating. I had arms, men and horses; I had wealth in abundance; can you wonder that I was unwilling to lose them? The ambition of Rome aspires to universal domination; a nd must the rest of mankind, by consequence, stretch their necks to the yoke? I held you at bay for years; had I acted otherwise, where, on your part, had bee n the glory of conquest, and where, on mine, the honour of a brave resistance? I am now in your power. If you are bent on vengeance, execute your purpose. The b loody scene will soon be over and the name of Caratacos will sink into oblivion. But if you preserve my life, then I shall be, to late posterity, a monument of Roman clemency. Caratacos' speech to his conquerors was audacious and moving. Historically, it t old three important facts. First, it indicated that Rome had initially tried to come to terms with him, promising him a client-kingship if he accepted Roman ove rlordship. Secondly, it demonstrated Caratacos' belief in the cause of liberty a nd defiance of Roman imperialism. Lastly, it showed that the Celtic chieftain wa s an astute politician and his plea for clemency was a discerning and clever mov e.

The Emperor Claudius and his senate took the bait offered them by the Celtic rul er. Caratacos, his family and retinue were granted their lives. There was to be no ceremonial orgy of bloodshed to appease the Roman crowds that day. Caratacos and his family were to remain in permanent exile within the confines of the city of Rome. At their next session, the Roman senate decreed monuments be set up to mark Ostorius's victory over the Celts of Britain. That year, AD 51, the year Rome established her rule in southern Britain, marked the end of an epoch for the Celtic people. For a millennium they had spread the mselves throughout Europe, originating, it is thought, from homelands at the hea dwaters of the Rhine and Danube. They had spread as far eastwards as the Black S ea and also Asia Minor, west to the British Isles and south-west into the Iberia n peninsula as far south as Gades (Cadiz). They had also crossed the Alps and es tablished themselves in the Po Valley of northern Italy. Then, as Rome began to expand from a city state into a mighty empire, the Celtic realms began to fall t o the unquenchable Roman thirst for conquest and power. The Celts of Cisalpine G aul fell first, then the Celts of Iberia, of Transalpine Gaul, of Galatia, of Ga ul proper, until finally the Celts of Britain came under the pax Romana. The Celts of northern Britain, known as Caledonia to the Romans, were to keep th e Roman armies at bay, fighting for their liberty so fiercely that the Romans ha d to content themselves with erecting walls (Hadrian's Wall and the Antonine Wal l) as the barrier of their northern imperial frontier. Only Ireland and the Isle of Man were entirely to escape invasion by the ruthlessly efficient Roman milit ary machine. The year AD 51 saw the major part of the Celtic world in bondage to the empire o f Rome. -----------------------------1 - The Origins of the Celts The Celts were the first European people north of the Alps to emerge into record ed history. But the first references to them appear in the sixth and fifth centu ries BC when they began to encounter the peoples of the Mediterranean cultures, for the Celts did not leave any extensive written testimony in their own languag es until the Christian era. When they emerge in historical record, they are firs t called Keltoi, by the Greeks. Polybius also uses the term Galatae, which had, by his day, become widely used by Greeks. The Romans referred to them as Galli a s well as Celtae. Diodorus Siculus, Julius Caesar, Strabo and Pausanias all reco gnize the synonymous use of these terms. Diodorus Siculus (c.60 30 BC) considered that the term Celt was the proper name for the people he was describing. Pausani as (AD c.160) certainly gives prior antiquity to the name Celt over the names Ga uls or Galatians. And Julius Caesar (100-44 BC) comments that the Gauls of his d ay referred to themselves as Celtae. There is little doubt that the word Keltoi, or Celts as we will call them, was a word of Celtic origin. In searching for a meaning of the name some have pointed to the word meaning hidden - the word which gives us the Irish form ceilt, mean ing concealment or secret, and the word which has given us the English word kilt . Thus some believe that Keltoi meant the hidden or secret people and that this name referred to the Celtic prohibition against setting down in written form the ir vast store of knowledge. Celtic history, philosophy, law, genealogy and scien ce were transmitted in oral traditions until the Christian period. This was not because the Celts were illiterate but because of a religious prohibition. Caesar comments: The druids think it unlawful to commit this knowledge of theirs to writing (in s

ecular and in public and private business they use Greek characters). This is a practice which they have, I think, adopted for two reasons. They do not wish tha t their system should become commonly known or that their pupils, trusting in wr itten documents, should less carefully cultivate their memory; and, indeed, it d oes generally happen that those who rely on written documents, are less industri ous in learning by heart and have a weaker memory. So it was not until the Greeks and Romans commenced to write their accounts of t he Celts, sometimes culturally misconceived and invariably biased, that the Celt s emerged into recorded history. Archaeology has to fill the void before recorde d history and so we are presented with great difficulties in identifying the Cel ts and their origins. For example, what is meant by the Celts? The strictest, as well as the easiest, definition is those people who speak or spoke a Celtic lan guage. This is certainly the definition which has been used since recorded histo ry identified the movements of a Celtic-speaking people. But once we go beyond h istorical record we have to rely on other methods of identification. Historians and archaeologists are agreed that the start of the Iron Age in northern Europe, identified as the Hallstatt Culture, using the town of Hallstatt, in upper Aust ria, as the centre point of its expansion, 700 500 BC, was a Celtic cultural expan sion. They are agreed that another series of Iron Age objects, classified by the ir centre of distribution, La Tene, 500 100 BC, was also a Celtic cultural expansi on. We must therefore ask whether there were Celts in Europe before 700 BC. The direct answer is - of course! All the ancestors of the peoples of Europe wer e placed somewhere on the continent at this time. In the nineteenth century it b ecame accepted that most past and present European languages, with the exception s of Basque, Estonian, Finnish, Hungarian, Lapp and Turkish, were related to one another and were branches of a hypothesized common Indo-European language. When exactly 'common Indo-European' was spoken, and how it broke up into such divers e families as Latin, Slavic, Germanic, Celtic and so forth, is open to intense d ebate and speculation. And it is merely hypothesis. What we can say is that long before 700 BC there was in northern Europe a people whose language was developi ng into Celtic. In more recent years archaeologists have generally accepted that the Urnfield Fo lk were Celtic or, as some quaintly phrase it, proto-Celtic, meaning that their language had not quite developed into a form which we would immediately recogniz e as Celtic today. The Urnfield Culture of northern Europe is roughly dated betw een1200 and 700 BC. This people, if we may keep to generalities, were farming fo lk living in small communities who were also skilled in working bronze and, towa rds the end of the period, in working iron as well. In many places they lived in hill-forts and they buried their dead in the distinctive manner which gives the m their name - urnfields. The cremated ashes and bones of their dead were buried in urns of clay accompanied by small personal items which belonged to the decea sed in life. This culture was identified by a concentration in the Danube basin, around easte rn France and western Germany, spreading into eastern Germany and south across t he Alps into the Po Valley, south-west to southern France and further south into the Spanish peninsula. It also arrived in the British Isles. This is now accept ed as the spread of a Celtic culture. Jacquetta and Christopher Hawkes (Prehisto ric Britain, 1947) argued that the Celts were emerging in the Middle Bronze Age from a mixture of round-headed Beaker Folk from the south, a solid substratum of Neolithic and ultimately Mesolithic stocks. We can hypothesize that, at some stage of their historical development, the Celt s spoke a Common Celtic language. Celtic scholars have supposed this Common Celt ic to have been spoken just before the start of the first millennium BC, and the n, soon after, two distinct dialects of Celtic emerged which are identified by t heir modern names Goidelic and Brythonic, or the famous Q- and P-Celtic.

The Goidelic group is represented today by Irish, Manx and Scottish Gaelic, the Brythonic by Welsh, Cornish and Breton. Goidelic is said to have been the oldest form of Celtic with the Brythonic (which was of course closely related to conti nental Celtic, called Gaulish) developing from it at a later stage. This form si mplified itself in its case endings and in the loss of the neuter gender and dua l number. Differences occurred in the matter of initial mutation and aspiration. Above all, there was the famous substitution of P for Q in the Brythonic group which has led scholars to categorize the groups as P- and Q-Celtic. This is base d on the sound in Indo-European which gave qu (kw). The sound, in Goidelic, late r became represented by c (always hard), while in Brythonic it was replaced by p . For example: the word for son in Goidelic was mac. In the languages representi ng Brythonic this has altered to (m)ap (Welsh), mab (Breton) and map (Cornish). Another example can be seen with the word for head. In Irish it is ceann; in Sco ttish Gaelic it is also ceann while in Manx the sound is represented as kione. B ut in the Brythonic group it becomes pen (Welsh), penn (Breton) and pen (Cornish ). Henri Hubert has asserted that the separation of the Celtic dialects was a fact of great importance, implying a deep division between the Celtic peoples and sug gesting the occupation of Britain and Ireland by Goidelic-speaking Celts many ce nturies before the historical movement of the Brythonic-speaking Celts. So, ling uistically, Hubert and other scholars support the archaeological evidence of the Celts being domiciled in Britain, as represented by the Urnfield Culture, befor e 1000 BC. Similarly, Hubert pointed out that Goidelic-speakers were also settle d in Spain and Portugal about the same time, where there are signs of an early Q -Celtic culture which was subsequently submerged by later P-Celtic settlements. Therefore, separated from their fellow Celts on the continent, among whom the Br ythonic form of Celtic was developed, and certainly had developed by the fourth century, the Goidelic Celts continued to develop their dialect, which was to evo lve into Irish, Manx and Scottish. Later migrations from the continent of Brytho nic-speakers caused the Goidelic-speakers to recede, making the Brythonic langua ge dominant in the southern part of Britain. We now come to an important question. Where did the Celts begin to develop their distinctive culture? There are two contradictory traditions. One tradition, fou nded in history, places the point of origin on the north-west coast of Europe by the North Sea. The second tradition places the point of origin around the headw aters of the Danube. Ammianus Marcellinus (AD c.330-95), quoting Timagenes of Alexandria as his sourc e, claims that when the Celts began their expansion they came from the outermost isles beyond the Rhine, placing them on the coast opposite the North Sea. 'They were', he says, 'driven from their homes by the frequency of wars and violent r ising of the sea.' Certainly the concept fits in with people living in the Low C ountries. Ephoros of Cyme, one of the most influential Greek historians of the f ourth century BC, believed that the Celts came from that area and he is quoted b y Strabo (64 BC-AD c.24) but Strabo was somewhat sceptical. Ephoros describes th e Celts as remaining obstinately in their lands and losing more lives in floods than in wars until, finally, they were forced to migrate. When Hecataeus (c.500-476 BC) of Miletus and Herodotus (c.490-415 BC) of Halicar nassus first mention the Keltoi they were already spread in an arc from the Iber ian peninsula, through France and Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, northe rn Italy, and were moving eastwards along the Danube valley towards the Balkans. Herodotus indicates the Celtic homeland as being the upper Danube. If we accept the initial site of Celtic development as being the area around the headwaters of the Danube, the Rhine and the Rhone, we will not be far wrong. Here, Celtic n ames proliferate. The names of rivers, mountains and towns are Celtic. The Rhine

, for example, Renos, means sea; the Danube, from Danuvius, means swift-flowing (cognate with the Irish dana) and the Rhur, from Raura, seems to be named after the Celtic tribe, the Raurici. The tributaries and sub-tributaries of the rivers still retain their Celtic origins. Laber (the Labara near Ratisbon) means talki ng river; the Glan means pure or clean river and so on. There is a strong concen tration of Celtic place-names in this area, which weakens as one radiates from i ts central point. Hubert believes that the place-names indicate that the Celts w ere living in this region as the aboriginal population. This was the region, the refore, which was the 'cradle' of Celtic civilization and from which the Celts w ere eventually driven by the arrival of the Germanic people during the first cen tury BC. When Julius Caesar was in Gaul, for example, the Celtic tribes were sti ll moving westward as the Germanic tribes swept in behind them from the north-ea st to give their name and language to the lands taken from the former inhabitant s. The last members of this general exodus were the Helvetii and Boii from Switz erland and Bohemia and the Tigurini from Bavaria. Only place-names and archaeolo gical remains were left behind to mark the birth-place of Celtic civilization. It is a truism that a conqueror always writes the history and so we have to piec e together the early history of the Celts from the hostile viewpoint of the Gree ks and Romans. In trying to understand Celtic motivations, their attitudes, phil osophies and laws, we are handicapped by the early prohibition of the Celts agai nst committing their knowledge to written record. However, when the insular Celt s of Britain and Ireland began to put their knowledge into written form in the C hristian era it was not too late to form a perspective, bearing in mind the cult ural changes from early times. And we can be wary about taking what the Greeks a nd Romans say about the Celts as a literal truth. The Greeks and Romans represent the Celts as a barbaric people; as basically a f ierce warrior society, proud, ignorant, illiterate, taking life cheaply, given t o childish amusements and often drunk. In other words, Rome and Greece represent ed civilization while the Celts were depicted as exotic barbarians or noble sava ges. The image still remains with us. Yet today we realize that 'barbarity' or ' savagery' is just a matter of one's perception. Doubtless to the ancient Celts, the Romans and Greeks were equally as preposterous as the Celts were to the perc eptions of the Romans and Greeks. From the Urnfield Culture, the Celts emerge as an agricultural people farmers cu ltivating their lands and living in a tribal society. By the start of the Hallst att period in the eighth century BC, the development of iron-working enabled the Celtic peoples to make formidable axes, billhooks and other tools with which th ey could open roadways through previously impenetrable forests, effect extensive clearances and till the land with comparative ease. An old Irish word for road, avenue or pathway, still in use in modern Irish, is slighe, from the word sligi m, I hew. The development of skill in metal-working, particularly in iron, also gave the Celts new armaments of swords and spears which rendered them militarily superior to most of their neighbours and therefore made them more mobile becaus e there were few enemies to be feared. It was the Celts who were the great road-builders of northern Europe. The ancien t roads of Britain, for example, often ascribed to the Romans, had already been laid by the Celts long before the coming of the Romans. This is a fact only now slowly being accepted by scholars in the light of new archaeological finds. Yet Celtic roads were mentioned by Strabo, Caesar and Diodorus Siculus. It is obviou s, looking at Caesar's account of his Gallic campaigns, that he was moving his l egions rapidly through Gaul because there was an excellent system of roadways in existence. Similarly, when Caesar crossed to Britain, he found a highly mobile army of Celts opposing him in heavy war-chariots, some of them four-wheeled. For the Celts to be able to move in such vehicles with the speed and determination recounted by Caesar it becomes obvious, to the careful historian, that there had to be a well-laid system of roads in existence.

Now archaeology is reinforcing history. For example, in 1985 in Co. Longford, Ir eland, 1,000 yards of roadway were uncovered, having been preserved in a bog. Th e road was dated approximately to 150 BC. It had a foundation of oak beams place d side by side on thin rails of oak, ash and alder. Other such finds of chance s urvivals demonstrate that the Celts used local materials, the great forests of E urope, with which to build their roads. The Romans simply reinforced these roads with the materials they were used to handling -stone. Thus the Roman roads were preserved over the top of the Celtic roads. There is one fascinating point abou t the Co. Longford road. In one of the old Irish myths The Marriage of Etain', a king named Eochaidh Airemh is said to have imposed the task of building a cause way across the bog of Lemrach on the clans of Tethba, who dwelt in an area cover ing parts of Longford and Westmeath. The road is where the ancient tale placed i t, demonstrating that Irish myth can have a basis in reality. Incidentally, it is interesting to note that several Latin words connected with transport were in fact borrowed from Celtic into Latin, such as the names of var ious chariots, carts and wagons: carpentum (from which derives our modern car as well as carpenter), carruca, carrus and rheda all of which were four-wheeled me thods of transport used by the Celts - and the essendum, the war-chariot used by both Gauls and British Celts which was later adopted by the Romans for their ow n transportation use. Archaeology has also shown much evidence of the prosperity of the rich farming c ommunities of the Celts as well as their advances in art, Celtic pottery, jewell ery, especially the enamel-work from north Britain and metal jewellery. This art work found much favour in the ancient Mediterranean world. During the first cent ury BC, before Caesar's invasion of Britain, British woollen goods, especially c loaks (sagi), were eagerly sought after in Rome. The ownership of a British wool len cloak was as prestigious in Rome in that period as the possession of a Harri s-tweed suit was in the mid-twentieth century. The Celts generally built their houses and settlements in wood but in some place s they used stone, showing great sophistication in the construction of buildings . In Britain the remains of many such stone structures survive from the fourth t o second centuries BC. One such structure survives to a height of forty feet, wi th lintelled entrances and inward-tapering wall, sometimes fifteen feet thick, w ith chambers, galleries and stairs. Staigue Fort, in Co. Kerry, Ireland, a circu lar stone fortress built some time during the first millennium BC, still stands with walls thirteen feet high, enclosing a space eighty-eight feet across, with two chambers constructed within the thickness of the walls. Most of these constr uctions were of drystone. The evidence demonstrates that the Celts were excellen t builders. The basis of their society was tribal. By the time the Celtic law systems were c odified, with the Irish Brehon Law system being written down in the early Christ ian era, the Celtic tribal system was a highly sophisticated one. Comparing the Irish system with that enshrined in the Welsh Laws of Hywel Dda one can observe a common Celtic attitude to law. The good of the community was the basis of the law in other words, a primitive yet sophisticated communism was practised. Chief tains were elected, as were all officers of the tribe. Women emerge in Celtic so ciety with equality of rights. They could inherit, own property and be elected t o office, even to the position of leader in times of war, such as Cartimandua of the Brigantes and her more famous compatriot Boudicca of the Iceni. Tacitus obs erved, 'There is no rule of distinction to exclude the female line from the thro ne or the command of the armies.' The Celtic tribes varied in size. Some were small, others constituted entire nat ions. The Helvetii, for example, were said to be 390,000 strong when they began their exodus. Of special note was that the Celtic tribes cared for their sick, p

oor and aged and that, according to Irish records, hospitals, run by the tribes, existed in Ireland around 300 BC, many hundreds of years before St Fabiola foun ded the first Christian hospital in Rome. It is not the intention of this book to examine in detail the social life of the early Celts but simply to give some taste of it so that the history might be be tter understood. The Celtic religion is of importance in the understanding of Ce ltic attitudes. By the time the Greeks and Romans began to comment on the religi on of the Celts, towards the end of the third century BC, it was, in its philoso phy, a fairly standard one. It is true that the gods and goddesses were numerous , often appearing in triune form (three-in-one), although a 'father of the gods' is mentioned by many ancient observers. A lot of the gods and goddesses appear as ancestors of the people rather than as their creators - heroes and heroines. Celtic mythology, for example, surviving in Irish and Welsh texts, is an heroic one; for the Celts made their heroes into gods and their gods into heroes. In th e lives of these gods and heroes, the lives of the people and the essence of the ir religious traditions were mirrored. Celtic heroes and heroines were no mere p hysical beauties with empty heads. They had to have intellectual powers equal to their physical abilities. They were totally human and were subject to all the n atural virtues and vices. They practised all seven of the deadly sins. Yet their world was one of rural happiness, a world in which they indulged in all the ple asures of mortal life in an idealized form: love of nature, art, games, feasting , hunting and heroic single-handed combat. The Celtic religion was one of the first to evolve a doctrine of immortality. It taught that death was but a changing of place and that life went on with all it s forms and goods in another world, a world of the dead - the fabulous Otherworl d. But when people died in that world, the souls were reborn in this world. Thus a constant exchange of souls took place between the two worlds: death in this w orld took a soul to the Otherworld; death in that world brought a soul to this w orld. Thus did Philostratus of Tyana (AD c.170-249) observe that the Celts celeb rated birth with mourning and death with joy. Caesar, the cynical general, remar ked that this teaching of immortality doubtless accounted for the reckless brave ry of the Celts in battle. The Celtic religion was administered, as was all Celtic learning, law and philos ophy, by a group called the druids, first mentioned in the third century BC. To the Greeks and Romans, the druids were described as a priesthood, but they fulfi lled political functions as well indeed many tribal chieftains were also druids, such as Divitiacos and Dumnorix. It took twenty years to learn all the druidica l canon, for the druid functioned not only as minister of religion, with its doc trine of immortality and complete moral system, but also as philosopher, teacher , and natural scientist and keeper of the law and its interpretation. Druids wer e often called upon to take legal, political and even military decisions. Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) reports the druids to have been great natural scientists, with a knowledge of physics and astronomy which they applied in the construction of calendars. The earliest-known surviving Celtic calendar, dated f rom the first century BC, is the Coligny Calendar, now in the Palais des Arts, L yons, France. It is far more elaborate than the rudimentary Julian calendar and has a highly sophisticated five-year synchronization of lunation with the solar year. It consists of a huge bronze plate which is engraved with a calendar of si xty-two consecutive lunar months. The language is Gaulish but the lettering and numerals are Latin. Place-names, personal names and inscriptions testify to a ce rtain degree of literacy in the Celtic language. Caesar explains: They count per iods of time not by the number of days but by the number of nights; and in recko ning birthdays and the new moon and new year, their unit of reckoning is the nig ht followed by the day.' Bards, poets and minstrels held a high position in Celtic society and were close

ly associated with the druids. Diodorus Siculus observed: 'They have also lyric poets whom they call bards. They sing to the accompaniment of instruments resemb ling lyres, sometimes a eulogy and sometimes a satire.' The bards were highly tr ained, a professional group who were the repositories of Celtic history, legends , folklore and poetry. They were under the patronage of the chieftains. The trad ition, as we have noted, was strictly an oral one, the bards having to commit to memory a vast store of knowledge and be word-perfect in their recitations. As a people, the Celts had a strong natural feeling for learning and intellectua l exercise. Greek and Roman writers often remark on this aspect of their tempera ment, contrasting it with what they considered to be the crudity of their materi al civilization but praising the refinement and elegance of their use of languag e and appreciation of linguistic subtlety. Marcus Porcius Cato (234-149 BC) rema rked on the sophistication of Celtic eloquence and rhetoric. Poseidonius (c.13550 BC), quoted by Athenaeus (AD c.200), recorded an incident at a feast in Gaul given by a chieftain named Louernios whose name means the fox. A Celtic poet who arrived too late met Louernios and composed a song magnifying his greatness and lamenting his own late arrival. Louernios was very pleased and asked for a bag of gold and threw it to the poet, who ran beside his chariot. T he poet picked it up and sang another song saying that the very tracks of Louern ios' chariot on the earth gave gold and largesse to mankind. Both Poseidonius and Diodorus Siculus noted the popularity of music among the Ce lts and mentioned the variety of instruments which they used. Musical instrument s and people dancing can be observed as decorations on Celtic pottery as early a s the seventh century BC. Turning to warfare, Diodorus Siculus observed that the druids had the power to p revent battles between the Celtic tribes: And it is not only in the needs of peace but also in war that they [the Celts] c arefully obey these men and their song-loving poets, and this is true not only o f their friends but of their enemies. For oft-times as armies approached each ot her in line of battle with their swords drawn and their spears raised for the ch arge, these men come forth between them and stop the conflict as though they had spellbound some kind of wild animals. Thus, even among the most savage barbaria ns, anger yields to wisdom and Ares does homage to the Muses. In fact, the Celts preferred to settle warfare by means of single-handed combat between the chieftains or champions of the opposing armies rather than a pitch b attle between opposing forces. Diodorus commented: 'And when someone accepts the ir challenge to battle, they proudly recite the deeds of valour of their ancesto rs and proclaim their own valorous quality, at the same time abusing and making little of their opponent and generally attempting to rob him beforehand of his f ighting spirit.' In their early conflict with the Celts, some Roman commanders would accept the C eltic form of resolving the battle. But the custom was frowned upon by the Roman senate. Titus Manlius Imperiosus Torquatus (who had received his title Torquatu s for taking the hero's torque from the body of a Celt he had slain in single co mbat) decreed in 340 BC that henceforth no Roman should enter into single combat with a Cert to settle military disputes. One might think that the Celtic method of two men, leaders of the armies, settling the outcome of a military conflict by this means was a little more civilized than the Roman method of total warfare and devastation by large armies. Yet Celtic society did produce a warrior class, as well as bands of professional soldiers who sold their expertise to whomever would hire their services. Celtic warriors were recruited by Syracuse, Sparta, Carthage, Macedonia, Bythinia, Syr

ia, Egypt and eventually Rome herself. They achieved a reputation for bravery am ong the peoples of the ancient world, although Aristotle (384-322. BC) wrote som ewhat grudgingly: It is not bravery to withstand fearful things through ignorance - for example if through madness one were to withstand the onset of thunderbolts - and again, ev en if one understands how great the danger is, it is not bravery to withstand it through high-spiritedness as when the Celts take up arms to attack the waves; a nd in general all the courage of barbarians is compounded with high-spiritedness . High-spiritedness or not, even Aristotle acknowledged the bravery of Celtic warr iors in single-handed combat or acting as a unit in battle. Some of the bands of warriors, such as the Gaesatae (or spearmen) who took part in several Celtic wa rs and were mistakenly thought to be a tribe by Roman writers, fought naked beca use of the religious ritual implications. Caesar records that some of the Britis h warriors stained their body with a blue dye to give them a more fearsome appea rance in battle. Diodorus Siculus gives a vivid description of the Celts as an a rmy: Their armour includes man-sized shields decorated in individual fashion. Some of these have projecting bronze animals of fine workmanship which serve for defenc e as well as decoration. On their heads they wear bronze helmets which possess l arge projecting figures lending the appearance of enormous stature to the wearer . In some cases horns form one piece with the helmet, while in other cases it is relief figures of the foreparts of birds or quadrupeds. Their trumpets are again of a peculiar barbaric kind; they blow into them and pr oduce a harsh sound which suits the tumults of war. Some have iron breastplates of chain mail, while others fight naked, and for them the breastplate given by n ature suffices. Instead of the short sword they carry long swords held by iron o r bronze chains and hanging along their right side. Some wear gold-plated or sil ver-plated belts round their tunics. The spears which they brandish in battle, a nd which they call lanciae, have iron heads a cubit or more in length and a litt le less than two palms in breadth; for their swords are as long as the javelins of other people, and their javelins have points longer than swords. The Romans found the Celtic custom of taking the heads of their slain enemies as trophies somewhat distasteful, but it had a profound religious significance. To the Celts, the soul was contained in the head and not the heart. Diodorus obser ves: They cut off the heads of enemies slain in battle and attach them to the necks o f their horses. The bloodstained spoils they hand over to their attendants to ca rry off as booty, while striking up a paean and singing a song of victory; and t hey nail up these fruits upon their houses, just as those who lay low wild anima ls in certain kinds of hunting. They embalm in cedar oil the heads of the most distinguished enemies, and preser ve them carefully in a chest, and display them with pride to strangers, saying t hat for this head one of their ancestors, or his father or the man himself, refu sed the offer of a large sum of money. They say that some of them boast that the y refused the weight of the head in gold; thus displaying what is only a barbaro us kind of magnanimity, for it is not a sign of nobility to refrain from selling the proofs of one's valour. Diodorus adds: 'It is rather true that it is bestial to continue one's hostility against a slain fellow man.' The Celts, in their turn, regarded as no less barb aric the Roman custom of either slaughtering prisoners wholesale or selling them into slavery rather than ransoming them as hostages back to their own people in

accordance with Celtic custom. What made the Celtic tribes leave their original homelands and spread across Eur ope? At the start of the first millennium BC the peoples of Europe were in a gre at state of flux and would remain so until the middle of the first millennium AD . There occurred great movements of peoples across Europe, settling for a while, establishing homelands and then abruptly moving on. Perhaps a drought, several crop failures in consecutive years, would force farming communities to search fo r new lands and conditions; or perhaps the people would be forced to move on as more aggressive newcomers invaded their lands - this was the cause of the migrat ions of the Helvetii and Boii in the first century BC. Even in the Mediterranean world the urge for movement and expansion was dominant . With the collapse of the Hittite empire at the end of the second millennium BC , there was a considerable movement of peoples through the eastern Mediterranean . Then the Phoenicians, from biblical Canaan, began to spread throughout the Med iterranean, settling colonies as far west as Gades (Cadiz) and also in North Afr ica at Utica and Carthage. The Greeks began a massive expansion in the eighth ce ntury BC, establishing colonies which dominated southern Italy and settlements i n North Africa, in Spain and one of their most famous colonies - Massilia (Marse illes). In the fifth century BC, the Phoenician colony of Carthage had become st rong enough to develop her own empire. In the next century Macedonia expanded in to a major empire in the east under Alexander the Great. Then came the rise of R ome, her conflict with Carthage and victory, which left the way clear for Roman expansion throughout the Mediterranean and beyond. So the expansion of the Celts was merely one of several major movements in the ancient world. Unfortunately, as we have seen, we do not know anything about the reasons for th e Celtic expansion before its collision with the Mediterranean. Latin writers, p articularly Livy, record a tradition that the expansions began because the origi nal Celtic homelands had become over-populated. The Celtic farming communities w ere looking for new fertile lands to cultivate and settle. This seems an accepta ble theory. The Celts, once established in the new territory, did not set up tra ding colonies like the Phoenicians and Greeks, nor did they impose a military ov erlordship on the people they conquered, as did the Romans. They simply moved in to the new lands, setting up pastoral and agricultural communities, defending th em with tribal armies raised from the people. So it is likely that the search fo r 'living space' was the prime cause of the spread of the 'Celtic empire'. -----------------------------2 - The Celts in Italy The Celts were well established in the Po Valley of northern Italy before the be ginning of the fourth century BC. If we are to believe Livy, they arrived in the time of Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, who ruled Rome from 534 to 508 BC. Yet some scholars, such as Alexandre Bertrand (in Archeologie celtique et gauloise, Pari s, 1876), have placed their descent into the Italic peninsula as early as 1000 B C. The earliest clearly identifiable archaeological evidence is an eighth-centur y BC boundary marker found in 1827 at Zignano, incised with Etruscan characters and depicting a Celtic warrior. The theory that the Celts were in the Po Valley long before the arrival of the group recorded by Livy in the late sixth century BC is not actually contradicted by Livy. The Roman historian states: 'They cross ed the Alps by the country of the Taurini and the valley of Dara Baltea, defeate d the Etruscans near Ticino, and, hearing that the place in which they halted wa s called the Plain of Insubres, that is by the very same name as a sub-tribe of the Aedui, regarded this as an omen, which they followed and founded a city ther e.' If this is true, then the Insubres must already have been settled in the Po Valley before the coming of those tribes mentioned by Livy, which were a confede ration of the Bituriges, Arverni, Senones, Aedui, Ambarri, Carnutes and Aulerci.

And this would accord with archaeological evidence. Livy places the homeland of the Celts at this time exactly where it was in his o wn day - that is, in Gaul proper. He says that the Celts were ruled by a king ca lled Ambicatos. Gaul was so fertile and populous that the immense multitude threatened to be har d to rule. So the King, being old and wishing to relieve his kingdom of its exce ss population, declared that he would send his sister's sons, Bellovesos and Sig ovesos, who were energetic youths, to whatever country the gods should indicate by omens, and they could take as many men as they wished, so that no people shou ld be able to resist their advance. The omens assigned the Hercynian Forests [ce ntral Germany] to Sigovesos, and to the more fortunate Bellovesos, the road to I taly. Livy was undoubtedly recording a native Celtic tradition which had been transmit ted orally until committed to written record in the late first century BC. Huber t accepts that Livy's source was the Celtic writer Cornelius Nepos (c.100-c.25 B C), a native of Cisalpine Gaul. Another source may well have been the Celtic his torian Trogus Pompeius, writing in Latin about this time, who compared the Celti c migration into northern Italy to the Roman ver sacrum (sacred spring) when, in emergencies, overpopulated communities expelled their members aged twenty years , to go where they pleased and found new communities. Cornelius Nepos says that his Celtic ancestors had been established in the Po Valley long before the captu re of Veii (396 BC). The tradition which Livy records is obviously that accepted by the Celts of Cisa lpine Gaul at the time when he was writing. The names he records are certainly C eltic ones. Ambicatos is he who gives battle all round while Sigovesos is he who can conquer. As to Bellovesos, who brought his people across the Alps to settle in the Po Valley, his name means he who can kill. Livy suggests that the Celts crossed the Alps in several bands, all under the general direction of Bellovesos , who went first with the Insubres. Then came a chieftain named Elitovios and hi s tribe, the Cenomani. Groups called the Libii and Salluvi came next, followed b y the Boii and Lingones, who came together through what is now St Gothard's Pass . Finally, the Senones arrived. Archaeology has identified Celtic cemeteries from the fifth and fourth centuries to the south of the River Po, the oldest being near Bologna. Curiously enough, the oldest-identified Celtic cemetery north of the Po river is only dated to the third century BC. The evidence is that the Celts displaced the original occupan ts of the Po Valley but there is no indication, either archaeologically or in wr itten record, whether the original occupants were driven out or whether intermar riage occurred. Indeed, were these pre-Bellovesos inhabitants the descendants of an earlier Celtic migration, as suggested by archaeology and tradition? One thi ng is certain, that when Bellovesos arrived, the Celts came into immediate confl ict with the Etruscans, for the Etruscan empire had exerted control over the Po Valley. The Etruscans, called Tyrrhenians by the Greeks, came into being as a powerful c ulture about 700 BC. They were comprised of a loose confederation of city states which were at the height of their power from c.6zo to 500 BC, controlling an em pire from the Po Valley in the north to Campania in the south. When Rome began i ts rise, Etruria was its main rival. About twenty-five years before the descent of Bellovesos and his Celts into the Po Valley, the Etruscans had taken control of the valley and had established several colonies there. About 474 BC the Celts defeated the Etruscan armies near Ticino. It was, perhaps, in the very same yea r that Rome destroyed Etruscan naval supremacy in a sea battle off Cumae. Rome h ad also won a major land battle at Arica, in the Alban Hills, against Etruria, a nd Etruscan fortunes were clearly on the wane.

Bellovesos and his successors succeeded in driving the Etruscans into the Eugane an Hills, overlooking Verona. The Cenomani advanced south on this side of the It alian peninsula. According to Marcus Junianus Justinus, the Roman historian of t he second or third century AD, who wrote an abridgement of the history by the Ce lt Trogus Pompeius, the Cenomani founded the city of Trento (Trent and Tridentum ). The name, which also survives in Britain, was applied to a river which was li able to flood. North of Trento is Caverno, which is another survival of a Celtic place-name from the word Cauaros, hero, cognate with the Old Irish caur, a gian t. The Celts began to establish thriving agricultural settlements in the fertile Po Valley and the foundation of many cities and towns is ascribed to them, such as Milan, Brescia, Bergamo, Como, Vincenza, Turin, Modena, Lodi and, far south nea r Ancona, Senigallia. Bologna, which may have already been in existence, was giv en the Celtic name of Bononia. While some of the older place-names were doubtles s kept by the Celts, Celtic names were given to places such as Reno, Benacus, La ke Garda, Treviso and Trebbia. The Celts formed their new country north-east of the Apennines and as far south, according to Livy, as the valley of Chienti beyo nd Ancona on the eastern coast. This was the land of the Senones, and Celtic tom bs have been found as far south in this area as the region of Filottrano and Osi mo. Senigallia, just north of Ancona, means the place of the Senones Gauls. Even tually, the Romans would come to designate the area Cisalpine Gaul, the land of the Gauls south of the Alps. The Celts of Cisalpine Gaul left behind them funerary inscriptions, graffiti on pottery and manufacturers' marks in surprisingly large numbers, showing that the Celts were not illiterate, as is the popular misconception. We have already dis cussed their religious prohibition against written records in their own language , but inscriptions from Briona and Brescia record many Celtic names, indicating their literacy. One of the most southerly funerary inscriptions honouring a Celt was found in the valley of the Tiber, at Todi, south of Perugia. This is in Cel tic and Latin in commemoration of Ategnatos, son of Druteos. It is unlikely that a Celtic settlement occurred this far south and it may simply be a relic of a C eltic expedition into the area. It could also be the result of an individual mig ration. By why is it bilingual? Perhaps it is a sign that the Celts and Latins d id not ignore one another except in times of savage warfare, as Livy suggests. The Celts shared the Italic peninsula with several aggressive neighbours to the south. The Etruscans, as we have seen, had been dominant but their power was fad ing in the fifth century BC. In the region of the southern Apennines were the Sa mnites, the descendants of the Sabines, whose power had been broken by Rome in t he mid-fifth century BC. There was Rome herself, whose year of foundation annus urbis conditae - is given as 753 BC. After a period of kings, the city of Rome h ad constituted herself a republic in 510 BC, the King being replaced by two magi strates (consuls) elected annually. In times of national crisis, their powers mi ght be temporarily superseded by the appointment of a 'dictator'. During the fif th century BC, Rome was replacing Etruria as the main power on the peninsula. In the south of the Italic peninsula, Greek colonies had been established which we re collectively known as Magna Graecia. They were prosperous city states whose i ndependence was to be eroded by Rome in the fourth century BC and ended entirely with Roman victory during the war against Pyrrhus of Epiros. In 405 BC Rome laid siege to the Etruscan stronghold of Veii, twelve miles north of Rome. After ten years of stalemate, the Roman General Marcus Furius Camillus took charge of the siege and conquered the city by assault in 396 BC. This vict ory enhanced Rome's prestige and made her the undisputed master of Etruria. Some years later, according to Livy, Arruns of Clusium (Chiusi) became involved in a quarrel with another Etruscan aristocrat called Lucomo. Lucomo had apparently s educed Arruns' wife. Arruns decided to hire some Celtic warriors from north of t

he Apennines to help him pursue this quarrel. About 390 BC, a Celtic army arrive d outside Clusium, led by a chieftain called Brennos. Was Brennos a proper name, or was it merely a title meaning king? The word for king in modern Welsh is sti ll brenin. It would seem that Clusium appeared a more attractive proposition for sacking and pillaging than Lucomo's city. Now Clusium was only three days' march north of Rome, eighty-five miles, and so the city fathers sent to Rome, the new power in the land, to ask for help. Rome sent three envoys, brothers of the noble house of the Fabii, to negotiate with t he Celts. Diodorus Siculus says that the Fabii were not ambassadors at all but s pies who were to assess the strength of the Celts. Certainly the Fabii brothers, on arriving at Clusium, did not act as negotiators but began to organize the pe ople of the city to attack the Celts. Ambustus Fabius, one of the three, slew on e of the Celtic chieftains. Upon this breach of 'international law', says Livy, the Celts demanded the surrender of the Romans. When it was not forthcoming, the Celts began their attack on the city. Rome now despatched an army some 40,000 strong under the command of one of their consuls, A. Quintus Sulpicius. On hearing that the Romans were marching against them, the Celts, led by Brennos, broke off their attack on Clusium and moved sw iftly south to meet them. On 18 July 390 BC (other writers put the date later at 387/386 BC) Brennos and his Celtic army met the Romans for the first time on th e banks of the River Allia, about ten to twelve miles north of Rome. The Celts s mashed their way through the army of Sulpicius, and the Roman soldiers were seiz ed with panic. Thousands rushed into the river in an attempt to save themselves from the northern warriors by swimming to the opposite bank, and many met their deaths in the water. Sulpicius, with a small body of men, managed to flee back t o the safety of Rome. But how safe was Rome? The city was in total panic. Citizens poured out through the gates, carrying wit h them their most precious and easily transportable possessions. The sacred obje cts of the temples were secretly buried, while the vestal virgins carried off th e Palladium, the image of the Greek goddess Pallas Athena, said to have been bro ught to Rome by the Trojan Aeneas after the fall of Troy, as well as the eternal flame. They are said to have escaped in a peasant's wagon along the Janiculus a nd to have taken refuge in the Etruscan town of Caere. For long afterwards 18 July was marked as a black day in the Roman calendar. All iaensis, as it was known, was held to be un-propitious for any public undertakin g. Three days after the battle, Brennos and his victorious Celtic army arrived outs ide the city of Rome. His scouts reported that Rome stood destitute of defenders . He hesitated before entering the city, fearing some trick which could lead to ambush. But there was no army facing him in the main part of the city. Only the Capitoline Hill, which was the most sacred part of Rome, was barricaded and defe nded. The rest of the city was open. The Celts advanced along the thoroughfares as far as the Forum, the political, religious and commercial centre of Rome betw een the Palatine Hill and the Capitoline Hill. It had evolved from the market-pl ace of the city, drained in the sixth century to make way for the building of te mples and monuments of civic importance. Here, according to Livy, the Celts foun d a number of venerable, grey-bearded senators sitting in their robes of office. The Romans believed that by sacrificing their lives to the gods at the hour of defeat, disorder and confusion could be wrought among their enemies; so the aged senators of Rome were determined not to survive the destruction of their city. Livy says that the Celts were amazed at the sight of the old senators, calmly si tting in the Forum, like statues, awaiting death. One Celtic warrior plucked at the beard of a senator called Papyrius, probably to ensure that he was not carve d out of marble. The senator immediately struck the Celt a blow on the head. The Celt retaliated and a general massacre of the senators took place.

Brennos turned his attention to the Capitoline Hill. It was one of the seven hil ls on which Rome was built and had two peaks, the southwest summit being the Cap itol, the northern one being known as the Citadel. From earliest times the Capit oline Hill had been used as a religious centre rather than for habitation. On th e south-western summit was the temple of Jupiter, and the most sacred part of th e city. Its construction had been begun by King Tarquin, but it had not been ded icated until the first year of the republic, 510 BC. At the southwestern corner of the Capitol was the Tarpeian Rock, from which criminals sentenced to death we re hurled. The rock is said to have been named after Tarpeia, the daughter of th e commander of the guard, who offered to betray her father and the garrison to t he Sabines in return for gold. According to the historian Plutarch (AD c.26- c.1 20), Symlos, whose work has not survived, said that it was to the Celts that Tar peia offered to betray the garrison by showing the attackers a secret way up the Capitoline. The commander of the Romans defending the Capitoline was Marcus Manlius. After a few initial sorties, the Celts realized that the Romans were in a good defensiv e position which was centred in the temple of Jupiter. While Brennos was feeling out the Roman defences here, other groups of Celts sacked the rest of the city and set it afire. It is said that only a few buildings on the Palatine as well a s the Capitoline escaped the conflagration. During this time, a young officer na med Pontius Cominius, sent from the Roman garrison at Veii, managed to sneak thr ough the Celtic lines, swim the Tiber and scale the Capitoline by a secret route . He reported to Manlius that the Roman forces at Veii would be coming to his re scue as soon as they found Marcus Furius Camillus, the Roman General who had com pleted the victory over the Etruscans at Veii. Not long after his victory, the R oman senate had accused Camillus of appropriating booty for his personal use and he had been sent into exile. The Romans now realized that their only hope of re pulsing the Celts lay in recalling their general. He was to be offered the posit ion of dictator of Rome. Cominius was sent back to Veii with the plea for the Roman relief force to come as quickly as possible. According to Livy, Cominius' secret route to the top of the Capitoline Hill had been observed by the Celts. Brennos led his men up in an other attempt to take it by storm. The tradition goes that Manlius was awakened by the cackling of the sacred geese in the temple, who gave warning of the Celti c attack, the guard dogs having failed to do so. He summoned his men and they we re able to repel Brennos and his men once more. Thereafter the feeding of the sa cred geese became the responsibility of the Roman state. In an annual commemorat ion geese were carried on litters with purple and gold cushions, while dogs were crucified on stakes of elder, a ritual which still existed in Christian times. Manlius was afterwards accorded the title of Capitolinus, in honour of his defen ce, but he suffered an unhappy end. A Roman aristocrat, he sided with the poor o f Rome, who were forced to pay the costs of the Celtic withdrawal. Manlius, in t he political crisis which followed, was accused of trying to overthrow the gover nment and to set himself up as ruler. For this he was cast to his death from the Tarpeian Rock. In spite of the promise made by Pontius Cominius, that the Capitoline garrison w ould soon be relieved, the siege dragged on for six months. The Roman garrison w ere suffering from lack of supplies. Camillus, who had accepted sole command of the Roman forces, did not appear to have sufficient strength to launch an attack on the Celtic army now in and around Rome. He contented himself with ambushes a nd attacks on Brennos' foraging parties. From the viewpoint of those on the Capi toline, the position was desperate. Manlius decided to open negotiations with Br ennos. An agreement was reached that the Celts would withdraw from Rome upon the payment of a sum of 1,000 pounds (weight) in gold. Livy records an incident tha t when the ransom was being weighed in the Forum, one of the Romans complained t

hat the Celts were using false weights. Brennos is said to have thrown his sword on to the balance and commented: 'Vae victis!' (Woe to the conquered!). In othe r words, it is the conqueror who states the terms. It is now that there is a clash of traditions. According to Livy, Camillus and a Roman army suddenly materialized on the spot, declared the agreement null and v oid and drove the Celts out of the city. He says that on the following day both armies met outside the city and Camillus slew Brennos. But Livy, whose history i s fiercely patriotic, is not always to be trusted. Fortunately, Polybius and Dio dorus have traces of older sources in their accounts which do not seem to be so falsified. According to Polybius, 'the Celts withdrew unmolested with their boot y, having voluntarily and on their own terms restored the city to the Romans.' D iodorus agrees that Brennos and his Celts settled for the ransom and withdrew. Marcus Furius Camillus, says Livy, became 'the saviour of his country and second founder of Rome', for he steered the city through the civil crisis which follow ed the Celtic conquest. He put down a revolution of the people, led by Manlius, and reasserted the power of the patricians. But this internal civil strife was t o last until 367 BC. During this time, indeed for the next fifty years, the Celt s continued to harass Rome. In the year in which the civil strife in Rome ended, the Celts were again at the gates of the city. Yet again, in 361/360 BC, a Celt ic army entered the Tiber Valley and came close to Rome. Polybius says that 'on this occasion the Romans did not dare to meet them in battle because the invasio n took them by surprise, and they had no time to organize resistance and bring t ogether the forces of their allies.' In 360 BC the Celts descended into Campania and encountered a Roman force. Titus Manlius Imperiosus Torquatus commanded thi s force and Manlius accepted the challenge of the Celtic chieftain to settle the conflict by single-handed combat. Manlius killed the chieftain and so earned hi s cognomen Torquatus by taking from the neck of the slain Celt his hero's tore. In 340 BC, when Manlius had become one of the two consuls of Rome, he forbade si ngle combat with enemy chieftains, presumably because Roman commanders were not enjoying a successful record in such encounters. In 349 BC the Celts were ranging as far south as Apulia. According to Livy, duri ng a campaign against the Celts in 345 BC Marcus Valerius Corvus fought in a sin gle-handed combat against a Celtic chieftain. A crow flew down and pecked the Ce lt's face and hid the Roman with its wings. This extraordinary episode has been remarked upon by Henri Hubert, who points out that it is entirely unlike anythin g in Latin tradition but is remarkably similar to an episode in the Irish epic T ain Bo Chuailgne, in which the goddess of death and battles, the Morrigu, attack s Cuchulainn, who has scorned her love, in the form of a crow. The crow, or rave n, was the Celtic symbol of the gods and goddesses of death and battle. Valerius Corvus bears, as his cognomen, the Latin designation, crow. Camille Jullian has suggested that the entire history of Livy, which is fabulous and epic, was prob ably made up of Celtic traditions which Livy knew well, for he was born in Patav ium (Padua) in Cisalpine Gaul and did not go to Rome until he was an adult. It was during this campaign that Rome seems to have recovered from its fear of m eeting the Celts in open battle. Polybius says that they 'marched out confidentl y to meet them, for they were eager to engage and fight a decisive battle'. Pres umably, the Romans were also eager to expiate the shame of their previous defeat s. It seems, however, that the Celts did not give them that satisfaction and wit hdrew under cover of darkness without a major battle. 'After this alarm,' says P olybius, 'they kept quiet for thirteen years and then, as they saw that the powe r of Rome was growing fast, they concluded a formal treaty with them [the Romans ] and faithfully observed its terms for thirty years.' At the start of the third century BC there was another wave of migration from th e Celtic tribes living north of the Alps. The new tribes settled in the Po Valle y without any conflict. However, about the same time the Etruscans decided to ma

ke an attempt to regain their independence from Rome. They formed an alliance wi th the Celts and a combined army of Celts and Etruscans moved south and plundere d Roman territory. Four years later, in 295 BC, the Celts formed another anti-Ro man alliance, this time with the Samnites. The continued growth of Roman power o n the Italic peninsula was a considerable source of worry to the other peoples, particularly the Samnites. A series of three wars from 343 to 290 BC brought Rom an overlordship to the Samnites. The second of these wars lasted from 321 to 305 BC and ended at Bovianum, where the Samnites sued for peace. In 298 BC Samnium made a last effort to resist Rome and formed alliances with the Celts, the Etrus cans and the Lucanians to form a hostile ring around Rome. The war started auspiciously for the anti-Roman alliances. Two Roman legions und er Lucius Scipio were sent to Camerinum, ninety miles north-east of Rome, to hol d a pass in the Apennines through which the Celts were expected to advance. A co mbined army of Celts and Samnites, commanded by a Samnite general, Gellius Equat ius, was already in position. The Roman army was badly defeated and one legion a nnihilated. In 295 BC Quintus Fabius Maximus was given command of five legions and ordered t o the Apennines to take the Samnite town of Sentium (Sassoferrato), about thirty -five miles from the Adriatic coast. Gellius Equatius and his combined Celto-Sam nite army were waiting. The war-chariots of the Celts gave the anti-Roman allian ce an initial advantage against Maximus' left wing. But on the right wing the Sa mnites were driven back, enabling Maximus to attack the Celts on the flank. Afte r a savage struggle the centre of the alliance army collapsed. Rome had a comple te victory. Gellius Equatius was killed along with 25,000 of his men, and a furt her 8,000 were captured. Samnium now accepted Roman terms. Yet the Celts and Etruscans did not surrender. In 284 BC the Senones were besieging Arretium. A Roman army under Lucius Caecil ius tried to raise the siege but the Celts defeated his army and Caecilius was k illed. The survivors elected Manlius Curius to command them and delegates were s ent to negotiate a peace treaty. The Celts were told to beware of the Roman amba ssadors. Was this in recollection of the way the Fabii had behaved at Clusium? T hey slew the ambassadors. Enraged, the Roman survivors under Curius launched an attack so fiercely that the Celts were driven off. In retribution for this, the Romans made a point of invading the territory of the Senones, north of Ancona, a nd establishing a fortified colony at Senones Gallia (the land of the Senones Ce lts), present-day Senigallia. In 283 BC, the year following this event, the combined armies of the Celts and E truscans were finally defeated. A Roman army commanded by Publius Cornelius Dola bella encountered the Etruscans and Celts near the Vadimonian Lake on the Tiber river, some forty-five miles north of Rome. The Etruscan and Celtic army was in the process of crossing the river and Dolabella fell on them, inflicting severe losses. For the first time, Rome was confident of her northern boundaries. She now turne d her greedy eyes towards the Greek city states of southern Italy - Magna Graeca . The Greeks decided to combine against Roman territorial expansion and they cal led on Pyrrhus, King of Epiros and former King of Macedonia, to come to their ai d. Pyrrhus landed on the coast of Lucania with 25,000 men and twenty elephants. Rome sent P. Laverius Lavinus with an army of 35,000 to meet the Greek King near Heraclea. There Pyrrhus routed the Romans. Pyrrhus, looking for allies against Rome, marched north to Apulia, where he was joined by Celts. At Asculum (Ascoli Satriano) Pyrrhus encountered a Roman army o f equal force commanded by Sulpicius Saverrio. Both sides fought furiously and t hen the Romans began to fall back. Roman losses were 6,000 compared with 3,500 m en of Pyrrhus' army. Nevertheless, Pyrrhus is said to have commented, 'Another s

uch victory and we are lost' - hence the phrase, pyrrhic victory. Pyrrhus suddenly abandoned his campaign on the Italian peninsula and sailed to t he aid of the Greek city states in Sicily. After four years' campaigning, he ret urned to Italy and raised an army of Samnites, Lucanians, Bruttians, Greeks and Celts. At the Samnium town of Beneventum, 130 miles south-east of Rome, they enc ountered the Roman army of Manlius Curius Dentatus. The Roman victory here ended Pyrrhus' attempt to curb the power of Rome. He returned to Greece leaving the G reek city states of southern Italy at the mercy of Rome. By 270 BC Rome had comp leted her conquest of the south. The republic now stood master of all Italy as f ar north as where the Rubicon (Fiumicino) emptied into the Adriatic. It was the Rubicon which marked the boundary between Italy and Cisalpine Gaul until 42 BC. Polybius tells us that there was a period of peace between Rome and the Celts of the Po Valley for the next forty-five years. As time went on, and those who had actually witnessed these terrible battles pas sed away, they were replaced by a younger generation, men who were filled with a n unreflecting desire to fight and who were completely without experience of suf fering or of national peril, and their impulse, not surprisingly, was to destroy the equilibrium which had been imposed by the treaty. They interpreted the slig htest action of the Romans as a provocation. . . . The provocation was that Rome was continuing to colonize the lands of the Senone s and was evicting these Celts. Refugees from the country of the Senones were ar riving among the Boii and the Insubres to the north. Once more, the territorial expansion of the 'old enemy', Rome, was worrying the Celts of the Po Valley. In 243 BC, the chieftains Atis of the Boii and Galatos of the Insubres, having disc ussed the situation, sent north of the Alps to their fellow Celtic tribes for ai d. Polybius and Appian of Alexandria (AD c.i6o) both record that bands of warrio rs arrived from the north and met the Po Valley Celts at Ariminum (Rimini). The Celts of Cisalpine Gaul became suspicious about the objectives of their northern kinsmen. Even the intentions of Atis and Galatos were questioned. There was an uprising in which Atis and Galatos were killed and the Transalpine Celts were dr iven out of the Po Valley. Meanwhile, Rome had despatched a legion to the northe rn border but it was able to return having witnessed the result of the inter-Cel tic warfare. In 237 BC, when Marcus Aemilius Lepidus was one of the two Roman consuls, the Ro man senate decided to take over the Celtic territory of Picenum and colonize it. Polybius says: This policy of colonization was a demagogic measure introduced b y Gaius Flaminius, which may be said to have marked the first step in the demora lization of the Roman people, as well as precipitating the war with the Celts wh ich followed.' Gaius Flaminius' scheme was designed to give the Roman proletaria t a stake in the land, a move strongly opposed by the patrician senators, who ha d profited from the occupation of land acquired by conquest in the past. Gaius F laminius eventually carried his measure as a tribune in the popular assembly aga inst the wishes of the patrician party. Polybius' assertion that it demoralized the Roman people is a comment on his attitude towards this new phase of democrat ic assertiveness in Roman life. Hearing of the plan to dispossess part of their people of their lands, the Celts of the Po Valley sent envoys to their fellow Celts north of the Alps. Polybius says they contacted a tribe who dwelt near the River Rhone called the Gaesatae, 'because they serve as mercenaries'. Indeed, the Gaesatae was not a tribal name at all but the name given to a band of professional warriors who sold their serv ices. They could be likened to the Fianna of the ancient Irish tradition. The na me derived from the Celtic word for spear, gae (still found in modern Irish and in Welsh, as gwayw). Thus they were called 'spearmen'. So the Celts of the Po Va lley now recruited in their defence a professional band of warriors. It is the f

irst time we hear of 'professionals' defending the Celts rather than the tribal armies. In 225 BC the Celtic army had gathered in the Po Valley commanded by two chiefta ins - Concolitanos and Aneroestos. According to Polybius, still regarding the Ga esatae as a tribe: The Gaesatae, then, having mobilized a strong and lavishly equipped army, crosse d the Alps, and in the eighth year [225 BC] after the distribution of the lands of Picenum, they descended into the valley of the Po. The Insubres and the Boii stood loyally by the pledge they had given their allies, but a Roman delegation succeeded in persuading the Veneti and the Cenomani to their side; and so the Ce ltic chiefs were obliged to detach part of their forces to guard their territory against an attack by these tribes. So already the Romans had seen the wisdom of divide et impera, divide and rule, by splitting the Celts of the Po Valley against each other. One of the Roman con suls, Lucius Aemilius Paullus, was despatched to Ariminium with an army. An unna med praetor, combining the office of a chief magistrate and military commander, was sent to Etruria. The second Consul, Gaius Atilius Regulus, son of a hero of Rome's first war against Carthage, was occupied in Sardinia. Messages were sent to advise him to return with his army. Polybius remarks that the Romans, having provoked the Celts into war, reacted wi th panic: Meanwhile in Rome itself the people were filled with dread; the danger that thre atened them was, they believed, both great and imminent, and these feelings were natural enough, since the age-old terror inspired by the Celts had never been a ltogether dispelled [a reference to the sack of Rome by Brennos], their thoughts always returning to this possibility, and the authorities were continuously occ upied with calling up and enrolling the legions, and summoning those of their al lies who were liable for service to hold themselves ready. All Roman subjects in general were required to provide lists of men of military age, since the author ities were anxious to know the total strength that was available to them, and me anwhile stocks of corn, of missiles and of other warlike stores had been collect ed on a scale which exceeded any such preparations within living memory. Polybius estimates that the Celtic army of Concolitanos and Aneroestos numbered 50,000 infantry and 20,000 cavalry. Rome had recruited in her defence an astonis hing 700,000 infantry and 13,000 cavalry. Polybius is surely unique among histor ians in not exaggerating the numbers of the enemy to enhance the standing of the Romans. The Celts made the first move by crossing out of the Po Valley and over the Apennines in a descent on Etruria. There was little opposition until they r eached Clusium, the city where Brennos had first encountered the Romans. It was here that the Roman Praetor and his army had taken up positions. According to Po lybius: At sunset the two armies were almost in contact, and they encamped for the night with only a short distance separating them. When it was dark, the Celts lit the ir camp fires. They left their cavalry there with orders that they should wait f or daybreak, and then as soon as they became visible to the enemy they were to f ollow the route which the infantry had taken. In the meantime, the Celts withdre w their main body under cover of darkness towards a town named Faesulae [Fiesoli ] and took up their positions. Their plan was to wait for the cavalry, and at th e same time to disconcert any attack by the enemy with an unforeseen situation. As Fiesoli is eighty miles from Chiusi (Clusium), Polybius was clearly saying th at the Celts did not actually reach the town but only marched 'towards it' befor e they encamped. They were still, therefore, within the vicinity of Clusium. Her

e we have evidence of just how professional the Celtic commanders were. We have none of the massed tribal armies of the Celts, waiting until daybreak and then t hrowing themselves on their enemies. Here are signs of experience and well-thoug ht-out strategy. It was a strategy which certainly fooled the Romans. Polybius s ays: When the Romans sighted the cavalry at daybreak and saw them unsupported, they c oncluded that the main body of the Celts had fled, and so pursued the cavalry al ong the line of the enemy's supposed retreat. Then, as the Romans approached, th e main body of the Celts sprang forward from their positions and charged them. A fierce battle followed which was stubbornly contested on both sides. Rome lost ill where pursuing rest for 6,000 men in this battle and the rest fled. A large number reached a h they established a strong defensive position. Part of the Celtic army, them, tried to take it but, exhausted by their night march, decided to the following day and attempt it on the next morning.

The Roman Consul, Lucius Aemilius Paullus, having received word at Ariminium tha t the Celts had crossed the Apennines to the west rather than turning east to me et his army, had been hurrying across country. The Celtic commanders now heard f rom their scouts that Paullus' army was not far away. A council of war was held among the Celtic chieftains. Aneroestos felt that the army should not give battle again so soon. Paullus' army was only one day's marc h away. He argued that as soon as the warriors had rested, they should make a st rategic withdrawal back into the Po Valley. The other chieftains agreed. The Cel ts began to move south-west towards the Etrurian coast. Paullus arrived in time to rescue the survivors of the Praetor's army and unite them with his force. He followed the Celts at a safe distance, not risking a pitched battle for fear tha t his army might be decimated, as the Praetor's army had been, which would leave Rome wide open without any means of defence. However, Rome's second Consul, Gaius Atilius Regulus, had already crossed from S ardinia with his legions, landing at Pisae (Pisa), and was marching south to Rom e. Unbeknown to them, his army was marching directly towards the Celts, who were now moving north. The Celts were caught between two Roman armies of tremendous strength. Regulus was the first to appreciate the position, having caught some forward sco uts of the Celtic army and interrogated them. His army was stationed across the main highway near Cape Telamon and he immediately deployed his men so that they would be on the high ground which dominated the road along which the Celts had t o pass. The Celtic commanders were still unaware of the arrival of Regulus and w hen they encountered the forward positions of the Roman army they thought that P aullus had simply outflanked them. But they soon discovered that they now had tw o Roman armies to face, both armies of superior strength to their own. Polybius tells us that the Celtic commanders placed the Gaesatae, backed by the Insubres, against Paullus while the Boii and the Taurisci (from Turin) faced the army of Regulus. We now have an interesting piece of cultural misinterpretation by Polybius: The Insubres and the Boii wore their trousers and light cloaks, but the Gaesatae had been moved by their thirst for glory and their defiant spirit to throw away these garments, and so they took up their positions in front of the whole army naked and wearing nothing but their arms. They believed that they would be bette r equipped for action in this state ... This was not the case. The Gaesatae, the professional band of warriors, fought n aked for religious reasons, believing in the oneness of nature and the communion

of all things. To fight naked was to increase their karma, their unity with nat ure and harmony with living things. To the Romans, however, the nakedness of the Celtic warriors bore no religious symbolism: 'the movements of the naked warrio rs in the front ranks made a terrifying spectacle. They were all men of splendid physique and in the prime of life, and those in the leading companies were rich ly adorned with gold necklaces and bracelets. The mere sight of them was enough to arouse fear among the Romans.' The gold necklaces Polybius refers to were of course the gold heroes' torques which denoted a warrior. The battle opened. Once more Polybius impresses upon his readers how the Romans 'were terrified by the fine order of the Celtic army and the dreadful din for th ere were innumerable horn-blowers and trumpeters and, as the whole army were sho uting their war cries at the same time, there was such a tumult as if not only t he soldiers but all the country around had got a voice and caught up the cry.' I n the opening moments of the battle the Consul Atilius Regulus was killed. He wa s decapitated in Celtic fashion and his head brought to one of the Celtic chieft ains. But the Romans stood firm and began to discharge their javelins. Polybius says that the shields used by the Celts in this battle, unlike subsequent battle s, did not cover the whole body and the tall stature of the naked warriors made the missiles more likely to find a mark. The Gaesatae made a wild charge on the Roman lines. The Romans countered and many Celtic lives were thrown away. The Ro mans, having blocked the charge, moved forward, pressing the Gaesatae back. On t he other front, the Boii and Taurisci met a fierce Roman charge but held their g round. Countless hand-to-hand encounters were taking place. 'The end came', writes Polybius, 'when the Celts were attacked by the Roman cava lry, who delivered a furious charge from the high ground on the flank; the Celti c cavalry turned and fled, and their infantry were cut down where they stood.' C oncolitanos was captured and eventually taken to Rome for a triumph and executio n. Aneroestos and a group of companions managed to escape capture and leave the battlefield but, again according to Polybius, he and his entire retinue took the ir own lives rather than fall into Roman hands. The figures provided by Polybius show that the battle of Telamon was a major Celtic defeat, with 40,000 Celtic w arriors slain in battle and 10,000 taken prisoner. Even then the surviving Roman Consul, Paullus, was thirsting for revenge. Having united the two Roman armies, he marched a section of them across the Apennines and into the country of the Boii. There he allowed his troops to take their fill of plunder,' says Polybius, attacking the rich farming settlements and township s of the Boii. He returned to Rome in the autumn of 225 BC bearing the standards and gold necklaces worn by the Celtic warriors, with other booty, to decorate t he Capitol. This was how the most formidable of the Celtic invasions, which had placed all t he Italians and above all the Romans in mortal danger, was finally destroyed. Th e victory encouraged the Romans to hope that they could clear the Celts from the entire valley of the Po, and so in the following year [224 BC] they sent out bo th the consuls, Quintus Fulvius and Titus Manlius, with a strong well-equipped f orce. Their attack took the Boii by surprise and frightened them into making sub mission to Rome. But the rest of the campaign produced no practical results; thi s was partly owing to the onset of heavy rains, and partly to the outbreak of an epidemic in the army. Thus from Polybius we see that the intention was to drive out the Celts of the P o Valley and colonize it from Rome. In 223 BC the consuls Publius Furius and Gaius Flaminius led another invasion of the Celtic territory. This time they marched into the country of the Anamari, i n the area of Placentia (Piacenza). The Romans agreed a treaty with the Anamari and then moved into the territory of the Insubres. Against the Insubres the Roma

ns suffered heavy losses and were forced to withdraw. The Roman commanders then tried a different tactic by marching in a circular route, crossing the River Clu sius, moving through the territory of the Cenomani and descending on the Insubre s again. The Insubres retired to Milan, where they gathered an army of 50,000 me n and brought from their temples certain gold standards which were to put streng th into their people in their fight against the Romans. The Romans managed to pe rsuade the Anamari and Cenomari to help them. In the ensuing battle the Romans w ere able to manoeuvre the Celts so that they were hemmed in by the Roman lines. The Romans closed with them and rendered them helpless by leaving them no room t o raise their arms to slash; this is the stroke which is peculiar to the Celts, and the only one they can make, as their swords have no points. The Romans, on t he other hand, made no attempt to slash and used only the thrust, kept their swo rds straight and relied on their sharp points, which were very effective. The Romans gained another victory over the Insubres but withdrew to Rome having collected enough plunder to pay for the season's campaign. Before the start of the 'campaigning season', in the spring of 222 BC, the Celti c tribes of the Po Valley sent a united delegation to Rome to ask for terms of p eace. The new consuls, Marcus Claudius Marcellus and Gnaeus Cornelius, refused t o discuss any such terms. Peace was not to be granted to the Celts of the Po Val ley. Rome was intent on driving them from the valley or exterminating them. Hear ing this, the Celts once more sent across the Alps to their northern kinsmen and raised a force of another 30,000 Gaesatae, professional warriors commanded by a chieftain called Viridomar, who called himself a 'son of the Rhine'. Marcus Claudius Marcellus and Gnaeus Cornelius marched the Roman armies north an d immediately made for the land of the Insubres once again. They laid siege to A cerrae, a Celtic township between the Po river and the Alps. The Celts, in an at tempt to force the Romans to raise the siege, detached a part of their army and crossed to the south of the Po, entering the territory of the Anamari, one of th e Celtic tribes who had shortsightedly entered an alliance with Rome. The Celtic army was led by Viridomar, who promptly laid siege to Clastidium (Casteggio), w hich was the chief town of the Anamari. When news of this action reached Marcus Claudius Marcellus he set off with a body of infantry and cavalry to relieve Cla stidium. The ruse had worked and Viridomar turned his army to face the Romans in open battle. The battle opened with a furious charge of the Roman cavalry. The Celts held the ir ground and fierce fighting began. Slowly the Romans began to encircle the Cel tic positions. Here we find a surprising development. It appears that Viridomar offered a challenge, in the traditional Celtic fashion, to the Roman General, Ma rcus Claudius Marcellus, to settle the issue by single combat to the death. Surp risingly, the Roman General accepted. He succeeded in slaying Viridomar and the Celtic army crumbled before a renewed Roman charge. The battle of Clastidium bec ame a major Roman victory, of equal significance to Telamon. Clastidium also becomes important as the point at which the Germanic peoples, th e ancestors of the English, French, Germans and so on, first emerge into recorde d history. The Roman Aeta Triumphalia says that Marcus Claudius Marcellus gained the spolia opima, spoils of honour, for slaying Viridomar and triumphing 'over the Insubrian Celts and the Germans'. Now the Germans at Clastidium were not the re as invaders, nor were they fighting for their own lands. Indeed, they were fi ghting under a Celtic commander with a Celtic army. We are faced with the conclu sion that the first appearance of the Germanic peoples in history, fighting for the Celts of the Po Valley against Rome, was either as hired troops or as forces levied on a subject territory. Professor Eoin Mac Neill regards the presence of the Germanic people at Clastidium as indicating that they, or some portion of t hem, were under Celtic political dominance.

Professor Mac Neill points out that this interpretation is supported by philolog ical evidence and that a number of words of Celtic origin are found spread throu gh the whole group of Germanic languages. A number of these words are connected with political organization and, says Mac Neill, this is indicative of Celtic po litical dominance at the time of their adoption into Germanic speech. For exampl e, the German reich, meaning state, originally realm or royal dominion, is trace d to the Celtic rigion. From the Celtic word ambactus, used by Caesar in the sen se of client or dependant, indicating one of the retainers of a Celtic chieftain , but originally meaning one who is sent about or an envoy, comes the German wor d amt, meaning office, charge, employment. Ambactus, incidentally, provides the Romance languages (and English via Norman French) with the words embassy and amb assador. The Celtic word dunon, a fortified place, found in the dun place-names, made its way through the Germanic languages and arrived in English as the word town. With the defeat at Clastidium the remnants of the Celtic army reached Mediolanum (Milan), which was the chief city of the Insubres. Acerrae fell to the Romans. Gnaeus Cornelius was in charge of besieging Mediolanum. The Celts made a spirite d attempt at defence and launched a raid against his siege lines in which the Ro mans, taken by surprise, broke and many of them were killed. However, Gnaeus Cor nelius organized a counter-attack and checked the Celtic gains. Mediolanum was t aken by storm and the Insubres were forced to make unconditional surrender to Ro me. Polybius records: 'So ended the war against the Celts. If we consider it in terms of the audacity and the desperate courage displayed by those taking part a nd of the number who fought and died in the battles, this conflict is unsurpasse d by any other war in history ...' The Romans moved quickly to consolidate their victory. They established permanen t garrisons at Placentia among the Boii and at Cremona and Milan among the Insub res. Colonists were encouraged to come from Rome, to Romanize areas and to settl e on lands seized from the Celts. Another garrison was established at Mutina. Ro man garrisons now controlled a conquered, sullen and resentful population. And s o the seeds were sown for the Celts of the Po Valley to organize secretly and pr epare themselves for yet another war against Rome - and this time, they realized , it would be a war for their very survival. -----------------------------3 - The Iberian Peninsula One of the founding fathers of prehistoric archaeology in Spain, Louis Siret (Qu estions de chronologic et d'ethnographie iberique, Paris, 1913) was the first sc holar to assert that the Celts arrived in the Iberian peninsula during the Bronz e Age and, indeed, that it was the Celts who introduced the working of bronze in to the region. This wave of settlers were Goidelic-speakers. If we accept the Ir ish traditions it was from Spain that the Gaels (the Goidelic-speakers) invaded and colonized Ireland. The story is recounted in the Leabhar Gabhala, The Book of Invasions, the earlie st fragment of which survives in Leabhar na Nuachonghbala, known as the Book of Leinster, compiled about AD 1150 by Fionn Mac Gorman. The Irish tradition has it that a warrior named Golamh of Spain took service with a king of Scythia and ma rried his daughter. Golamh became known under the Latin form of his name, Milesi us, given in Irish as Mile Easpain (the Spanish soldier). After Milesius' wife, Seang, died, the Scythian King grew fearful of Milesius and plotted to kill him. Discovering the plot, Milesius fled to Egypt with his sons Donn and Airioch Fea bhruadh and his followers and took service with the Pharaoh Nectanebus. He was s uccessful in conducting a war for the Pharaoh against the Ethiopians. There were , in fact, two pharaohs of the Thirtieth Dynasty named Nectanebus but their date

s are 380-363 BC and 360-343 BC- too late for the accepted date of the Goidelic Celtic colonization of Ireland and too early to associate the tradition with kno wn Celtic service in the army of the Egyptian pharaohs. Irish traditions has it that Milesius married Scota, the daughter of the Pharaoh, and two sons Eber and Amairgen were born in Egypt. A third son, Ir, was born on the island of Irena ne ar Thrace after Milesius and his followers left Egypt. A fourth son, Colpa, was born on the island of Gotia. Milesius eventually returned to Spain. Here he lear ned of the death of Ith, given as his nephew, in Ireland - slain by Mac Cecht, M ac Cuill and Mac Greine, the three sons of Ogma, the Irish god of eloquence and learning - and he decided to take revenge by conquering Ireland. But he did not reach Ireland, although his wife Scota did. She was killed fighting the De Danaa n and was buried in Kerry. It was Milesius' sons who carried out the conquest an d became the ancestors of the Gaelic people of Ireland. Although the story is cl assified as mythology, frequently mythology is based on fact and the native orig in-myth of the Irish has enough correlation with historical fact to make it a ca se for fascinating speculation. The Goidelic settlers in Iberia were replaced in the middle of the first millenn ium AD by a new wave of Gaulish (or Brythonic) speakers. By the time the Greek m ariners began establishing their trading posts and settlements on the Iberian pe ninsula during the seventh and fifth centuries BC, the Celtic population had swi tched languages. Furthermore, the Celtic peoples were well established throughou t the land. Herodotus (c.490 425 BC), the Greek historian who was the first to giv e a detailed account of the people of the Iberian peninsula, says that the Pyren ees were 'in the Celtic country' and that 'the Celts are outside the Pillars of Heracles [Gibraltar] and marched with the Cynesii, who are the westernmost peopl e of Europe.' Aristotle (384 322 BC) gives the name Celtica to the entire mountain mass of the I berian peninsula. One of the most influential Greek historians of the fourth cen tury BC, Ephoros of Cyme, writing about 350 BC, states that the Celtic realms re ached as far as Gades (Cadiz), a colony founded by Phoenicians from Tyre at the start of the first millennium BC and for a long time the westernmost point of th e known world. Other writers named specific Celtic tribal areas from Gades in th e south northward to the Pyrenees. Pytheas, in the second half of the fourth cen tury BC, a Greek explorer from Massilia (Marseilles) who made a famous voyage th rough the Straits of Gibraltar, north along the Spanish coast and as far as the British Isles, spoke of Iberian rivers flowing into the Atlantic as passing thro ugh the land of the Celts. Herodotus writes of the Tartessus river, which is the modern Guadalquivir, in wh ose valley stand the cities of Cordoba and Seville. The Tartessus valley was fam ed, even in Herodotus' time, for its silver mines. Greeks from Phocaea began to form trading settlements there about 600 BC and made a treaty with the local Kin g, who helped them build their settlements. His name was Arganthonios. The name obviously comes from the Celtic word for silver, arganto. Arganthonios' name bec ame proverbial for longevity. Herodotus says he lived 120 years, of which he rei gned as King some 80 years. Arganthonios is referred to as having died some time before 564 BC. The Celtic place-names of the peninsula have enabled scholars to determine fairl y accurately most of the territory occupied by the Celts. Names ending in -briga , such as Segobriga (Sergorbe) and Lacobriga (Lagos), were widespread in the Cel tic world. Names of fortified townships ending in the Celtic -dunon are also wid espread, such as Caladunum (Calahorra), near Mount Alegro in Catalonia, Arialdun um, the site of which is now uncertain, and Virodunum (Verdum), in the province of Heusca and Verdu. Some argue that, while the Celts were widely dispersed thro ughout the peninsula, they only established isolated settlements and did not con stitute the mass of the population. This is open to debate. It was Eratosthenes, writing about 230 BC, who gave the name Iberia to the peninsula. Timaeos of Tau

romenium in Sicily, originally an Athenian (c.356-260 BC), is thought to have be en the first to use the term Celtiberian. There is a school of thought which mai ntains that the name Celtiberian had a precise value as opposed to Celt, for som e ancient writers make a distinction between them. One generally accepted notion is that the Celtiberians were a 'mixed race', Celts intermixed with the native population of Iberia. The ancient chroniclers also make the distinction between the Celtiberia citeriores, those close to the coast, and Celtiberia ultenores, t hose furthest from the coast. It emerges quite clearly that, during the wars of independence against the Roman empire, all the named leaders bear Celtic names -Rhetogenes, Caraunios, Caros, Ambon, Leukon, Megaravicos and Auaros. And although some writers distinguish the Lusitani as an Iberian tribe, their leader in the war against Rome, Viriathos, has a Celtic name. So were the Lusitani a Celtic people or did the Celts manage to establish a dynastic rule over an Iberian people? Gaius Plinius Secundus (Pli ny the Elder), AD 23/4-79, states categorically that the Lusitani were Celts and spoke Celtic. But Henri Hubert supposes that some Celtic families were accepted into the native tribes and achieved power, perhaps assimilating while continuin g to use Celtic names. For example, James Callaghan (Prime Minister of the Unite d Kingdom, 1976-9) bore an Irish surname but was certainly not Irish. It can be accepted, however, that by the time Iberia began to be conquered, firs t by the Carthaginian empire and then by the Roman empire, the Celts constituted the major population and held political predominance in the peninsula. Some his torians, like Rufius Festus Avienus, writing in the fourth century AD, describe the Celts of the Iberian plateau as pastoral herdsmen leading a hard and penurio us life. Yet, at the time of Ephoros of Cyme, gold, silver, copper and tin were being worked and exported and there is much evidence of a thriving trade with th e Greek world. The end of the independence of Celtic Iberia had its origins in the conflict bet ween Carthage and Rome. The city of Carthage, occupying a strong strategic posit ion on the Tunisian coast of North Africa, had been established by Phoenician co lonists traditionally in 814 BC. During the sixth century BC it grew as a strong trading power and its interests began to conflict with Greek settlements throug hout the Mediterranean. Forming an alliance with the Etruscans, the Carthaginian s were able to drive the Greeks from Corsica and gain control of Sardinia, Sicil y and several coastal towns on the Iberian peninsula, such as Gades. By 164 BC C arthage was the centre of a major empire. Rome was now emerging as a dominant power and, at first, Carthage was content to establish commercial treaties with her. But it became inevitable that, as Rome rose in power and influence, a military conflict would occur. The first war, kno wn as the First Punic War, broke out in 264 BC and lasted until 241 BC. The Roma ns managed to defeat the Carthaginians, eventually gaining dominance of the seas . Carthage was forced to pay indemnity to Rome and to evacuate many of her colon ies. During the war, Carthage found that her colonies on the southern coast of I beria had come under attack from the natives. The Carthaginian parliament, the S uffete, decided that the city must regain control of them as a first attempt to recover her prestige. Iberia was not yet in the Roman sphere of interest and Car thage could extend her empire in this direction. A Carthaginian general named Ha milcar Barca was sent with an army to reassert Carthaginian power in Iberia. Ham ilcar Barca had fought in the war against Rome with some distinction and had bee n one of those who had negotiated the terms of peace in 241 BC. He arrived at Ga des in 237 BC and began a systematic reduction of the south-western coast before pushing forward to the south-eastern side of the peninsula and moving along the Mediterranean coastline northwards towards the Greek colonies. In 229 BC, durin g the siege of Helice, one of the Greek colonies, he accidentally drowned while crossing a river.

Hamilcar Barca's son-in-law, Hasdrubal, son of Gisgo, was appointed Carthaginian commander in Spain and continued the campaign. The Greek colonies by this time had signed an alliance with Rome and the Carthaginians were forced to give an un dertaking that they would confine their campaigning to south of the River Ebro. Meanwhile, Hasdrubal was bringing the Celtiberian and Iberian tribes in the area firmly under Carthaginian rule. During these campaigns, three of the sons of Ha milcar Barca, Hannibal, Hasdrubal and Mago, were distinguishing themselves as mi litary leaders. In 221 BC, among the slaves taken from a defeated Celtic tribe, was one unnamed Celt who managed to get close enough to the Carthaginian command er, Hasdrubal, to assassinate him. With Hasdrubal's death, Hannibal (247-182 BC) became commander. He was twenty-si x years old. For two years he consolidated his position and then, in 219 BC, des pite the agreement with Rome, he launched an attack over the Ebro against Sagunt um (Sagunto), one of the rich Greek city states in alliance with Rome. As he ful ly realized, his attack precipitated war with Rome the Second Punic War. Saguntu m took eight months to fall, during which Rome tried to assert her authority by diplomatic means while the Carthaginian parliament procrastinated. Hannibal had planned an audacious invasion of the Italian peninsula which he intended to carr y out before Rome was fully prepared. In addition to his Carthaginians, he recruited levies from the Celtiberians and Iberians. Soon he had ready an army of 100,000 men with thirty-seven war-trained elephants. Knowing that Roman fleets dominated the seas, Hannibal chose to move his army by an overland route, a march of 1,500 miles across two of the greates t European mountain barriers - the Pyrenees and the Alps. It was obvious that th e young Carthaginian commander had a good knowledge of events in Italy and that he knew of the recent defeats of the Celts of the Po Valley by Rome. Furthermore , he knew that the Celts, while recently conquered, were unsubdued. He despatche d ambassadors to the Celts of northern Italy and an alliance was made. Food, sup plies and men were promised to Hannibal once he crossed the Alps into Italy. Pol ybius comments: 'He knew that the only means of carrying the war against the Rom ans in Italy was, after surmounting, if possible, the difficulties of the route, to reach the above country and employ the Celts as allies and confederates in h is enterprise.' Soon all was ready. The command of the Carthaginian army in Spain was given to H annibal's brother Hasdrubal. His invasion force gathered at New Carthage (Cartha go Nova), Cartegna, and marched in May 218 BC. They kept to the Mediterranean co ast, moving along the eastern side of the Pyrenees and into Gaul. It was, of cou rse, necessary either to win over or to subdue the Celtic tribes in this area an d a younger brother Hanno was left with 10,000 infantry and 1,000 cavalry to kee p the Celtic tribes of the Pyrenees in check and guard the passages. Moving along the southern coast of Gaul, Hannibal seems to have developed good r elations with the Celtic chieftains in that area. Livy mentions that the chiefta ins 'came without reluctance to the Carthaginian, being won by his presents, and suffered his army to pass through their territories ... without molestation'. Hannibal's first battle occurred when he neared the Greek colony of Massilia (Ma rseilles), which was in alliance with Rome. A Roman army had already landed ther e under the command of Publius Cornelius Scipio. However, most of the Roman sold iers were incapacitated by sea-sickness and fever. Scipio sent out some Massilio t guides and some local Celtic mercenaries to explore the country for Hannibal's army. They found Hannibal crossing the Rhone about four days' march north of Ma ssilia. Scipio had been able to persuade a Celtic tribe, the Volcae Tectosages, whose capital was at Tolosa (Toulouse), to ally themselves with Rome. He now ask ed them to dispute Hannibal's crossing of the Rhone and engage the Carthaginian until his own Roman troops were recovered. The Tectosages took up positions on t he eastern bank, but Hannibal outflanked them with his Numidian cavalry, which h

ad crossed on their left flank. The Tectosages, wedged between the Numidians and the frontal assault of the Carthaginians, broke in disorder. Hannibal pressed on immediately to the Alps, where he received ambassadors from the Celts of the Po Valley. These appear to have been members of the Boii. Hanni bal took the opportunity to lecture his army, instructing them to discount the p opular notion that the Alps were insurmountable. He introduced the Po Valley Cel ts to them and said: These very ambassadors whom you see before you have crossed the Alps. They didn' t fly over them on wings. What, in reality, is impervious or insurmountable ...? Are you going to let it be said that the Celts gained possession of a country w hich the Carthaginians were afraid even to approach? Take your choice. Either su bmit that the Celts are better men than you, or else follow me; and look forward at the end of your journey to that rich plain which spreads between the Tiber a nd the walls of Rome. And so Hannibal, with his army, with its Celtiberian and also Gaulish auxiliarie s, passed through the Alps to their destiny on the Italian peninsula and nearly seventeen years of continuous warfare there. We will follow their story in Chapt er 4. But, in the meantime, we will return to events in Iberia. Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio, the brother of the Consul Publius Cornelius Scipio who had missed encountering Hannibal's army north of Massilia, had been sent to Iber ia to liberate the Greek colonies from Carthaginian control. He was joined a sho rt time later by his brother, who had been decisively defeated by Hannibal in th e Po Valley. The Scipio brothers won some successes, managing to retake the area as far south as Saguntum. In 212 BC Hannibal's brothers, Hasdrubal and Mago, la unched a counter-offensive and in a series of successes both the Scipio brothers were killed. In 210 BC, however, Publius Cornelius Scipio's son, then twenty-se ven years old and bearing the same name, though later taking the title Africanus , landed with a new Roman army. In 209 BC Scipio Africanus force-marched his army down the east coast to New Car thage. In seven hours his legions had stormed the city. The tide was turning aga inst Carthage on the Iberian peninsula. Three years later, the Carthaginians wer e driven out of the peninsula altogether and Rome now exerted her control over t he country. In 197 BC, with the Second Punic War ending in Rome's favour, the Iberian penins ula was divided into two colonial provinces by Rome. 'Hither Spain' centred on t he Ebro basin, while 'Further Spain' was the area around Gibraltar across to the valley of the Guadalquivir. Rome sent officials and fixed annual taxes for the area. This resulted in the first of the general insurrections of the Celtiberian s against their new imperial masters. The Turdetani rose in 196 BC and were defe ated at Turta. In 195 BC the Consul Marcus Porcius Cato was sent to deal with th e rebellious tribes. He was an austere military man and his severity was proverb ial. He is famous for uttering the cry: 'Carthago delenda est!' (Carthage must b e destroyed!). Cato's wars of pacification lasted for several years. He did not make any signif icant headway against the Celtiberians but seems to have made unsuccessful attem pts to capture the Celtic towns of Siguenza and Numantia. He managed to seize co ntrol of the silver mines in 195 BC in what is now Catalonia. The Lusitani also rebelled and defeated a Roman general, Aemilius Paullus, in 190 BC. However, Pau llus managed to regroup his legions and win another battle later in the year. Insurrection continued. In 179 BC Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus (d. 154 BC) was s ent to Hither Spain to pacify it. Polybius says he destroyed 300 Celtic towns, w hile Poseidonius corrects the word 'towns' to 'fortresses'. His subsequent measu

res of pacification won him some fame for he revised the treaties with the Celti c tribes, placed the system of land tenure and taxation on a more equitable basi s and established several Roman towns in the interior of the country. He also en couraged Celtiberian enlistment into the Roman army and even persuaded some of t he Celtic chieftains to accept posts of command within the Roman army. He believ ed that this would keep the 'wilder spirits' among the Celtic population under c ontrol. The result was a period of twenty years' comparative peace. In 154 BC, however, Roman control was disturbed by the incursions of the Lusitan i from what is now modern Portugal. The Lusitani began raiding Roman garrisons a nd towns and persuaded other Celtiberian tribes to join them. In 153 BC the Roma ns decided to besiege the formidable Celtic hill-fort of Numantia, situated on t he upper Douro in north-central Spain, thought to be the site of modern Soria. I t was a stronghold of Celtic resistance to Rome, surrounded by impenetrable fore sts, with two rivers cutting deep ravines on either side. In their attempt to re duce the hill-fort, the Romans brought up elephants. The defenders dropped rocks on them. One elephant, sent mad with fury, turned and trampled the Romans, caus ing them to panic and flee. The Celts were able to set off in pursuit, and sever ely mauled the Roman army. The fighting went on until 151 BC, when M. Atilius, t he Roman commander, agreed terms. These terms, however, were rejected by the new commander, a praetor named Servius Sulpicius Galba. He succeeded in defeating t he Lusitani and, when they had surrendered, proceeded to massacre them and ensla ve the survivors. Even in Rome this incident was strongly criticized and the for mer commander in Spain, Marcus Porcius Cato, then an old man, came forward to pr osecute Galba for this 'crime' before the senate. However, most senators in Rome approved of what Galba had done. Iberia was proving a troublesome acquisition a nd Galba obtained an acquittal. Among the survivors of Galba's massacre was a young man named Viriathos. He beca me chieftain of the Lusitani survivors and began to lead his people in guerilla war against Rome which lasted for eight years. In 148 BC the Roman Governor and his army were defeated and the Governor killed. In 141 BC one of the Roman consu ls, sent to crush the Lusitani, found himself surrounded and was forced to concl ude a treaty with Viriathos. The Roman senate was compelled to ratify it. Howeve r, in 140 BC Servius Caepio was sent to Spain and he immediately reneged on the treaty and while pretending to open new negotiations with Viriathos he bribed so me Lusitanian traitors to murder the Celtic leader while he slept. It was charac teristic of Rome that this blood money was never paid and presumably the murdere rs were slain in turn. It is recorded that during the funeral rites for Viriatho s some 200 pairs of warriors fought in mock single-handed combat as a tribute. The loss of Viriathos weakened Celtiberian resistance, although il 138 BC when one of the Roman consuls, Decimus Junius Brutus, fleet to attack the Lusitani strongholds on the Atlantic coast, them down. He established garrison settlements at Lisbon on the entia. it continued unt who organized a managed to wear Tagas and at Val

The war against other Celtiberian tribes was continuing. Under the settlement of Gracchus, the Celtiberians had been given permission by Rome to continue to for tify their townships. Galba, however, had revoked this right and subsequent Roma n commanders had made punitive expeditions against Celtic fortified towns. This warfare continued until 132 BC, when the Celtiberians began to redouble their ef forts against Rome. Polybius writes: 'This war between the Romans and Celtiberia ns is called "The Fiery War", for while wars in Greece or Asia are settled with one or two pitched battles, the battles there drag on, only brought to a tempora ry end by the darkness of night. Both sides refused to let their courage flag or bodies tire.' In 136 BC during the siege of a Celtiberian hill-fort at Pallantia, the Roman co mmander, Mancinus, allowed his supplies to run out and decided to evacuate his p

ositions at night. He left his sick and wounded behind. The Celtiberians emerged from their hill-fort and the retreat turned into a rout, the Romans being slaug htered. Some 20,000 Romans surrendered to the Celts. Mancinus was stripped of hi s command by the outraged senate. In 134 BC a new commander was sent to the troublesome provinces. This was the gr andson of Scipio Africanus - Publius Cornelius Scipio (c.185-129 BC). He was, in fact, adopted and his real father had been L. Aemilius Paullus, regarded as the conqueror of Macedonia. Scipio had fought in this war under his father's comman d. During the Third Punic War between Rome and Carthage (149-146 BC), Scipio had broken into Carthage itself and destroyed the city. He was now elected one of R ome's two consuls and given command in Spain. On arrival he found the Roman troo ps there demoralized by their long war against the Celtiberians. Discipline was almost non-existent and he had to set to work to revitalize them and retrain the m. Only when he was satisfied with the quality of his troops did he examine the position of his enemy. Once more, as in 153 BC, it seemed that the hill-fort of Numantia was the centre of Celtiberian resistance to the Roman conquest. Here, under the chieftain Avar os, the Celtiberians were in an impregnable position. If Numantia fell, the Celt iberians throughout the province would be demoralized. Scipio moved his legions through the surrounding countryside, looting and burning, although they were con stantly harassed by the Celtiberian guerillas. Looking at Numantia for the first time, Scipio realized just how formidable the hill-fort was. He decided to erec t seven fortresses around the town and link them with ditches and palisades. Bal listae and catapulta, Roman artillery for throwing rocks and missiles, were set up. The Numantians were still able to receive provisions at this stage from acro ss the neighbouring rivers but Scipio slowly cut off all routes of supply. He wa s able to make alliances with a few surrounding Celtiberian tribes who, shortsig htedly, saw the reduction of Numantia simply as the end of a powerful rival. The Numantians made several forays against the Romans, fighting hand to hand and using the falcata, a heavy cleaver-like weapon. According to Livy, the weapon c ould sever heads or cut off arms with one blow. In their night attacks on the Ro man positions the Celts used javelins tied with rags which had been soaked in pi tch and ignited. But as time progressed it became obvious to Avaros, the Celtibe rian chieftain, that the Roman siegeworks were just as impregnable as the walls of his hill-fort. But there was one difference - the Romans had access to suppli es and he had not. A chieftain named Rhetogenes was chosen, with a few comrades, to attempt to brea k through the Roman lines and raise the surrounding Celtiberians tribes against the Romans. Carrying a scaling ladder, the Celtiberians left Numantia during dar kness and managed to scramble unseen over the Roman siegeworks. They silenced th e guards, seized horses and rode off into the night. Rhetogenes made for the hil l-fort of the neighbouring Arevaci and entreated them to come to the aid of Numa ntia. But the Arevaci had made an alliance with Rome and refused. Rhetogenes wen t on to Lutia. There he found young Celtiberian warriors willing to join him. Ho wever, word was sent to Scipio that the young men of Lutia were preparing to fig ht against him. He reacted immediately. He withdrew one of his legions, surround ed Lutia and demanded that the young warriors be paraded before the town or his legion would destroy it, men, women and children. The young men were lined up. S cipio had 400 of them seized and had their right hands cut off. Rhetogenes' attempts to persuade the surrounding Celtiberians to help Numantia f ailed. As the weeks passed, starvation forced Avaros to send envoys to Scipio to ask for terms of surrender. Scipio demanded unconditional surrender. Perhaps th rough a Roman agent provocateur it was rumoured that Avaros and his family had s ecured terms for themselves from Rome and had agreed to sell out the rest of the Numantians. The people, desperate and starving, assassinated Avaros. Many also

took their own lives. Famine and disease had broken their spirit. Appian, the hi storian of the event, seems moved by the suppression of 8,000 Celtiberians by 60 ,000 Romans in such a drawn-out siege. As the Numantians opened the gates of the ir town and came out to surrender, Appian records: 'Their bodies were foul, thei r hair and nails long, and they were smeared with dirt. In their eyes there was a fearful expression; an expression of anger, pain, weariness and the awareness of having eaten human flesh.' It was reported that the starving Numantians had r esorted to cannibalism in their extremity. Scipio selected fifty leading warriors to be sent to Rome for his ceremonial tri umph. The rest of the population were sold into slavery while the town was put t o the torch. Scipio was astute enough to divide the territory among those tribes with whom he had formed an alliance, as a bribe. Although the heartland of Celt iberian resistance had been devastated, and Celtiberian independence smothered, Celtiberian chieftains continued to rule their tribal areas under the suzerain p ower of Rome. When, in 105 BC, the Cimbri and Teutones, having destroyed three Roman armies, c rossed the Pyrenees into the Iberian peninsula, it was the Celtiberians who conf ronted them and, after two years of struggle, forced them back across the Pyrene es. The Celtiberian tribes were not entirely subservient to the pax Romana and s everal minor insurrections occurred. It appeared that many of these insurrection s were deliberately provoked by Roman governors in order to secure an easy victo ry and earn prestige in Rome. In 93 BC Titus Didius was one such military govern or who provoked the Celtiberians and then suppressed them with a savageness whic h shocked even Roman susceptibilities. Having reduced the Arevaci to starvation and then effected a surrender on the condition that he would give them new lands on which they could resettle, Didius had them disarmed and promptly proceeded s ystematically to massacre men, women and children. Appian of Alexandria, writing AD c.160, disapprovingly comments: 'For this Didius was actually honoured with a triumph!' These uprisings of the Celtiberians were no more than brief episodes in the poli tical history of the new Roman province. In 83 BC Quintus Sertorius arrived to govern the Roman province. He was a distin guished Roman soldier who firmly believed in the Roman republic, joining Cinna's march on Rome against those who wanted to established an emperor as ruler. In 8 0 BC the Lusitani persuaded him to lead them in revolt against Rome. Lucius Corn ellius Sulla (c. 13 8-78 BC), whose vindictive cruelty was long remembered in Ro me, had finally seized the city in 82 BC after a ruthless civil war and had been made dictator. Sulla was the leader of the optimates (best class), the Roman up per classes who sought to rule as an oligarchy against the populares, those on t he side of the people. Sertorius, who had been a leader of the populares, learne d that Sulla was now busy compiling lists of people who might be killed without trial and their property confiscated. Although Sulla died in 78 BC, his supporte rs, such as Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (Pompey the Great, 106-48 BC), continued to d ominate in the senate. Sertorius therefore placed himself at the head of the Lus itani insurrection and was joined by many Roman colonists and numerous political exiles arriving from Rome to escape Sulla's purges. ---[Insert Pic cp01] This magnificent bowl, 8.5 cm high and dated to the late fifth century BC, is pa rt of a group of very rich finds of early La Tene Celtic art, discovered in the mid-nineteenth century at Schwarzenbach, West Germany. The gold open-work on a b ronze backing, covers a wooden bowl.

---[Insert Pic cp02] A bronze brooch in the shape of a cock, with coral inlay, and dated to the fourt h century BC This magnificent piece was found in the 'Princess's Grave' m Reinhe im, near Saarbruken in 1954. ---[Insert Pic cp03] A detail from one of a pair of bronze jugs, dated to the The jugs are inlaid with red enamel and coral, and were asse Yutz, Moselle The upper handle shows an anima! with aterfowl as two other animals watch the fate of the bird what is probably the head of a Celtic god. ---[Insert Pic cp04] A Celtiberian gold brooch from about the second century BC showing a Celtic warr ior with helmet, shield and sword. ---[Insert Pic cp05] A terrier made by spinning semi-molten ribbons of different coloured glass on a rod The dog was found in a warrior's grave in Wallertheim, near the Rhine in Wes t Germany and is dated to the late second century BC. ---[Insert Pic cp06] This decoration of enamelled bronze belonged to a horse's harness and is dated t o the first century BC. It was found on a Gallo-Roman site at Paillart, Oise, bu t is thought to have been made in Britain. ---[Insert Pic cp07] A low alloy coin of the Veneti of Gaul, dating to the first half of the first ce ntury BC, and probably in use before Caesar's defeat of this seafaring Celtic tr ibe. A head is depicted on the obverse while on the reverse there is a human-hea ded horse, guided by a person with a hero's torc, leaping over a boar - a symbol of warlike strength. ---[Insert Pic cp08] Left A gold coin of Tascionvanus (thought to be the father of Cunobelinos), stru ck at Camulodunum. This reverse side shows two galloping horses over the outline of a wheel. Right. A gold coin of Cunobelinos (Cymbeline), one of the most famo us Celtic kings of Britain (d c 40 AD). The inscription CAMV denotes the town of Camulodunum (Colchester) which was then Cunobelinos's capital. The coin shows a early fourth century BC found in the 19305 at B fangs in pursuit of a w The lower handle shows

n ear of wheat, indicating the importance of cereals to British Celtic economy. ---[Insert Pic cp09] A detail from the cauldron, dated to 100 BC, discovered at Gundestrup, Denmark. The cauldron may have had a ritual significance. It was certainly important in C eltic mythology and gave birth to the 'Holy Grail' of Christian Celtic Arthurian myth. ---[Insert Pic cp10] One of the bronze scabbard plates of a sword, dated to the first century AD. The plate was found at Isleham, Cambridge in 1976, during the harrowing of a field. ---[Insert Pic cp11] The Aylesford bucket, discovered in 1886 in a burial ground identified with the Cantii (of Kent), is dated to approximately 50 BC. ---[Insert Pic cp12] An enamelled bronze dragonesque brooch dated to the first century AD. ---From 81 to 73 BC Sertorius was in firm control of all Spain and was successful i n holding the province against attacks from several Roman armies, including one led by Pompey himself in 77 BC. But gradually he lost ground to Pompey and Metel lus and his popularity waned. He was assassinated in 73 BC by his lieutenant Per penna. Spain was once more under Roman control and Julius Caesar, the rising sta r of Rome, went there as Governor in 68 BC. He fought a campaign against the Cel tiberians and captured the hill-fort of Brigantium. Pompey became Governor in Sp ain in 55 BC while Caesar was busy in Gaul and during the ensuing civil war, in 49 BC, Caesar managed to defeat the army of Pompey's lieutenants, M. Terentius V arro and Marcus Petreius, having formed alliances with the Celtiberians. By the time of the Emperor Augustus (63 BC-AD 14) Latin was widespread across th e Spanish province. Towns, agricultural settlements and trading prosperity creat ed stable and peaceful conditions. The remnants of the old Celtic civilization s eemed to vanish very quickly before the Romanization. Muncipal self-government w as widely granted and the standard of prosperity in Spain became unique among th e provinces of the Roman empire. During the governorship of Sertorius, schools had been established for the child ren of Celtiberian chieftains. Soon the Celtiberians themselves were contributin g to Latin literature. Among the most famous was Marcus Valerius Martialis, or M artial (AD c.40-103/4), born in Biblis, who made a frank assertion of his Celtic identity. The poet Egnatius was a Celtiberian whose work was ridiculed at Rome for its 'provincialness'. Marcus Fabius Quintilanus (b. AD 35) was a Celtiberian from Calagurris who became a famous teacher of rhetoric at Rome. Roman writers had long extolled the Celtic mastery of rhetoric. Quintilian, as he is known, be

came the first rhetorician to receive an official salary from the state treasury , under the Emperor Vespasian. His most famous work became Institutio Oratoria ( Education of an Orator). By a curious twist of fate the Florentine humanist Pogg io Bracciolini (1380-1459) discovered the only complete manuscript of the work i n the Abbey of St Gallen (St Gall) in Switzerland in 1416. Curious because St Gallen, near the Lake of Constance, had been founded in the e arly seventh century AD by an Irish monk, Gall, who was one of Columbanus' disci ples. There were many other writers from Spain, such as Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Elde r (c.55 BC-AD c.37/41), born in Cordoba as was his son Seneca the Younger (4 BCAD 65) and his grandson Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, Lucan (AD 39-65). But it is hard to establish whether they were Romanized Celtiberians or the children of Roman colonists in Spain. Pomponius Mela (AD c.43) was from Tingentera, and his work o n the Celts, especially on the druids, preserves information not found elsewhere . Was he using lost written sources or was his information from personal knowled ge as a Celtiberian? However, there is no distinct Celtic note in the works of s uch writers as Canius Rufius of Gades, Decianus of Emeritia, Maternus of Biblis or Valerius Licinius, all of whom added to the treasury of Latin literature in t he years following Rome's conquest of Celtiberia. We know that a Celtic language was still spoken in many parts of Spain during th e first century AD. Publius Tacitus (AD 56/57-c.117) records this fact. But ther e are no mentions of Celtic survivals afterwards. We can only assume that by the following century Celtiberia had become merely a geographical label and that th e Celtic language and civilization was lost in that area. It is worth departing from our period for a word of explanation about a popular myth which has sprung up concerning the continued presence on the Iberian penins ula of a Celtic people, particularly in Galicia and Asturias, in the north-west of Spain. It is true that there are some identifiable signs of the remnants of C eltic culture there and several words of Celtic origin have survived in the Gali cian language, which is now spoken by 80 per cent of the population of Galicia a nd is being reintroduced into schools after nearly fifty years of ruthless perse cution by Franco's Fascist state. Galician is a Romance language, deriving from the same Hispanic dialect as Portuguese; Portuguese crystallized into a literary language distinct from Spanish in the sixteenth century. Because of these remnants there has been a tendency to believe that the Galician s are a survival of the original Celtic inhabitants of the Iberian peninsula. Th is is not so. During the fifth century AD, as the ancestors of the English began to push into Britain, driving the original Celtic inhabitants westward, many Ce ltic tribes decided that migration was the only way to escape the pagan hordes f looding into their once prosperous homelands. The major migrations to the Armori can peninsula, later to take its name of Brittany (little Britain) from the new settlers, is well known. However, other Celtic tribes from southern Britain arri ved on the northern seaboard of Spain, mainly in Asturias, between Lugo and Ovie do. Their settlements were recognized at the Council of Lugo in AD 5 67 as const ituting the Christian see of Bretona, whose bishop, Mahiloc, signed the acta of the Second Council of Braga in AD 572. The settlements spread and the settlers b equeathed a name to the new country - Galicia, which, it is argued, comes from t he same root as Galatia. But the British Celtic settlements in Galicia and Astur ias were quickly absorbed and even the Celtic Church's influence, which had been imported with them, ceased when Roman orthodoxy was accepted at the Council of Toledo in AD 633. The see of Bretona (see of the Britons) existed until at least AD 830, when it was ravaged by the Moors; perhaps it existed as late as the Cou ncil of Oviedo in AD 90c. It was finally merged with the see of Oviedo and Mondo nedo. Any Celtic remnants in this area of the country derived from the small Bri tish Celtic settlement of the fifth century and not from the pre-Roman-conquest

period of Celtic occupation. ------------------------------------4 - Cisalpine Gaul The Celts of the Po Valley of northern Italy, decisively defeated at Telamon in 225 BC and subsequently in Roman incursions into their country culminating with the defeat at Clastidium in 222 BC, were now subjected to the establishment of R oman military garrisons in their territory and to an aggressive Roman colonizati on policy. It was in the early spring of 218 BC that secret envoys arrived from Hannibal, the Carthaginian commander in Iberia, seeking an alliance against Rome . It would seem that Hannibal's envoys went to the chieftains of the Boii, for i t was envoys of this tribe who went to meet Hannibal and his army and led them t hrough the passes of the Alpine ranges. Hannibal and his army had made his famous march from New Carthage in Iberia to C isalpine Gaul in six months. He arrived with some 20,000 infantry and 6,000 cava lry and a few elephants. The army consisted not only of his Carthaginian soldier s but also of Numidian cavalry, Celtiberians and some Gaulish Celts who had join ed him en route. During his march he had lost some 15,000 to 20,000 men from his army: most of these casualties were during his astonishing November crossing of the Alps. The role of the Celtic guides from the Boii of Cisalpine Gaul in that crossing has never been properly acknowledged by historians. But without the Ce lts' knowledge of the mountain passes Hannibal could not have journeyed successf ully over the Alps in winter. When the news came that Hannibal was through the Alps and nearing their territor y, the Boii and their Insubrean neighbours rose up, as prearranged, and pinned d own the Roman military garrisons in their fortifications. The first garrison to be attacked was one which the Romans had placed at Taurini (Turin), the chief ci ty of the Taurini tribe. However, Publius Cornelius Scipio, one of Rome's two co nsuls for that year, 218 BC, who had failed to intercept Hannibal north of Massi lia, had already sent a warning to Rome. An army under a praetor was despatched north to check Hannibal before he could break out of the confinement of the moun tain passes into the fertile valley of the Po, where he would have complete mano euvrability. The Boii, who must have been able to field a considerable tribal ar my, moved south to meet the Romans and were able to check the progress of the Pr aetor's army, allowing the Carthaginians time to pass into the valley in safety. Scipio and his army had returned with all haste from Massilia, landing at Pisa, and began an immediate advance into the valley of the Po. Meanwhile, Rome's seco nd Consul, Tiberius Sempronius Longus, then in Sicily, was ordered to return and move his troops to Ariminium (Rimini) to support Scipio. In December 218 BC, on the Tincino river, the northern tributary of the Po where the Celts had defeate d an Etruscan army two centuries before, Scipio and Hannibal clashed. The Romans were routed and Scipio wounded. The Romans fled south of the Po. Tiberius Sempr onius Longus, having marched from Sicily in a record forty days, crossed the Tre bbia, a southern tributary of the Po, with an army of 40,000 men to launch a sur prise attack on Hannibal during a snowstorm. Hannibal had been warned by the Cel tic population. His cavalry struck hard at the advancing flanks of the Roman arm y, bending them back. From a concealed gully, Mago, one of Hannibal's younger br others, led a fierce charge against the enemy's rear. The encircled Romans fough t desperately. By the end of the day only half of their original force were able to fight their way to Placentia. The rest were fugitive, captured or dead in th e drifting snow. The Carthaginian victories put heart into the Celts of the Po V alley. In two brief encounters, Cisalpine Gaul was free of Rome. Thousands of Po Valley Celts now flocked to join Hannibal's army. During the rest of the winter, Hannibal rested his army near Bononia (Bologna),

the Boii tribal capital. In the early spring of 217 BC he began marching south t owards Rome, crossing the Apennines on the western side of the Italic peninsula. Rome had now changed her consuls. Scipio had been sent off to Iberia to join hi s brother Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio in seeking to drive the Carthaginians out. (*) ~~~~ Note: [*] See Chapter 3. ~~~~ Gaius Flaminius, the veteran of the war against the Cisalpine Celts, and Servili us Geminus had been given command of the armies. Flaminius was sent to Aretium ( Arezzo) while Geminus was sent to Ariminium (Rimini). Flaminius' plan was to att empt to get Hannibal's army between his army and that of Geminus, as had happene d to the Celts at Telamon. He allowed Hannibal's army to pass by his position th en, sending messages to Geminus, set off in pursuit. Hannibal's scouts were well informed. Reaching Lake Trasimeno, the Carthaginian commander placed his 35,000 men in wooded hills overlooking its waters. On the mist-shrouded morning of 21 June, the unsuspecting Flaminius and his 40,000 legionaries were suddenly assaul ted by Celts, Celtiberians, Carthaginians and Numidians as they were strung out in marching formation. It was one of the bloodiest ambushes of history. The enti re Roman army was destroyed, its soldiers either killed or taken captive. Among the dead was Flaminius. On Hannibal's side there were only 1,500 casualties, mos tly Celts, demonstrating the leading part played by them in the attack. Hannibal always placed his Celtic allies in his centre-front ranks during battle. Now Geminus' army, hastening up, was also attacked and destroyed. Rome was in tu rmoil. The senate appointed Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosis as dictator. The d ictator soon became unpopular for he avoided any open conflict with Hannibal and limited his attacks to harrying actions. However, Quintus Fabius had a reason f or this. It gave him time to raise and organize a new army. Perhaps Hannibal's g reatest military mistake was not proceeding directly to Rome after Lake Trasimen o. Without an army, the city would surely have fallen swiftly. But Hannibal beli eved that Rome would be defended and that he did not possess enough trained troo ps and equipment to conduct a siege. Instead, he marched into the country of the Samnites and then south-east into the rich plains near the Adriatic coast. He h alted in Apulia and made his headquarters at Geronium. Quintus Fabius had built up an army of 150,000 men, a force double the size of H annibal's. This army was now given over to the two new consuls, Gaius Terentius Varro and Lucius Aemilius Paullus, another veteran of the war against the Cisalp ine Celts. Varro was commander-in-chief. They marched to engage Hannibal, arrivi ng in Apulia in June 216 BC. After some minor skirmishes, they offered battle to Hannibal near the city of Cannae (Cannosa), near modern Barletta, overlooking t he low flat lands beside the River Aufidus (Ofanto). Varro placed in the field the largest Roman army ever assembled. He drew it up i n the traditional manner with his infantry in the centre and cavalry on either w ing, his lightly armed troops placed before his heavily armed legions. Hannibal positioned his Celtic and Celtiberian troops in the front ranks of his centre ar my; behind them were his Carthaginians, while on his left flank he placed Celtic cavalry and on his right Numidian cavalry. He had 40,000 infantry and 10,000 ho rse facing 80,000 Roman infantry and 6,000 horse. On 3 August 216 BC, the Roman army opened the battle with an attack on the centr e of Hannibal's army. The Celts and Celtiberians moved out to meet the attack an

d then, in a prearranged plan, began to fall back as if being forced by the Roma ns. Varro, thinking the centre was weakening, pushed his troops into the bulge, securing a large salient. However, as this was happening, Hanno, son of Vomilcar , led the Celtic cavalry around the right flank of the Roman lines and launched an attack on both flanks of Roman cavalry, while Maharbal led his Numidian caval ry from the left flank. The Roman cavalry was routed and the encirclement of the Roman army was complete. Hannibal pressed on the Roman infantry. They were assa iled on all sides and cut to pieces. Accounts give Roman deaths at Cannae as 50, 000, with 4,500 taken captive. Livy tells a story of a military tribune, Gnaeus Lentulus, who recognized the Co nsul Lucius Aemilius Paullus wandering on the battlefield covered in blood. Lent ulus urged the Consul to take his horse and escape. Paullus refused and told him to escape to Rome himself and tell the senate to fortify the city. Lentulus esc aped and the Consul was never seen alive again. The commander-in-chief, the Cons ul Varro, had already fled from the field and rallied a few thousand survivors a t Canusium. Among the officers killed were the former consuls Servilius, Atilius and Minucius. Out of thirty-three military tribunes, twenty-nine were killed, a nd eighty Roman senators were also slain. It was Rome's greatest defeat. Hanniba l had lost 5,700 men killed in the battle, of whom 4,000 were Celts, 1,500 Celti berians and Numidians. The Carthaginian commander had destroyed all Rome's fighting forces. The entire Italian peninsula was his. Yet once more he refused to attack Rome herself. In h is defence it is said that he lacked troops knowledgeable in siege warfare and t he necessary siege equipment. Once more he gave Rome time to rebuild her shatter ed forces. In Rome every house had lost sons and fathers. The dictator, Quintus Fabius, was not associated with Varro's defeat and was in firm charge of the def ences. Hannibal sent an envoy, Carthalo, to Rome to demand her surrender. Rome r efused. Hannibal was content to make Capua his headquarters. Most of the cities of southern Italy, the former Greek colonies of Magna Graeca, were happy to be liberated from Roman control. They joined Hannibal, and Capua became the capital of a powerful alliance supporting the Carthaginian. The fortu nes of the Cisalpine Celts, the Celts of the Po Valley, were also in the ascenda nt. Rome was beaten but she refused to submit. Quintus Fabius started to raise a new army and, because Hannibal refused to lay siege to Rome, the Carthaginian force s had to be content with taking secondary objectives. Among the various heroic actions which took place was the escape of a young Roma n military tribune named Publius Sempronius Tuditanus with 600 men from behind C arthaginian lines. Sempronius Tuditanus later wrote an historical account of the rise of Rome in which he maintained that the Etruscans were, in fact, a Celtic people; and this gave rise to a myth which has existed to this day. (See Epilogu e.) From Capua Hannibal marched to Naples, hoping to take the city, which was still holding out in alliance with Rome. He wanted to establish a seaport through whic h to bring in reinforcements from Carthage. However, at Nola, sixteen miles nort h-east of Naples, Marcus Claudius Marcellus, the victor of Clastidium, had estab lished a strong defensive position. Hannibal was forced to attack it and was rep ulsed. Quintus Fabius was raiding the countryside around Capua in an attempt to carry off corn and supplies. This war of skirmishing went on until 214 BC. Then Syracuse, in Sicily, taken from Carthage as part of the settlement of the First Punic War, rose in revolt against Rome. Marcellus was sent to bring it back unde r Roman rule. He laid siege to it with 25,000 men. It was a siege which lasted t wo years, ending when the Romans forced their way in during a festival. The gate s were opened, letting the Roman army flood into the city, where Marcellus allow

ed them to massacre many of the inhabitants. One of the most famous people to be killed in this slaughter was Archimedes (c.287-212 BC), perhaps the greatest ma thematician of the age, an astronomer, physicist and inventor, who lived at the court of Hieron II of Syracuse. During 212/211 BC a Roman army laid siege to Hannibal's capital at Capua. Hannib al tried to relieve the pressure on it by marching south and seizing Tarentum (T aranto) on the southern coast, hoping to draw the Roman army after him. However, although he captured the town he was unable to reduce the Roman fortress which guarded the entrance to the harbour mouth. This prevented the use of the harbour by the Carthaginian fleet. Hannibal's ruse had failed, for the Roman army besie ging Capua was not lured after him. The city was eventually forced into surrende r and, as a reprisal for its support of Hannibal, some fifty-three of its senato rs were executed while other officials were sold into slavery. Roman morale was boosted by the successes in Iberia. But the war became a slow c hess game, with Hannibal throughout 210-209 BC managing to take some important p ieces in the form of strategic towns. In 209 BC Hannibal was able to maul severe ly the Roman army of Marcellus, now returned to the Italian peninsula. However, the Romans managed to recapture Tarentum. In 207 BC Hannibal received news that his brother Hasdrubal was following his ro ute through Gaul and across the Alps with a new Carthaginian army, its compositi on much like Hannibal's, with Numidians, Celtiberians and Celts as well as Carth aginians. Hasdrubal had also recruited Ligurians, a people living west of the Po Valley and straddling the Alps between Cisalpine Gaul and Gaul itself. There is confusion over whether the Ligurians were Celts or constituted a separate peopl e. Hasdrubal arrived with his army in the spring of 207 BC and was able to recru it a great many Celts of the Po Valley. He sent a message to his brother Hanniba l, urging him to join him at the Metaurus river near Ancona for a united attack on Rome. The message never reached Hannibal - it was intercepted by the Romans. Rome now sent one of its consuls, Marcus Livius Salinator, to face Hasdrubal's a rmy, while the second Consul, Gaius Claudius Nero, was sent to blockade Hannibal and prevent him moving north to join his brother. However, when Nero realized t hat Hannibal had not received his brother's message, he made a decision which al tered the course of the war. He took 7,000 men from his army and marched to rein force Livius Salinator in the north. Hasdrubal's informants told him that the Roman armies had united and so he began to pull back to the Metaurus river before they could launch an attack. But he w as too late. Nero, commanding the right flank, launched an attack on the Celts h olding Hasdrubal's left flank. The Romans were quickly checked by the skill of t he Celtic troops. It was then that Nero made a second decisive decision. Withdra wing his men he force-marched them around the back of Livius Salinator's main ar my to the left flank and launched an attack on the Numidian positions. The Numid ians crumbled before his attack before Hasdrubal knew what was happening. In thi s flanking attack some 10,000 of Hasdrubal's army were slain, including Hasdruba l himself. Only 2,000 Romans were killed. The first Hannibal knew of his brother 's defeat and death was when a Roman threw Hasdrubal's severed head into Hanniba l's camp. Although Hannibal remained in Italy for a further four years, the Carthaginian c ommander never regained the impetus or success against Rome that the early years had given him. In 205 BC his brother, Mago, landed at Genoa with another army, but it was pinned down there by Roman forces for two years before Mago re-embark ed for Carthage. In the winter of 203 BC Carthage, under pressure from a Roman a rmy which had landed in Africa under Scipio Africanus, called Hannibal and his a rmy back to protect the city. (*) By the following year, with Hannibal's defeat at Zama, the Second Punic War had been brought to a close and once more Rome eme

rged as the victor. Rome now turned her gaze on Cisalpine Gaul, on the Celts of the Po Valley, which had been the door through which Hannibal had gained entrance to the Italic peni nsula. They had been Hannibal's unswerving allies against Rome. On the grounds t hat Carthage was still inciting the Celts of the Po Valley to insurrection again st Rome, the Roman senate authorized the conquest of the area. Roman armies marc hed north across the Apennines. In 199/198 and 197/196 BC it is recorded that th e Insubres alone lost 75,000 fighting men in battles with Rome. By 197 BC the Ce nomani had surrendered. In 196 BC the Insubres were granted surprisingly good te rms of surrender. In 192 BC the Boii decided to ask for terms. A chieftain of th e Boii and his family arrived at the camp of the Proconsul, T. Quinctius Flamini nus, and surrendered. ~~~~ Note: [*] See Chapter 7. ~~~~ The Proconsul murdered the chieftain and his family, apparently, says Livy, to e ntertain a sulky boyfriend. Flamininus was taken off the senate poll in 182 BC f or this and other acts considered unworthy of a Roman senator. From the Celtic v iewpoint, Roman justice was a trifle tardy. However, in 187 BC, Cisalpine Gaul was still far from conquered. Even those trib es which had already surrendered were a source of concern to Rome. That year the Roman General commanding the area decided to disarm the Cenomani, who immediate ly objected that this was against the treaty they had made with Rome in 197 BC. They took their case to the Roman senate and one of the consuls, M. Aemilius Lep idus, reversed the decision of the Roman commander and allowed them to keep thei r arms. In 186 BC a Celtic tribe called the Carni crossed the Alps with 17,000 fighting men, and tried to settle in the Po Valley. This seems to indicate that the Celti c population of the Po Valley was never static and that the tribes were continua lly moving. A Roman army commanded by a praetor was sent against them but it was not until 183 BC that they were driven back across the Alps. A similar thing ha ppened in 178 BC when a smaller group of 3,000 Celts appeared. They were named t he Stratielli and they built a town in the district of Aquileia. A Roman army un der Marcus Claudius Marcellus destroyed it. It was not until 173 BC that the Str atielli finally surrendered to M. Popilius Laenas, who promptly sold the entire tribe into slavery and auctioned their property. There were protests in the Roma n senate but Laenas had sufficient political backing for his actions. The gradual displacement of the Celtic population of Cisalpine Gaul by war and c onquest gave Rome an excellent opportunity to carry on a programme of colonizati on. Ex-soldiers of the Roman army, as well as other settlers, were encouraged to take over the farmsteads of the Celts as well as the towns. Those Celts who wer e not driven out of the Po Valley were to be Romanized. The Alps were now to be considered the boundary of the Roman/Celtic world and the Roman senate issued a proclamation forbidding the Celts to enter the territory. Cisalpine Gaul became Gallia Togata, the land of the Celts who wear the toga, that is Romanized Celts. Polybius (c.200-c.118 BC), the Greek historian from Megalopolis in Arcadia who b ecame pro-Roman, visited Cisalpine Gaul during these early years of Roman coloni zation and at a time when Celtic civilization there still thrived. 'Words fail t o describe the fertility of the country,' he says, ... travellers stopping at the inns do not make terms over each item separately,

but ask what the rate is per head; as a rule the innkeeper undertakes to give t hem all they want for a quarter of an obol [about half-a-penny in modern currenc y] and this price is seldom exceeded. Need I speak of the enormous population of the country, of the stature and good looks of the people, and of their warlike spirit? The description of the inns, or hostels, given by Polybius reminds one of the de scriptions of the inns and hostels in ancient Ireland as described in native tra dition, and of the native laws pertaining to the way such inns and hostels shoul d be run. The Celtic system of hospitality, the network of inns and hostels, had already become a by-word in the ancient world. Clearly the system lasted long a fter Rome's conquest of Cisalpine Gaul. Excavations at Ornavasso and in the neig hbourhood of Como show that the Celts, and in particular the Insubres, remained as distinctive civilizations in the Po Valley down to imperial times. In 90/89 BC, one hundred years after the conquest, the senate granted automatic Roman citizenship to all the inhabitants of Roman settlements and this was exten ded in 49 BC to cover all the inhabitants of Cisalpine Gaul. In 82 BC the Roman dictator, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, designated Cisalpine Gaul a Roman province. In 42 BC Cisalpine Gaul was part of Italy, Rome having achieved the conquest and a bsorption of all the peoples of the Italian peninsula. Cisalpine Gaul had ceased to exist and even the Celtic tribes in the southern foothills of the Alps were conquered by the Emperor Augustus just before the start of the Christian era. Only once more were the Celts of Cisalpine Gaul able to offer a threat to Rome, when many joined the slave army of Spartacus. In 73 BC Spartacus, a Thracian who had been brought to Capua, in Italy, to serve as a gladiator, broke out of capt ivity and established himself as a guerilla leader on the slopes of Mount Vesuvi us. After a year all attempts to capture him had been beaten off and he gathered a large rebel army which defeated two Roman armies. Thrace had ceased to be a C eltic kingdom only a hundred years before this time (*) and one can speculate wh ether Spartacus himself was a Thracian Celt. What is certain is that a large par t of his army was Celtic. The Celtic custom of single-handed combat rendered mos t Celtic captives liable to recruitment as gladiators. And, indeed, Spartacus' t wo generals, Crixos and Cenomaros, were Celts bearing Celtic names. When Crixos was killed in 72 BC, Spartacus slew 300 Roman prisoners in retaliation. He defea ted three more Roman armies and reached Cisalpine Gaul, where he drew large numb ers of recruits from the Celts of the Po Valley. In 71 BC Marcus Licinius Crassus finally cornered Spartacus in southern Italy an d defeated him. Spartacus appears to have been killed in the battle. Gnaeus Pomp eius Magnus (Pompey the Great) had just returned from Spain in time to annihilat e the remnants of Spartacus' army and take credit for ending the war. Crassus ce lebrated his victory by crucifying 6,000 prisoners along the Appian Way from Cap ua to the gates of Rome. Spartacus has become a legend not only for his daring s uccesses but for his reputation for personal bravery and his qualities of streng th and humanity. By the start of the period of the Roman empire, which began when Augustus (Gaius Octavius Caesar) accepted tribunician power for life in 23 BC and turned the re publican government into an hereditary system of emperors, the Celtic civilizati on of the Po Valley was disappearing rapidly. It seems to have disappeared altog ether by the end of the first century of the Roman empire. The loss to the Celti c world, however, was certainly Rome's gain, for a great deal of literary talent from Cisalpine Gaul gave a new impetus to Latin literature. The Celts of the ancient world, like their descendants, were rich in literary ta lent, from poets and storytellers to historians. Prior to the Christian era, how ever, the Celts were constrained by their culture which, as we have seen, prohib ited the writing down of their knowledge. Therefore only a few texts in continen

tal Celtic (Gaulish) survive. The famous Coligny Calendar of the first century B C, and the recently discovered Larzac inscription on a lead tablet, give us our longest-known Gaulish texts to date. The only other written remains appear on fu nerary inscriptions, manufacturer's markings on pottery and other goods and the occasional names and words recorded by Greek and Latin writers. ~~~~ Note: [*] See Chapter 5. ~~~~ The Celtic literary tradition was an oral one, highly sophisticated and relying on the power of mental cultivation. Caesar observed that it could take a druid u p to twenty years of training before he was sufficiently knowledgeable in law, p hilosophy, history and genealogy. It was from this oral tradition that the Irish Brehon Law system was first committed to writing in the Christian era and, soon after, the Welsh law system known as the Laws of Hywel Dda. But, as we have see n, the Celts of the ancient world certainly knew how to write, not only using th e alphabets of the Greeks and Romans but adopting them to their own sound system s in order to write their names. Following the Romanization of Cisalpine Gaul, m any Celts achieved enough fluency in Latin to give literary expression through i t, and soon these Celts gained literary reputations. These writers tend to be classified simply as 'Latin writers', just as in modern times there is a tendency to claim many Irish, Scots, Welsh, Manx and Cornish w riters as 'English' or Breton writers as 'French', largely because they write in the English or French language. For example, unfortunately typical is an entry in The Reader's Encyclopaedia (*) which states: 'Stoker (Abraham) Bram. (1847-19 12). English writer. Stoker is best known for Dracula (1987) ...' Stoker was, of course, an Irishman, born in Dublin and educated at Trinity College. He was thi rty-one years old before he first went to England. A close reading of his works shows his Irish origins but, because he wrote in English and not Irish, he is cl assed as English. In the same way many regard Jonathan Swift, Oliver Goldsmith, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Oscar Wilde, G. B. Shaw, Peter Cheyney - the list is endless - as English writers. As it is in modern times, so it was in the period before the start of the Christian era. The Celts who wrote in Latin have become Latin writers, just as Martial, a Celtiberian, is now generally regarded as a Ro man. However, during the first century BC, Rome recognized a 'school' of Celtic poets emanating from Cisalpine Gaul. One of the leading figures of this 'school' was Gaius Valerius Catullus (c. 85-54 BC), whose body of poetry has survived. He cam e from Verona, which was not then a Roman colony, and his name derives from the Celtic word catos clever. Catullus' patron appears to be Metellus Celer, Governo r of Cisalpine Gaul about 62, BC. Among other members of the 'school' was Helviu s Cinna, who was from Brixia, one of the chief towns of the Cenomani. ~~~~ Note: [*] Harper & Row, 1988, third edition. ~~~~ Catullus mentions that he wrote a long and complex poem entitled 'Zmyrna', based on mythological concepts. Cinna's poems are fascinating in that he introduces i nto Latin a number of Celtic words mainly connected with equestrian matters. Fur ius Bibaculus (c.103 25 BC) was from Cremona. His only surviving work is epigrams in which he mentions a fellow Cisalpine Gaul, a poet named Valerius Cato. Cato was originally a supporter of Julius Caesar during the civil-war period but late

r turned against him. Tacitus mentions that he wrote satires about Caesar. Anoth er writer, usually associated with this Cisalpine Celtic 'school', is M. Terenti us Varro (b. 8z BC), who was in fact from Transalpine Gaul. He contributed satir es, love elegies and a war epic, Bellum Sequanicum, which is thought to have bee n an account of the conquest of his own people, the Sequani, by Julius Caesar. U nfortunately, of the few lines of this which survive, little can be deduced abou t its subject. It is difficult to say how long the Celts of the Po Valley were contributing to Latin literature. As early as 179 BC, actually during the conquest and colonizat ion of Cisalpine Gaul, we find Caecilius Statius (or Statius Caecilius) of Medio lanum (Milan), which Strabo says was the chief town of the Insubres. Quintus Hor atius Flaccus (65-8 BC), the famous Horace, is on record as praising Caecilius, who is said to have combined lyrical quality with Aristophanic humour. Around 90/89 BC we find Lucius Pomponius of Bononia (Bologna), who becomes the f irst Celt to satirize his fellow countrymen. Among the many farces attributed to him is one called Galli Transalpini. Doubtless, Pomponius would be presenting h is fellow Celts to the Roman world in much the same way as certain Irish playwri ghts of the nineteenth century developed the 'stage Irishman' for English consum ption. While the Celtic writers made an impression on Rome, Roman writers were g enerally dismissive of their work, just as the English and French in modern time s, when speaking of their Celtic neighbours, make their 'Celticness' a matter of denigration. Cicero disliked the Celts, for example, although he had a number o f Celtic friends. He particularly disliked the Celts' accent when they spoke Lat in. He scorned Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesonius, who became one of the two Roman consuls in 58 BC, because he was actually the grandson of an Insubrean Celt! Pi so's daughter, Calpurnia, married Julius Caesar. There is some irony there - tha t the first Roman emperors were descended from Celts. Quintilian (AD c.35-96), h imself a Celtiberian, was quite dismissive of the Celtic writers from the Po Val ley, although he did allow himself to offer qualified admiration for an Insubrea n writer on Epicurean philosophy, T. Catius. Better known, however, was Cornelius Nepos (c.100-c.25 BC), another Insubrean Ce lt who, it is said, was a protege of T. Catius, from Ticinum. Catullus dedicated his book of poems to Nepos, who was a friend of Cicero and of Atticus. His writ ings included a universal history, Chronica, love poems, anecdotes and biographi cal works. According to Professor H.D. Rankin: 'He was a respected senior Celtic intellectual of his time, and perhaps, to some degree, the patron of Catullus a nd others from his native country.' How Nepos managed to be on friendly terms wi th Cicero probably reflects on Nepos' attitude to his Celtic background. Cicero, for example, felt the Celts to be unrefined, barbaric and lacking in manners. H e once launched an attack on the 'arrogance' of the Celts coming to Rome and wal king about in their alien dress in 'uncouth fashion' through the Forum. One conj ures up a picture of Nepos as being similar to certain modern Irish media person alities, making their way in the English world by denigrating the habits and att itudes of their fellow countrymen. Perhaps one does Nepos an injustice. Yet another respected Celtic historian was Trogus Pompeius, writing in the time of the Emperor Augustus (c.27 BC-AD c.14). He was a native of Transalpine Gaul a nd Justin says he was a member of the Vocontii tribe. The Celtic philologist, Pr ofessor Horst Schmidt, in a work on Gaulish personal names, quotes a number of G aulish names beginning with trog- and connects them with the Irish trog/truag me aning 'miserable', cognate with the Welsh tru. Trogus wrote a universal history in forty-four books entitled Historiae Philippicae, but only an epitome of it su rvives, written by Justin. More contentiously, Publius Vergilius Maro, the famous Virgil (70-19 BC), is cla imed as a Celtic writer. He was certainly from Cisalpine Gaul, born in Andes, ne ar Mantua, and educated at Cremona and Milan before going to Rome to study rheto

ric and philosophy. Most general works agree on his Celtic origin although some believe his family were Etruscan settlers in the area. Professor Rankin says: 'W e need not deny Celtic influences in the background of Virgil's life.' His poems are certainly rooted in the life among the Po Valley Celts. The Eclogues deal w ith the problems of land expropriation - a subject which Celtic poets were deali ng with 2,000 years later. Virgil's epic poem the Aeneid has secured him a place in the history of literature and, according to Professor Rankin, 'a Celtic flav our has been perceived in it.' The work became the supreme epic of the Roman wor ld. Before leaving the Celtic influence on Latin writing at this time we must mentio n Titus Livius, the historian Livy (57 BC-AD 17), who is something of an enigma. He was a native of Patavium (Padua) in Cisalpine Gaul. He can scarcely be claim ed as an admirer of anything Celtic and makes it clear that he considers the Cel ts' culture to be inferior and claims they have a lack of stamina and instabilit y of temperament. And yet his writing shows a style which differentiates itself from his fellow Latin writers. Can it be that he speaks of the Celts simply as a Latin who is proud not to be one a Latin colonial, having to grow up in a Celti c territory, perhaps in much the same way that Rudyard Kipling grew up in Bombay despising Indians? Or, more significantly, does Livy write as a Celt who is ash amed of being one and is at pains to conceal the fact - a figure all too familia r in the history of the Celtic peoples? Livy's history of Rome from its founding, written in 142 books of which only 35 survive, has been described as imaginative and epic rather than scholarly. Camil le Jullian has suggested that Livy's work was probably based on the imaginative Celtic epics interwoven in the Roman historical tradition. Episodes from Livy's history compare fascinatingly with episodes from native Celtic tradition. We hav e already mentioned the story of Valerius Corvus (*) and his single-handed comba t: the episode of the crow which seems more at home in the Tain Bo Chuailgne tha n in a Latin history. The Roman historian, literary patron and statesman Gaius A sinius Pollio (76 BC-AD 4) criticized Livy for his provincial manner of expressi on, and clearly Livy was associated with the 'barbaric' lifestyle, speech and ha bits of the Celts of the Po Valley. By the time of the Roman emperors, the Celts of the Po Valley, becoming more and more Romanized, were also playing their part in building the empire, just as th e Irish, Scots, Welsh, Manx and Cornish gave individual contributions to the cre ation of England's empire. But they did so as Latins. ~~~~ Note: [*] See Chapter 2. ~~~~ From Celtic speech, the Celts of the Po Valley had passed through a period of bi lingualism, which, according to Professor Rankin, had given the impetus for the Celtic 'school' of writing during the first century BC. Referring to the Cisalpi ne Celtic poets' use of onomatopoeia and wordplay, he comments that this 'could easily be stimulated by the linguistic and cultural influence of a Celtic substr ate'. All too soon, bilingualism gave way to monolingualism in the language of t he conqueror and the Celts of the Po Valley became merged in the new Italian nat ion created by Rome. ---------------------------5 - The Sack of Delphi Livy informs us that at the same time that Bellovesos led the Celtic tribes into

northern Italy his brother, Sigovesos, took other tribes eastwards in Europe. L ivy says they settled in the Hercynian Forests of Central Europe. Archaeology in dicates an eastward movement along the course of the Danube. Justin, writing his abridgement of the Historiae Philippicae by the Romanized Celtic historian Trog us Pompeius, says the Celtic tribes made for Illyria, guided there by birds, 'fo r the Celts are pre-eminent in the augur's art'. Illyria was an area of modern Y ugoslavia, east of the Adriatic and bordering on the kingdoms of Macedonia and E piros. Justin also records that some of the Celts settled in Pannonia (modern Hu ngary) and 'had various wars with their neighbours which lasted for a long time, and at last reached Greece and Macedonia, overthrowing everything before them'. Unfortunately, we know little of the eastward movement until the Celts came into conflict with the Greeks and their arrival emerges in the written record. Trogu s, via Justin, confirms the presence of Celtic tribes in the Carpathians around 358 BC. Archaeological evidence confirms that during the fifth and fourth centur ies BC the Celts had started to settle at the start of the Balkan peninsula. The opompos of Chios (c.376-after 323 BC), an able Greek historian and friend of Phi lip II of Macedonia and later of Alexander the Great, wrote numerous books, incl uding a continuation of Thucydides' history of Greece. In this later work he rec ounts the collision of the Celts with the Illyrian tribes on the Dalmatian coast opposite Pharos (Lesina) and Corcyra Nigra (Curzola) somewhere near the mouth o f the Naron (Narenta). The predominant people of Illyria at this time were the A ntariatae, whose lands extended into Bulgaria. According to the Periplus of Scyl ax of Caryanda (511-486 BC), often quoted by Hecateus and other authors, they we re a large, powerful people at the height of their military powers when the Celt s arrived there. The Antariatae had exerted their authority over Macedonia and f orced Amyntas II, the father of Philip II, to pay tribute to them in 393 BC. In 359 BC Bardulis, King of the Antariatae, defeated the army of Perdiccas III of M acedonia, brother of Philip II, and killed him. It was thus that Philip became K ing and he was eventually successful in driving back the Antariatae. It has been suggested that Philip of Macedonia might have formed some alliance w ith the Celtic tribes settling in Illyria as a means of subduing the power of th e Antariatae, for many of his coins have appeared among the Celtic archaeologica l finds in the Danube Valley. Similarly, it has been suggested that it was the C elts who kept the Antariatae occupied while Alexander of Macedonia was subduing the Thracians just after he came to the throne. One of the most influential Celtic tribes of the area was the Scordistae, who bu ilt their tribal capital at Singidunum, near present-day Belgrade. Dr Jan Filip, the Czech Celtic scholar, is of the opinion that in some areas of the east the Celts settled as a ruling class only, but we lack reliable information. What we do know is that the Celtic move eastward covered a very wide area. Celtic cemete ries dating from this period and hill-forts have been found as far north as Wroc law (Breslau) in Poland and as eastward as Krakow (Cracow) and even further alon g the Tisza river, beyond Kosice into the Ukraine. These settlements are, howeve r, sparse. The concentration of such hill-forts and cemeteries, showing a densit y of Celtic occupation, occurs in Czechoslovakia and Hungary. And we know that t he Celtic Boii gave their name to part of this area - Bohemia. Unfortunately, it is only when the Celts entered the Greek world that they emerge into recorded h istory. The Greeks had recognized the quality of Celtic warriors in the fourth century a nd had started to recruit them as mercenaries into their armies. Yet the recruit ment was made, not from the Celts on their northern borders, but from the Celts of Cisalpine Gaul. Xenophon (c.42.8-354 BC), the historian and disciple of Socra tes, records that Dionysius of Syracuse, the Greek colony in Sicily (430 367 BC), had recruited 2,000 Celts from Cisalpine Gaul in 366 BC and sent them to Sparta. Sparta was then engaged in a war against the rising power of Thebes. Xenophon h ad great praise for the Celtic prowess as cavalry. He knew what he was talking a

bout for he had served in the Spartan cavalry. Describing an encounter between t he Celts and the Thebans near Corinth, Xenophon says: Few though they were, they were scattered here and there. They charged towards t he Thebans, threw their javelins, and then dashed away as the enemy moved toward s them, often turning around and throwing more javelins. While pursuing these ta ctics, they sometimes dismounted for a rest. But if anyone charged upon them whi le they were resting, they would easily leap on to their horses and retreat. If enemy warriors pursued them far from the Theban army, these horsemen would then turn around and wrack them with their javelins. Thus they manipulated the entire Theban army, compelling it to advance or fall back at their will. When Epaminondas of Thebes invaded Sparta, the Spartans used their Celtic cavalr y to good effect. Sparta's dominant role had been weakened by the loss of Messen ia, which had been re-formed in 370/369 BC into an independent state after 300 y ears' servitude to Sparta. Thebes had had a hand in this, and the formation of a league of Arcadian states against Sparta was also the work of Thebes. The war b etween Thebes and Sparta ended in 362 BC at the battle of Maninea, in which the Celtic cavalry played an important role. While Maninea was nominally a Theban vi ctory, Thebes suffered the death of her king Epaminondas and so a peace was made . It was about this time that Ephoros of Cyme named the Celts as one of the three great peoples on the circumference of the world and assigned north-west Europe a s their homeland. But the Celtic peoples were already nearing the northern borde rs of the Greek states. In 336 BC Philip II of Macedonia was killed by one of his bodyguard, coincidenta lly with a Celtic sword. When the sword was removed it was described as a short, broad-bladed Celtic sword with an ivory handle carved with the image of a chari ot. The Macedonians saw this as a fulfilment of a prophecy which had warned Phil ip to beware of chariots. Philip's son Alexander (356-323 BC) became King of Mac edonia. Soon he exerted his authority as overlord of all the Greek states and th en turned to consolidate his northern frontiers. Having brought Thrace under his rule he moved to the banks of the Danube, and the peoples of the surrounding ar ea came to his camp to form alliances and settle treaties with him. Among the peoples who sent envoys to his camp were the Celtic tribes who now dwe lt on the Adriatic coast of Illyria. Arrian, who is quoting Ptolemy, son of Lagu s, who was one of Alexander's generals, says that Alexander received the Celts a micably. He gave a feast for them. They were, says Arrian, 'men of haughty demea nour and tall in proportion'. During the feast Alexander asked the Celts what th ey feared most, expecting them to answer 'You, my lord.' However, their reply wa s startling to the would-be conqueror of the world: 'We fear only that the sky w ill fall on our heads.' Strabo also describes the scene, again attributing it to Ptolemy's account. The Celtic envoys added, however, that they also 'put above everything else the friendship of such a man as he'. Alexander, perhaps somewhat abashed, made a treaty of friendship with them. Later, records Arrian, Alexande r commented that for barbarians the Celts had a ludicrously high opinion of them selves. Alexander and his historians seem to misunderstand the main thrust of the Celtic statement. While certainly declaring that they had no fear of Alexander, they w ere using a ritual formula to emphasize their good intentions and a desire for a treaty of equals. Their words were, in fact, a form of oath which was still to be found in Irish law tracts a millennium later, committing the individual's cor poreal integrity to keep a bargain but also invoking natural elements: 'We will keep faith unless the sky fall and crush us or the earth open and swallow us or the sea rise and overwhelm us.'

This meeting of Alexander the Great and the Celts on the banks of the Danube in 334 BC was a significant one. It was the first meeting of Celts and Macedonians on an equal basis and the treaty of friendship seems to have lasted during the r est of Alexander's reign, while he left his northern frontiers undefended and to ok his army into Asia Minor to carve his famous empire. Again quoting Ptolemy, A rrian says that in 323 BC a group of Celtic envoys made the journey to Babylon t o meet with Alexander, at that time engaged in plans to open a sea route from th e mouth of the Euphrates to Egypt. Not long after this, Alexander suddenly fell ill at a drinking party, perhaps through fever or poison, and, after ten days, d ied. In order to understand the subsequent history of the Celts in the Hellenic world , we must understand the turmoil into which that world was plunged following the death of Alexander. He was only thirty-three years old when he died and no prov ision had been made for a successor. Unlike the Celtic system, where chieftains were elected, and unlike the system then pertaining in the Roman republic where two consuls were elected annually, the system among the Greek states was that ki ngs inherited titles under the law of primogeniture, under which the eldest-surv iving legitimate son inherited. Alexander had been survived by an illegitimate s on, Heracles, a boy of ten years of age. But he had left his wife Roxana pregnan t. The Macedonian empire fell into chaos as Alexander's generals formed factions and these rival factions went to war. The Wars of the Hellenistic Monarchies, a s they became known, lasted for a couple of centuries until the Roman republic e ventually established its rule over the kingdoms. Following a battle at Ipsus in 301 BC, Alexander's empire split into four major spheres of power the kingdoms of Macedonia, Thrace, Egypt and Syria. In Macedoni a Antipater became Regent, ostensibly for Alexander's legitimate heir, a son bor n of Roxana after his death. But Antipater established his own dynasty, which la sted until 294 BC, when a series of usurpers seized power for varying periods. T he last of these was Ptolemy Ceraunnos (281-279 BC), who led the Macedonian army out to confront the Celtic army of Brennos and Acichoros, only to meet defeat a nd death. In Egypt at the time of Alexander's death, Ptolemy son of Lagus was Military Gov ernor. He decided to hang on to Egypt, ruling it until in 306 BC he adopted the title of pharaoh, becoming Ptolemy I Lagi, the founder of the Ptolemy dynasty, w hich survived three centuries until the death of Cleopatra, the last Ptolemy rul er. Another general, Seleucos, a close friend and comrade of Alexander, had been his deputy in Syria. Seleucos now established himself as Seleucos I (311-180 BC) wi th his capital at Babylon. He then built a new city, Seleucia, on the Tigris, wh ich he used before finally making his capital at Antioch (modern Hataz Antakya). Like all the former generals squabbling over Alexander's empire, Seleucos had a n ambition to rule the entire empire. Lysimachos, another general, had seized th e Macedonian throne and the two former comrades met at Corupedion in 281 BC. Bot h men were now octogenarians. They decided to settle their differences by fighti ng in single combat; Seleucos slew Lysimachos and put the Macedonian army to fli ght. Seleucos then crossed into Macedonia in 280 BC to claim the throne. However , Ptolemy Ceraunnos, another former general of Alexander, had meanwhile seized t he throne. He was able to slay Seleucos and drive his Syrian army back into Asia Minor. Seleucos' son, Antiochus, called Soter or saviour, became King of Syria. In the meantime, the Celts were still expanding on the northern borders of the G reek states. Greek chroniclers noticed that in 310 BC their old enemies the Anta riatae of Illyria, the former great military power of the area, began to flee so uth in panic. The event was so extraordinary that it caused ructions in the Mace donian world. The Antariatae attempted to cross into Macedonia in strength. Cass ander (c.358-297 BC), who was son of Antipater and ruler of Macedonia at this ti

me, managed to contain them and allowed 20,000 of them to settle on his border. What had happened was that a great Celtic army led by a chieftain named Molistom os had moved into Antariatae territory, causing them to flee before them. It was the first indication that the Celts, who had remained quiet and settled since t heir treaty with Alexander, were now beginning to move down the Balkan peninsula towards the Greek states. By 300 BC they were spreading eastward as well and had reached the valley of Mor ava, from where they became a threat to Thrace. In 298 BC a Celtic army advanced into the territory of modern Bulgaria where the Macedonian King Cassander oppos ed them. Cassander and his Macedonians managed to defeat the Celts on the slopes of Haemos. The following year Cassander died and once more the Celts were on th e move. A Celtic army entered Thrace, led by Cambaules (which name perhaps means crooked hand). Thrace was bounded by the River Danube (called the Ister) to the north, the Black Sea and Bosporus in the east and Hellespont, Macedonia and Pro pontis in the south. An Indo-European people, the Thracians were considered prim itive and barbaric by the Greeks, who had colonized the country extensively. Und er Philip II of Macedonia Thrace had become a Macedonian protectorate. Now Thrac e fell to Cambaules and remained under Celtic dominance for a hundred years. The last King of Thrace to bear a distinct Celtic name is recorded in 193 BC. In 281/280 BC the Celts took further advantage of the rivalries between Alexande r's successors. Three separate Celtic armies gathered on the northern borders an d began an invasion of the Greek heartland. The main source of the history of th ese events would appear to be Hieronymus of Cardia, regarded as the most trustwo rthy historian of the period between the death of Alexander and the death of Pyr rhus of Epiros (323-272 BC). Hieronymus lived during the period he was describin g and therefore his knowledge is first hand. While his original history is now l ost, he is quoted extensively in the works of Diodorus and Arrian. An eastern army of Celts, commanded by Cerethrios - the name could mean the rock - attacked from Bulgaria, coming out of Thrace on the eastern side of the penin sula. From Illyria, another army led by Bolgios - the name could mean glutton, a lthough Hubert prefers thunderbolt - came to Epiros and Macedonia. Bolgios enter ed Macedonia near Monastir (Bitola). He sent envoys to the King, Ptolemy Ceraunn os, who, having killed Seleucos of Syria, was consolidating his position in orde r to take over Alexander's empire. Ptolemy Ceraunnos was not perturbed by the ar rival of the Celts; after all, they were merely outlandish barbarians with, as A lexander had said, a ludicrously high opinion of themselves. He promptly killed the Celtic envoys who arrived at his court. When Bolgios and the Celtic army appeared on the plains of Macedonia seeking ven geance, Ptolemy realized his mistake. The Macedonian army, which had fought and conquered under Alexander as far as India and Egypt, was scattered like chaff. P tolemy Ceraunnos himself was slain in the battle and his head was placed on the point of a spear. The Celts moved through Macedonia pillaging and burning. A Mac edonian officer named Sosthenes managed to regroup remnants of the army and cond uct a small-scale guerilla war which kept Bolgios pinned down in Macedonia. However, in 279 BC, the main Celtic thrust against Greece came with the appearan ce of a central army commanded by Brennos and Acichorius. Brennos, like his name sake who had sacked Rome, could be a proper name or simply a title, brennin - ki ng. It has been suggested that Brennos and Acichorius might have been one and th e same person. Most historians, however, identify them as separate individuals. Diodorus refers to Acichorius as Cichorius. The name could mean his sister's dog . This central army had been fighting the hill tribes of Haemos through Paepnoa. W hen it descended into Macedonia it was reckoned, by Greek historians, to consist of 150,000 infantry and between 15,000 and 20,000 cavalry. Each horseman was ac

companied by two mounted companions, the body of three being called a trimarkisi a. The figures were undoubtedly boosted by Greek historians to allow them a dignifi ed position in the events which followed. In Macedonia, Sosthenes, a soldier of modest origins we are told, had managed to keep Bolgios from entirely swamping the kingdom. But with the arrival of Brenno s and Acichorius the Celtic army became overwhelming and soon passed on towards the other Greek states, leaving troops to prevent Macedonia from rising behind t hem. The Celtic army swept southwards. The Greeks decided to confront the Celts at Thermopylae, the narrow pass linking Greece with the north between Thessaly and Locris. The Phocians had built a wal l there to check the southerly raids of the Thessalians. In 480 BC the Persian i nvaders found a mountain pass at Thermopylae and managed to outflank the Spartan defenders and annihilate them there. That tragic piece of Greek history could n ot have escaped the memory of the armies that gathered at Thermopylae to defend the pass against the Celts. The army was predominantly an Athenian army, command ed by Callippus, son of Moerocles. Callippus decided to prevent the Celts from r eaching the pass and sent a detachment of horsemen to the River Spercheius, nort h of the pass, to break down all the bridges over the fast-running waters. Brennos and Acichorius reached the Spercheius and found the bridges down and the Greek army encamped on the opposite bank. Brennos sent a detachment of men to f ord the river higher up in calmer water. The Celtic warriors are said to have sw um across using their long shields as rafts. The next morning they created a few diversionary raids, causing Callippus to believe that the main Celtic army had crossed. He withdrew his army back to the pass at Thermopylae. With the opposition gone, Brennos and Acichorius were able to cross the river at leisure. They commenced the rebuilding of the bridges, using the local populati on as forced labour. The Celtic army raided the surrounding countryside for prov isions but they did not launch an attack on the city of Heracleia, whose citizen s had shut their gates. Instead of engaging in a prolonged siege, the Celts seem ed anxious to meet the Greek army and defeat it. Each day, Callippus' army was b eing reinforced with contingents from other Greek states. Brennos and Acichorius reached the pass at Thermopylae within a few days. It was Callippus who began the battle, advancing on the Celtic lines at sunrise, quiet ly and in good order. The rough terrain and steep slopes of the mountains render ed use of the Celtic cavalry and chariots impossible. The fighting had to be don e by the footsoldiers. Pausanias (AD c.160) says the Celts fought impressively, some reportedly pulling out Greek javelins from their bodies and casting them ba ck at their enemies. As the battle for the pass raged, Callippus ordered an Athe nian contingent to row down the coast and land to attack the flank of the Celtic army, using arrows and slingshots. The Celts were hard-pressed and many, trying to face the new attack from the seaward flank, encountered a coastal marshland, caused by the silting of the coast, which bogged them down in its mud. Casualti es were heavy. Fighting lasted all day and both sides finally withdrew to their respective lines at nightfall. For an entire week the two armies kept their positions. Brennos is said to have devised a plan to split the Greek ranks. Obviously well informed about Greek pol itics and knowing that the union of the Greek city states was a temporary phenom enon, he detached his cavalry, which had been useless for fighting at Thermopyla e, to enter the neighbouring region of Aetolia. They sacked the town of Callion and although the Oatians sent an army to the Aetolians' aid they were completely defeated. Greek propaganda went overboard in recounting the sack of Callion. He re the Celts were said to have eaten the flesh of infants and drunk their blood,

while the women of the town ran themselves on to the Celts' swords rather than be taken alive. The Celtic warriors are said not to have abstained from intercou rse with the dead and dying women. The list of atrocities is remarkably similar to Herodotus' account of the Persian invasion. The Celts certainly plundered Aet olia and the news reached the ears of the Aetolians serving in Callippus' army, as the Celtic commanders knew it would. The Aetolians immediately left their com rades to hasten to defend their homeland. Brennos and Acichorius had succeeded i n splitting the Greek army. Brennos now persuaded some of the local people to show him a mountain pass acros s Mount Oeta which would outflank Callippus' position in the main pass of Thermo pylae. On Mount Oeta was a temple of Athena which Callippus had garrisoned in ca se the way was discovered. Telesarchos was the Greek commander of this garrison and despite an assault by the Celts he managed to hold out. Finally, however, th e Celts bypassed the temple and moved round the flank and rear of Callippus' arm y. Their descent behind the Greeks was hidden in a morning mist. Fighting was fi erce but the Celts held the advantage. Callippus managed to save the majority of his Athenian contingent by evacuating them to their ships and so prevented the disaster which had overwhelmed Leonidas and his Spartans when they tried to hold the pass against the Persians in 480 BC. The Greek accounts praise the bravery of a young Athenian named Cydias, who was fighting his first and last battle. Wh en he fell his shield was taken to Athens and dedicated in the temple of Zeus El euthrios. Centuries later it was stolen by the Roman dictator Sulla when he camp aigned in Greece between 86 and 84 BC. The Greek army had been beaten. The pass at Thermopylae lay open, the road to th e rich Greek city states was unimpeded. All Greece lay undefended before the Cel ts. Leaving Acichorius at Heracleia to keep the Aetolians and Phocians at bay, Brenn os turned his army and came by way of the gorges of Parnassos to Delphi in Phoci s. Delphi was situated on the southern slopes of Mount Parnassos, the site of th e most famous oracle of Apollo, and the most sacred site of the Hellenic world. It had been continuously occupied since Mycenaean times (c.1400 BC). This was th e residence of the oracle, the Pythia (python), a female who had to be fifty yea rs of age before her appointment and thereafter lived a life of seclusion making pronouncements to those who consulted her. Kings, emperors and dictators throug hout the Hellenic world, and later Rome, came to seek her judgements. Terracotta figures of the priestess dating back to the twelfth century BC have been found, although worship of Apollo as an oracle god of prophecy is said to have commenc ed only in the eighth century BC. The temple of Delphi had been destroyed in 373 BC in an earthquake but had been rebuilt. It was not until AD 391 that the Empe ror Theodosius finally closed it in the name of Christianity. Brennos and his Celts made their way to the temple complex. The Greek historians claim storms and earthquakes marked their coming, causing panic among the Celti c warriors. The ghosts of Greek heroes were said to have risen up to defend the sacred site. Although the Greek historians had the gods on their side, they were unable to change history. The Celts raided Delphi and slew the Pythia, making o ff with the fabulous treasures which had been collected at the site over the cen turies. An army of Aetolians and Phocians came racing up to defend their gods an d treasures but were unable to prevent the Celts making an orderly withdrawal, w ith the treasure, to rejoin Acichorius near Heracleia. However, Brennos was said to have been wounded in the attacks. The Romanized Celtic historian Trogus Pompeius, quoted by Justin, recorded that within the Celtic army were warriors from a tribe called the Tectosages. The Tec tosages are later named as one of the founding tribes of Galatia. However, they also appear in Gaul, where their tribal capital was Tolosa (Toulouse). Whether t he three geographically disparate people were one tribe, or whether they were di

fferent tribes using a similar name, or again whether they were different branch es of one tribe, is unclear. Trogus says that part of the great treasure of Delp hi passed into their keeping. When the Romans captured Tolosa in 106 BC, the Con sul Quintilius Servilius Caepio found treasure in a sacred Celtic lake nearby. S trabo claimed it was part of the Delphic treasure. Caepio took charge of it and was ordered to transport it to Rome. However, it vanished en route with its guar ds. Caepio was said to have been ordered into exile for complicity in the affair and a new phrase entered the Latin language - aurum Tolosanum, Toulouse gold', meaning ill-gotten goods. What happened to Brennos, Acichorius and the Celtic army is somewhat confused. T he Greek historians, enraged by the sack of Delphi, now draw a picture of a brok en and accursed Brennos. For his act of sacrilege at Delphi, it is said that Apo llo wounded him three times with his own hand. Then they say that Brennos, reali zing his profanity, took his own life. A small bronze statue in the Naples museu m, a replica of the original, is said to represent his suicide. The Celts are th en reported to have moved northwards out of Greece, leaving it in disarray. Acce pting the suicide of Brennos as true, or his death by some other means, such as from his wounds in battle, it is obvious that the Celtic army did not leave Gree ce in confusion. They withdrew in an orderly manner taking their loot with them. No Greek army was strong enough to attack them. In fact, the city states were i n such turmoil that the famous celebration of the Panathenaea had to be suspende d for the year 278 BC. Soon afterwards a festival to celebrate the deliverance o f the Greeks by the puzzling withdrawal of the Celts, called the Soteria or Salv ation Festival, was instituted by the Amphictiones, the religious assembly of th e Greek states. The Greeks were clearly shocked by what had happened. The event had an effect on the Greek literary world, and for a long time poetic epics about the Celtic inv asion were composed and these works were collectively known as Galatika. Unfortu nately, none has survived. The Celtic invasion was also commemorated by other ar tforms. Pausanius says that the battle at Thermopylae between Brennos and Callip pus was depicted in a great wall painting in the council chamber of Athens. Othe r such paintings were to be found in the temples of Apollo in both Greece and It aly; many also showed the sack of Delphi. Propertius (c.50 BC - after 16 BC) rec ords that at Delos and even in Rome there were commemorations. In Rome, on the i vory doors of the temple of the Palatine, were carvings of the Celts sacking Del phi. Minor artworks, pendants, as well as paintings, have emerged in various par ts of the Hellenic world. A medallion found in Capua shows a Celtic warrior with his foot on the severed head of the Pythia while on the bottom of a goblet, pro duced in Gales, Celtic warriors are seen against a background of the burning col onnades of Delphi. In 277 BC a Celtic army was still in northern Greece. Antigonus Gonatas, the gra ndson of one of Alexander's generals who had been killed at Ipsus in 301 BC, had arrived in Macedonia. Since the Celts had slain Ptolemy Ceraunnos, Macedonia ha d been without a king. Antigonus Gonatas had made an alliance with Antiochus I o f Syria and with his blessing was able to claim the Macedonian throne. His fathe r Demetrios had ruled Macedonia from 294 to 287 BC, and on that fact he had base d his claim. Antigonus Gonatas found that he had one obstacle in his path. The C elts were still in Macedonia. According to Trogus, quoted by Justin, he despatch ed envoys to the Celts, asking them to send ambassadors to meet with him. The am bassadors duly went to see him and returned to their chieftains with enthusiasti c accounts of Antigonus Gonatas' wealth and simplicity of character. It would ap pear that Antigonus had crossed from Asia Minor into Macedonia, for the Celts be lieved they could overwhelm his camp by a surprise night attack and loot his tre asures. They gathered their army on the Gallipoli peninsula and made their attac k. It was an ambush. The camp was deserted and suddenly the Celts found Antigonu s attacking them in the rear.

Having defeated the Celts, Antigonus Gonatas came to an agreement with them. He was obviously not yet sufficiently secure in his position as King of Macedonia s imply to attempt to drive them out of the country. He therefore recruited a larg e force into his army under the leadership of their chieftain Ceredrios. When Py rrhus of Epiros returned to Greece in 275 BC, following his campaigns in Italy, the Celts served Antigonus Gonatas against him. Pyrrhus, who had reigned as King of Macedonia for a brief year in 287 BC, wanted to re-establish himself as king there. He defeated Antigonus Gonatas and, according to Pausanius, especially re joiced that he had been able to vanquish the Celtic mercenaries in the Macedonia n army. He recruited them into his own army and allowed them to sack the rich to mbs of the ancient Macedonian kings at Aegae. In an attempt to reassert Macedoni an authority he marched against Sparta in 272 BC with a strong Celtic contingent and then turned against Argos, in the north-east Peloponnese, where he was kill ed. Antigonus Gonatas returned to the throne of Macedonia, which he was able to keep for thirty-two years, from 271 to 239 BC. He continued to use Celtic warriors a s mercenaries in his army and Justin recounts that down to the end of the Macedo nian Wars of Succession the Celts left their dead scattered about the battlefiel ds of Greece, martyrs to the cause of every Greek party and faction. In 265 BC a contingent of Celts were stationed in the city of Megara and mutinie d because of irregular and poor pay. Megara, a Dorian city at the eastern end of the isthmus of Corinth, was where Eucleides of Megara (c.390 BC) founded his sc hool of philosophy. The mutiny was suppressed and all the Celts were put to the sword. Celtic warriors were still serving in the Macedonian army when Perseus, the last of the Antigonidae kings, ascended the throne in 179 BC. He devoted his energie s to consolidating Macedonian power in Greece, supposedly independent but, in re ality, subject to the will of Rome. In 171 BC Perseus actually felt strong enoug h to challenge Rome's will and the Third Macedonian War began. At Larissa, in ea stern Thessaly, Perseus, using a large force of Celtic warriors, repulsed the Ro man army. In 168 BC Lucius Aemilius Paullus led a Roman army into Macedonia wher e, on 22 June, he encountered Perseus. Perseus attacked the Romans at Pydna on t he western shore of the Gulf of Salonika. Rome triumphed and some 20,000 members of the Macedonian army were killed and 11,000 were taken prisoner. Perseus hims elf was captured and he ended his days in exile in Rome in 166 BC. The mighty em pire of Alexander the Great was now a province of Rome. However, Andriscos, a cl aimant to the Macedonian throne, attempted an uprising in 149 BC, causing the Fo urth Macedonian War. The uprising was crushed, Andriscos was executed and the tr adition of Celtic mercenaries serving in the Macedonian army was finally brought to an end. Returning to the year 277 BC, when Antigonus Gonatas defeated the last independe nt Celtic army in Greece and recruited them not only for Macedonia but, as we sh all see in subsequent chapters, for the armies of other Hellenistic kings, there is a question to be asked. The dispersal of the Celtic armies could not have be en achieved simply by their recruitment as mercenaries, that is if we are to bel ieve the Greek estimates of their size. It would seem that the bulk of them move d north again, having found no room in populated Greece to settle. The Celts discovered more space on the northern plains of Morava, Maritza and al ong the Danube Valley, where towns sprang up bearing Celtic names such as Bonia (Vidin), Ratiaria (Artcher), Durostorum (Silistria) and Noviodunum (Isakcha). Ca mbaules' original conquest of Thrace still held firm but according to Polybius a nd Trogus, as quoted by Justin, the Celts of Thrace eventually became Hellenized and disappeared as a distinct culture, leaving few remnants of their civilizati on. They struck coins, some bearing Celtic names like Cauros, the last King of T hrace to bear a distinctive Celtic name in 193 BC. According to Polybius, Cauros

was a very successful political leader who acted as an arbiter between Byzantiu m and the King of Bithynia. He is recorded as a diplomat and a just man who had a kingly nature and greatness of soul. He is also said to have kept good order i n his dominions. Polybius, writing in praise of Cauros, sounds as if he knew Cau ros personally and this is certainly possible. In addition to the Celtic kingdom of Thrace there were other Celtic regions esta blished in the aftermath of the Celtic exodus from Greece. A Celtic tribe led by a chieftain named Comantorios settled on the slopes of Haemos. The Scordisci ha d also established a fairly prosperous and strong kingdom around modern Belgrade . There emerges an entire region of Celtic place-names and sites, albeit thinly sown, running northwards along the Black Sea. Pausanias speaks of a Celtic peopl e, the Cabari, remarkable for their great stature, living far to the north 'on t he edge of the frozen desert'. Certainly Celtic objects dating from this period have been found in the southern Ukraine, along the Dnieper, while on the Dnieste r was a town with the Celtic name of Camodunum (Zaleszcyki). Plutarch, the Greek historian (AD c.46-120), fixed the eastward limit of the Celtic world as far as the Sea of Azos (Maeotis). The Boii, a tribe found in northern Italy, are also frequently mentioned as inha bitants of the area which is now Czechoslovakia and, in fact, gave their name as Boiohaemum, or Bohemia, to the area. Celtic graves exist here which date back t o the fifth century BC and burials continued on the sites regularly until the th ird century BC. It would seem that there were at least two branches of the Boii, or two tribes with the same name, as with the Tectosages, who were found at the same time in Asia Minor and in Gaul. Some historians have tried to make the Boi i into one tribe with one leader and have ascribed their appearance in Czechoslo vakia to their alleged expulsion by the Romans from northern Italy about 190 BC. This would not fit in with archaeological evidence, which places the Celtic occ upation of the area long before 190 BC. However, the first confirmation that the Celts in the area were called the Boii does not occur until 113 BC, when they r epulsed the eruption of the Cimbri. Following this, archaeologists have pointed to a fall-off in the number of Celtic burials, which seems to indicate that the Celts were generally losing their population and power in this area. We have also seen that by the fourth century BC the Celts had settled along the valleys of Mures, Somes and Cris in Transylvania and also in Moldavia among the Geto-Dacian population. They seemed to have been absorbed by the second century BC, their knowledge of metal-working contributing to an acceleration of the deve lopment of Dacian culture. By the second century BC, according to Trogus, Oroles , the Dacian King, had built up Dacia as a powerful kingdom. When Rome made her first intervention in the Balkans, M. Minucius Rufus attempted an attack on Daci a, which made an alliance with the Celtic Scordisci in the Danube Valley. But by the first century BC, Rome was gradually gaining control of the territories whi ch bordered Dacia. Yet the Dacians were able to keep the Romans at bay and go th rough a high point of cultural development. From 70 to 44 BC Burebista was King and centralized the state. According to Strabo: Having become the leader of his people, exhausted by frequent wars, the Getic Bu rebista raised them so much through drilling, abstention from wine and obedience to orders, that he achieved a powerful state within a few years and subjected t o the Getae the major part of the neighbouring populations, coming to be feared by the Romans themselves. In 60 BC Burebista launched an offensive against the Celtic peoples, the Boii an d Taurisci, in Pannonia and in Slovakia, in order to expand the frontiers of his Dacian state. He also extended his rule to the Greek colonies in the area. It w as after their defeat by Burebista that the Celts began to leave Bohemia. Accord ing to Greek lists some 3 2,000 men, women and children of the Boii moved from B ohemia and went to Noricum (Austria), where they besieged Noreja (Neumarkt) with

out success. They then moved into Switzerland to join the Celtic Helvetii in the ir westward migration into Gaul, where they were checked and defeated by Julius Caesar. The survivors of the Boii were allowed to settle in the country of the A edui and remain there permanently as farmers. Burebista, who had caused their mi gration, offered an alliance to Pompey against Caesar during the Roman civil war . The alliance did not materialize as Pompey was killed in Egypt. Caesar conside red an expedition against Burebista, 'the first and most powerful among all the kings who had ever reigned in Thrace, ruling over the entire area, beyond the gr eat river'. A few months after Caesar's own assassination, Burebista was killed, the victim of a plot, and his kingdom was divided. Soon the Emperor Augustus ex tended Roman influence to the area. The clash of the Greek and Celtic worlds led to an exchange between the cultures . There was certainly a Hellenization of those Celts who settled within the worl d of Hellenic influence. There was also a Celtic input into the Hellenic world, even to the extent of some loan-words entering the Greek language from Celtic. T he Celts also take their place in literary tradition, not only in the Galatika e pic poetry, previously mentioned, but in the work of Theocritus, writing in the first half of the third century BC, in which he introduces Galatea, the sea-nymp h daughter of Nereus and Doris. Galatea is, of course, the synonym for Galatian, Gaul or Celt, and is said to mean, significantly, milk-white. The Greeks often praised the beauty of the fair, 'milk-white' skin of the Celts. Theocritus tells the story of Galatea being wooed by the ugly Polyphemus, the Cyclops. Galatea b ecomes the eponymous ancestor of the Celts (the Galatians). From echoes by Virgi l and Ovid, the story was set down by the English poet John Gay and this provide d the libretto for Handel's Acis and Galatea. One of the most intriguing mysteries of the contact between the Greek and Celtic worlds was the suggestion by the Alexandrian school of Greek writers that the G reeks accepted 'much of their philosophy' from the Celts. The Celts were among t he first to develop a doctrine on the immortality of the soul. This doctrine was passed from the Celts to the Greeks, so it is claimed by Sotion of Alexandria ( c.200-170 BC). Alexander Cornelius (Polyhistor) (c.105 BC) quotes a text by Aris totle in support of this idea. Some scholars have said that the Aristotle of Pol yhistor was not the famous Aristotle (384-322 BC) who taught Alexander the Great . Many later Greek writers mention the claim, some using sources that have becom e lost to us. How valid are their arguments? It is generally accepted that the doctrine of immortality was a teaching of Pyth agoras, a Greek polymath, philosopher and mystic, of the late sixth century BC. Yet it was said that Pythagoras did not write anything down and within a few yea rs of his death (c.500 BC), owing to the contradictions in the traditions of his life and teaching, he had become a figure of mystery and legend. His teachings were spread by disciples and, when they became a highly political organization, they were suppressed about 450 BC. Therefore, one has to bear in mind that there is no definite evidence of what Pythagoras taught. Yet the most celebrated claim to fame was that he taught a doctrine of the immor tality of the soul, which was more a doctrine of reincarnation or transmigration of the soul. It has been said that he claimed to have been, in a previous reinc arnation, the Trojan Euphorbus, who had been slain at Troy. Xenophanes of Coloph on (c.570 BC), and therefore a contemporary of Pythagoras, is reported to have b een shocked by this idea. Now the superficial similarity of this doctrine and that of the druidic teaching has been remarked upon by many writers of the ancient world. The druids taught that death was only a changing of place and that life went on with all its forms and goods in another world, a world of the death which gave up living souls. Th erefore, a constant exchange of souls takes place between the two worlds - this world and the famous Otherworld of the pre-Christian Celtic religion. Death in t

his world took a soul to the Otherworld; death in the Otherworld brought a soul to this world. So Philostratus of Tyana (AD c. 170-249) observed that the Celts celebrated birth with mourning and death with joy. The cynical soldier in Julius Caesar could remark, 'The druid's chief doctrine i s that the soul of a man does not perish but passes after death from one person to another. They hold that this is the best of all incitements to courage as ban ishing the fear of death.' This was how Caesar accounted for the reckless courag e of the Celts in battle. Sotion, writing in the second century BC, is the earliest-surviving reference to the idea that the Greeks took the doctrine of immortality from the Celts. The e arliest-known contact between the Greek and Celtic worlds was in the fourth cent ury and if Pythagoras taught the idea in the late sixth century surely its adopt ion by the Greeks predates the coming of the Celts? But did the Celts have earli er contacts with the Greeks? Hecataeus of Miletus (c.520 c.476 BC) was a contemp orary of Pythagoras and he certainly knew of the Celts. This would make feasible the claim of Aristotle, as quoted by Polyhistor, that the doctrine came from th e Celts and, moreover, that it was a Celt who taught Pythagoras the idea. Polyhi stor, quoting Aristotle, says that Pythagoras learned the doctrine from a slave named Zalmoxis. Zalmoxis is identified as Pythagoras' slave by Herodotus. Clemen t , of Alexandria (AD c.150 211/6), a theologian with a thorough knowledge of Gree k literature and Stoic philosophy, reiterates that Zalmoxis taught Pythagoras an d that Zalmoxis must have been a Celt. Sotion, who wrote accounts of the philosophers of different schools, became a ma in source of Diogenes Laertius (writing in the third century AD), who says, 'the study of this philosophy had its beginning among the barbarians.' Indeed, Celsu s (AD c.178-80), quoted by Origen (AD c.186-256), points out that the Celts were a 'very wise and ancient nation'. There is, however, a contrary tradition. Diodorus Siculus (d. c.21 BC) was the f irst to reverse the claims, saying that the Celts had developed their philosophy from that of Pythagoras. 'The Pythagorean doctrine prevailed among the Celts, t eaching that the souls of men are immortal, and after a fixed number of years th ey will enter into another body.' He continues: The druids, who were of a loftie r intellect, and bound by the rules of brotherhood as decreed by Pythagoras' aut hority, were exalted by investigation of deep and serious study, and despising h uman affairs, declared souls to be immortal.' Hippolytus (AD c.170-236), obviously using Diodorus as his source, makes the sam e claim, but goes even further, clearly aware of the suggestion that Zalmoxis wa s Pythagoras' teacher. He states that, at the death of Pythagoras, Zalmoxis retu rned to Thrace, where he taught the Celts. Hippolytus was under the impression t hat Thrace had been a Celtic country longer than it had, for, as we have seen, C ambaules and his Celts did not conquer Thrace until 300 BC, 200 years after Pyth agoras' death. Hippolytus, in his Philosophumena, writes: The druids among the Celts having profoundly examined the Pythagorean philosophy , Zalmoxis, a Thracian by race, the slave of Pythagoras, became for them the fou nder of this discipline. After the death of Pythagoras, he made his way there, a nd became the founder of this philosophy, for them. The Celts honour them [the d ruids] as prophets and prognosticators because they foretell matters by ciphers and numbers according to the Pythagorean skill ... While the Alexandrian school, arguing that the Greeks took the doctrine from the Celts, is certainly older than those writers arguing that the Celts took it fro m the Greeks, there is a third possibility to consider perhaps the doctrine was simply a case of parallel development. And, if one considers very carefully, the re is yet a fourth possibility perhaps the similarity is so superficial that it

does not really exist. After all, the Pythagorean belief was in the transmigrati on of the souls through all living things, according to those who wrote it down centuries after Pythagoras' death; whereas the Celtic belief was in the rebirth of the soul in human bodies from one world to another. It could therefore be arg ued that the Celtic and Pythagorean doctrines were mutually exclusive. ----------------------------6 - Galatia What we know of the Galatian state gives us our first example of the organizatio n of a Celtic state,' says Henri Hubert in The Greatness and Decline of the Celt s (1934). Galatia was established by the Celts in Asia Minor during the third ce ntury BC and a Celtic language was still spoken there in the fourth century AD. The Galatians had become one of the first peoples to accept the new religion of Christianity and are now best known through Paul of Tarsus' famous Epistle to th e Galatians written about AD 55. Galatia had been established through the disunity of the petty kingdoms of Asia Minor, once united under Alexander the Great's empire. Antiochus I's Syrian empi re claimed the territory of Asia Minor, or modern Turkey. In reality, however, t here were many subdivisions. After the battle of Ipsus in 312 BC, Armenia, which had been part of the Syrian empire, revolted and two kingdoms emerged Armenia M ajor and Armenia Minor. It is not until 190 BC that the first-known kings of the se territories find record. Bithynia was a kingdom still claiming independence, stretching from the Bosporus along the coast of the Black Sea. When Alexander invaded Asia Minor, Bithynia h ad been a semi-independent kingdom within the Persian empire, ruled by Bas (334326 BC). Bas had managed to retain his kingdom in spite of quarrels with Alexand er's successors. On his death his son Zipoetes (326-278 BC) continued his father 's policies, enjoying a reign of forty-eight years. When he died his two sons, N icomedes and Zipoetes, argued over the kingdom but Nicomedes emerged as the next king, reigning from 278 to 250 BC. Nicomedes was to play an important part in t he settlement of the Celts in Galatia. In north-east Asia Minor (Turkey), there was another semi-independent kingdom, t hat of Pontus, founded by Arionarzanes in 363 BC. The monarchy he founded surviv ed Alexander's conquests and the quarrels of his generals, with the Pontic kings retaining their independence until Pharnaces II submitted to Julius Caesar at Z ela in 47 BC. Near to Pontus was the smaller kingdom of Paphlagonia, which had b ecome part of the Pontus kingdom at the dissolution of the Persian empire, but s eems to have retained a series of petty kings. To the south-east lay another sem i-independent kingdom that of Cappadocia, founded by Ariarathese I (331-322 BC). It was taken over as the personal fiefdom of Alexander's friend Perdiccas but r easserted its independence in 315 BC and managed to retain it until AD 15. To th e south-west, on the coastline of the Aegean, a new kingdom was founded by Phile taerus (281-263 BC) in the turmoil of the conflict between Syria and Macedonia this was the kingdom of Pergamas or, more popularly, Pergamum. Into the turmoil of the rivalries and wars of these kingdoms, in the wake of the dissolution of Alexander's empire, came the Celts. Antigonus Gonatas, having defeated the last remaining Celtic army in Greece, had recruited a section of them, under their chieftain Ciderios, into the Macedonia n army. At the same time Antigonus Gonatas recruited many thousands of Celtic wa rriors for service in the army of Ptolemy of Egypt. Nicomedes of Bithynia saw an opportunity to use the Celts in his own war of survival, first against his quar relsome brother Zapoetes and secondly against the claims of Antiochus I of Syria . He asked the Macedonian King, Antigonus Gonatas, to recruit a force of Celtic

mercenaries. In response to the request, the Macedonian King recruited some 20,0 00 Celts, of whom 10,000 were under arms. The pay was a gold piece per warrior. The Celts consisted of three tribes - the Tolistoboii, the Tectosages and the Tr ocmi. According to Poseidonius (c.135-50 BC) these tribes had already detached t hemselves from the Celtic army before the sack of Delphi. They were led by their chieftains Leonnorios and Lutarios. They crossed at the Hellespont (Dardanelles ) into Asia Minor, taking their women and children with them. With such troops, Nicomedes of Bithynia was able to reach a prompt and successfu l conclusion with his brother and end his ambition to become king. But Leonnorio s and Lutarios soon became aware of the warring Greek factions within Asia Minor and realized that they could take personal advantage of this situation. They le ft the service of Nicomedes and began demanding tribute from the Greek city stat es of Troy, Ephesos and Miletos on the Aegean coastline. Tradition has it that t he vestal virgins of Miletos killed themselves when the Celts sacked the city. L ivy says that the Celtic tribes divided Asia Minor between them as far east as T aurus. This seems an exaggeration. However, within a few years the Celts had cer tainly formed settlements in the area which was to be named after them Galatia. It was Hieronymos of Cardia who is credited with the first-known use of the term Galatia, the land of the Gauls, Galli or Celts. The area was in the northern zo ne of the central plateau of Asia Minor, a region rising to 2,000-4,000 feet abo ve sea level. It was a country of few trees, bare hills but small and fertile pl ains during the rainy season. It was frequently affected by droughts and consequ ent famine. The area had once been the centre of the Phrygian kingdom, famed for King Midas and Gordius of the famed Gordian knot. Phrygia had lost its independ ence in the sixth century BC. In the Iliad the Phrygians were represented as an heroic warrior people. It is generally thought that they were part of an early m ovement from Greece and therefore spoke a form of Greek. When the Celts settled in the area they lived side by side with the native popul ation and did not, in general, occupy the cities, preferring to build their trad itional hill-forts and farming settlements. Deiotaros I of Galatia was known to have ruled from a dun, although Pessinus, once the main religious centre of the Phrygians, was said to be the chief town of the Celts. Eventually the remnants o f the Phrygian civilization were assimilated into Celtic culture and not, as som e have maintained, the reverse. The three Celtic tribes settled in separate encl aves. The Tolistoboii settled the upper valley of the Sangarios (Sakarya), by wh ose winding path the tombs of long-dead Phrygian kings lay. Pessinus was claimed to be their centre. In this territory stood the famous city of Gordium (now Pol atli), which had been the capital of ancient Phrygia where, in the acropolis of the temple of Zeus Basileus, there stood a pole around which was tied an intrica te knot. Legend had it that Gordius, father of King Midas, had tied this knot an d a prophecy was handed down that he who unravelled it would become lord of all Asia. In 333 BC Alexander had rested in the city and, on examining the knot, sim ply hacked it to pieces with his sword, claiming the prophecy to be fulfilled. A nd into many languages has come the phrase 'to cut the Gordian knot', meaning to overcome a difficulty by violent measures. Further east the Tectosages claimed the territory around Tavium, which was their centre. And again, eastward, the Trocmi settled along the banks of the River Ha lys (Kizilirmak), with Ancyra (Ankara) as their chief settlement. Strabo referre d to Ancyra as a Celtic phrourion, a stronghold. So perhaps Ancyra was originall y a hill-fort. Strabo assures us that all three Celtic tribes spoke the same lan guage (homo-glotti). He says that each tribe was divided into four septs and act ually names some of them. The Tolistoboii, for example, contained the Voturi, Am bitui and Tosiopes while the Tectosages had a sept called the Teutobodiaci. Each sept was ruled by a chieftain and two sub-chieftains, with a judge. Was this ju dge, in reality, a druid? Strabo goes on to say that the twelve septs sent a tot al of 300 elected representatives to an assembly at the main centre of Drunemeto

n. Unfortunately the exact site of Drunemeton is not clear. Perhaps, if Pessinus was the chief city of the Celts, they are one and the same place. The name is t ypically Celtic, the sanctuary of oaks. Nemeton as the word for sanctuary occurs in many Celtic names. Nemetodurum was the early name for Nanterre. Nemetobrigia occurs as a place-name in Spanish Galicia. Vernemeton is mentioned by Fortunatu s as a Celtic centre in Nottinghamshire, while Medionemeton was situated in sout hern Scotland. The form of government described by Strabo as existing among the Celts of Galati a is paralleled by the assembly of Gaul, which met at Lugdunum (Lyons). The Gree ks referred to the state as Koinon Galaton, the Commonwealth of Galatians, and i t is true that the name of no particular overall leader emerges for a long time. This form of government accords with everything we know of later social and pol itical structures among the Celts, with the electoral system ensuring that no de spot could exert supreme sovereignty. It is certain that the Celts took their dr uids and religion with them into Asia Minor. Diogenes Laertius, writing in the t hird century AD, says that they had seers called druidae and semnotheoi. Even ea rlier writers such as Clement of Alexandria (AD c.150-216) says the Galatians ha d a druid class. This has been echoed by Cyril of Alexandria (c. fifth century A D) and Stephanus of Byzantium (c. seventh century AD), who cited earlier sources now lost. The Celts of Galatia issued their own coinage. However, not many clearly identif iable Celtic archaeological remains have been uncovered in the area. Certainly t here have been many brooches of the second century BC, identified as Celtic La T ene C types. In a chambered tomb at Mal Tepe, at Mezek, the third-century BC rem ains of a Celtic chariot with bronze fittings have been found. Like their fellow Celts in Europe, the Galatians did not bequeath any documentation in their own language. The few inscriptions that survive were written in Greek. According to Henri Hubert: 'Their Greek is so correct ...' He maintains: 'Greek was the langu age of the Gallic troops ... Greek was likewise the official language of the Gau ls of Asia Minor. They have not left a single inscription in Celtic.' However, P rofessor Rankin propounds the theory that the Galatians were, in fact, anti-Gree k and did not become Hellenized to any large degree and, when the area fell unde r Roman conquest, actually adopted Roman forms in preference to Greek. There cou ld be some truth in both arguments. The Galatians certainly used Greek and later Latin in their commerce with the surrounding Graeco-Latin world. But the truth is that they maintained their own Celtic language until a surprisingly late peri od. According to Strabo the Galatians spoke Celtic in his day (c.63 BC-AD 21), and L ucan (AD c.39-65) supports this. He refers to a soothsayer from Paphlagonia, bor dering on Galatia, who spoke Celtic. And then we have the famous evidence of St Jerome (Eusebius Hieronymous) in the fourth century AD. St Jerome spent some tim e in Treves, in Gaul, and when he stayed in Ancyra for a while he was able to st ate categorically not only that the Galatians still spoke Celtic but that the la nguage was very close to that spoken by the Gauls of Treves, the Treveri. So we may safely say that Celtic was spoken in the central plain of what is modern Tur key for at least seven centuries. How long it existed after the end of the fourt h century is unknown. It would be fairly safe to say that it must have lasted a few centuries more in the area. The state of Galatia had not come about by conquest but rather by agreement with the surrounding Hellenistic kings, who were anxious to resolve the 'Celtic prob lem' which threatened their security. Nicomedes of Bithynia, having invited the Celtic tribes into Asia Minor, had been unable to control them or check their ra vages against the Greek city states of the western coast. The term Galatika (Gau l-geld) or 'Celtic tribute' had entered into the Greek vocabulary, for the Celts roamed the area demanding tribute from the Greek kings; it was a highly organiz ed 'protection racket' on a grand scale.

In 275 BC Antiochus I of Syria defeated the Celts, crushing them with his elepha nts, against which they had no experience. In the wake of this defeat, and seemi ngly with the approval of Antiochus and surrounding monarchs, the Celts were all owed to settle in Galatia. Like other Celtic communities, they turned to farming . But not long afterwards they began to raid outside their agreed territorial bo rders. In 265 BC they met with the Syrian King Antiochus once again and in a bat tle near Ephesus they defeated and slew him. They seemed to take no advantage of the defeat of the Syrians and Antiochus Theus, Antiochus II, was allowed to suc ceed his father, becoming a rather weak and profligate ruler. During his reign t wo more territories in the north-east, Bactria and Parthia, broke off from Syria and established themselves as independent kingdoms. Antiochus tried to impose h is rule on the Celts at Ancyra but was unsuccessful. He was finally murdered by his wife Laodice and was succeeded by Seleucos II (246-226 BC), who lost most of the Syrian kingdom beyond the Euphrates. A civil war raged between him and his brother Antiochus Hierax, who hired the Celts of Galatia to do most of his fight ing. Seleucos was therefore anxious to drive the Celts out of Asia Minor. He fou ght a major battle against them at Ancyra but was defeated. Thereafter the Celti c raids on the surrounding population were frequent and destructive, ranging fro m eastern Asia Minor as far south as Apameia and Themisonium. From this time on the newly emerged kingdom of Pergamum was forced to pay the Celts an annual trib ute. In 241 BC Attalos I succeeded to the Pergamum throne and he seems to have been a stronger king than his predecessors. When the Celts arrived to collect their tr ibute in 240 BC Attalos met them near the source of the Caice and defeated them in battle. Pergamum now began its rise under Attalos as one of the most powerful Hellenistic kingdoms. In 232 BC the Tolistoboii, making a bold raid into Pergam um territory, were defeated once more by Attalos near the shrine of Aphrodite, c lose by the city of Pergamum itself. It was a decisive battle for, by the defeat of the Celts, Pergamum also emerged as a dominant state. The defeat marked the end of Celtic raids against Pergamum, as well as against Bithynia and Pontus. In return, Attalos of Pergamum and the other Hellenistic monarchs recognized Galat ia as a distinct state. The Greek states of Asia Minor undoubtedly saw the victory over the Celts as a n oteworthy achievement. Attalos and his successor Eumenes II (197-159 BC) set up numerous monuments which, says Henri Hubert, must have formed a single scheme. P ergamene statues were erected in bronze - copies were made in marble, such as 'T he Dying Gaul' of the Capitoline Museum and the Ludovisi group showing a Celt st abbing himself with his own sword having killed his female companion, in the Nat ional Roman Museum. The Celts in these remarkable works are recognizable by the detail of their costume, ornaments, weapons and features. According to Pliny, Ep igonos created a masterpiece depicting a dead Celtic mother being caressed by he r child. Statues of Celts were set up at the Acropolis of Athens, while frescoes at Pergamum, and even as far afield as Naples, depicted Attalos' victory over t he Celts. Medallions from Capua also commemorated the event. Seleucos II of Syria had died from a fall from his horse in 226 BC and had been succeeded by Seleucos III Ceraunnos (225-223 BC), who determined to reconquer th e whole of Asia Minor for Syria. Before he could move his army he was assassinat ed by one of his mercenary soldiers - interestingly recorded as a Celt named Apo touros. Polybius writes that the Syrian army had a large number of Celtic mercen aries, recruited from Europe rather than neighbouring Galatia. Seleucos was succ eeded by Antiochus III (223-187 BC), called 'the Great', who set about restoring the pre-eminence of Syria. Meanwhile Attalos I of Pergamum, whose reign was to last forty-four years, was b usy recruiting Celtic mercenary troops from Europe for his own armies. He settle d a tribe called the Trocnades in a portion of the Pergamum kingdom. Whether the

re was any intercourse between them and the Galatians is not recorded. In 218 BC Attalos invited another Celtic tribe called the Aegosages from Europe. He used these Celts to make a series of raids into Aeolis and across Lydia into northern Phrygia - presumably against their fellow Celts of Galatia. He rewarded the Aeg osages with lands around the Hellespont. After a while the Aegosages rose in rev olt against Attalos and started to plunder the surrounding countryside and besie ge Ilium (Troy). The Aegosages do not appear to have made any attempt to unite w ith the Galatians. Their siege of Ilium was lifted by a force from Alexandria Tr oas commanded by the Pergamum General Themistes. The Aegosages withdrew from Per gamum into Bithynia. The Bithynian King, Prusias I (228-180 BC), was worried by the arrival of the Celts in his lands and managed to corner them at Arisba where , in 217 BC, he massacred all of them, including, observes Polybius, their women and children. Attalos of Pergamum and Antiochus the Great formed an alliance. Within a short t ime Antiochus had recovered most of the Syrian empire and was moving westward. A ttalos extended his rule over most of the northern part of Asia Minor and forced Prusias of Bithynia to accept him as suzerain during a campaign in 207/206 BC. The ambitious Syrian ruler Antiochus observed that a Roman victory over the Mace donians at Cynoscephalae, in 197 BC, had left the Greek states powerless. Would Rome follow up the advantage and take Greece or could he make a grab for Greece first? Antiochus, with the help of the Aetolians, took his army to Greece in 191 BC. Rome's reaction was swift. She landed an army in Epiros and drove the Syria ns back to Thermopylae. Here, where Brennos and his Celts had smashed the Greek army a century before, 40,000 Romans under Manpius Acilius Glabrio and Marcus Po rcius Cato turned back the Syrian outposts and inflicted a disastrous defeat on Antiochus. The Syrian King fled with only 500 survivors from his army. Antiochus was a confirmed enemy of Rome and, when the Carthaginian Hannibal aske d him for sanctuary, Antiochus agreed. Hannibal, who had been defeated at the ba ttle of Zama in 202 BC by Scipio (see Chapter 7), had lived for seven years unde r Roman rule but realized that Rome still considered him a threat and plotted hi s death. Rome now had another excuse to land her armies in Asia Minor: to do bat tle with Antiochus of Syria. The result was that Asia Minor was to be absorbed i nto the fast-growing empire of Rome. The Celts of Galatia had a choice in the matter. Attalos of Pergamum had died in 197 BC to be succeeded by Eumenes II (197-159 BC). Eumenes was pro-Roman. Argui ng against Professor Rankin's theory that the Celts were also pro-Roman, we find that the Galatians started to raid Pergamum again and demand tribute from the c ity of Lampsacos. There now occurs one of the earliest examples of the recogniti on of a solidarity between the Celtic peoples, even when of differing tribes and at great distances from one another. The city of Lampsacos had sent envoys to M assilia (Marseilles) in southern Gaul. The Massilots were pro-Roman. The senate of Massilia sent a letter to the Tolistoboii of Galatia via the envoys from Lamp sacos, attempting to persuade them not to fight for Antiochus III against Rome. They pointed out that the surrounding Celtic tribes enjoyed good relations with them and the Romans. This fact shows that the Greeks of both Massilia and Lampsa cos knew of a sense of common identity among the Celtic peoples even when living far from each other. Some years earlier, for example, they had - when demonstra ting a pro-Carthaginian line -sent envoys to the Volcae Tectosages with a reques t for them to be neutral when Hannibal passed through their country. The Tolistoboii ignored the entreaty and the Galatians joined forces with Antioc hus against Rome. In 190 BC the Roman navy defeated the Syrian navy off Crete an d Rome was able to launch its land invasion of Asia Minor with 40,000 legionarie s commanded by Lucius Cornelius Scipio and his famous brother Publius Cornelius Scipio, called Africanus. The Roman forces landed near Magnesia. Eumenes II of P ergamum immediately allied himself with the Romans.

At Magnesia Antiochus III gathered 80,000 troops, including his Galatian allies. The Syrians began the battle by striking at the Roman left flank while Eumenes II struck at the Syrian left. The Syrians were driven back and the elephant corp s stampeded and smashed into Antiochus' main phalanx in the centre. The troops o f the Scipio brothers followed up the advantage. Roman chroniclers claim that 40 ,000 Syrians and their allies were killed compared with 300 Romans. Magnesia was a disaster for Syria and those who had supported her. Antiochus accepted the Roman peace terms and paid a large indemnity to Rome, pro mising to give up his navy and accept Roman overlordship of his empire. Armenia and Bactria became independent again. Hannibal, now no longer safe under Antioch us' protection, fled to the court of Prusias of Bithynia. He was traced by Roman agents and, realizing that he was trapped, is recorded as saying: 'Let us now p ut an end to the life which has caused the Romans so much anxiety.' He took pois on. The victor of Trebbia, Trasimene, Cannae and many other battles was sixty-fi ve years old. He had crossed the Alps and for sixteen years held his Carthaginia n army together undefeated. Four centuries after Hannibal's death, when Roman mo thers wished to quieten their rebellious children, they would whisper: 'Hannibal ad portas!' Hannibal is at the gates! The Scipio brothers were now concerned about the pacification and annexation of Asia Minor. They decided that the Celts of Galatia presented the most immediate problem. Gnaeus Manlius Volso was given command of a punitive expedition against Galatia in 189 BC. According to Livy, Volso gave his Roman troops a pep-talk be fore they had their first encounter with the Galatian army. He wanted to make su re that his men knew the type of warriors they were up against. Volso said: They sing as they advance into battle; they yell and leap in the air, clashing t heir weapons against their shields. The Greeks and Phrygians are scared of this display, but the Romans are used to such wildness. We have learned that if you c that initial charge of blind passion then th an bear up to their first onslaught eir limbs will grow weary with the effort and when their passion subsides they a re overcome by sun, dust and thirst. And anyway, these Celts we face are of a mi xed blood, part Greek. Not the Celts our forefathers fought. Volso defeated the Tolistoboii and the Trocmi at the battle of Olympus, near the city of Pessinus. According to Livy, this was done with great slaughter and som e 40,000 Galatians, including women and children, were subsequently sold into sl avery. Volso then went on to Ancyra and defeated the Tectosages in a battle at a hill called Magaba. In the wake of this 'pacification', the Romans made Galatia a vassal territory of the Pergamum kingdom. Livy actually suggests a reason why the Romans used extreme severity in their conquest of Galatia. He says that the y had inherited a fear of the Celts. By smashing the power of Galatia the Romans had secured the eastern world from potential Celtic conquest and dominance. Volso's conquest did not have a lasting effect. Soon afterwards the Galatians fo rmed an alliance with Prusias of Bithynia and Pharnaces of Pontus against their Roman-imposed overlord Eumenes of Pergamum. Trogus Pompeius points out, and perh aps with some pride as a Celt himself, that the Galatians were still a formidabl e people in spite of Volso's conquest. There now emerges a leader of the Galatians with some vision. Ortagion of the To listoboii, according to Polybius, realized that there was only one path availabl e to the Galatians if they were to stand against conquest. The loose confederati on of the Celtic tribes must be united and under one leader. In other words, the Commonwealth of Galatia should become a centralized state in order to secure th e Celts' freedom from the surrounding kingdoms and from the overall authority of Rome. Polybius recounts that he interviewed Ortagion's wife, Chiomara, in Sardi s and learned first hand of her husband's plans. Plutarch mentions this referenc e in a lost book of Polybius', from which it appears that Polybius might also ha

ve met Ortagion. The Celtic chieftain is described as full of charm and highly i ntelligent. However, it seems that Ortagion's attempts to unite the Celts of Gal atia met with little success. There survives from 181 BC a list of the chieftain s of the Celtic septs who refused to depart from adherence to the traditional Ce ltic tribal form of government. Ortagion vanishes from historical record. It may be conjectured from Polybius' interview with Chiomara, and perhaps Ortagion, in Sardis that they were in exile there. The Celts of Galatia continued their various factions and alliances and soon Pha rnaces I of Pontus (c.190 160 BC) had taken advantage of their divisions to establ ish Pontus' supremacy over Galatia. The Galatians sought to rid themselves of th is overlordship. Pharnaces, who appears as a cruel tyrant, set up garrisons in G alatia. He had also overrun Paphlagonia and Cappadocia. The Galatians responded by an alliance with their former enemy Eumenes II. Two Celtic chieftains, Corsig natos and Gaizatorix, commanded Galatian troops in his army and were still fight ing with Eumenes in 179 BC. The alliance finally drove Pharnaces out of Galatia. In 167 BC, however we find the Galatians fighting for Prusias II (180-149 BC) of Bithynia. Under their chieftain Advertas they invaded Pergamum and almost overt hrew Eumenes. At this point, the Roman Governor stepped in to mediate. Livy reco rds that the Romans allowed both the Galatians and Prusias of Bithynia the oppor tunity to submit a list of grievances to them. After some negotiations, in 165 B C, Eumenes, with Roman support, managed to expel the Galatians from Pergamum but , by treaty, he was forced to recognize that Pergamum had no control over Galati a. From 164 to 160 BC there followed a series of border disputes between Galatia an d neighbouring Cappadocia. The Trocmi, with the approval of the Romans, tried to seize a stretch of Cappodocian land. Ariarathes V (162-131 BC), the Cappadocian King, eventually bribed the Romans in order to be allowed to retain this territ ory. But the Galatians continued their southward expansion until 123 BC, adding parts of Lycaonia to their control. The fluctuations between the power of Pergamum and that of Pontus ensured, for a time, the relative independence of Galatia. However, Manlius Aquillius, the Rom an Consul in Asia Minor, declared that Mithridates IV (160-120 BC) of Pontus had a legal claim to control Phrygia, or the Galatian territory. In 12.6 BC the sen ate declared Manlius Aquillius' decision null and void. However, Mithridates IV continued to claim control. In 120 BC he was assassinated. Mithridates V, called 'the Great', succeeded him and set about making the kingdo m of Pontus into a small empire. He was a minor when he became King and for eigh t years devoted himself to the study of languages (he is reported to have master ed twenty-five) and to the development of physical prowess. At the age of twenty he set out to create an empire, adding Armenia Minor, Colchis, the eastern coas t of the Black Sea, the Crimea (Cheronesus Taurica) and the entire region to the River Dniester. With those he felt unable to conquer, he merely entered into al liances, giving his sister Laodice in marriage to Ariarathes, King of Cappadocia , and his daughter Cleopatra to Tigranes, King of Armenia Major. In 102 BC he ma de an alliance with Nicomedes II of Bithynia and was able to partition and add P aphlagonia to his territory. In spite of his sister's marriage to Ariarathes, he eventually felt strong enough to attack Cappadocia and place his nephew, as Ari arathes VII, on the throne. Perhaps his nephew showed too much independence, for not long afterwards he had him murdered and set up his own eight-year-old son a s King. Cappadocia finally revolted in 93 BC and managed to reassert her indepen dence. It was inevitable that Mithridates would turn to the Celts of Galatia. He decide d to neutralize the Galatian leadership by an act of treachery. In 88 BC he invi ted some sixty leading Celtic chieftains to his court, ostensibly to dine and di

scuss his intentions towards their country. Here Mithridates displayed a knowled ge of Celtic social customs and it is highly likely that Celtic was one of the t wenty-five languages which he had acquired in his youth. He knew that the rules of hospitality were sacred to the Celt and that no Celt went into his host's din ing hall armed. Mithridates waited until the feast had started and then had his soldiers kill them. One chieftain escaped from the mass murder - Deiotaros, son of Dumnorix of the T olistoboii. Three other Galatian chieftains had either refused or not been able to attend Mi thridates' feast, but the King of Pontus sent assassins to their fortress to see k hospitality, pretending to be travellers, with orders to slay the chieftains w hen the moment arose. They succeeded in killing one of these chieftains, so that , out of all the Galatian tribes and septs, three chieftains only survived. It w as not the first time, nor would it be the last, that the Celtic attitude to the sacred laws of hospitality was cynically exploited by their enemies. Mithridate s had obviously wanted to cut off the head and brains of Celtic government in Ga latia so that he could move in, exploiting the ensuing power vacuum. Indeed, he had not omitted to kill supporters and friends of the Galatians within his own c amp. However, while he had used his knowledge of Celtic custom to good effect, h e does not appear to have considered the inherent democracy of the Celtic system , which allowed for the immediate election of new chieftains by the tribal assem blies. Deiotaros, whose name means divine bull, soon emerged as the leader unifying the Galatian tribes and septs. He now managed to do what Ortagion had unsuccessfull y tried to do one hundred years before unite the Celts of Galatia. The war betwe en the Celts and Pontus was long for it was not until 74 BC that Deiotaros final ly drove out Zeumachus, whom Mithridates had sent as Governor of Galatia, and th e troops of Pontus. Deiotaros had achieved this by political alliances as well a s force. The mistake Mithridates had made was entering into a war with Rome. Mithridates' war against Rome took three stages. The first was from 88 to 84 BC, the second from 83 to 82 BC and the third from 74 to 65 BC. Mithridates had att empted to invade Europe and was promptly defeated there by Lucius Cornelius Sull a, who had been made Consul in 88 BC and sent by the senate to throw back Mithri dates' troops, who were in Greece. By 86 BC he had driven Mithridates out of Gre ece, and he crossed into Asia Minor and came to terms with him in 84 BC. Mithrid ates used the treaty as a breathing space to consolidate fresh troops, inviting punitive attacks from the Proconsul Lucius Murena. Another peace was made. The war was eventually renewed in 74 BC when Mithridates attacked Bithynia, whic h had been bequeathed to Rome in 75 BC by Nicomedes II. Deiotaros and the Galati ans made alliances with Rome and soon Mithridates was retreating. The Consul Luc ius Licinius Lucullus invaded Pontus and Mithridates fled to the Crimea. Faced w ith surrender to Rome, in 63 BC Mithridates attempted to take his own life. The poison he used was ineffectual. There was a poetic justice in the fact that a Ce ltic warrior delivered the death blow with his sword. Deiotaros moved the Galatians into the Roman orbit. It would appear that the Rom ans were doing their best to woo the Celts, finding the Celtic culture of Galati a potentially advantageous to them in a sea of Hellenistic states. With an indep endent Galatia, there would be a check to the rise of a major Hellenistic power in the area, such as Pergamum or Pontus, which might topple Roman influence. In 66 BC Gnaeus Magnus Pompeius (Pompey the Great) was sent as Consul to take co mmand of the area. He formed an alliance with Galatia, becoming a friend of Deio taros, and, under Roman suzerainty, allowed them to retain their native organiza tion of independent tribal cantons under the rulership of native chieftains. He

recognized a triumvirate of three chieftains as ruling Galatia -Deiotaros of the Tolistoboii, Brogitarios of the Trocmi and an unnamed chieftain of the Tectosag es. The Galatian chieftains were even granted, as compensation for Mithridates' ravages, concessions of lands in Pontus and Armenia Minor. Deiotaros was given G azelonitis. Having secured Galatia as an ally, Pompey embarked on a campaign of conquest against the surrounding states which was then unprecedented in the anna ls of the Roman republic. By 63 BC Asia Minor and its kingdoms were firmly under Roman rule. Deiotaros once again emerges as an astute and able politician. During the wars a gainst Mithridates he had been the single unifying leader of the Galatians. Pomp ey, not wishing to give him too much power, had reinstituted the triune leadersh ip. Deiotaros therefore married one of his daughters to Brogitarios of the Trocm i and another to Castor, son of the chieftain of the Tectosages. Soon he appears as undisputed ruler of the Galatians. He introduced the Roman methods of milita ry training, organization and tactics into his army. He also became interested i n the Roman art of estate management. He was respected by the Romans for his pol itical ability and formed successful relationships with such powerful Romans of differing temperaments as Lucius Cornelius Sulla, Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus, Gai us Julius Caesar and Marcus Tullius Cicero. But it was recorded that Deiotaros n ever undertook an important decision without consulting the auguries, in traditi onal Celtic fashion. His one major error of strategy was to give his support to the Roman senate and the old republican party during the Roman civil war from 49 to 45 BC. Deiotaros took the side of Pompey against Julius Caesar. The civil war was, of course, a R oman quarrel but Deiotaros was obviously attempting to make use of it to further the interests of Galatian independence. From his viewpoint, Pompey was a more s ympathetic friend than Julius Caesar. And it is hardly likely that Deiotaros, th e Celtic king of a Celtic people, was unaware of Caesar's recent campaign of con quests against the Celts of Gaul during 58-51 BC. By the time the civil war erup ted Deiotaros was already an elderly man and it was reported that he was so feeb le that he could not mount a horse without assistance. Yet he fought at Pompey's side at Pharsalus. With Julius Caesar's victory, Deiotaros found new enemies. His own grandson Cast or and his wife sometimes confused with his son-in-law Castor and his daughter ccused him of plotting against the life of Caesar. In 47 BC Deiotaros was tried before a Roman court. He was able to call upon the skill of his friend Marcus Tu llius Cicero, who had been Governor of Cilicia, south of Galatia, from 51 to 50 BC and had become a friend of the Galatian King during this period. Cicero himse lf had taken Pompey's side against Caesar but had been reconciled with Caesar ju st before the trial. Cicero was successful in his defence of the old Celtic rule r. However, Deiotaros, on his release, decided to ensure no further betrayal by his grandson and his wife by having them executed. Deiotaros is said to have died at an advanced age and was succeeded by his survi ving son, also named Deiotaros. Deiotaros II also managed to commit himself to t he wrong side during the next phase of Rome's civil war the struggle between Mar cus Antonius (Mark Antony) and Octavian, eventually to become the first emperor, Augustus. Marcus Antonius gave Deiotaros II lands in Armenia for his help again st Octavian. When Octavian emerged victorious, which seems to have coincided wit h Deiotaros II's death - whether from natural causes, battle or execution we do not know - a chieftain named Amyntas opportunistically made himself King of Gala tia. In 2.5 BC Galatia became a Roman province ruled by a propraetor appointed direct ly from Rome. Coincidentally, in AD 14, a monument was set up at a temple raised to Augustus and Rome in Ancyra which records the names of two British Celtic ki ngs who came to him as suppliants in Rome. They are Tincommios and Dumnovelaunos a

. Little is subsequently recorded of Galatia until Paul of Tarsus, which city is in neighbouring Cilicia, visited the country on a Christian mission some time b etween AD 40 and 5c. He was suffering a sickness at the time and stayed in Pessi nus, the chief city of the Tolistoboii. He was apparently surprised by the warmh earted Celtic hospitality which he received. He also succeeded in converting man y of the Galatians to his new faith - Christianity. The Galatians have received a permanent place in Christian history through the f amous letter which Paul wrote to them from Rome some time between AD 50 and 55. Paul was angry with them. 'You stupid Galatians! You must have been bewitched!' Apparently, not long after Paul had made his converts among the Galatians, other Christians arrived belonging to another 'school' of Christianity and drew the G alatians into their philosophy. This was the movement led by the original discip les of Jesus who still saw themselves as part of the Judaic faith, believing in Jesus as the last of the Jewish messiahs. Paul, who had not known Jesus while he was alive, had abrogated Judaic law, introduced the 'salvation doctrine' and gn osticism. The bulk of his followers came from a pagan Hellenistic background, wh ich enabled them to respond to the gnostic aspects of his teachings. This had brought him into bitter conflict with the original Christian, or Nazare ne, leaders such as Jacob (James), John and Simon Bar-Jonah, nicknamed 'The Rock ' - Kephas in Greek and Petra in Latin, and it is by the Latin, Peter, that he i s known to Christendom. Paul freely admits his quarrel with them and speaks of a face-to-face confrontation with Peter. To compilers of the New Testament it see med unseemly that Paul could quarrel with the man designated by Jesus himself to lead the movement. To get round this, they left the Greek Kephas in the content ious passages while translating the name to the Latin Peter in others. Thus, in places, Kephas and Peter appear as two different people instead of the same man Simon Bar-Jonah. Paul himself, claiming authority for his 'breakaway' Christian sect, wrote to th e Galatians that Jacob, John and Peter had given him approval. They: acknowledged that I had been entrusted with the Gospel for the Gentiles as surel y as Peter had been entrusted with the Gospel for the Jews. For God whose action made Peter an apostle to the Jews, also made me an apostle to the Gentiles. Recognizing, then, the favour bestowed on me, those reputed pillars of our socie ty, James (Jacob], Peter and John, accepted Barnabus and myself as partners and shook hands upon it, agreeing that we should go to the Gentiles while they went to the Jews. But, from the evidence of the later conflict between Paul and the original disci ples of Jesus, it was obvious that they were appalled that Paul was surrendering their teaching to pagan idolatry, as they saw it. In this conflict the Nazarene s, as they were known, sent out missions in an attempt to counteract Paul's teac hings. The Celtic Galatians, therefore, were among the first of Paul's converts to take notice of the Nazarenes and brought forth Paul's angry letter to them. I am astonished to find you turning so quickly away from him who called you by g race, and following a different Gospel. Not that it is in fact another Gospel, o nly there are persons who unsettle your minds by trying to distort the Gospel of Christ. The Nazarene movement continued to exist as late as the fifth century AD, follow ing the teachings of Jesus' original disciples. But Paul's 'breakaway' movement, the 'Gentile Christians', eventually constituted the bulk of the Christian move ment and took the opportunity to declare the Nazarene sect 'heretical'. The Naza renes' Gospels were suppressed, although fragments have been found. To the end t hey taught that Jesus was the last Jewish Messiah but not a divinity and that Pa

ul was the heretic who had perverted the real teachings of Christ and merged the m with pagan Hellenistic philosophy. Whether Paul's somewhat abusive letter to the Galatians succeeded in reconvertin g them back to his form of Christianity is not known. In AD 74 the Romans decided to unite Galatia with Cappadocia as a single provinc e. In AD 106 the Emperor Trajan separated them again as two distinct administrat ive units. As we have already seen St Jerome (Eusebius Hieronymous), visiting Ga latia and staying in Ancyra, reported that the Galatians still spoke their Celti c language and likened it to the Celtic spoken by the Treveri in northern Gaul, which he had also visited. Nothing more is known of the Galatians until a passin g reference which indicated that Galatia existed as a separate unit as late as t he eighth century AD. When the Celtic language of Galatia, the culture, customs and historical traditions, ceased to exist is difficult to estimate. Perhaps the language was dead by the eighth century, t he century when the earliest records of the precursor of modern Turkish are to b e found; this language is now the official language of Turkey, which covers the former Celtic territory of Galatia. ---------------------------------7 - The Celts in North Africa Dionysios I (405-367 BC), ruler of Syracuse, was the first recorded Mediterranea n monarch to employ Celtic warriors as mercenaries. Syracuse had been founded as a colony by Corinth on the south coast of Sicily in the late eighth century BC. When Dionysios came to the throne of Syracuse he began to pursue an expansionis t policy and made himself master of half of Sicily and over many of the Greek ci ty states on the Italian mainland. He encountered roving bands of Celtic warrior s about 379 BC while he was besieging Croton, a Greek colony on the Gulf of Tare ntum (Taranto). These Celts were fairly well south and must have wandered there after their successes against Rome. Dionysios sent 2,000 of them to Sparta to he lp her in her war against Thebes. But others he recruited into his own army. Celts were serving in the army of Syracuse several generations later when Agatho cles made himself ruler, in 317 BC. Agathocles was a demagogue who continued Dio nysios' policy of expansion and his attacks on the western Sicilian cities. Thes e cities called in the assistance of Carthage. The Carthaginians landed an army in Sicily and, in 311 BC, laid siege to Syracuse. Agathocles, a daring military commander, decided to relieve the pressure on his city by shipping part of his a rmy from the harbour of Syracuse across to the North African coast and attacking Carthage itself. In this audacious venture it is recorded that he transported t he first body of Celtic warriors to North Africa in 307 BC. The attack worked, f or in 306 BC Carthage agreed to Agathocles' peace terms. The Carthaginians apparently learned something of the qualities of the Celtic wa rriors, because forty years later, in 263 BC, Polybius tells us Carthage recruit ed a force of 3,000 Celtic warriors. Apparently they were from Cisalpine Gaul. T he force was recruited in the year before the First Punic War opened, when the r ising power of Rome was checked by the Carthaginian empire. The Celtic force was shipped to Agrigentum (Acragas), the Carthaginian city on the south-west coast of Sicily. When the war started going badly for Carthage, the Celts decided to l oot the city for themselves. However, the Romans took control, made the Celts ta ke service in their army and sent them to Illyria. Carthage had, however, recruited other bodies of Celtic warriors, who remained l oyal to them throughout the war. At the conclusion of this first war between Car thage and Rome, the Celtic mercenaries, led by their chieftain Antaros, who spok

e excellent Punic according to Polybius, mutinied over lack of payment. They app ealed to Rome to help them and this gave Rome the pretext for renewing hostiliti es and annexing Corsica, Sardinia and the Sicilian possessions. In spite of their experience with Celtic mercenary groups, Carthage continued to recruit the Celts from Iberia, Gaul and Cisalpine Gaul during the Second Punic War. Indeed, Hannibal's policies relied on alliances with Celtic tribes. Without the Celts, he could never have launched his famous invasion of the Italian peni nsula. Other Celtic bands were arriving in North Africa. Ptolemy I Lagi, one-time Gener al of Alexander the Great, had established his rule in Egypt, becoming Pharaoh a nd founding a dynasty which was to last for nearly 300 years, ending with the de ath of Cleopatra (51-30 BC). He it was who began the collection of the great lib rary at Alexandria and also established a museum there, making Alexandria a magn ificent university, inviting men of learning from all parts of the world to come to live there. His son Ptolemy II Philadelphios (b. 308 BC) ruled Egypt as Phar aoh from 283 to 246 BC. Through Antigonus Gonatas, King of Macedonia, Ptolemy re cruited a large body of Celtic warriors from Greece to serve in his army. Ptolemy had a brother called Magas, who rebelled against his rule, seeking the t hrone of the pharaohs for himself. This may well have been the reason why Ptolem y sought a corps of Celtic mercenaries to serve him, not being able to trust his own troops for fear of desertion to his brother. Pausanius records a corps of 4 ,000 Celtic warriors arriving in Egypt to serve Ptolemy II. Using the Celts, Pto lemy defeated his brother but was unable to follow up this victory and consolida te his position because the Celts mutinied. This was about 259 BC and it gave Ma gas sufficient breathing-space to secure his rule over Cyrenaica, a Greek colony in what is now Libya, a few miles inland. It was a prosperous trading colony fo unded about 630 BC. Cyrenaica became a Roman province in 74 BC. What was the cause of the Celtic mutiny? According to Pausanius, the Celts consp ired to overthrow Ptolemy II and rule the Egyptian kingdom for themselves. If th is was so, it was an ambitious and daring plan and one doomed to failure. Some 4 ,000 Celtic warriors against the might of Egypt seems improbable odds. The real motive probably lies with the reason put forward by Callimachos, the Greek schol ar (c.310/305-c.240 BC), who was from Cyrene. He lived through the event and was actually at Alexandria at the time, having been commissioned by Ptolemy II to c atalogue all the books in the famous library. During this time he produced sever al scholarly works including Hymn to Delos, in which he celebrates the defeat of the Celts. Callimachos speaks of a Celtic conspiracy to steal the treasures of Ptolemy while he was distracted by the affair of his brother Magas. The Celtic mutiny was put down with severity by Ptolemy II, who had the prisoner s taken to an island in the Sebennytic arm of the Nile and left there to languis h. The Celts perished on the island, either by starvation or by ritual suicide. The suppression of the Celtic mutiny was considered of sufficient importance to be commemorated. Ptolemy had a coin struck which depicted a Celtic shield. A mon ument was raised of which only fragments now survive: a piece depicting the head of a Celt with an intense expression of pain is now in the Cairo Museum. There is also a younger Celtic head showing anguish and a headless body of a fallen wa rrior. The pieces are said to have come from one whole monument which represente d the scene of mass suicide and, in its original form, must have been a magnific ent illustration of the epic of these Celtic warriors. Other smaller monuments s howing the Celtic defeat have also been discovered. Ptolemy II did not harbour grudges against peoples for we are told that he recru ited more Celtic warriors into the Egyptian army when he was developing commerce between the Nile and the Red Sea, reopening a canal originally excavated by Ram eses II and building a road from Coptos, near Thebes, to northern Berenice and e

stablishing commerce with Arabia, Ethiopia and India. Ptolemy III Euergetes ascended the throne of Egypt in 247 BC and continued to re cruit Celtic warriors to serve in the armies of the Pharaoh. He took them with h im on his invasion of Syria in 245 BC when he defeated Seleucos Callincos, captu red Antioch and overran Mesopotamia, Babylon, Media and much of Persia. When Ptolemy IV Philopator (222-205 BC) ruled Egypt, the Celtic presence in the Egyptian army was still strong. Bands of Celts, with their women and children, h ad settled in Egypt. Perhaps there was a degree of intermarriage, for Polybius s peaks of them as the Katoikoi and their descendants as Epigovoi. Some of their g raves, with painted tombstones, have been found in the cemetery of Hadra, southeast of Alexandria. It is recorded that 4,000 of these Egyptian-Celts fought at the battle of Raphia in 217 BC when Antiochus II marched against the Egyptian em pire of Ptolemy IV. Antiochus of Syria had an army of 20,000 men, including many Celtic mercenaries. They met up with the army of Ptolemy at Raphia (Rafa) on the Palestine-Egyptian border. Ptolemy's army numbered 25,000. As well as the 4,000 Egyptian-Celts, th ere were 10,000 Celts recruited from Thrace. The overwhelming composition of the Egyptian army was, therefore, Celtic. As Ptolemy's men attacked, the Syrian pha lanxes became disorganized. Another charge and the Syrians were completely route d. Antiochus' Syrian army lost 14,000 men killed and some 4,000 captured. At this time it was a common saying that no prince of the eastern world could do without his corps of Celtic warriors. In a curious repetition of those days, it was said in Europe of the eighteenth century that no European monarch could do without his Irish brigade - for Irish brigades saw lengthy and distinguished ser vice in the armies of France, Spain and Austria. The Scottish regiment with the oldest history still remains the Gardes Ecossaises, the Scots Guards of the Fren ch army formed in AD 1420 and disbanded in the 1830s. The last record of Celts serving in the Egyptian army was during 186/185 BC when Ptolemy V Epiphanes was Pharaoh. Ptolemy V had been only five years old when hi s father died and during his minority the affairs of Egypt were badly managed by his guardians Agathocles and Tlepolemus. Philip of Macedonia and Antiochus of S yria were able to combine together to strip Egypt of her European and Asiatic do minions. Antiochus had his daughter Cleopatra marry the boy king of Egypt. Even after Ptolemy V attained adulthood there was considerable unrest. A revolt in Up per Egypt was the reason why Ptolemy V sent an army of Celtic mercenaries up the Nile Valley in 186/185 BC. From this campaign survives one of the most intriguing monuments from the ancien t Celtic world. In the small chapel of Horus, in the temple of Seti I at the Gre at Temple of Karnak, a pharaoh who had reigned some time prior to 1400 BC, four Celtic warriors inscribed a piece of graffiti. 'Of the Galatians,' they wrote in Greek, 'we, Thoas, Callistratos, Acannon and Apollonios, came, and a fox we cau ght here.' It is a fascinating inscription. Four Celtic warriors, serving in the army of Ptolemy V, had taken time off from putting down the revolt in Upper Egy pt to wander into the tomb in idle curiosity, caught a jackal, which they mistoo k for a European fox, and recorded what they had done and their names. Once agai n, it is interesting, and underlines the cultural point, that they did not think of writing in Celtic. They wrote in straightforward Greek, so correct that Henr i Hubert demonstrates that it was an acquired language and not a mother-tongue, and also gave Greek forms of their names. And with this intriguing piece of Celtic graffiti in the tomb of an ancient phar aoh, the Celtic mercenaries of the Egyptian army disappear from historical recor d.

Just before this time, further west along the coast of North Africa, the Celts w ere serving in the Carthaginian army. The battle of Ilipia in 206 BC had resulte d in a Carthaginian withdrawal from the Iberian peninsula. When the Carthaginian s withdrew to North Africa, many Celtiberians and Celts followed them. In spite of Scipio Africanus' conquest of the Iberian peninsula, the Roman senate was rel uctant to let him take the advantage and pursue the Carthaginians to their home territory. It was not until 2.04 BC that they finally gave him permission and in the midsummer of that year he, with a large Roman army, landed at Utica, some t wenty miles from Carthage. Almost immediately he found himself hemmed in near th e coast by Hasdrubal, son of Cisco, with a body of Carthaginians and their allie s commanded by Syphax of Numidia, a North African kingdom neighbouring Carthage. Syphax was elderly but had been won to the Carthaginian cause by Hasdrubal givi ng his young daughter Sophonisba in marriage to him. Scipio and his Romans erected strong defensive positions around the city of Utic a and made an alliance with another Numidian chieftain named Masinissa, who was envious of Syphax's marriage to the beautiful Sophonisba. In the spring of 203 B C Scipio launched an offensive against the Carthaginian army from his beachhead. The Carthaginians and Numidians fell back inland towards an area known as the G reat Plain. In fact, they were in full flight approaching the town of Abba when they met a c ontingent of 4,000 Celtic warriors. The sight of these warriors, observes Polybi us, raised the spirits of Hasdrubal's army and persuaded them to halt their retr eat. 'The arrival of the Celts put fresh heart into the Carthaginians. Their num bers were reported in the capital [Carthage] as 10,000 instead of 4,000 and it w as said that their courage and the excellence of their weapons made them irresis tible in the field.' The arrival of the Celts saved the city of Carthage from falling into Roman hand s. However, Scipio was an aggressive enemy and he took 16,000 men on a five-day for ced march into the interior and fell on the new Carthaginian encampment. Hasdrub al had prior warning of the attack and had drawn up his men in readiness. The Ce lts he placed in the centre of his army, opposite the tough Roman legions, with Numidian cavalry to his left and Carthaginians to his right. While the Numidians were immediately driven back in the opening Roman assault, the Carthaginians wa vered for a while until they also fell back. Polybius says: 'The Celts, on the o ther hand, fought splendidly and held their ground against the Roman centre.' Scipio, realizing that the power of the Carthaginian army lay in the Celtic cont ingents, threw all his forces against them, slowly encircling them. When the Cel ts saw that they were on their own, Carthaginians and Numidians having fled from the battlefield, they surrendered. Scipio refused to accept their surrender and massacred them all. 'Thus perished the Celts, but they nevertheless rendered th e greatest service to the Carthaginians not only during the fighting, but also i n the rout, for if the Romans had not encountered their resistance, but had imme diately pursued the fugitives, very few of the enemy would have got away.' Hasdrubal was able to reach the walls of Carthage with the remnants of his army. Syphax was captured. He was eventually taken to Rome to be paraded in a triumph before ceremonial execution. The treacherous Numidian, Masinissa, took Syphax's wife, Sophonisba, who had been waiting at the Numidian capital of Cirta. Scipio disapproved and was going to despatch her in chains to Rome so Masinissa sent h er poison to save her from the disgrace. Scipio now turned on Carthage, seizing a portion of the Bay of Tunis, and establ ishing his army in siege positions. He offered terms to the city for its surrend er: all prisoners and deserters were to be restored to Rome; the Carthaginian fo

rces in Italy were to be withdrawn; the Carthaginian forces from Cisalpine Gaul were to be withdrawn; and Carthage was to give up her possessions in the Mediter ranean islands as well as to reduce her naval fleet to only twenty ships. The Ca rthaginian parliament decided to accept in principle and started negotiations; a t the same time, they sent to Hannibal, still in Italy, to return immediately wi th his army to save Carthage. In June 203 BC, Hannibal slipped out of the port of Croton, in the Gulf of Taren tum, with the bulk of his 12,000-man army, including his Celtic allies. He had c rossed the Alps into Italy when he was twenty-nine years old. Now he was forty-f ive. Hearing word of his coming, Carthage broke off negotiations with the Romans and Hasdrubal was able to seize zoo Roman transport ships. Hannibal landed on t he east coast of what is now Tunisia, about eighty miles from Carthage, in Octob er 203 BC. He immediately threw himself into the task of forging a new army to f ace Scipio. Hannibal's brother Mago, who was in Cisalpine Gaul with a medium-siz ed army, mainly of Celts, also arrived and joined him. Scipio marched up to the Bagradas (Merjerda) river, arriving at Hannibal's outpo sts in the spring of 202 BC. Near the village of Zama, Scipio and Hannibal met. Scipio had placed his Roman legions in the centre with Masinissa and 6,000 Numid ian horse on his right flank and Laelius and a contingent of Latin horse to the left. Hannibal placed his eighty elephants in the front line while giving pride of the centre ranks to the Celts, directly behind the elephants. Hanno was commanding Ligurian, African and Carthaginian troops placed behind the Celts. Numidian hors e were on the left flank and Carthaginian horse on the right. The first Roman assault scattered the elephants and it became a battle of the ce ntre footsoldiers Roman legionaries against Celtic warriors. These Celtic troops were mainly from Mago's army. After fierce hand-to-hand fighting, the Celts wer e slowly forced backwards and, on a prearranged signal, they retired to the flan ks. Scipio now ordered his centre to fall back to encourage Hannibal to think he was wavering. As Hannibal's troops pressed forward, Scipio unleashed his flanking c avalry. The battle became a massacre and by the end of the day 20,000 lay dead o n the field while a further 20,000 were captured in the pursuit. It was the batt le which caused the Roman senate to award Scipio with the title 'Africanus'. The battle of Zama brought to an end the Second Punic War, which had lasted for nea rly seventeen years. It marked the defeat of Hannibal and the collapse of Cartha ginian power. The battle of Zama was also important for the Celtic world. Aside from the Celts who had fought in the Carthaginian armies, the Celts of Cisalpine Gaul had had strong political motives for supporting Carthage. With Carthage defeated, and Ro me's power in the ascendant, there was nothing to stop Rome continuing her polic y of conquering and Romanizing Cisalpine Gaul. As we have seen, (*) Rome turned on Cisalpine Gaul and succeeded in conquering it after a campaign of twenty year s. Once Cisalpine Gaul was part of the Roman empire, it was a short march across the mountains to the rich lands of Transalpine Gaul. ~~~~ Note: [*] See Chapter 4. ~~~~ --------------------------------

8 - The Province After the conquest of Cisalpine Gaul, Rome could look beyond the Alps. With her new acquisitions in Spain in almost constant rebellion, there was a need for a s upply route along which men, equipment and provisions could be shipped. Hannibal had demonstrated that one possibility could be an overland route. Rome had now established friendly relations with Massilia (Marseilles), the Greek colony foun ded by Phocaea, east of the River Rhone, about 600 BC. Massilia had become an im portant trading port and the gateway for Celtic trade from the hinterlands of th e Celtic world to the Mediterranean. Her sphere of influence along the coast as far as Genoa was recognized by Rome. Massilots had established settlements in Ga ul as far inland as Aries and along the modern Riviera coast at Agathem (Agde), Antipolis (Antibes) and Nicae (Nice) to her eastern side, and westward to Pyrene (hence Pyrenees) and to the future Malaga. Massilia had become one of the great centres of the Greek commercial world. In 154 BC the Salyes, a tribe differentiated by ancient writers from the rest of the Celtic world by being designated Celto-Ligurian, launched an attack on Mass ilia. Rome, as a gesture of friendship, sent troops to aid the Massilots, who dr ove the Salyes back. In 125 BC the Salyes attacked again. This time the Romans s aw an opportunity to annex Massilia to their empire without coming into conflict with the Greek population of the Massilot settlements. Roman terms to aid Massi lia against the Celto-Ligurians were the annexation of the coastal area from Cis alpine Gaul to Massilia. The Massilots, to whom security and trade meant everyth ing, accepted the proposal. Rome sent M. Fulvius Flaccus, one of the consuls, wi th a military expedition. Flaccus drove the Salyes back. Their chieftains took refuge with one of the powerful Celtic tribes to the north of Massilia, the Allobriges. The Allobriges were allied with another influentia l Celtic tribe, the Arverni. For giving the Salyes help, the Romans sent an army under their Consul Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus up the Rhone to teach the Celtic tr ibes that Rome's enmity was something to be feared. This was in 122 BC. At Vinda lum, a place near the confluence of the Sorgue, Ahenobarbus faced an army of 20, 000 Celtic warriors commanded by Bituitis, son of Lovernios the Fox, chieftain o f the Arverni. Ahenobarbus delayed the battle until he could be reinforced by a second army commanded by Q. Fabius Maximus. The battle proved another disaster f or the Celts. Fabius Maximus then led a punitive expedition into the country of the Allobriges. Ahenobarbus began to conclude treaties with other Celtic tribes in the area as far apart as the Helvetii (of what is now Switzerland) and the Te ctosages of Tolosa (Toulouse). A large area of southern Gaul had not accepted th e 'friendship' of Rome. Bituitis, who had escaped after his defeat at Vindalum, now contacted Rome and o ffered peace terms on behalf of the Arverni. His condition, however, was that he should deal with the senate of Rome in person. Rome was delighted to welcome th e Celtic chieftain and had no intention of letting him go. Bituitis was, in fact , interned near Frascati on the northern slope of the Alban mountain, some thirt een miles south-east of Rome. Here, he was eventually joined by his son Congenti atos (sometimes referred to as Comm). Domitius Ahenobarbus set up a monument at Nimes to celebrate his victory. The Romans now stood master of the Celtic territory between the Alps and Massili a, stretching north near to Lake Geneva. They called the area simply 'the provin ce', which name is retained in modern Provence. By 118 BC this territory was ext ended westward to the Pyrenees and Tolosa. A Roman colony was founded called Nar bo (Narbonne) and the province's official name became Gallia Narbonensis. The gr eat Via Domitia, or Domitius' road, was constructed from Genoa, running north of Massilia to Narbo and then onwards, skirting the eastern end of the Pyrenees do wn to Valencia and finally reaching New Carthage. The great land route had been officially opened up and Rome was master of this commercial and military highway

. The province had annexed much fertile and valuable land from the Celtic tribes a nd given Rome a strong foothold in the Celtic hinterland. To safeguard their interests, the Romans made alliances with many tribes on the northern frontier of this province. One tribe especially, the Aedui - the name m eaning the burners, found in the Old Irish aed (fire) proved to be one of Rome's staunchest allies and were used as a cat's paw to protect her interests. But Ro me was not satisfied with the territory she had gained. It would not be long bef ore her imperial greed would push her further northward. In 113 BC a people called the Cimbri, arriving from the north, came into conflic t with the Boii, in Bohemia. They were considered by contemporary observers to b e a Celtic people. Sextus Pompeius Festus, abridging a lexicon of Verrius Flaccu s (d. AD 14), says the name derived from the Celtic word amber, meaning brigand. Old Irish certainly has a word cimb for tribute and a word combid meaning priso ner. This supposes a formation of 'one who takes prisoners for tribute', which c ould easily be an act of brigandage. The recorded names of the leaders of the Ci mbri, such as Claodicos, are Celtic. In their later incursions the Cimbri were joined by another people called the Te utones. Today, of course, the word Teuton is synonymous with German. But at the time of their alliance with the Cimbri the Teutones were considered Celts as wel l. The name itself is simply the Latin form of the Celtic word meaning people, w hich emerges in the Gaulish deity Teutates and in the Irish tuath, a tribe. The Galatians had a sept called Teutobodiaci in the Tectosages. The leader of the Te utones was named Teutobodunos, a clearly Celtic name. Diodorus, Strabo and Pliny all refer to the fact that the Cimbri and the Teutones spoke a Celtic language, while Plutarch refers to the Ambrones as the 'crack corps' of the Teuton army, who are clearly identified by Sextus Pompeius Festus as a gens Gallica - a Celti c people. In recent times, however, scholars have become uncertain whether to accept the c ontemporary evidence that the Cimbri and Teutones were Celts. They base their cu rrent scepticism on the belief that the ancient world had yet to distinguish bet ween the Celts and Germans, as the Germans had only just made their first appear ance into record. Henri Hubert, while admitting the evidence which showed that t he Cimbri and Teutones were Celtic-speaking, came up with the remarkable theory that they could have been Germans who were Celticized by trade or policy during the third or second centuries BC. He argued that just as the Irish, Scots or Wel sh have taken Anglo-Saxon names, or Anglicized their Celtic names, so the Cimbri and Teutones could have taken Celtic names, spoken Celtic but been German. The theory seems a little far-fetched. Quintus Sertorius, the General whom Gaius Mar ius appointed to discover what he could about them, learned Celtic and found tha t language sufficient in his dealings with them. But, in fairness to the 'German theory', Pytheas, in the fourth century BC, does record a people called Teutone s in his day as living on the island of Abalum (Esel) off the Baltic coast and b eing engaged in the amber trade. That area is not generally considered one popul ated by the Celts. Additionally, in Augustus' time, a Roman expedition sent alon g the northern European coast found, in what is now Jutland, a remnant of the Ci mbri. Strabo called Jutland the Cimbric Peninsula. The contemporary evidence, however, seems clear enough. The Cimbri and the Teuto nes spoke Celtic, had Celtic names and used Celtic weapons. The very names of th e two tribes were Celtic. They were, then, Celts. And, eventually, they formed a lliances with other Celtic tribes, creating a large Celtic army which, once more , nearly brought about the downfall of Rome. The Cimbri first appeared in 113 BC, when they spread into the land of the Boii

in what is called Bohemia. They were said to have come from north-western Europe , so the discovery of remnants of the tribe in Jutland is not so amazing. Poseid onius connected them with the Cimmerians, who, according to Homer's Odyssey, wer e a people living on the edge of the world by the shore of Oceanus, a land shrou ded by perpetual mist and darkness. Some nineteenth-century writers have tried t o link the name with the Welsh Cymry. The Boii drove these Cimbri out of their l ands. They next appeared in the lands of the Volcae Tectosages, who also drove t hem away. They then appeared in the lands of the Taurisci of Noricum, modern Aus tria. So the Romans began to concern themselves with the Cimbri, for anyone cont rolling this area could pass into the Po Valley and thence into Italy proper. Th e Consul for that year, Cn. Papirius Carbo, was hurriedly sent with an army to I llyria by sea and thence into Noricum, marching to the principal city of Noreia (Neumarkt). The Cimbri did not want to fight the Romans and attempted to negotiate . Carbo dismissed their envoys and pressed on in battle formation. The vastated his army and he was beaten back with considerable losses. The taly lay open and undefended. But the Cimbri moved away northwards and ore was heard of them for two years. with them Cimbri de road to I nothing m

In 111 BC they appeared in the Rhone Valley and began recruiting local Celtic tr ibes into an alliance. They were moving southwards and it was clear that the Rom an province of Gallia Narbonensis was under threat. However, in 109 BC envoys fr om the Cimbri arrived before the Roman Governor of the province, M. Junius Silan us, explaining that all they wanted was an area of fertile land in which to sett le. Silanus passed on their request to the Roman senate. The senate instructed h im to break off any discussions and attack them. Junius Silanus obeyed orders an d was promptly cut to pieces, as Carbo had been. The armies of Rome had received their second major defeat at the hands of the Cimbri. By 107 BC the Cimbri had been joined by the Teutones and many other Celtic tribe s led by Boiorix, Lugios and Gaesorix. The Tectosages of Tolosa had now rebelled against Rome and had been joined by the Tigurini. They were besieging the Roman garrison at Tolosa. Rome had raised a fresh army commanded by one of the consul s for that year, L. Cassius Longinus. He was able to separate the Tigurini, comm anded by a chieftain named Divico, and pressed forward on them. Divico withdrew down the Garonne Valley, finally making a stand near Agen, in the country of the Nitiobriges. Not only did Divico defeat the Roman army but the Consul Cassius L onginus was killed in the battle. Divico took the surrender of the remnants of t he Roman soldiers. In fact, fifty years after this event, Divico was still alive and living in the land of the Helvetii and was known to Julius Caesar. Another Roman army, commanded by Longinus' fellow Consul for 107 BC, Servilius C aepio, had followed him to Tolosa and managed to relieve the besieged Roman garr ison there. He forced the Tectosages to surrender and took, as tribute, an estim ated 200,000 pounds weight in gold from their holy temples. Other versions have it that the gold was discovered in a sacred lake and identified as the gold take n in the sack of Delphi. Caepio sent it under guard to Massilia, en route for Ro me, but it never arrived. He was accused of complicity in the theft from the imp erial coffers. However, it seems likely that a part of this treasure re-emerged in the find at Taillac-Libourne in 1893 when a horde of gold coins was discovere d. The coins were mainly struck by the Celtic tribes of the Arverni, Bellovaci a nd Ambarri, while others are unidentifiable. In spite of Caepio's success in rescuing the garrison at Tolosa, Rome was in tur moil. Three Roman armies had been defeated in as many major engagements by the C elts. In 105 BC Caepio, now the Governor of the province, was reinforced by a ne w Roman army commanded by Gaius Manlius. Manlius was a blunt, no-nonsense profes sional soldier who had risen through the ranks of the army. Caepio, on the other hand, was an aristocrat who had achieved his rank by virtue of his birth. Caepi

o clearly despised Manlius while Manlius regarded Caepio as a fool. The rift was to prove fatal. Manlius was all for launching an attack on the Cimbri and their allies, taking the offensive immediately. Soon after he had arrived at Massilia , on 6 October 105 BC, he had sent out an advance guard, commanded by his second -in-command, Scaurus, to scout the enemy positions. Caepio disapproved of Manliu s' action and, while the two Roman generals were quarrelling, Scaurus and his co mmand were wiped out. The Cimbri came bursting down on the main Roman army posit ions at Arausio (Orange) and they suffered a similar fate. A fourth Roman army h ad been destroyed and the road to Rome herself lay open and undefended. Panic re igned in the city, the Celtic sack of Rome in 390 BC was uppermost in the citize ns' minds. Inexplicably, the Cimbri and their allies, the Teutones, turned away, westward a cross the Pyrenees, while their other allies returned to their former agricultur al pursuits. Rome was given a breathing-space while the Cimbri and Teutones raid ed into Iberia, perhaps still trying to find fertile land in which to settle; bu t after a couple of years they were driven out by the Celtiberians. Rome, in the intervening period, was able to find a man equal to the task of def ending it. The man was Gaius Marius (157-86 BC), who had fought the Celts before , serving as a young officer under Scipio Aemilianus during the siege of Numanti a. He was married to Julia, who was to become aunt to Gaius Julius Caesar. Mariu s had just concluded a successful campaign against Jugurtha and the Numidians, w ho had been in rebellion against Rome, and was now called back from Africa to de fend Rome against the Cimbri and their allies. Marius, with the Cimbri in Spain, was given two years to reorganize the demorali zed and defeated Roman forces. He was elected Consul and placed in sole charge o f the operation. It is his methods of organization with which we associate the R oman army today: the legionary formations with their aquila, or eagle, as a mean s to raise regimental esprit de corps. The legion, regular pay, standard weapons and standard battle-tactics were all introduced by him. For the first time, the army became a career for aspiring young men, and for the first time Rome had a standing army, with terms of service and retirement pensions. In 102 BC, with Marius being re-elected Consul for a fourth term, the news came that the Celts were on the move once again. The Cimbri were massing along the Br enner Pass and Quintus Lutatius Catulus, the second Consul for 102 BC, was sent with an army to prevent them emerging. The Cimbri were forced to fall back towar ds the River Athesis (Adige), from where they threatened to move through Gallia Narbonensis. Meanwhile, the Teutones and the Ambrones had already moved through eastern Galli a Narbonensis and were now coming through the Alps towards the Po Valley. Marius marched his army to face them. Their initial encounter was a stalemate, but it gave the Romans a boost in morale for it was not a defeat for them. Encouraged, Marius went on the offensive, forcing the Teutones and Ambrones to fall back as far as Aquae Sextiae (Aix), where he effected a skilful encirclement. He attacke d and gave his troops orders to spare no one. The attack became a massacre. Chro nicles recorded that the butchery by the Romans was so tremendous that for many years the fields in the vicinity, saturated with so much blood, produced bumper corn crops. Only a small body of survivors escaped to the lands of another Celti c tribe, the Sequani, but the Sequani were forced to surrender them to the pursu ing Romans, who promptly butchered them. Marius returned to Rome to universal rejoicing by the citizens and was elected C onsul for a fifth time. In the spring of 101 BC he marched north with fresh troo ps to reinforce the army of Catulus which had wintered in the Po Valley. The Cim bri were already moving across the Alps in large numbers, determined to have rev enge on the Romans for the massacre of their compatriots at Aquae Sextiae. By Au

gust they had taken up positions near Vercellae, between Milan and Turin, on the Paudine Plain. It was reported that their battle line was enormous and stretche d for three miles. The Celts opened the attack and, for a time, it seemed that t he Roman line was going to break before their charge as it had done so often bef ore. But Marius' newly reorganized army was better equipped and trained to meet the onslaught. In tight-knit formations, the Romans stood firm against the charg es. The Cimbri wavered. Roman writers observed that it was an extremely hot day and that the heat sapped the northern vigour of the Celts. Their lines broke. Th is was the moment Marius had waited for. His troops now took the offensive. The Cimbri fell back and then the withdrawal became a rout. Historians record that 1 20,000 were slaughtered. No one escaped. Rome had been saved yet again and it wa s fully five centuries before the Italian peninsula was to be invaded again. Of the tribes that had caused such devastation to Rome, and checked her imperial ambitions for a decade, little else is known. The Teutones are heard of no more . The Ambrones also disappear, although Latin grammarians of the late empire say the name survived as a term of abuse, perhaps in much the same way the name of the Vandals, the Germanic tribe who invaded Gaul and Spain in the fourth and fif th centuries AD, has survived for someone ruthlessly destructive. Only the Cimbr i are heard of when the Roman expedition, during the time of Augustus (63 BC-AD 14), discovered them in Jutland. The Cimbri sent the Roman Emperor a gift - a ca uldron. One cannot help remarking that a cauldron, with its mystic significance, is a very Celtic gift! the Arverni, Tectosa The tribes who had joined the Cimbri, Teutones and Ambrones ges, Tigurini and others settled once more to the peaceful life of agriculture. For a couple of generations there was peace on the northern frontiers of the Rom an empire. But the marauding expeditions had had a great effect on the Celtic wo rld beyond Rome's influence. During the decade social habits had changed. From 5 00 BC the people of Gaul, from the country of the Belgae, Belgium in the north, south to the newly created province of Gallia Narbonensis, had enjoyed a settled and stable life as agricultural communities, living in open villages and scatte red farmsteads. The ancient hill-forts had fallen into disuse. Trade was prosper ous and many of the Celtic tribes produced their own coinage. Highways crisscros sed the fertile farmlands of the Celts. At the start of the first century BC, at the time of Rome's defeat of the Cimbri , the people of Gaul were back in the old hill-forts and were rebuilding them, c reating new ones and fortifying their townships. Was it simply a response to the Cimbri expeditions through Gaul? The answer was no. A new people were moving southwards in great numbers at this period the Germans, ancestors of the Germanic peoples, including the English and the Franks. They had originated from an undefined area, generally considered to be southern Scandinavia. Tacitus, in his work Germania, on the origins, geograp hy and institutions of the Germans, written about AD 98, says it was the Celts o f Gaul who first encountered them and gave them the name Germani, which designat ed the entire group of tribes. We have seen that at Clastidium in 222 BC the Ger mans, making their first appearance in recorded history, were found fighting for the Celts against Rome. By 120 BC the Germans were pushing into former Celtic territory and soon the eas tern border of Gaul was the Rhine, the great Celtic river of Rhenos (meaning sea ), whose valley was filled with Celtic place-names, indicative of the centuries of Celtic occupation. The Celts in what is now southern Germany, Austria and Cze choslovakia were isolated from the rest of the Celtic world and were eventually to disappear. Within a few years, the Germanic tribes were even attempting to cr oss the Rhine. As we have seen, (*) whereas once the Celts had achieved politica l predominance over some of the Germanic peoples, now it was the Germans' turn t o assert their military superiority as they pressed south and west. And it was t

he movement of these peoples which was forcing the Celtic agricultural communiti es to fortify themselves against attack by retreating to a lifestyle which they had abandoned centuries before. The Celtic world had started to diminish and its heartland, Gaul, was suddenly c aught in a pincer movement pressed by the Germanic tribes from the north-east an d by the Romans from the south. ~~~~ Note: [*] See Chapter 2. ~~~~ ------------------------------9 - Caesar in Gaul In 71 BC the Sequani of Gaul, living on the western bank of the Rhine, were invo lved in a quarrel with the Aedui, who occupied central Gaul between the Upper Lo ire and Saone. The Aedui capital was the hill-fort of Bibracte, modern Autun. Wh at the cause of this dispute was it is difficult to say. The dispute erupted int o prolonged warfare. The Sequani looked for allies to help them and invited from the eastern bank a confederation of German tribes, known as the Seubi, under th eir chieftain Ariovistus. Taking advantage of this internal squabble, the German s pressed across the Rhine and were soon seizing Celtic land and raiding deep in to Celtic territory. Ariovistus defeated the Aedui in 61 BC and, by this time, m any of the Celtic tribes of Gaul were forced to pay tribute to him. In 60 BC the chieftain of the Aedui, Divitiacos, looked for a powerful ally to h elp him drive back the Germans. Instead of turning to the rest of the Celtic wor ld, he turned his eyes south - to Rome. He made the journey there and was allowe d to address the Roman senate with his proposal for an alliance. During his visi t it appears that he was the guest of Quintus Tullius Cicero (102-43 BC), an abl e soldier and administrator and younger brother of Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 43 BC), the orator and statesman. Divitiacos met the elder Cicero, who mentions him in his letters. Interestingly, Cicero does not refer to the Aedui chieftain's p olitical interests in Rome but he does mention that Divitiacos was not only a ch ieftain but a druid and that he was acquainted with natural philosophy and was a ble to predict the future. It is unclear whether Marcus Cicero, who had been Con sul in 63-62. BC, supported Divitiacos when he spoke in the senate. It seems hig hly likely, for any alliance with the Aedui was opposed by Gaius Julius Caesar ( 100 44 BC), who had just returned from Spain, where he had been Governor. Caesar h ad achieved a reputation for his generalship in that country and was a rising po wer in Rome. Cicero, however, opposed what he saw as Caesar's 'unconstitutional attitudes'. Divitiacos must have received some vague promises from Rome for when he returned to Gaul he did all he could to promote an alliance of Rome with the Aedui. The following year, in 59 BC, however, Caesar was appointed Consul of Rome with Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus. It was now that Caesar emerged as a man of determined ambition for he began to push through laws which his fellow Consul attempted to veto, as was his right. Bibulus, finding himself ineffectual against the determ ination of Caesar, was forced to shut himself in his house for the rest of the y ear of consulship and gave rise to the joke that it was the consulship not of Ca esar and Bibulus but of Julius and Caesar. Caesar turned to Gaul and, having dis missed the idea of an alliance with the Celtic chieftain Divitiacos - perhaps on the ground that he had been promoted by Marcus Cicero, his enemy - asked the se nate to recognize the German warlord Ariovistus as king and 'friend of the Roman people' (rex atque amicus). Finding his actions approved of by distant Rome, Ar

iovistus continued to carve a Germanic empire among the Celtic tribes of Gaul, o vercoming all resistance. Dumnorix, whose name means king of the world, the younger brother of Divitiacos, was opposed to his brother's pro-Roman attitude. He must have argued vehemently , especially when it became known that Rome was supporting the German Ariovistus . However, Divitiacos was not to be budged. Dumnorix was married to a daughter o f Orgetorix, chieftain of the Helvetii. The Helvetii were a large and powerful C eltic tribe inhabiting the area of modern Switzerland (the name Helvetia is used as the name for Switzerland by the Swiss today). Dumnorix entered into a secret alliance with Orgetorix and also with Casticos, a son of the chieftain of the S equani who had become disillusioned by his father's alliance with Ariovistus. Th e purpose behind this agreement was to attempt to unite the Celts of Gaul in an effort to drive the Germans back across the Rhine and to check the interference of Rome in the affairs of Gaul. In 58 BC Caesar emerged as Proconsul but with Gnaeus Magnus Pompeius (Pompey) an d Marcus Licinius Crassus as co-consuls, forming what became known as the First Triumvirate. Pompey had already been Consul with Crassus in 70 BC and had a repu tation as being a more successful general than Caesar. He, too, was a man of gre at ambition. Crassus (115-536) had achieved fame for suppressing the Spartacus u prising. These three powerful men, breaking with the senate, became virtual dict ators of Rome. They divided up the spheres of influence they were to have and Ca esar took for himself the governorship of Illyricum (Dalmatia), Cisalpine Gaul a nd Gallia Narbonensis. But he was an ambitious man and he wanted to achieve a mi litary reputation as great, if not greater, than that of Pompey. In spite of his alliance with Pompey and Crassus, Caesar saw them as his rivals for power as we ll. Only new conquests could enhance his reputation in Rome, and he was clearly looking beyond Gallia Narbonensis towards the rest of Gaul, the mainly uncharter ed hinterland of the Celts. Caesar had been assigned only four legions to keep his provinces under control. This did not meet with his ambitious plans and he set about raising two more as well as bodies of auxiliaries. The position of second-in-command was offered to Quintus Tullius Cicero to appease his political opponents. Cicero, however, decl ined the offer, though he was later to join Caesar as a legate, commanding a leg ion, taking part in the 54 BC invasion of Britain. The post of second-in-command went instead to Titus Atticus Labienus. Labienus came from Picenum, where his f amily had settled among the Cisalpine Celts as colonists. He had served as a tri bune in 63 BC and achieved notoriety by prosecuting one Rabirius for a murder wh ich had taken place in 100 BC; Cicero had acted as defence counsel. Cicero's Pro Rabirio (For Rabirius) is one of his more famous speeches. Labienus was to serv e as Caesar's most trustworthy lieutenant through the Gallic wars but during the Roman civil war he sided with Pompey. In the early months of 58 BC Caesar was offered the perfect excuse for intervent ion in Gaul. Orgetorix, the chieftain of the Helvetii, had died. The new leaders of the Helvetii, pressurized by the advancing Germans from the north and northeast and fully aware of the ambitions of Rome to the south, decided on a mass mi gration.The Boii had already moved themselves from what is now Bohemia, in Czech oslovakia, and settled for a short time in Noricum, or modern Austria, where the y had joined the Taurisci. The advance of the Germanic tribes had forced both th ese peoples to move yet again to the country of the Helvetii. In fact, the Helve tii had, apparently, been preparing for their mass exodus for some time. Wagons with food and stores for the journey had been assembled and nearly 400,000 men, women and children, of whom 92,000 were fighting men, assembled. It was to be on e of the last major Celtic migrations for five centuries, for not until the sout hern British Celts fled to Brittany and northern Spain in the fifth and sixth ce nturies AD was there to be a migration on such a scale. The aim of the Helvetii, with their Boii, Taurisci and Tigurini followers, seemed to be a search for 'li

ving space' away from the Germanic tribes and Romans. They were to move westward . Dumnorix of the Aedui had persuaded Casticos of the Sequani to allow the Helve tii to pass through his tribal lands. They were to move westward, keeping to the south of the Jura Mountains and passing what is now Lake Geneva. On the appoint ed day the 400,000 Celts fired their villages, towns, farmsteads and fields, to prevent them falling into the hands of the incoming Germanic tribes, and began t o move to the Pas de l'Ecluse. Meanwhile Dumnorix's pro-Roman brother, Divitiacos, chieftain of the Aedui, had sent Caesar word of what was happening. Caesar was in Aquileia, in Cisalpine Gau l. He must have been delighted by an apparently heaven-sent opportunity to inter vene. The movement of the Helvetii was seen as a threat to the 'peace' of the Ro man province of Gallia Narbonensis and also to the lands to its north. The Roman s could explain that their intervention had been requested by a friendly monarch Divitiacos of the Aedui. Caesar immediately set off with the six legions to con front the Helvetii. By 1 April, 58 BC, Caesar and his legions had reached the southern end of Lake G eneva while the Helvetian Celts were assembling to pass through the Pas de l'Ecl use. Caesar blocked them from turning south, where they would have crossed part of Gallia Narbonensis to swing round into Sequani territory. To avoid the Romans they turned north-west into the territory of the Aedui. It was all the same to Caesar. Whichever way the Helvetii moved, it was an invitation for the Romans to attack. Divitiacos had invited the Romans to 'protect' Aedui territory against the Helvetii. Caesar began to march after the Celts. The Aedui, finding the Romans entering their territory, were now split between t heir chieftain's pro-Roman policy and the pro-Celtic policy of Dumnorix. Althoug h Dumnorix was not the chieftain of the Aedui, he, like his brother, also appear s to have been a druid, and possessed as much influence as his brother Divitiaco s. Caesar, entering Aedui territory, found many of them giving support to the He lvetii. Indeed, the Aedui kept the Helvetii informed of Caesar's movements and a lso prevented supplies of corn and other provisions from falling into Roman hand s. Roman cavalry, sent by Caesar to cut off the advance of the Helvetii, were mi sdirected by the Aedui. Caesar demanded a conference with the Aedui leadership and Divitiacos sent a chi eftain named Liscos to meet the Roman General. Undoubtedly Caesar wanted Dumnori x caught and eliminated. However, as Caesar recounts, Divitiacos stood up for hi s brother, pointing out that the punishment of Dumnorix would alienate Divitiaco s from the good opinion of his people and, interestingly enough, not only from t he Aedui but from the people of all Gaul. Caesar had a meeting with Divitiacos a nd records that the interview took place through an interpreter. It was inevitable that the Romans would eventually encounter the Helvetii. After all, the movement of 400,000 people, men, women and children, and the elderly, with their wagons and goods, was a slow process. Caesar, hearing that they were crossing the River Saone, crossed the river of Lugdunum, the fortress of Lugh, t he Celtic god (Lyons) and moved rapidly along the western bank to intercept them . By the time he reached the spot he could see only the Tigurini still crossing. This was the tribe which, in earlier years, had decimated the army of Longinus. Caesar and his troops, catching them by surprise, cut them to pieces. It became clear that, in trying to avoid the Romans, the Helvetii would pass Bib racte, the Aedui capital of Autun. Caesar, taking advantage of his greater mobil ity, marched his six legions towards Bibracte and positioned his men in readines s. The Helvetii marched slowly into the trap. The battle at Bibracte lasted from noon until nightfall. The Helvetii fought desperately against Caesar's ruthless legions. Finally, using the wagons to form defensive positions they made it as hard as possible for Caesar to overcome them. Some 6,000 were massacred during t

he first day's fighting. The next day found the Helvetii making a stand at nearb y Langres. Caesar surrounded them and moved in. Of the nearly 400,000 who had st arted the exodus, only 100,000 survived. While the remnants of the Boii were allowed to settle in the country of the Aedu i, the Helvetii were forcibly returned to their former homeland, Helvetia, and m ade to rebuild their burned and devastated homes. Here they were eventually subj ugated by the incoming Germanic tribes and through conquest and intermarriage th ey have vanished as a distinct Celtic people, leaving only the name Helvetia as a name for modern Switzerland to mark their passing. The ruthlessness and efficiency demonstrated by the Romans clearly impressed the Celtic chieftains of Gaul. Many of them began arriving at the capital of the Ae dui to make friends with Caesar and to see whether he would help them against Ar iovistus and his Germans, who were still encroaching on their eastern borders. T heir thinking was shortsighted: the enemy of your enemy is your friend. Using Di vitiacos as their spokesman, the chieftains of the Celtic tribes of Gaul asked C aesar to aid them. It was precisely what Caesar wanted them to ask. He could cla im that he was champion and protector of Gaul. Caesar asked Ariovistus to meet him for a conference. Notwithstanding the fact t hat the German King had been proclaimed a 'friend of Rome', and at Caesar's inst igation, it was clear that Rome, in the person of Caesar, set little store by tr eaties. Ariovistus declined to meet, suavely replying that if Caesar needed anyt hing, he had only to ask. The German King added that, after all, he was 'a frien d of Rome'. The gloves came off. Caesar demanded that the German King should ret urn east of the Rhine, release all his Gaulish prisoners and cease any military excursions into Celtic territory. He added that the Celtic tribes of Gaul were n ow under Roman protection. Ariovistus answered that he had not interfered with t he Romans or Roman possessions and therefore the Romans had no right to interfer e with him. If Caesar wanted to press the matter, he, Ariovistus, would fight. A large body of Germans started to cross the Rhine to swell Ariovistus' forces. Caesar at once moved his army to meet this challenge. The Germans were gathering in the country of the Sequani, formerly enemies of the Aedui and now enemies of Rome. Many of the Sequani Celts decided to join forces with Ariovistus. Caesar marched to their capital, Vesonito (Besancon), a hundred miles north-east of Bib racte. After an initial skirmish, the Germans pressed on to Caesar's outposts. Caesar r esponded with an immediate attack and the Germans were put to flight. Publius Cr assus, the son of Marcus Licinius Crassus, one of the triumvirate, pursued them with cavalry and pushed them back over the Rhine. Men, women and children were c ut down and Ariovistus' defeat was total. The German threat to Gaul had been bro ken for the time being - but the Roman threat was now immediate. As Dumnorix had foreseen, the Romans were going to seize the whole of Gaul. While Labienus and the Roman army went into winter quarters in the land of the Sequani, Ceasar went to Cisalpine Gaul to raise two more legions on his own responsibility, look aft er administrative problems and prepare his campaign for the forthcoming year. To the north, in that area which is still named after them - Belgium -a confeder ation of the Belgae Celtic tribes had witnessed with dismay the political naivet y of Divitiacos and his friends. They realized that the might of Rome would be t urned against them during the following year. The Belgae confederation had come into being to fight the encroachments of the Germans and had been hardened by ye ars of border conflict. Their territory was bounded in the south by the rivers M arne and Seine, in the west by the sea and in the east and north by the Rhine. T hey were not susceptible to Roman bribes and duplicity. In 57 BC Caesar, back in Gaul, commanding eight legions and with a large conting

ent of Aedui cavalry now at his service, with Divitiacos in tow as adviser and c hief negotiator, marched northward. In fact, he made a forced march so that he a rrived in the territory of the Belgic Remi (Reims being their tribal capital) be fore they knew he was near. The Remi, whose name means the first, were the most southerly of the Belgae confederation and the most exposed to the Roman advance. They had no time to prepare and were forced to surrender. Caesar took hostages and passed swiftly on to the River Aisne, to the north. The Suessiones, Bellovac i and Ambiana were prepared but, after some tough fighting, Caesar secured their submission. Moving westward he reached the River Sambre (Somme) and set up camp near Samarobriva (Amiens). He discovered that the leading tribes of the Belgae confederation, the Nervii and the Aduatuci, were awaiting him on the far bank of the river. The Nervii had a tremendous fighting reputation and even Caesar even tually admits admiration for them. They were an austere tribe who forbade wine t o be brought among them as being injurious to their health. Caesar sent his cavalry across the river to feel out the enemy positions. The Ne rvii quickly routed the cavalry and carried the attack to the far bank, swimming across the river in the darkness and engaging the main Roman infantry in a fier ce hand-to-hand struggle. On Caesar's right flank, the VII and XII Legions were actually in danger of annihilation. Caesar took personal command in the area, ma naged to rally his men and launched a counter-attack which broke the Celtic adva nce. Soon the Celts were in retreat and the retreat became a rout. Roman archers and slingers poured a withering fire on them as they tried to recross the Somme . Of the 50,000 Celts who were said to have launched the attack, only 500 surviv ed, according to Roman estimations. The Aduatuci were now moving westward to reinforce the Nervii and they posed a t hreat to Caesar's eastern flank. He turned his legions to meet them and encounte red them at Namur, where they withdrew into the great hill-fort there. Caesar no w surrounded them and besieged them. Word reached the Aduatuci that, with the de feat of the Nervii, the Belgae confederation had asked for terms of surrender. C aesar promised the Aduatuci leaders that if they surrendered he would spare thei r lives. The Aduatuci leaders put down their weapons and opened the gates of the hill-fort. Caesar claimed they had betrayed the terms of the agreement and imme diately slaughtered 4,000 of them and then rounded up the others, some 53,000 me mbers of the tribe, for sale into slavery. The Belgae confederation had been crushed as completely as the Helvetii in the p revious year. Yet for the next thirty years the Roman conquest of the Belgic tri bes was to be a tenuous one and the peace uneasy. Nevertheless, in two brief cam paigns, Caesar had been able to claim the major part of Gaul under Roman control . The only area which was an unknown territory was Armorica, the Breton peninsul a. Caesar sent Publius Crassus with a unit of the VII Legion to make a survey of it and seek alliances among the tribes there while he left the major part of hi s army in winter quarters at Chartres, Orleans and Blois. Then he returned to Ro me. It was in the wake of the defeat of the Belgae that Divitiacos of the Aedui vani shed from the historical scene. Until this point he had been Caesar's constant c ompanion in Gaul, urging his fellow Celts to submit to Rome. As the Roman army b ecame increasingly successful, more and more Gauls joined it as mercenary cavalr y. Caesar concludes his account of events with what he claims to be a verbatim r eport of speeches made by the Celtic ruler, although they appear to be Caesar's own impressions of the function of Divitiacos in regard to furthering Rome's int erests in Gaul rather than the actual words of Divitiacos. Cicero had said that Divitiacos was a druid and yet there seems little of the qualities commonly asso ciated with a druid in his speeches. Certainly Caesar does not refer to him as a druid, but Cicero's testimony is unquestionable and was based on a personal kno wledge of the man.

Divitiacos is the antithesis of his brother Dumnorix, who, after the defeat of t he Helvetii, is not referred to by Caesar until the year 54 BC when he emerges a s the new chieftain of the Aedui and still Caesar's most implacable enemy. The b rothers are chalk and cheese. The one, manipulative, trying to make the best dea l of selling Gaulish freedom to the Romans; the other, fiercely Gaulish, a man o f inflexible patriotism and entirely devoted to his native land and people, who would die rather than betray their trust. When Caesar returned to Gaul in the spring of 56 BC, Divitiacos had vanished. Di d he simply die, or was he assassinated by a Gaulish patriot? Unfortunately, Cae sar does not say. Nor does he say what Dumnorix was doing during 58-54 BC, altho ugh when he does re-emerge as chieftain of the Aedui, he is a hostage of the Rom ans. Publius Crassus had arrived in Rome early in 56 BC with some disturbing news for Caesar. He had reconnoitred the Armorican peninsula, taking some of the VII Leg ion, and had received token submissions and assurances of friendship from half-a -dozen tribes, including an important sea-faring people called the Veneti, whose capital at Vannes still bears their name. But no sooner had he passed on, leavi ng some of the officers of the VII Legion with them to act as emissaries, than t he Veneti had risen up in defiance of Rome and made those officers their prisone rs. Caesar was having a rough ride in the Roman senate at that time and so he to ok the opportunity to cut short his stay in Rome and rejoin his legions in Gaul. In the meantime he had sent orders for a fleet of Roman galleys to be built in the mouth of the Loire, and rowers, seamen and pilots were transported there fro m Massilia. However, when he arrived in Gaul in the early spring, he discovered that the Ven eti were not the only tribe threatening the Roman conquest. The Belgae were caus ing disturbances and Caesar ordered Titurius Sabinus to take three of the legion s to occupy their country. Then there were the Germanic tribes making further in cursions across the Rhine. He despatched Labienus with another three legions to check them. So, with the remaining two legions, Caesar set off for the country o f the Veneti to teach them obedience to Rome. The Veneti were a maritime power whose strongholds stood on the headlands and is lands in Quiberon Bay. They were almost unapproachable from the land. The Veneti had a powerful fleet of ships, some 220 vessels according to Roman sources, wit h which they traded not only along the coast of Gaul but with Britain and Irelan d. Much of their wealth originated from trading tin from the mines of Cornwall. It appeared that their opposition to the Romans derived not only from a reaction to foreign domination but from a rumour that the Romans were going to invade Br itain; this would destroy the Veneti trade with that country. The Veneti waited with equanimity as Caesar and his legions marched into their c ountry. They realized that the Romans would find it difficult to attack from the landward side. Indeed, when Caesar and his legions attempted to capture some of their island fortresses by constructing huge dykes or causeways, the Veneti sim ply evacuated their people by ship to another stronghold. Caesar saw that the on ly way to defeat the Veneti was to use a Roman naval force to attack them. Word came that his fleet of galleys was now ready in the mouth of the Loire. He gave command of them to Decimus Junius Brutus, then a young man, distantly related to Marcus Brutus who was destined to become one of Caesar's assassins. The fleet s ailed up into the Gulf of Morbihan to encounter the Veneti fleet. It was to be t he first major sea battle Rome had fought in the Atlantic. Curiously, in 138 BC, a Roman consul of the same name - Decimus Junius Brutus - built a fleet with wh ich he attacked the Celtiberian strongholds on the Atlantic coast of Iberia. Was this mere coincidence? Or did some historian of the earlier event confuse the n ame with the exploit of the later Brutus?

According to Caesar, the Veneti ships were powerful vessels: They have flat bottoms which enable them to sail in shallow coastal water. Their high prows and sterns protect them from heavy seas and violent storms, as do th eir strong hulls made entirely from oak. The cross timbers beams a foot wide are secured with iron nails as thick as a man's thumb. Their anchors are secured wi th chains not ropes, while their sails are made of rawhide or thin leather, so a s to stand up to the violent Atlantic winds. As the two fleets closed with one another, Caesar and his legions watched from t he headlands. The naval engagement lasted from 10 a.m. until sunset. Brutus had examined the Veneti ships well and had scythes fastened on long poles so that hi s sailors could cut the rigging of the Celtic ships. With their sails fluttering helplessly, the Celtic vessels apparently lost control and were an easy prey to Roman boarding parties. One by one the Veneti ships were overwhelmed. Some of t hem tried to withdraw but a drop in the wind prevented them and the majority of sailors were captured. Such an easy victory by the Romans over the tough sea-far ing Veneti does seem a little hard to swallow. However, perhaps the answer lies in Tim Newark's Celtic Warriors, 1986, which suggests that not only were Caesar' s ships built by Gallic mercenaries but they were also manned by Gauls used to s ailing against the types of ships being used by the Veneti. The victory does app ear more plausible in these circumstances. The defeat of the Veneti was a significant step in Caesar's Gaulish campaign. Us ing the excuse that the Veneti had 'rebelled' against Rome in that they had firs t accepted Roman authority and then wrongly imprisoned Roman officers, Caesar tr eated the tribe and their allies without mercy. All the tribal chieftains and le aders were executed on the spot while the rest were sold into slavery. While the war against the Veneti was taking place, Titurius Sabinus and his thre e legions had managed to put down the rumblings of insurrection among the Belgae . Some of the tribes had actually turned on their pro-Roman chieftains and overt hrown them. Sabinus had marched across the Seine to the area around Calais, wher e he defeated two such tribes, the Morini and Menapii. Labienus had achieved a s imilar success in checking the incursions of the Germanic tribes across the Rhin e. In the south-east of Gaul, Publius Crassus had been carrying out Caesar's ins tructions, with a mobile force, moving down the western coastline and taking sub missions of septs and tribes as far as the Pyrenees, including the powerful Aqui tani. Not many years before, the Aquitani had defeated two Roman armies. They ha d not given in without a struggle, even seeking aid from the Celtiberians. But C rassus, using what troops he had, had stormed their hill-fort. Caesar was deligh ted. It seemed that the subjugation of all the Celtic tribes of Gaul was complet e. During the winter of 56/55 BC, however, the Germanic tribes were pressing over t he Rhine again. The Seubi, of whom Ariovistus had been King, were in the forefro nt of a new movement, pushing over above the junction of the Rhine and Meuse. Du ring a council of pro-Roman Gaulish chieftains in the spring of 5 5 BC, Caesar l earned that some anti-Roman Gaulish chieftains had been trying to form an allian ce with the Germans against Rome. Caesar sent word to two Germanic tribes, the Usipetes and Tencteri, telling them to withdraw across the Rhine. When they did not, he marched to engage them. In spite of attempts by Caesar to negotiate first, a large body of Germans attacked the Roman advance guard but were driven off. When the German chiefs came into t he Roman camp the next morning to ask for a truce, Caesar had them arrested. The n he launched an attack on the German forces. With their chiefs held prisoner, t he Germans were in a state of confusion. The Roman troops had been worked up to fever pitch by tales of German treachery and blood-thirst and began to slaughter them without discrimination. Thousands of men, women and children were drowned

as they attempted to flee back across the Rhine. Caesar complacently remarks tha t, of the 430,000 men, women and children of these tribes, only a few survivors remained. This massacre, rather than battle, occurred near Coblenz. Caesar followed up his success with a determined effort to break the German ambi tion to invade Gaul. Caesar had secured alliances with certain Gaulish chieftain s, who accepted Roman overlordship and were content that Gaul had a role in the empire of Rome. If the Germans were allowed to establish a foothold in Gaul, the y could use it as a base to weaken Roman rule and perhaps even invade the Italia n peninsula. Then there was the existence of the Gaulish patriotic party, probab ly centred around Dumnorix, who were seeking alliances against Rome. If Caesar a cted with swiftness and savagery, it would teach both the Gauls and the Germans a lesson which would force them to accept the pax Romana. While the Germans were still reeling from their defeat at Coblenz, Caesar threw a bridge over the Rhine in ten days. He marched his legions across and spent the next eighteen days east of the Rhine burning villages, taking hostages, extract ing submissions and forcing other tribes, such as the Suebi and Sigambri, to ret reat before him. When Caesar and his legions returned in triumph to Gaul at abou t the beginning of August 5 5 BC, burning the bridge across the Rhine behind the m, all Gaul was quiet. There were no reports of any Celtic tribe in arms against the Roman presence. Yet there were still two full months in which the army coul d campaign. Caesar, ever the man of ambition, looked westward - westward across a narrow str ip of sea towards the island of Britain. -----------------------------10 - Britain The country with which Caesar's ambition now lay, the island of Britain, had bec ome known to the Mediterranean peoples at least by the fifth century BC through the merchants of the ancient world. Britain was one of the few sources of tin in Europe, tin being a necessary component of bronze. The Phoenicians and Greeks k new of the Tin Islands lying to the north-west of the known world. In the second half of the fourth century BC Pytheas, the Greek explorer from Massilia, made a voyage north along the western coast of Europe and crossed to the islands, actu ally circumnavigating Britain, noting its neighbour, Ireland, and the main featu res of the island group. The Greeks had named them the Cassiterides - the Tin Islands. It has been sugges ted that the name was Celtic and that the word for tin, first recorded by Homer kassiteros was borrowed from Celtic, as tin was a 'Celtic' material. The stem ca ssi, in Celtic, means esteem or love and appears several times in British Celtic names for example Cassivelaunos, the lover of Belinos. But the argument that th e Greek word for tin was a Celtic loan-word is doubtful, for the Irish word is s tan and the Welsh word is ystaen. It is not likely that a word describing an imp ortant product of the Celtic world would have disappeared from the Celtic vocabu lary, especially if supported by Greek usage. Polybius, Strabo, Avienus refer to the Tin Islands as the Pretanic Islands, the form implying that the inhabitants were Pretani. The name seems to have been use d first by the Gauls and then picked up by the Romans. During the Roman period, the name Brittones, perhaps a corruption of Pretani, was used, and hence Britain . The older form continued in use in Welsh texts to describe the island of Brita in as a whole - Prydain - and, significantly, Pretani is used to refer to the pe ople the Romans called Picti or Picts. When Caesar arrived in Britain, Celtic was the universal language. It is perhaps

astonishing that even today in the territory now known as England Celtic placenames are fairly commonplace. In spite of the conquests and occupations by the R omans, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Danes and finally Normans, and the driving off or extinction of the original Celtic population, many of the place-names are still recognizably Celtic. Most of the rivers and streams bear Celtic names, especiall y the major rivers such as the Aire, Avon, Axe, Dee, Derwent, Don, Esk, Exe, Ous e, Severn, Stour, Tees, Thames, Trent and Wye. Most of the prominent hills and r anges, the Pennines for example, and forests, Kinver, Penge and Savernake, bear Celtic names. Some of the major towns, such as London, retain their Celtic names while others, such as Manchester, retain them in compound form. Territorial nam es, such as Kent, Thanet, Wight and Leeds, linger on. However, most villages and hamlets bear the names of the cultures which replaced the Celtic and are mainly Anglo-Saxon. Several Celtic words of topographical meaning also survive such as cumb, coombe (valley), tor (hill), bourne (a brook), carr (rock) as in Carham, luh (lake) as in Lutton, Lincolnshire, and so forth. If the Urnfield Culture established the first Celtic societies in Britain, we ca n accept that the Celts were living in Britain by 1200 or 1000 BC. And if the th eory of Celtic scholars, among them Henri Hubert, that Goidelic was the earliest form of Celtic is correct, it is reasonable to assume that a form of Goidelic w as once spoken throughout Britain but a language-shift took place with the devel opment of the P-Celtic, now known as Brythonic, form. It was with the Iron Age culture that Britain began to emerge clearly in history . Pytheas records that the Celts of Britain were agricultural and pastoral farme rs like their cousins in mainland Europe. Their main crop was wheat. 'This wheat the natives thresh, not on open floors, but in barns because they have so littl e sunshine and so much rain.' Inland, Pytheas was impressed by the large herds o f cattle and sheep. In the Cornish peninsula he found that the Celts worked iron , tin and bronze, made fine pottery and were spinners and weavers of wool and cl oth. He found that at this stage of their development they preferred to barter g oods. 'They refuse to accept coin and insist on barter, preferring to exchange n ecessities rather than fix prices.' Coinage did not develop among the British Ce lts until the second century BC. Diodorus Siculus (d. 21 BC), citing several older authorities, records: The inhabitants of that part of Britain which is called Belerion [Land's End] ar e very fond of strangers and, from their intercourse with foreign merchants, are civilized in their manner of life. They prepare tin, working very carefully the earth in which it is produced. The ground is rocky, but it contains earthy vein s, the produce of which is ground down, smelted and purified. They beat the meta l into masses, like astragali, and carry it to a certain island off Britain call ed Ictis ... here, then, the merchants buy the tin from the natives and carry it over to Gaul, and after travelling overland for about thirty days, they finally bring their load on horse to the mouth of the Rhone. Diodorus accurately describes the method of 'tin-streaming'. Archaeology has discovered in Cornwall a wide variety of artefacts supporting a popular trade with Britain long before the arrival of Caesar, ranging from Iberi an brooches to Grecian mirrors. In fact, Publius Crassus, Roman Governor of Spai n c.95 BC, was credited by the Romans with making the sea route between south-we st Britain and the Roman colonies in Spain more generally known and developing t rade between them. When Caesar marched his legions through southern Britain he found that 'the popu lation is numerous beyond all counting, and very numerous also the houses. These closely resemble the houses of Gaul.' He identified timber as a main building m aterial and noted half-timbered constructions, some three storeys high. However,

we can still see the remains of stone structures, dating from the fourth to sec ond centuries BC. In the north, brochs made of drystone walling still survive, r ising to heights of forty feet with lintelled entrances, inward-tapering walls, sometimes fifteen feet thick, with chambers, galleries and stairs. An archaeolog ical reconstruction of Clickhimin, a building dating back to the fourth century BC, has been called a 'revelation' by archaeologist Dr Patrick Crampton: 'The ev idence of Clickhimin is so revolutionary that it will take years before its full implications can be realized.' Dr Crampton was comparing the evidence of the Cl ickhimin site with the traditional misconception of ancient Britons clad in skin s, painting themselves and living in mud huts, which a too literal and selective reading of Caesar has bequeathed. References to such structures in early Irish and Welsh manuscripts, thought to be due to the imagination of the scribes, are now seen as accurate. Northern Britain, which did not emerge into recorded history until Gnaeus Julius Agricola attempted to conquer it during AD 80-4, was also pictured as wild and barbaric. The only ground for this belief was that the Caledonians, as the Roman s called the people living north of the Firth of Forth, would not meekly submit to the pax Romana. However, the archaeological evidence shows that the Celtic tr ibes of Caledonia were every bit as advanced as their Celtic cousins elsewhere. A people emerging later in this area have been thought to be a pre-Celtic people . They bear the popular name Picts, from the Latin Picti, Painted People. Bede ( AD c.673-735) certainly treated their language as different from Celtic. However , Professor Kenneth Jackson regards them, in the main, as an offshoot from the c ontinental Celts, but 'whether these are a simple extension of the British occup iers of Britain up to the Forth and Clyde ... or whether a rather more separate Celtic nation is uncertain, but perhaps the second.' Professor Jackson says of t he linguistic evidence that it is not clear whether linguistic differences were merely a matter of dialect. They called themselves Priteni, which in the Goideli c form of Celtic became Cruthin, if one remembers the famous substitute of Q/C f or the P sound. According to Professor Jackson: There are no texts in their language extant, because when they learned to write, from the Church, they wrote in Latin, and we have only some scanty personal nam es and place-names to guide us. Most are unquestionably Celtic, and moreover wha t is called P-Celtic, that is sprung from the continental Celtic milieu from whi ch the Britons also came, and not from the Q-Celtic which was the source of Iris h and Scottish Gaelic. A remarkable piece of evidence for this is the place-name s numerous all through Pictland, beginning with the Pictish pett, meaning someth ing like a farming unit or a manorial unit. This gives Pit - in hundreds of name s like Pitlochry; it is related to the Gaulish source of French piece (cf. parce l of land) and is clearly P-Celtic, i.e. not Gaelic. For personal names, Calgaco s 'The Swordsman', a war-leader, and Argentocoxos 'Silver-Leg', a chief, are exa mples of undoubted Celtic names during the Roman period; and a post-Roman instan ce is the eighth-century King Unuist son of Wurguist, 'One Choice son of Super-C hoice' (Oengus son of Porcus in early Gaelic). While Pictish king-lists give a preponderance of rulers in the Brythonic form of Celtic, nevertheless as far back as scholastic research can penetrate Gaelic wa s the common language of the Picts. So the change from one branch of Celtic to a nother must have taken place about the start of the Christian era or soon afterw ards. This would also account for the rapid integration of the Pictish kingdoms with that of the Gaelic Dal Riada to form the united kingdom of Alba (modern Sco tland). Picts are recorded as dwelling in mid and northern Ireland for many cent uries, the last reference occurring in the Annals of Ulster in AD 809. It has been hypothesized that towards 1200-1000 BC the climate in Scotland began to worsen, becoming colder and more damp and so encouraging the growth of peat and causing less arable land to be available. The result of this was a pressure

on the communities to protect their crops and livestock from less fortunate trib es, who resorted to raiding. Archaeological evidence does show an increase of we apons from this period and defensive building. By the seventh century BC the con struction of great hill-forts was under way and even farmsteads appeared to be e nclosed by stout timber stockades, although it must be added that many unenclose d settlements have also been excavated. Timber-laced forts occur from the seventh century BC, dated by radiocarbon, but it is difficult to date drystone fortifications accurately. The Celts of Britain , both north and south, used the drystone method with great ability. Many of the ir magnificent constructions survive, such as the village of Chysauster, near Ma dron, Cornwall, which is one of the best examples of stone-built Celtic houses. There are over fifty surviving brochs in Scotland, round towers and fortificatio ns, the two tallest being Mousa (still standing forty-three feet high) and Dun T roddan (standing twenty-five feet high). But one of the best known is Clickhimin , which developed from a fortified farmstead built around the seventh century BC . As well as these examples of the ability of the Celts to build lasting stone con structions, there survive numerous examples of their complex and sophisticated h ill-forts. One of the best known in the south of Britain is Maiden Castle, near Dorchester, which was reduced by the II Augusta Legion commanded by the future E mperor Titus Vespasian (AD 9-79). Maiden Castle, the name apparently deriving fr om Mai's fortress - Mai-dun - was erected about the first century BC, with massi ve triple ramparts and intricate defences guarding its two entrances. It enclose d an area two-thirds of a mile in length and one-third of a mile in breadth, wit h ramparts rising as high as a hundred feet. This appeared to be the tribal capi tal of the Durotriges. In the north, however, there is also no lack of hill-forts and these are similar , and certainly equal, to those in the south. For example, the Caterthuns in Ang us, known as the White Caterthun and the Brown Caterthun, stand almost two miles apart. The White Caterthun retains a stone-built rampart the inner wall alone m easuring forty feet thick and ten feet high. The outer wall is some twenty feet thick. The area enclosed measures 150 yards by 60, while outside the fortress fu rther defensive lines are seen. The Brown Caterthun encloses a large area, some 100 yards by 60, but does not have the same impressive fortification survivals a s the White Caterthun. At the time when Caesar turned his mind to conquest, Britain was a prosperous co untry with flourishing agricultural communities, advanced in art, woollen and li nen production, wheeled pottery and the production of jewellery. Its woollen goo ds were even exported to Rome where the possession of a British woollen cloak, a sagum, placed one in the height of fashion. It was a civilization advanced in m etal-working, the production of iron, tin and copper, and even gold from Wales. Bronze-smelting was an advanced art. It was a civilization which had a widesprea d trade with Gaul and the Mediterranean world. Why, then, did Caesar, in his justification for invading Britain, paint such an inaccurate picture of the country, and one which is popularly accepted today eve n though Caesar is entirely at odds with older and contemporary Greek and Roman writers on Britain? Caesar writes: Of all the Britons those that inhabit the lands of the Cantii [Kent] are the mos t civilized and it is a wholly maritime region. These Cantii differ but little f rom the Gauls in habits of life. But many of the inland Britons do not grow corn . They live on milk and flesh and are clothed in skins. All Britons stain their persons with a dye that produces a blue colour. This gives them a more terrible aspect in battle. They wear their hair long, shaving all the body except the hea d and upper lip.

It is especially surprising that Caesar seems ignorant of the fact that the wool len cloaks (sagi) from Britain were highly prized in the Rome of his day and wer e therefore indicative of a widespread knowledge of the high standard of the Bri tish woollen industry. Caesar's contemporary, Strabo, the Greek geographer, cert ainly mentions this thriving export in woollen garments to Rome as well as the e xport of linen and leatherwork. And at this time British artwork had reached a n ew height of development. Whereas art among the continental Celts was then in de cline, the Celtic artists in Britain, around 100 BC to AD 43, were producing mag nificent decorated bronze mirrors and other objects, especially enamelwork, show ing some of the finest and most intricate examples of the precision of their cra ftsmanship. Like the Celtic illuminated manuscripts of a later period, it is alm ost impossible to compare this artform with any other. One such mirror, found at Birdlip, Gloucester, has highly sophisticated workings of enamel inlays on the handle, while the Mayer Mirror, recovered from the Thames, is simply breathtakin g. In the north of Britain, too, there was a flourishing school of Celtic art, cent red in Dumfries, Scotland, which reached its highest development in the years im mediately after the birth of Christ. Some of the finest examples of British Celt ic artistry can be found on bronze sword scabbards of this period, such as the o ne found in Bugthorpe, Yorkshire. Was Caesar's ignorance of the conditions in Britain feigned or genuine? Caesar's plan to invade Britain had been formed as early as 57 BC when he was fi ghting the Belgae confederation. He had discovered that many of the Belgae, perh aps several entire septs, had fled to Britain rather than submit to the Romans. These Belgae claimed kinship with certain tribes in southern Britain who had set tled there in the second century BC and maintained contact with the Belgae on th e European mainland. Some chieftains actually claimed to rule tribes with septs on both sides of the Channel. Thus he found a Belgae chieftain named Commios of the Atrebates claiming suzerainty over a tribe of Atrebates in southern Britain. Caesar immediately set out to learn what he could about Britain. Did his inform ants provide him with a highly inaccurate and bleak picture of Britain in an att empt to dissuade him from his invasion? Did Caesar distort the picture for reaso ns of his own? Or was it merely a matter of an insensitive soldier not being the right sort of person to record such details accurately? Before coming to Caesar, it can be asked: what of Britain's history? It was not until the Christian era that the British Celts, like the Celts of Ire land, began to record their traditions in their own language. Like Celts elsewhe re, the druids and bards were the repositories of learning - the law, history, p hilosophy and poetry. Apart from the traditions, therefore, recorded in Welsh, t here is little surviving tradition of the history prior to the coming of the Rom ans - unless we are prepared to believe Geoffrey of Monmouth. In AD 1137 Geoffrey, a scholar of Breton Celtic origin born and living in Wales, wrote a prose chronicle in twelve books which purported to be the history of Br itain from earliest times - Historia regnum Britanniae, the history of the kings of Britain. For many centuries no one questioned its authenticity as an histori cal document. It was the source work for Raphael Holinshed (d. AD c.1580), whose Chronicles in turn provided a source for the plots of many Shake-spearean plays . And the Arthurian legends have their major source in Geoffrey's work. Geoffrey never claimed to be anything more than a simple translator. He introduced his w ork with the explanation: Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, a man skilled in the art of public-speaking and we ll informed about the history of foreign countries, presented me with a certain

very ancient book written in the British language. The book, attractively compos ed to form a consecutive and orderly narrative, set out all the deeds of these m en, from Brutus, the first king of the Britons, down to Cadwallader, the son of Cadwallo. At Walter's request I have taken the trouble to translate the book int o Latin ... During the last hundred years Celtic scholars have dismissed Geoffrey's translat ion as a fake, maintaining that there is no Welsh composition which exists which could reasonably be looked upon as the original or groundwork of the book. They presume that such a work in Welsh would have survived. However, what is more in triguing is the fact that there does exist a copy of a twelfth-century poem by J ohn of Cornwall in Latin hexameters called The Prophecy of Merlin'. John of Corn wall claims that it is simply a translation of an early Cornish manuscript and, in support, he gives notations in the original Cornish, which words belong to th e Old Cornish period, some centuries before John's Latin version. The only known copy of this work is one dated 8 October AD 1474 surviving in the Vatican. Ther e is some similarity between John's 'The Prophecy of Merlin' and Geoffrey's chap ter 'The Prophecies of Merlin'. So did the book in the British language exist as Geoffrey claimed? And does Historia regnum Britanniae have its provenance in th e Cornish dialect of British rather than Welsh? If this is so, does Geoffrey's work provide us with a genuine British Celtic tra dition of history prior to the arrival of the Romans in Britain in the same way as the Leabhar Gabhala provides us with the historical traditions of early Irela nd? Geoffrey's statement is clear. The Archdeacon of Oxford, Walter Mapes, 'a man le arned in foreign histories', had discovered the ancient book, written in Brython ic Celtic, and had given it to Geoffrey, who understood the language, to transla te. Geoffrey dedicated the work to Henry II's son, the Earl of Gloucester. What would be the reason for such a deception, the forgery of the work - as claimed b y modern scholars - involving the venerable and highly respected Archdeacon of O xford and himself? Surely other contemporary scholars would have demanded sight of the original work and we would have had some comment about its veracity long ago? No such comment was forthcoming and for centuries it remained a source work . This is not to say, accepting that it is a genuine British Celtic tradition, tha t we can also accept that it is a reliable history, any more than we can accept the Leabhar Gabhala as a reliable account of the early history of Ireland. It is interesting that Historia regnum Britanniae has similarities to the Irish tradi tion in that both claim an ancestry of kings going back to the Trojans. While Pa rthalon is the Trojan who arrives in Ireland to found a dynasty after the fall o f Troy, Brutus is said to be the Trojan who founds a similar dynasty in Britain. This probably indicates the Greek scholarship of the later Christian scribes in both countries. There is another similarity in the emergence in the British tradition of Dunwall o Molmutius, son of Cloten, King of Cornwall, as a man who exerted his rule over the whole of Britain and established a law system, subsequently known as the Mo lmutine Laws. One can compare this to the claim that Ollamh Fodhla became High K ing of Ireland c.714 BC and codified the Brehon Law system. No less intriguing is that Molmutius, who is said to have ruled for forty years, has two sons, Belinos and Brennos. They are said to have quarrelled and Brennos goes into exile in Gaul, among the Allobriges, and marries the daughter of Segi nos, their chieftain. He returns to Britain, tries to overthrow his brother, but their mother, Conwenna, manages to reconcile them. The account then has it that Belinos and Brennos lead an army to Rome and sack i

t before returning to Britain. So Brennos, famous as the conqueror of Rome in 39 0-387 BC, returns to be buried in his native capital, the city of the Trinovante s - identified as London. The account goes on to record some forty-four kings un til Cassivelaunos, who is said to have been one of three brothers - Lud, Cassive launos and Nennius. Lud is described as rebuilding the city of the Trinovantes a nd renaming it as his fortress - Lud's dun. When he died he was buried by one of the gates, henceforth called Ludgate. And so Britain then passed to the kingshi p of Cassivelaunos, who was to be Caesar's greatest opponent. This, of course, is if we accept Geoffrey's work as an accurate rendering of Bri tish Celtic tradition and if we attach some validity to that tradition. Caesar chose the VII and X Legions, a total force of 10,000 men, to attempt a re connaissance in force in August 55 BC. For a usually careful general, Caesar's d ecision to make the journey on his return from his punitive expedition against t he German tribes is a surprising one. He was, in fact, proposing an ill-prepared military expedition to a fairly unknown island late in the campaigning season. He left his main army in the hands of Sabinus and Cotta, which would imply that he took his second-in-command Titus Labienus with him to Britain. Some eighty tr ansports were assembled at Portus Itius (Wissant), while eighteen more transport s were gathered at Ambleteuse for cavalry. Caesar sent two advance guards. An officer named Gaius Volusenus was despatched across to the British coast in a fast war-galley to reconnoitre for a safe landi ng-place. Volusenus was to rendezvous with Caesar's fleet off the coast within f ive days. The second person he despatched was Commios, the Celtic chieftain of t he Atrebates who was told to go to the British Atrebates and suggest they submit to Caesar. If they did so, Caesar promised he would recognize Commios as their chieftain as well as chieftain of the Gaulish Atrebates. On the evening of 24 August 5 5 BC, the Roman invasion fleet set sail for the Br itish coast. By 9 a.m. on the following morning they were clustered at anchor un der the shadow of the great white cliffs of South Foreland. Along the cliff tops , as far as the eye could see, were massed thousands of British warriors, called together by the alarm of their coastal sentinels when the ships had first appea red in the early dawn light. Volusenus' war-galley made its rendezvous on time a nd the officer reported that there was an easier landing place further along the coast. This was the open beach between Walmer and Deal. Caesar summoned a meeti ng of staff officers on his flagship and discussed how best to secure the beachh ead against the opposition which was gathering. He then waited until 3.30 p.m. f or the cavalry to catch up, but the small fleet of ships transporting the cavalr y did not appear. On the open beaches at Walmer the Roman fleet swung inshore. This was the land o f the Cantii, still remembered in the county name of Kent. They were a large tri be split into four septs under their chieftains Cingetorix, Carnilios, Taximagul os and Segonax. They had followed the movement of the Roman fleet along the coas tline with their army, which contained massive war-chariots and cavalry. Through ignorance of the waters, Caesar chose to start his landing at low tide when his transports were unable to get close to the shore. His soldiers were faced with having to wade over zoo yards to dry land in the face of a withering fire from t he British bowmen and slingshots. Caesar records: The soldiers, oppressed with the great weight of their arms, ignorant of the gro und, and with their hands encumbered, were obliged to jump from their ships and to engage the enemy standing close in the waves, while they on the other hand, e ither from dry land or having advanced a very little into the water, with all th eir limbs perfectly free, were boldly hurling javelins from places with which th

ey were all acquainted, and urging on horses inured to the service. Finding my m en dismayed, and disorganized by this unaccustomed manner of fighting, I ordered my long boats or galleys to be rowed a little distance from our transports, so as to attack the open flank of the enemy, and to dislodge them from their positi ons by slings and arrows and other missiles. This manoeuvre was of great service , for the British, confused by my artillery, stopped and drew back, though but f or a little space. The soldiers still hesitated to leave their transports and the advantage Caesar had gained might have been thrown away but for the unnamed standard-bearer of th e X Legion who called upon the gods for the success of his venture and cried: 'L eap forth, soldiers, unless you wish to betray your standard to the enemy! I, at any rate, shall have performed my duty to my country and my general!' The stand ard-bearer then jumped from his transport and began wading ashore towards the Ce ltic defenders. Fearing the disgrace of the loss of a Roman eagle, the soldiers began to follow. One of the British weapons which unnerved the Romans was the heavy war-chariot. Chariots as a weapon of war had fallen into disuse among the Gaulish Celts. Whil e Roman historians had referred to the Celtic war-chariots in early clashes, Cae sar's soldiers had no experience of them. The Romans were faced with two-wheeled and even four-wheeled chariots. They were light wickerwork vehicles adorned wit h decorated metalwork. Scythes were fitted on the hubs of the wheels which were able to mow down the enemy. The war-chariots were to feature in insular Celtic l iterature when the historical traditions of these days came to be written. They were handled expertly, with the warriors driving into the shallows to engage in hand-to-hand combat with the invaders. Caesar observes: 'On seeing this, I order ed the boats belonging to the galleys and the supply boats to be filled with sol diers and sent to help those I saw in trouble. By thus bringing into action all my reserve troops, I, at length, revived the drooping courage of the legions.' I t was not until 7 p.m. that a beachhead had been secured and the Celts had been pushed back. The chieftains of the Cantii reviewed their strategy. Commios of the Atrebates h ad doubtless warned them of the skill of the Roman soldiers. He had probably tol d them of how easily Gaul had fallen to Caesar. Commios later told Caesar that h e had been imprisoned by the Cantii chieftains to prevent his warning the Romans of their determination to fight Caesar on the beaches. Commios could well have been lying. He may simply have waited to see if the British were more successful in handling the Roman soldiers than had been his fellow Gauls. The British chie ftains certainly supported Commios in his claim and added that they had been for ced to challenge Caesar by the common people. This comment is simply another aff irmation of the democratic character of the -system under which the clan assembl ies elected the chieftain: he was hemmed in by office and dependent on the suppo rt of his tribe, so it was usually easier for him to promote their interests and follow their wishes than to become despotic. The next morning the chieftains of the Cantii, accompanied by Commios and some o ther envoys, arrived at Caesar's camp and began to open negotiations. ---[Insert pic bw01] Staigue Fort (fifth-century BC), a superb, circular, dry-stone construction, sta nds at the head of a valley near Sneem in the Iveragh Peninsula. ---[Insert pic bw02]

There are numerous brochs on the islands and mainland of Scotland, built by the Celts around the fifth to the first centuries BC. Mousa is a particularly good e xample of Celtic building ability, and still survives at a height of forty-five feet. ---[Insert pic bw03] Dun Aengus, Aran Isles, Ireland this is one of the most famous of the ancient Ce ltic fortresses and is situated on Inis Mor, the largest of the Aran Islands. ---[Insert pic bw04] Left: Chysauster, a Celtic village near Madron, Cornwall was built during the se cond century BC and occupied from then until the third century AD when it was ab andoned Right: Maiden Castle, Dorset an aerial view from the west Maidun, the fo rtress of Mai, was a major hillfort of the Durotriges. ---[Insert pic bw05] A victim of the Roman attack a Celtic defender of Maiden Castle with a Roman bal lista arrow lodged in his vertebra. ---[Insert pic bw06] This war chariot burial was discovered at Carton Slack, East Yorkshire in the co untry of the Brigantes The grave is dated to the second century BC. ---[Insert pic bw07] The Uffington white horse is 365 feet from nose to tail and one of several Celti c hill figures to survive. It is dated between the first century BC and the firs t century AD and is thought to be a product of Belgae craftsmanship. ---[Insert pic bw08] A selection of Urnfield bronze swords, now regarded as early Celtic or 'proto Ce ltic'. Types of sword from left to right Auvernier from Kirschgartenhausen, Rieg see from Egen, 'Griff-zungenschwert' from Hemigkofen, Morigen from Gailenkirchen , an 'antenna sword' from Schussenried The swords date from the period 1200 to 7 00 BC. ---[Insert pic bw09] An engraved iron and bronze scabbard, bearing remnants of coral studs, dated (40 0-350 BC) This is from the La Tene Celtic period although it was found at Hallst

att. ---[Insert pic bw10] The Witham shield is made of intricately worked sheets of bronze originally moun ted on a wooden frame It is dated to the first century BC and was found in the R iver Witham, Lincolnshire. ---[Insert pic bw11] A bronze covered iron helmet, with gold leaf and inlaid coral decorations (midto late fourth century BC) A knob from the top has recently been discovered, and the cheek piece (not visible in this picture) is decorated with coral inlay The helmet was discovered in 1981 in a cave at Agris, Charente in France. ---[Insert pic bw12] The Celts often placed wheeled objects in their graves This warrior hunting a wi ld boar, found in Merida, Spain, is from the second century BC. ---[Insert pic bw13] 'The Dying Gaul' a Roman marble copy of a bronze original The original formed pa rt of a group raised by Attalos of Pergamum to commemorate his victory over the Galatian Celts in 241 BC. ---[Insert pic bw14] Bronze helmet (first-century BC) found in the Thames by Waterloo Bridge, is one of the very few Celtic war helmets to have survived anywhere in Europe. ---[Insert pic bw15] The Snettisham torc, found in a horde in Norfolk, England, during 1948-50 is dat ed to the mid first century BC and is made of electrum. ---[Insert pic bw16] The Desborough mirror dates to the late first century BC, and was found in 1908 near a hill-fort at Desborough, Northamptonshire. ---[Insert pic bw17] A set of glass gaming pieces from a burial excavated at Welwyn Garden City, Hert

fordshire (first-century BC). The pieces were found together with a much decayed gaming board. ---One of the envoys was a young man whom Caesar knew as Mandubratios. What the Rom ans did not know apparently was that the name was a derisory nickname. Mandubrad meant black traitor, the name still recognizable in a Welsh form, du bradwr. Ac cepting Geoffrey's British tradition, his real name was Avarwy. According to Cae sar Mandubratios was the son of Imanuentios, chieftain of the Trinovantes, who h ad been slain by a chieftain called Cassivelaunos - meaning lover of Bel, but gi ven in British tradition as Caswallon - of the Cassi. Mandubratios had come to a sk Caesar if he would make him King of the Trinovantes. The peace negotiations between Caesar and the Cantii chieftains went on for four days. Lacking cavalry, Caesar had made no attempt to explore the surrounding co untryside. However, the cavalry finally arrived. But no sooner were their transp orts approaching the shore than a squall sprang up from the north-east. The tran sports were scattered before they could draw close to land. Most of them eventua lly made their way back to Gaul. For Caesar this was a disaster. Not only had his cavalry reinforcement been lost but the infantry transport had been smashed in the same storm. The moon was ful l and the tide almost at the springs, with rollers racing each other up the slop ing beaches and filling the hulls of the ships with water. The heavier transport s were dragged at their anchors and many were simply smashed to pieces on the be ach. Caesar reported: The result was that the warships, which had been beached, became waterlogged; as for the transports riding at anchor, they were dashed one against another, and it was impossible to manoeuvre them or do anything whatever to assist. Several s hips broke up, and the remainder lost their cables, anchors and rigging. The Celts were delighted. It must have seemed a good omen. The Cantii chieftains simply melted away from the negotiating table and went back to their arms. Morale among the Romans was low. They were now cast away on a hostile shore, a s mall force of hungry men with no provisions, clothing or equipment for a protrac ted winter campaign. There were no facilities to repair or replace the transport s and no reinforcements to rely upon. Caesar ordered fatigue parties to venture out and reap neighbouring wheat crops, confiscating supplies and materials from the nearest settlements. The year had been fairly dry and good crops stood ready for harvesting. At the same time he o rdered his engineers to demolish the worst of his damaged vessels and use them t o repair the others. Twelve ships were totally beyond repair and were thus canni balized to make good other ships. The Celts were busy ambushing the foraging parties and isolated patrols and outp osts. While members of the VII Legion were out foraging the sentries reported se eing an unusually large cloud of dust in the direction in which they had gone. A large force of British war-chariots had hidden in ambush in a wooded area betwe en what is now Martin Hill and Ringwould and attacked the fatigue parties. Caesa r issued immediate orders. The battalion on guard duty were detailed to go with me to the scene of the acti on, two others were ordered to relieve them and the rest to arm and follow on im mediately. We had not been marching long before I noticed the VII Legion was in difficulties; they were only just managing to hold their own with their units cl osely packed under heavy fire.

Caesar now had a chance to see at first hand how expert the British were at usin g their war-chariots. Their manner of fighting from chariots is as follows: first of all they drive in all directions and hurl javelins, and so by the mere terror that the teams insp ire and by the noise of the wheels they generally throw the ranks of soldiers in to confusion. When they have worked their way in between the troops, they leap d own from the chariots and fight on foot. Meanwhile their charioteers retire grad ually from the battle, and place the chariots in such a fashion that, if the war riors are hard pressed by the enemy, they may have a ready means of retreat to t heir own side. Thus they show in action the mobility of cavalry and the stability of infantry; and by daily use and practice they become so accomplished that they are ready to gallop their teams down the steepest slopes without loss of control, to check t hem and turn them in a moment, to run along the pole, stand on the yoke, and the n, quick as lightning, to dart back into the chariot. According to Geoffrey's British tradition, the leader of the attacking force was Nennius, the brother of Cassivelaunos. He is said personally to have attacked a detachment of the X Legion commanded by Caesar himself, which was hard pressed to save its standard from capture. The tradition has it that the sword of the Ro man General buried itself in the shield of Nennius and, before Caesar could extr icate it, the tide of battle had separated the combatants, leaving the weapon as a trophy for the British. True or not, Caesar succeeded in achieving no more th an an orderly retreat back to his fortified encampment. The Romans were unable t o prevent the Celts carrying off a large number of prisoners and weapons. A period of extremely bad weather now set in. 'For many days in succession,' say s Caesar, 'tempestuous weather prevented both armies from resuming hostilities.' Then came a period of fine, clear weather. The Celtic forces marched to the for tified Roman positions. Caesar and his men, backs to the sea, supported by their heavy artillery catapulta and ballistae, taken from the dismantled ships stood ready to receive the Celtic charge. It swept up to the Roman lines and, as so of ten in the past, broke. Caesar gave the word for his disciplined ranks to move f orward. The Celts were routed. Caesar reports dryly: Envoys came to sue for peace. They were met with a demand for twice as many host ages as before and were ordered to bring them over to the continent, because the equinox was close at hand and the ill condition of our ships made it inadvisabl e to postpone the voyage until winter. Taking advantage of the fair weather, we set sail a little after midnight, and the whole fleet reached the mainland in sa fety. From the Roman military viewpoint, the expedition was disappointing. More than o nce does an apologetic note creep into Caesar's narrative. In his defence he mai ntains that he had embarked on what had been merely a military reconnaissance by which he meant to learn something about the country in preparation for a full-s cale invasion. Already, as his war galleys and transports pulled away from the B ritish coastline, the Roman General was planning that invasion with at least thr ee times as many troops and more extensive equipment a sufficient force to conqu er the entire island. ----------------------------11 - Caesar's Invasion of Britain During the winter of 55/54 BC Caesar quartered his troops in the country of the Belgae while he was called to deal with disturbances which had broken out in Ill

yria. In March 54 BC Caesar was due to give up his governorship of Gaul, but he persuaded the senate to vote him a further five years. He wanted to carry on wit h the unfinished business of launching an invasion of Britain and had already le ft orders with his second-in-command, Labienus, to build the necessary transport s and prepare the troops and equipment for an invasion 'force using three times the men taken in his first expedition. Caesar returned to Gaul in April and foun d 600 transports and 28 war-galleys ready for him. However, there was unrest in the country of the Belgae. This time it was among t he Treveri, a powerful tribe which had not submitted to Rome. Their tribal lands stood on the Moselle, with their chief town at modern-day Trier. Caesar took fo ur legions and 800 cavalry and marched into their territory. The trouble was tha t two chieftains of the Treveri were contending for the overall leadership of th e tribe -Indutiomaros and Cingetorix. Caesar discovered which of them was pro-Ro man in this case it was Cingetorix and promptly provided him with military aid t o overcome Indutiomaros, who, with his followers, was driven off. Cingetorix, wh ose name means the king who marched against the foe, thereafter proved supportiv e to Caesar. Caesar was under no illusion that Gaul was entirely pacified. At an y time it could erupt into insurrection against Rome and especially during his a bsence in Britain a signal might well be given for a general uprising. He decide d to pre-empt such plans by rounding up Gaulish hostages from the anti-Roman fac tions. Among them was the chieftain of the Aedui, Dumnorix. Dumnorix was still p reaching the co-operation of all the Celtic tribes of Gaul in the attempt to thr ow out the Romans and the Germans. He was appalled at his fellow Celts fighting each other while the Romans reaped the benefit of their petty squabbles and divi sions. He appeared to have great popularity among the Gauls and had forged diplo matic connections with all the anti-Roman elements among the Gaulish leaders. If a general uprising were to take place, it was obvious that Dumnorix would be it s leader. Under military escort, and accompanied by a small Aedui retinue, Dumnorix was br ought to Portus Itius, where he was joined by other Gaulish chieftains whose loy alties were similarly suspect. When they were told they were being taken as host ages with the Roman forces to Britain, Dumnorix became the spokesman for all of them. He told them that Caesar 'wanted to take them to Britain and murder them a ll' because he dared not put them to death in front of their people in case it c aused an uprising. Indeed, this may well have been Caesar's plan. It was certain ly a convenient way for the Romans to dispose of the subversive element among th e Gaulish leaders. Dumnorix and his fellow hostages refused to embark. On the day before the invasion fleet was due to sail, the sixth day of the month of Quintilis, soon to be renamed in Caesar's honour as the month of Julius, Dum norix and some of his followers managed to evade the Roman guards, seize some ho rses and ride off. Caesar immediately halted the embarkation process and despatc hed cavalry after the Celts with orders to bring Dumnorix back - dead or alive. The Roman cavalry caught up with the Celts, managed to head them off and called on them to surrender. The Celts would do no such thing and drew their longswords . The Romans closed in and soon Dumnorix was overpowered and slain, crying out t o the last that he was a free man of a free nation. Even in the hostile eyes of Rome, Dumnorix was an extraordinary personality. An able Celtic leader, he was inflexible in his patriotism and an implacable foe to Rome's imperial expansion in his country. His death was to serve as a rallying point for the Gaulish people who, within a few months, rose up in a war of liber ation which was to last for four years. By this token it can be argued that, in precipitating the Gaulish insurrection, the death of Dumnorix also cut short Cae sar's plans for a full-scale conquest of Britain. For his second attempt to conquer Britain, Caesar gathered a total of 30,000 men , consisting of five legions and 1,000 cavalry, packing them into 540 transports

and 200 vessels confiscated from the Gauls. Unfortunately, we do not know which legions he took. Caesar mentions only the VII Legion but it would be unusual fo r him not to have taken his favourite X Legion, which had already seen service i n Britain. We also know that Cicero's brother, Quintus Tullius Cicero, had been given command of the XIV Legon and that Cicero went to Britain. We can confident ly presume that his legion went also. However, we do not know what other legions went except that one was commanded by an officer named Gaius Trebonius. Titus A tticus Labienus was left in command of Gaul with three legions and 2,000 cavalry , with the specific duty of protecting the harbours to ensure Caesar's safe retu rn. The invasion fleet sailed on the ebb tide with a gentle south-westerly wind shor tly before sunset, at 8 p.m., on the sixth day of the month of Quintilis (July). With Caesar went Mandubratios, who had arrived in the Roman General's camp in B ritain the previous year. Caesar had promised to make him ruler of the British T rinovantes, and Mandubratios in return acted as Caesar's interpreter and chief n egotiator with the British Celts. At first light on 7 July, around 4 a.m., the Romans noticed that the tide was ca rrying them further northwards than they had intended. The order was issued to g et out the oars and, after some tiring rowing, the tide turned and to Caesar's r elief the fleet was carried towards the British coastline. Once more Caesar foun d himself off the great white cliffs of South Foreland. He recorded: 'The soldie rs worked splendidly and by continuous rowing they enabled the heavily laden tra nsports to keep up with the warships. The whole fleet reached Britain about noon . . .' The landings were unopposed and took place in the vicinity of Walmer, the name g iven in later Saxon times, meaning mere of the Welsh, 'Welsh' being the Saxon wo rd for foreigners, and given to the British Celts. 'The enemy was nowhere to be seen. We therefore disembarked and chose a site for the camp.' Traces of such a camp have been found near the old church in Walmer. Caesar's scouts managed to b ring in some prisoners and they told him that initially a large army had gathere d on the shore to meet the Romans on the beaches. Observing the size of the Roma n fleet, they had retired inland. By the evening of 7 July, Caesar and his 30,000 troops had established their bea chhead. The base camp was placed under the command of Quintus Atrius with ten co horts (5,000 men) drawn from all the legions. Some 300 cavalry were also placed under his command. Caesar then ordered a night march to seek out the enemy force s. He records: 'After a night march of about twelve miles I came in sight of the forces of the enemy.' The Celtic commanders had established a position by the Great Stour river, near Thanington. The Stour, cognate with Stura in Cisalpine Gaul, meaning strong and powerful river, was fordable but the Celts had retired to the opposite bank and were prepared to defend the crossing. Caesar writes: 'They came down with cavalr y and war-chariots and, by attacking from higher ground, tried to bar our passag e of the river. Repulsed by our cavalry, they retired to the woods where they ha d a strongly fortified position of great natural strength.' Caesar was fighting the Cantii, the Celtic tribe of the area. The Romans had caused many of them to retire into a nearby hill-fort, since identified with the remains at Bigbury Woo d. The Celts had apparently prepared for a siege and most of the approaches to t he hill-fort had been obstructed by the felling of trees. With their main body i nside the hill-fort, the Cantii chieftains sent out small groups to harry the in vaders. Caesar inspected the fortifications. The ramparts and palisades rose some twenty feet above a defensive ditch surrounding the earthen banks on which the walls w ere built. He detached the VII Legion and gave them orders to storm it. Bowmen a

nd slingmen started a fusillade to keep the heads of the Celts down while a test udo (tortoise) was formed by legionaries with their shields. They marched to the walls with a pioneer corps company who began to pile earth against the walls so that the legionaries could scramble upwards. Soon cohort after cohort was pouri ng into the fortress. It was taken with only small losses to the Romans. Celtic hill-forts never appeared to present a problem to the Romans in Britain. However, in the confusion, the Cantii chieftains and their main forces managed t o escape, but Caesar forbade any attempt at pursuit. His troops had already gone two nights without rest and he realized that if the Celts gathered to attack en masse his troops would be in no shape to repulse them. Additionally, he was uns ure of the situation in the surrounding countryside. On the next day, however, the Romans sent out cavalry detachments which actually made contact with the rearguard of the retiring Celtic army. Then a messenger c ame from Atrius at the base camp. On the night of 8/9 July an easterly gale had whipped up from the sea and nearly all the vessels had been dragged. The coastli ne was littered with transports which had been driven ashore. 'The anchors and c ables had parted, seamen and pilots had been helpless and heavy damage had been suffered as a result of collision.' The very thing that had robbed Caesar of victory during the preceding summer had occurred again. He withdrew his army back to the base camp. An inspection showe d that forty transports were beyond repair. The others were pulled ashore within a line of fortifications to prevent any attack on them by the Celts. The ships were to be repaired as well as possible. At the same time a war-galley was despa tched to Portus Itius with orders for Labienus to build replacement transports. It must have been a gloomy birthday for the forty-eight-year-old Caesar, celebra ting it on the shore of the territory of the Cantii on 12 July. It became even g loomier when the war-galley returned from Labienus with news from Rome that Caes ar's twenty-seven-year-old daughter Julia had died. Julia was Caesar's only chil d and was married to his rival Pompey. Her child, Caesar's grandson, had also di ed. The joint heir of Caesar and Pompey might well have prevented the coming civ il war between them as each strove to make himself dictator of the Roman empire. It was another personal loss for Caesar for that year his mother, Aurelia, who had played such a dominant role in his life, had also died. It was not until 19 July that Caesar was able to march his troops into the inter ior of Britain. Caesar's landing and the capture of Bigbury, the most important fortress in the country of the Cantii - according to archaeological evidence - had been a severe blow to the Celts of Britain. The chieftains of the Cantii had been in contact with Cassivelaunos of the Cassivelauni, both names signifying lover of Belinos, singular and plural. Caesar tells us that Cassivelaunos had his tribal territory some seventy-five miles from the sea, north of a river called the Tamesis (Tham es). The Celtic tribes of southern Britain 'had unanimously agreed to confer upo n him the supreme command', says Caesar. We can presume, with a fair degree of c ertainty, that the bestowing of supreme command on Cassivelaunos was due to the fact that he was already overall King, the High King, at least of southern Brita in at this time. Unfortunately, little is known about Cassivelaunos except that in him the Romans found a very astute military commander. His territory appears to have stretched through Middlesex, Hertfordshire and Oxfordshire. His capital was a hill-fort w hich can still be traced at Wheathampstead, a little to the north of St Albans. Caesar's first march inland had met with no resistance until he reached the Grea t Stour. Now, on 19 July, his second march into the British interior was not so

peaceful. He immediately felt the different personality of the new Celtic comman der. He had marched only a few miles inland when he found his troops engaged in running battles with British cavalry and war-chariots. It was soon obvious that Cassivelaunos' tactics were to harry and slow the Roman march as much as possibl e without engaging in an all-out battle. Time and again, his war-chariots and ca valry would swoop down, attacking vanguard or rearguard, scouting parties, forag ing parties or flanking detachments. Time and again, the Romans would halt to me et the offensive only to find the Celts had vanished as quickly as they had come . Sometimes, junior officers were carried away by their enthusiasm and let their men chase the Celts into the forests. Each time this happened it spelt disaster for the Romans, for they found their units cut off by hidden British marksmen a nd inevitably they suffered heavy losses. At the end of the first day's march, the Romans stopped to build a night camp. C assivelaunos would not let them rest so easily. His troops burst out of the surr ounding woods and attacked the fatigue parties and outposts. Caesar recalled tha t heavy fighting ensued and he had to order the first cohorts (the crack troops) of two legions to attempt to rescue the outposts under threat. The first cohort s contained veterans and were at double strength, so, in all, they totalled 2,00 0 men. The rescue was nearly a disaster for even these crack troops became cut o ff and involved in fierce fighting. Caesar begrudgingly praised the Celtic tacti cs and bravery. He tried to encircle them but the Celts withdrew. During this sk irmish Caesar lost one of his senior commanders, Quintus Laberius Durus. British tradition, recorded centuries later, says it was the brother of Cassivelaunos, Nennius, leader of the attack on the VII Legion during the previous year, who co mmanded this particular attack. But 'the success of the day was dearly purchased by the death of Nennius, who fell in the last onset of the enemy.' Caesar records: In the whole of this kind of battle, since it was fought under the eyes of all a nd before the camp, it was perceived that our men, on account of the weight of t heir arms (inasmuch as they could neither follow those who were giving war, nor dared to depart from their standards) were little suited for an enemy of this ki nd; that the cavalry manoeuvre fought with great danger, because they [the enemy ] would oft-times retreat even designedly, and, when they had drawn off our hors e a little way from the legions, would leap down from their chariots and fight o n foot in unequal combat. But this system of cavalry engagement is wont to bring equal disaster, and of the same kind to both those retreating and those pursuin g. He adds: 'The enemy never fought in close order, but in small parties and at con siderable distances, and had detachments placed about, and some, in turn, took t he place of others, and the vigorous and fresh troops succeeded those who were w eary.' The brilliant hit-and-run guerilla tactics of the Celts certainly took th eir toll of Roman lives. Cassivelaunos now sent out small detachments of warrior s who 'took up their position at a distance from the camp, on the hills, and beg an to show themselves in small parties, and with less spirit than on the day bef ore, to provoke our horsemen to combat,' says Caesar. He forbade his troops to m ake any foolhardy answer to this provocation. The Romans now found themselves running out of supplies because their foraging p arties had been unable to move far afield and the native population had removed themselves and their livestock out of the route of the Roman march. Caesar order ed Gaius Trebonius, an officer who was destined to be one of his assassins, to t ake command of the foraging parties and scour the countryside as far as possible . It was just such a move that Cassivelaunos had been waiting for. His warriors fell on Trebonius' men as they searched for provisions. Trebonius managed to wit hdraw his men back to the protection of the main encampment with a considerable loss of life.

Caesar, warned of the retreat of his foraging parties, decided to launch an atta ck on the pursuing Celtic warriors with three entire legions 'nor did they cease from pursuing them [the Celts] until the horse, confident of support since they saw the legions behind them, drove the enemy headlong and, slaying a great numb er of them, gave them no opportunity of rallying or halting or of leaping down f rom their chariots'. Caesar was able to report with satisfaction: 'Immediately a fter this retreat, the British auxiliaries who had assembled from all sides, dep arted, nor after that time did the enemy engage us in great numbers ...' Caesar, by use of the word 'auxiliaries', referred to the tribes who had come to the ai d of the Cantii, such as the Atrebates, Cassivelauni, Trinovantes and others. Cassivelaunos resumed his devastating guerilla tactics, harrying and delaying th e Roman advance. It seems that at no time in his campaign did Cassivelaunos use infantry against the Romans. His plan appears to have been simply to wear down t he Roman troops, cutting them off from their base camp and supply lines. The leg ions none the less managed to forage and raid the numerous rich farming settleme nts along the line of their march, putting them to the torch. Cassivelaunos, obs erving that these farming settlements were Caesar's main source of supply, order ed a scorched-earth policy. Not only were the farmers to withdraw out of the way of the Roman army but they were to fire their own farmsteads and drive off thei r flocks and herds, destroying their grain stores and crops. By now Caesar had learned the name of his formidable opponent and the location o f his capital. Mandubratios had obviously identified him as the man who had driv en his father, Imanuentios, from the kingship of the Trinovantes. The chieftains of the Cantii had now come to believe that they, and Cassivelaunos, were fighti ng a losing war against the Romans. Chieftains of five southern and eastern sept s came into Caesar's camp to discuss terms. They wanted to end the conflict as q uickly as possible to save their livestock and crops. It would seem that the sco rched-earth policy of Cassivelaunos was not popular. Through the mediation of Ma ndubratios these chieftains gave Caesar much valuable military information. 'The y told me we were not far away from Cassivelaunos' stronghold, which was strateg ically placed among woods and marshlands, and that large numbers of men and catt le were gathered there.' Caesar and his legions crossed the Medway - a compound river-name still retainin g the original Celtic root medu, the mead-coloured river. They crossed the river at Rochester, whose name at that time was Durobrivae, deriving from the Celtic for bridge of the stronghold. Caesar reports that he eventually arrived at the River Tamesis, whose name could mean either the dark river or the sluggish river the stem is still found in the Irish tamailte. Cassivelaunos was already waiting on the northern bank of the T amesis with a force of 4,000 war-chariots, ready to dispute the Roman crossing. We can only surmise that his chariots had crossed by a bridge at this point, for Caesar must have been in the area of a trading settlement of the Trinovantes: L ondon, which seems to have been called the wild place from the Celtic londo, fou nd in the Old Irish word lond, wild. There is, of course, the argument that the name derived from the fortress (dun) of Lugh, as in Lugdunum (Lyons) in Gaul. If Cassivelaunos had crossed with his chariots, he must have destroyed the bridge behind him. Caesar remarks: 'The river can be forded only at one point and even there the cr ossing was difficult.' Two possible fords have been suggested as the place where Caesar decided to cross. One was by Westminster, the other by Brentford. Archae ological evidence favours Brentford, which still retains, in part, its Celtic na me, cognate with Brigantia, meaning the high, or holy, river, which is where the River Brent flows into the Thames.

Caesar says: 'Large native forces appeared in battle order on the far bank, whic h was also defended by a line of pointed stakes; and some deserters in our custo dy revealed that more of these obstacles were placed underneath the river bed.' The Roman cavalry moved over first and secured the far bank and then the legiona ries suddenly began moving across. It was a deep crossing and at times only the heads of the footsoldiers were above the water. The Celts seemed unnerved and we re easily pushed back from their defensive positions. Crossing the Thames had placed Caesar in the land of the Cassivelauni and the gu erilla warfare intensified as the Romans pushed onwards, moving along the Colne Valley, whose name meant roaring river. Taking this route they would have marche d past Denham, Rickmansworth and Watford before reaching Wheathampstead. By this time Caesar admits that Cassivelaunos' guerillas were so successful that his ca valry could no longer venture out of touch with the main body of his troops and foraging parties could no longer be sent out. On all sides the forests were infe sted by watchful defenders awaiting their chance. By nd of ud the beginning of August the Roman army had cut their way through the forest a marshland and gazed upon the ramparts of the hill-fort which was the capital the Cassivelauni, the most powerful tribe in southern Britain. Caesar was pro of his troops. 'They did nothing unworthy of them,' he reported.

The hill-fort of the Cassivelauni, at Wheathampstead, enclosed one hundred acres with ramparts rising to thirty feet in height, being one hundred feet in width. Its remains are still traceable today. Cassivelaunos stood ready to face a Roma n siege but, as at the Cantii hill-fort at Bigbury, the Romans stormed the rampa rts on two sides with comparative ease. In the confusion, Cassivelaunos and some of his retinue escaped. Caesar was left the victor with livestock and provision s captured in the fortress. The Trinovantes, whose tribal area bordered on that of the Cassivelauni to the e ast, had decided to make terms with Caesar and accepted Mandubratios as their ch ieftain. But Caesar knew that as long as Cassivelaunos refused to submit the war was not over. There were a dozen hill-forts in the vicinity and Caesar was face d with having to reduce them one by one. Moreover, Cassivelaunos was not simply 'on the run'. He was not yet defeated and still exerted considerable authority. It is a testimony to his unquestioned authority, and a reinforcement of the pres umption that Cassivelaunos was High King, that he was able to send a messenger t o the chieftains of the four Cantii septs - Cingetorix, Carnilius, Taximagulus a nd Segonax - telling them to gather their warriors and make an attack on Caesar' s base camp. Cassivelaunos probably reasoned that an attack on his base would fo rce Caesar and his troops back to the coast, relieve pressure on Cassivelaunos h imself and allow him time to reorganize his army. The chieftains of the Cantii obeyed his instructions and gathered an army which launched an attack on the base camp at Walmer. Quintus Atrius made a resolute de fence. British tradition has it that Cingetorix was captured, yet Caesar mention s only the capture of a chieftain named Lugotorix. It is Quintus Tullius Cicero who gives us the vital information that this attack did, indeed, send Caesar has tening back to the base camp but leaving his main force, commanded by Trebonius, encamped around the Cassivelauni capital at Wheathampstead. Cicero mentions thi s in a letter to his brother Marcus. So Cassivelaunos' ruse was unsuccessful. Ca esar was at Walmer for only a few days, ensuring that Atrius had things under co ntrol, before returning to Wheathampstead. This must have been a blow for Cassivelaunos, who was now faced with the Romans raiding his farming settlements and townships. Caesar reports with some satisfac tion: 'So many losses having been received, his territories devastated, and bein g distressed most of all by the defections of the tribes, he sent ambassadors to

me to treat through Commios, the Atrebatian, concerning surrender.' So once again the intriguing figure of Commios, the ruler of the Gaulish Atrebat es, whom Caesar had taken to Britain to make ruler of the British Atrebates, eme rges at Caesar's camp. Where had he been during Caesar's second landing in Brita in? Certainly he was not in Caesar's camp. The fact that Caesar says Cassivelaun os used Commios as an ambassador suggests that he was with the Cassivelauni and that his British Atrebates might have been part of Cassivelaunos' army. Commios appears as no unpopular pro-Roman ruler imposed by the Romans. He had ruled the British Atrebates for a year and they seemed happy with his rule. Caesar's demands were brief. 'I demanded hostages, I fixed annual tribute payabl e by Britain into the Roman treasury, and I strictly forbade Cassivelaunos to in terfere with Mandubratios and the Trinovantes. After receiving these hostages, w e returned to the coast.' The actual negotiations appear to have taken some time for Caesar and his legion s did not return to their base camp at Walmer until the end of August. With them they took the remainder of the cattle herds of the Cassivelauni and large numbe rs of hostages - the first of countless British Celts who, over the next four ce nturies, were to be sold into slavery by Rome, never to see their native land ag ain. Labienus, in Gaul, had despatched sixty newly built transports to replace those destroyed, but because of the bad weather only a small number of these managed t o reach Britain. For some time, until mid-September, Caesar waited anxiously for the arrival of the rest of the transports. The equinox was now approaching and he decided to split his army, sending half of them to Gaul in the available tran sports with orders for those transports to return for the second half. The reaso n for this was not only that the Romans had fewer ships but that they had more p eople, the hostages, to transport to Rome. It was from the sale of these hostage s that Caesar would finance his expedition. On 26 September 54 BC, Caesar records: 'We weighed anchor at 9 p.m. and the whol e fleet reached land safely at dawn.' It was fairly obvious that Caesar's ambitions for a military conquest and annexa tion of Britain did not end there. His mind was probably full of ideas for a fur ther campaign during the next year and the establishment of a permanent garrison in Britain. But the situation in Gaul was to drive all such thoughts from his m ind. The subsequent uprising against Rome cancelled any plans he might have had and Britain was to retain her independence for a further century. Cassivelaunos returned to his position of pre-eminence among the British chieftains and was ab le to take advantage of the situation in Gaul to ignore the provisions of the tr eaty with Caesar. No annual tribute was paid to Rome and no further hostages wer e sent. Britain returned to being one of the most prosperous of the surviving in dependent Celtic countries. ---------------------------12 - Insurrection in Gaul Arriving back in Gaul at the end of September, Caesar went to Samarobriva (Amien s) to attend a council of pro-Roman Gaulish chieftains. The harvest in Gaul duri ng that summer of 54 BC had been a bad one, adding fuel to the discontent felt i n the country. Caesar told the chieftains that he was dispersing his troops over a wide area for winter quarters in order not to put too great a strain on any p articular tribe. There were eight legions and several unattached cohorts consist ing of nearly 80,000 men. He stationed them within a circle of 200-mile diameter , with Bavay as its centre. Lucius Roscius was given a command at Seex in Norman

dy; Quintus Tullius Cicero was placed at Charleroy; Titus Labienus was at Lavach erie on the Curthe; Sabinus and Cotta were at Tongres; Gaius Fabius was at St Po l, between Calais and Arras; Trebonius was at Amiens, which was Caesar's general headquarters; Marcus Crassus was at Montididier and Munatius Plancus was on the Oise near Compiegne. Caesar, who usually went to Italy for the winter, remained at Amiens. It would seem obvious that he had been warned of the seething discon tent in Gaul. Indutiomaros of the Treveri, whom Caesar had chased out by helping his pro-Roman brother Cingetorix gain the chieftainship of the tribe, was behind the immediat e unrest. The tribes were ready to rise against Rome, stung into action by the d eath of Dumnorix of the Aedui. Indutiomaros, however, knew that he must break th e belief that the Roman legions were invincible. He entered into an alliance wit h Ambiorix and Catavolos, chieftains of the Eburones, a tribe whose country lay between Liege and Cologne. They took their name from eburos, the yew, which was one of the most sacred Celtic trees. He convinced them that if one Roman legion was destroyed then all Gaul would ris e up. Ambiorix took command and decided to launch an attack on Tongres, where Sabinus and Cotta were quartered. Caesar, from his biased viewpoint, says the attack was carried out by treachery. Ambiorix appeared before the Roman encampment with an overwhelming force of Gauls. Caesar maintains that Ambiorix gave the Roman comm anders a guarantee of safe passage to the nearest Roman fortress at Namur, some fifty miles away. When Sabinus and Cotta, with their 9,000 troops, were moving t owards it in marching order, Ambiorix is said to have ambushed them. The entire legion, including Sabinus and Cotta, were wiped out. Ambiorix's success produced the effect which Indutiomaros had calculated. As soo n as the news of the annihilation of the legion spread, the country began to rev olt. The Nervii and several smaller tribes along the Meuse and Somme rose up. Qu intus Cicero, commanding the XIV Legion at the fortress of Namur (Charleroy), wa s surrounded by some 60,000 Gauls. He sent a messenger to Caesar, 120 miles away , who issued orders to Marcus Crassus at Montididier, Gaius Fabius at St Pol and Titus Labienus at Lavacherie to relieve Namur. Meanwhile, Indutiomaros, having overthrown his pro-Roman brother Cingetorix, was now at the head of the Treveri and he marched them against Titus Labienus, prev enting him from reaching Namur. The country was aflame. For the first time since Caesar had used the Helvetii as an excuse to intervene in the affairs of Gaul, the tribes appeared united again st Rome. Finally, Caesar himself marched from Amiens to relieve Cicero's fortres s. He was able to break the siege but, of Cicero's garrison, two men out of ever y three had been wounded. As the winter of 54/53 BC progressed, Indutiomaros was busy trying to build up a united Gaulish army. His hill-fort in the land of the Treveri at Trier became t he centre for Gaulish resistance to Rome. A council was held to which the chieft ains of all the tribes of Gaul were invited to send representatives. The Romans, having identified Indutiomaros as a leader of the insurrection, offe red a reward for him - dead or alive. Soon afterwards, Indutiomaros, besieging T itus Labienus at Lavacherie, was ambushed while crossing a ford on the Curthe; a Gaulish traitor killed him and claimed the reward from the Romans. This was a b low to the Gaulish resistance movement. However, Ambiorix continued to inflict p unishment on the legions. Caesar, realizing how strong resistance now was, sent to the south to raise two

fresh legions and asked Pompey if he could borrow a third legion from his comman d in Spain. During the summer of 53 BC he marched with four legions into the cou ntry of the Nervii and conducted a ruthless campaign, burning farmsteads and vil lages, seizing livestock, destroying crops, slaughtering men, women and children and carrying off survivors to be sold into slavery. Soon the countryside was de populated, and only burnt ruins marked the passage of the Roman army. During that summer Caesar called a council of the Gaulish chieftains at Amiens. Only a few pro-Roman chieftains attended and most of their tribes had already re jected their leadership and were in arms against Rome. Caesar, determined to cru sh resistance, set off in the direction of the area of modern Pans - named after the Celtic tribe, the Parisii. After a lightning campaign, he forced the Senone s and Carnutes to sue for peace. Then he turned towards the country of the Treveri, where Ambiorix appears to hav e established his headquarters. Caesar had taken Ambiorix's destruction of Sabin us and Cotta and their legion very much to heart. They had been among his favour ite commanders. While Ambiorix lived, it was a personal affront. It seems that A mbiorix had persuaded some of the Germanic tribes along the Rhine to join the Ce lts in making war on Rome, probably having little need to remind them of how Cae sar had devastated their country in previous years. Caesar, however, turned on the Germans, once more throwing a bridge over the Rhi ne and taking his men to wreak havoc in their territory. But his main concern wa s to catch up with Ambiorix. He had ordered Cicero and the XIV Legion to occupy the defensive positions at Tongres, the same positions which Sabinus and Cotta h ad held, while he marched the rest of his troops north to seek out Ambiorix. Cic ero thought he could relax. However, his encampment came under a surprise attack from 2,000 Germans seeking revenge on Rome. The camp was nearly overrun, and by the time the Romans had repelled the attack their casualties were very high. Caesar must have been infuriated. He returned from his punitive expedition witho ut encountering Ambiorix, who was never to be captured by Rome. But Caesar had h is revenge in the massacre of many of Ambiorix's Eburones as well as the Carnute s and Senones. Acco, the chieftain of the Carnutes, was put to death as a warnin g to other chieftains who preached rebellion against Rome. After such a devastating campaign, Gaul settled to an uneasy quiet during the au tumn of 53 BC. Caesar seemed satisfied that the military threat to Roman rule wa s now over. He returned to Italy for the winter and set about discussing the pol itical organization of the new province of the empire. But the Celts were learning fast about co-operation against a common enemy. All the chieftains of the major tribes of Gaul were in contact with each other. They had been deeply affected by Caesar's execution of Acco. While nothing is known about this chieftain, he must have had some reputation which caused Caesar to us e his execution as a warning to the rest of the Gaulish chiefs and for them to h ave responded with such outrage. Even the Aedui, which had once had a strong pro -Roman faction and had been the weak link which had allowed Rome to intervene in Gaul, were solidly anti-Roman now. While Caesar rested in Italy, the Gaulish ch ieftains were planning a universal uprising. A system of signals had been arrang ed and the spark was to be the uprising of the Carnutes. An armed band of Carnut es slaughtered a party of Roman officials at Gien, above Orleans, on the Loire. It was, they said, in revenge for the execution of their chieftain Acco. Within a few hours the spirit of revolt had spread across the country. There now emerged the most formidable Celtic leader to take on the might of Rome . Vercingetorix, whose name means the high king who marched against the foe, was chieftain of the Arverni. Their principal town was at Gergovia, four miles from Clermont on the Allier in the Puy-de-D6me. Vercingetorix, who had been accepted

as the head of a national confederation of the tribes of Gaul, had been buildin g up a Gaulish army during the autumn period, requesting each tribe to supply ar ms and bodies of men. He also devised a general plan of campaign. He wanted to p revent Caesar from returning to Gaul and thereby cut him off from his legions, w hich had been put into winter quarters in the country of the Belgae in the north . Obviously Vercingetorix recognized Caesar as a formidable military strategist. Therefore he wanted to prevent him from exercising control. It had been the height of winter, with snow still on the ground, when the Carnut es had given the signal for the general uprising. Caesar immediately returned ac ross the Alps and came marching swiftly up the valleys of the Rhone and Saone in to the country of the Aedui, marching day and night. Vercingetorix's Celtic army were unable to make contact with him before he reached Cenabum (Orleans) and cr ossed the Loire to the south to surround Avaricum (Bourges), which was the princ ipal town of the Bituriges, which tribal name means kings of the world. Vercingetorix had ordered that a scorched-earth policy should be maintained agai nst the Romans and that they should be prevented from gaining any supplies and p rovisions. All tribes were to fall back before Caesar, not only to wear him out but so that no contact with the legions in battle formation should occur before Vercingetorix was ready. However, the Bituriges had refused to evacuate their to wnship and they now shut themselves in. Caesar laid siege to Avaricum. Attacks b y Vercingetorix to relieve the town proved futile. The Romans eventually stormed it, slaughtering all but 800 of the 4,000 inhabitants. The survivors were taken to be sold as slaves. The massacre of Avaricum underscored Vercingetorix's orders about a scorched-ear th policy. Caesar's slaughter convinced the Celts to consent to a universal sacr ifice and they began to burn their farmsteads, villages and townships before the Roman advance. It is reported that the Bituriges burned twenty of their towns i n a single day. Adjoining tribes copied their example. The horizon at night was a ring of blazing fires as the Gauls sought to deprive the Romans of supplies an d booty. Vercingetorix now had thousands of patriotic young Gauls, on their ligh t war-horses, harrying the Romans' supply lines and communications. Caesar, in his determination to crush the insurrection, decided to strike at the heartland of his enemy. He had learned that Gergovia was the chief town of the Arverni. He wanted to smash it and, at the same time, the new military leader wh o had emerged among the Gauls. Gergovia stood on a high plateau where the rivers rise which run into the Loire on the one side and the Dordogne on the other. The sides of the hill were steep, and accessible in only a few places. Caesar, reinforced with six full-strength legions, decided to ascend from the right bank of the Allier. The Celtic commander was fairly confident that his hill-fort was impregnable to attack. He had stationed his army outside Gergovia but in such a position that t o attack it would put the enemy at a disadvantage. He was determined that Gergov ia would not suffer a fate similar to that of Avaricum. Caesar's assault troops managed to capture two heights outside the city but Verc ingetorix made his counter-attack with such success that they were driven back. This brilliant Celtic strategist followed up the attack and soon Caesar's army w as in flight from the field, with some 46 officers and 700 men dead. The Romans were routed. Only a fierce rearguard action by men of the X Legion prevented Cae sar's army from complete annihilation. Caesar's own personal record of invincibi lity was smashed. For the first time, Rome's most formidable General had been be aten in battle by a Celt. News of his defeat spread throughout Gaul. Even those tribes who had submitted t

o the Romans and promised them supplies turned and began destroying the provisio ns intended for Roman troops. Caesar's army was withdrawing northward now in an attempt to link up with Titus Labienus and his four legions which were in the Se ine Valley. Labienus had been having his own problems. He had, at the start of the uprising, moved his legions from his headquarters at Agendicum (Sens) to attack the Gauli sh forces within the vicinity of Paris. Hearing the news from the south, however , Labienus decided to return to the safety of Agendicum. Camulogenos, the Gaulis h leader in the area, made an attempt to cut off Labienus from his base by takin g up a position just south of the Seine while ordering part of his army into a p osition to the north. Labienus, on the north bank, was caught between the two Ce ltic armies. Labienus, however, was able to make a surprise move, crossing the Seine and atta cking Camulogenos' positions. The Celtic leader had been informed that Labienus was trying to move north. The Roman attack, therefore, was a complete surprise a nd Labienus was able to cut his way through the Celts and reach Agendicum in saf ety. Camulogenos was killed in the attack. Labienus shut himself into his fortif ied position to await developments. Caesar arrived with his legions not long afterwards and the two commands were un ited. Vercingetorix's main tactical error was allowing this unification, for Cae sar was now confident enough to turn his force and moved south to seek out Verci ngetorix's army. The Celtic commander was observing the march of the Roman army from positions ten miles away. There was no faulting the strategy of his decisio n to attack the Romans while they were on the march and strung out. He chose for the encounter the valley of Vingeanne, no more than a stream which descended in to the Saone. As the Celtic cavalry attacked the marching legions, they responde d swiftly by forming squares. After some brisk fighting the Celts were repelled and Caesar ordered his own cavalry to chase them before they had a chance to ref orm. Vercingetorix withdrew towards Alesia, a fortress of the Mandubians, just north of Dijon, which is now called Alise Ste-Reine on the Cote d'Or. With Caesar clos e behind, Vercingetorix had little choice but to move into the fortified positio n and prepare for a siege. Like Gergovia, Alesia stood on a hill with precipitou s slopes between two small rivers, the Ose and Oserain, which ran into the Brenn e and thence into the Seine. Therefore, Alesia was actually a peninsula and well protected with a good water supply. Vercingetorix was well aware of the Roman reputation for slaughtering non-combat ants, women, children and the elderly, as they had done at Avaricum. He gathered all the women, children and old people, along with any Mandubii menfolk who cho se not to fight with him, and allowed them to leave. Caesar, whose troops alread y surrounded the town, simply turned them round. No one would be allowed out of Alesia until Vercingetorix surrendered or until the Romans reduced it. Only 50,000 Celtic warriors were in the town, facing well over twice that number of Roman soldiers and a considerable number of mercenaries, whom the Romans app ear to have recruited from the Germanic tribes. Caesar was more cautious than he had been at Gergovia. He had obviously learned a lesson from that disaster. He began to build up siegeworks. Vercingetorix sent out daily and nightly raids to delay their construction while, at the same time, he issued a call for all the G aulish tribes to gather and attack the Romans. The call was answered. Some 100,000 footsoldiers and 8,000 cavalry began to conv erge on a point about a mile west of Caesar's army. Among those who commanded th is great Celtic army were Vercingetorix's son-in-law Vercassivelaunos (his name meaning the great lover of Belinos) and Commios of the Atrebates, now showing cl

early that he was no friend of Caesar. Caesar quickly positioned his troops as the first attack swept upon them. The fi ghting lasted most of the day, with the legionaries keeping the Celts in check. That night members of the Celtic army scattered through the countryside in order to get materials to make ladders for an attack on Caesar's siegeworks. As the f ight resumed the next day, led by Vercassivelaunos, Caesar ordered Mark Antony a nd Gaius Trebonius to command cohorts which were to hold themselves ready to mov e from point to point, wherever Celtic pressures looked like breaking the Roman lines. Caesar was also using heavy artillery weapons such as the catapulta and b allista and the Celts fell in large numbers, unused to these sophisticated weapo ns. On the third day the siege had not been raised and Vercingetorix and those in Al esia had been unable to break out. Now Vercassivelaunos launched an attack on th e north side of the Roman siegeworks about midday, using some 60,000 warriors. T he attack coincided with a determined thrust from Vercingetorix from Alesia. The idea was to catch the Romans between two fires. Caesar, however, saw the peril and sent Labienus with six cohorts to reinforce the two legions which held this northern line at Mont Rea. The Celts struggled determinedly to break this line and Caesar had to send more reinforcements under Decimus Brutus and Gaius Fabius. Even so, Caesar himself ev entually had to take his remaining reserves to join the action. The Celtic attac k wavered and finally broke. The German mercenaries were let loose, hewing down the Celts as they struggled to disengage. Caesar reports that seventy-four triba l standards were captured and brought to him and that his cavalry, chasing the C elts from the field, captured them in their thousands. Vercingetorix had withdrawn back into Alesia. The relief army of Celts had been defeated and scattered. He now called a council of chieftains. He had gone to wa r to regain the liberty of his country, he told them. Now they were faced with t he prospect of starvation. The Romans had them enclosed. He had attempted to get the non-combatants out of the fortress but the Romans had refused to let them p ass. They all knew what would happen once the Romans broke in. It would not be s imply the fighting men who would be killed but the elderly, the women and childr en. Maybe the bards could recite stories of what had happened a century before t o the Celts besieged in the hill-fort of Numantia. Vercingetorix offered his fol lowers a choice. They could kill him and send his head to the Roman commander by way of appeasement or they could send him to Caesar alive. The chieftains did n either but agreed to send ambassadors to Caesar asking for terms of surrender. Caesar's demand was for unconditional surrender. The chieftains accepted. Caesar sat amid the devastation before the hill-fort as the chieftains were brought on e by one before him and surrendered. Vercingetorix was to be taken in chains to Rome. He spent some years as a prisoner there in the dark underground cells of t he Tullanium below the Capitol. There, during Caesar's official triumph of 46 BC , the last great continental Celtic ruler was beheaded. In 40 BC a silver denari us was struck in celebration by Rome showing the head of Vercingetorix. During the winter of 52/51 BC Caesar decided to stamp the military lesson into t he Gaulish psyche to ensure that Gaul would never rise again. He began his winte r campaign in the land of the Carnutes, who had started the insurrection. Gutura tos had replaced the executed Acco as chieftain. Caesar marched through their la nds, burning, taking prisoners for selling into slavery, and destroying farmstea ds and villages wholesale. Guturatos joined the Bituriges and the Bellovaci in a combined army whose leader was none other than Commios the Atrebate. Throughout the winter Commios fought Caesar with considerable skill. Finally, unable to fi ght any more, he fled across the Rhine while Guturatos was captured. Caesar had the Carnutes chieftain flogged into insensibility and then decapitated, his head

being sent round Gaul as a warning of Roman vengeance. By the spring of 51 BC Gaul was fairly submissive, its spirit nearly broken. Yet some of Vercingetorix's own tribe were still attempting to hold out. In the sou th-west of the Arverni territory in the Dordogne stood the hill-fort of Exellodu num. The name indicates its position on an inaccessible rock, for uxellos means high, cognate with the Irish form uasal. This, then, was the high fortress. It w as well provisioned and watered. Here the spark of Gaulish resistance remained. The Romans took a long time to reduce the fortress, finally mining tunnels throu gh the rock under its fortifications. Eventually, by finding a way to cut off it s water supply, they forced the garrison to surrender. Caesar now held a council of Gaulish chieftains and lectured them on the future of Gaul as a dutiful province of the Roman empire. He was to spend another year in Gaul as Governor and commander-in-chief, organizing the administration of the different districts and assigning troops and officers for the various military commands. Then he left Gaul, in which he had made his reputation, to meet his ow n destiny of violence and death. Having lived by the sword, he was to die by the assassin's dagger on 15 March 44 BC in the senate at Rome. Gaul was never again to rise up as a united country against Rome. Small isolated revolts occurred, such as the rising of the Bellovaci in 46 BC, apparently in r esponse to the news of Vercingetorix's execution in Rome. In 44 BC the Allobrige s rose up and in 33 BC and 30 BC the Aquitani and Morini, while between 25 BC an d 7 BC a series of campaigns had to be mounted to contain disturbances among the tribes of south-east Gaul. Roman settlers soon began to pour into the country, but the popular notion that Gaul suddenly ceased to be Celtic and started speaking Latin in the years follow ing the Roman conquest is entirely mistaken. As late as the fifth century AD, a Gaul could write that it was only in his day that the leading families of Gaul w ere trying to 'throw off the scurf of Celtic speech'. If the leading families we re only then trying to rid themselves of the language one can assume that the va st majority of the people were still speaking Celtic. At the time of the conquest, Gaul had been moving towards literacy in its own la nguage in spite of the prohibitions of the druids. And it is from Gaul that one of the earliest extensive texts in a Celtic language survives the Calendar of Co ligny, which is now in the Palais des Arts in Lyons. As we have already mentione d, it consists of a huge bronze plate on which is engraved a calendar of sixty-t wo consecutive months. The lettering is Latin but the language is Gaulish. Place -names, personal names and inscriptions on the calendar testify to a literacy in this language. The calendar also confirms Caesar's observation that the Celts r eckoned periods of time by nights. The Coligny Calendar is a masterpiece of cale ndrical computation, which also confirms many remarks made by Greek observers ab out the skill of the druids in astronomical observation. New finds are continuing to advance our knowledge about Gaulish literacy. A new Gaulish inscription was found in 1983 in a Gaulish cemetery in L'Hospitalet du L arzac (Aveyron) in the neighbourhood of Millau. The inscription, written in Lati n cursive on a lead tablet, gives us the longest-known Gaulish text to date. By the fourth century AD the Gauls were using Latin to produce a literature of s ome distinction from the rest of the Latin world. Decimus Magnus Ausonius (AD c. 310-393) became one of the literary giants of his day. Born in Burdigalia (Borde aux), where he taught rhetoric, he was appointed tutor to the son of the Emperor Valentinian I. He rose to become Consul of the Gallic province. He wrote mainly in Latin but also in Greek. There were other writers such as (among many others ) Sulpicius Severus of the Aquitani, author of a biography of Martin of Tours; E utropius, the historian; Hilario, who wrote a history of the world; and Claudius

Rutilius Namantianus. It has been argued that, when Christianity took a strong hold on the Celts of Ga ul in the fourth century AD, Latin, as the vehicle of the new religion, caused a rapid decline of the Celtic language of Gaul. But by the fourth century the Gau lish Church was well established as a powerful organization and the Celtic conce pt of Christianity, based on the distinctive Celtic philosophies, was already sh owing contentious differences from the philosophies preached at Rome. Pope Innoc ent I (AD 401-17) had to write to Victricius, Bishop of Rouen, forbidding the Ga uls to write about their theological differences from other Christian provinces. Already the conflict between the Celtic Church and the Church of Rome was begin ning. Yet some of the great early Christian philosophers emerged from Gaul, such as Hilary of Poitiers (AD 315-67), who wrote the theological discourse De Trini tate, expressing the concept of the Holy Trinity, which he derived from the Celt ic triune god concept. But at what stage did Gaul cease to be Celtic? We have seen that St Jerome, duri ng the later fourth century, wrote of the Galatians as speaking the same dialect as that spoken by the Treveri - and St Jerome had stayed in both Galatia and th e land of the Treveri. His comment is not mere hearsay but first-hand evidence. Celtic was then still spoken among the Treveri of Gaul in the late fourth centur y AD. Added to that we have the evidence of Gaius Sollius Apollinaris Sidonius ( AD c.430-c.480), who became Bishop of the Arverni, once ruled over by Vercingeto rix. Sidonius' letters and poems are acclaimed for the light they shed on life a nd conditions in fifth-century AD Gaul. It is Sidonius who remarks that the lead ing families of Gaul were, in his day, still trying to throw off 'the scurf, as he calls it, of Celtic speech. Therefore Celtic must have been widespread among the ordinary people. The Celtic language of Gaul has actually survived to a considerable extent in th e vocabulary of modern French. While the Academic Francaise grudgingly admits to about 500 Celtic loan-words in French, there is a much larger Celtic vocabulary awaiting acknowledgement. The Dictionnaire General (ed. Adolphe Hatzfeld and Ar sene Darmesteter, 1890-1900) provided a large number of Celtic etymologies but m any Celtic scholars have argued that much more remains to be acknowledged and th at through the vehicle of Low Latin Celtic words survived into the Romance langu ages. It becomes obvious that when the Germanic Franks finally conquered and set tled Gaul, giving it its modern name, they intermarried with the Romano-Celtic p opulation and assimilated some part of their language to form modern French. Gaul proper, however, had become lost to the Celtic world. In the third century AD there arose a series of 'Gaulish emperors' during a schism in the Roman empir e. Postumus, calling himself 'Restorer of the Gauls' on his coinage, set himself up as Emperor with his capital at the capital of the Treveri, at Augusta Trevis orum (Trier) on the Moselle in AD 259. Tectricus was the last Gaulish Emperor, w ho, in AD 274, submitted to Aurelian. But these 'emperors' did not seriously env isage an independent Celtic Gaul re-emerging to challenge Rome. The Armorican peninsula (modern Brittany) has remained Celtic and was never subm erged either by Rome or by the later settlements of Norsemen and Franks. It was in a state of insurrection against Rome at the start of the fifth century AD. Zo simus tells us that in AD 409, 'encouraged by the example of the insular Britons , they had thrown off the Roman yoke.' The anonymous Gaulish Chronicle refers to a chieftain called Tibatto (AD c.43 5) as leader of an independence movement in Armorica. In AD 437 Tibatto is reported to have been captured and slain. The Celts of Armorica were reinforced soon afterwards by a new Celtic population arriving from Britain, having been forced to migrate in the face of the ruthles s conquest of their homelands by the Anglo-Saxons. They settled initially on the coast and then in the interior in the west of the peninsula. At first the Gallo

-Romano towns of Nantes, Vannes and Rennes adopted defensive measures against th em, enclosing their towns in fortifications. But soon the peninsula began to cha nge its character. The Gauls were reinforced by their British cousins and a new strong Celtic nation emerged. By the sixth century AD Armorica (the land by the sea) had become Brittany (Little Britain). Weroc'h II (AD 577-94) of Brittany ma naged to turn back the invasion of the Franks from the east. When Nominee of Bri ttany defeated the armies of Charles the Bald of France at Ballon on 22 November 845, he secured complete Breton independence until the fifteenth century, givin g Brittany time to develop into one of the modern Celtic nations. -----------------------------13 - Ireland The Celts of Ireland were not to suffer conquest by Rome. References to Ireland before the rise of native literacy with the Christian period are brief and inacc urate. The native literary traditions do not commence until the sixth century AD , apart from memorial and boundary stones found mainly in the south of the count ry and written in the Ogham alphabet. As we have seen elsewhere in the Celtic wo rld, the transmission of learning was conducted orally. Again, it has to be emph asized that this was not done through ignorance of the art of writing but becaus e of the conservative rules of the society. If there was any earlier written tra dition, indicated by references to libraries of Ogham cut on wands, or rods of y ew or oak, nothing has survived. Only Ogham inscriptions on stone have survived. It has been conjected that the wands were bound in the form of a fan, held toge ther by a pivot at one end, to be conveniently opened or closed. Such Ogham book s were referred to as tamlorga filidh (staves of the poets) or flesc filidh (poe t's rods). In the tale about two ill-fated lovers, Baile and Aillinn, it is rela ted that when a yew and an appletree grew over the lovers' graves, they were cut down and made into wand-books on which the bards cut their sad history in Ogham . Certainly the rhythmical syllabic verse of the sixth-century Irish remains poi nts clearly to a long literary tradition, although some have argued that this mi ght represent the archaic form of oral transmission rather than a written tradit ion. The history of Ireland until the early Christian period is therefore obscure. Th e first Irish historian we know of was Sinlan Moccu Min, an abbot of Bangor, in Ulster (d. AD 607). He was working on the Chronicle of Eusebius, a work of unive rsal history written by the Bishop of Caesarea in the fourth century AD. To this work Sinlan added a chronology of Irish historical events. The oldest-surviving native historical record, and the most reliable, is the Annals of Tighernach, c omposed in the late eleventh century AD at Clonmacnoise. Tighernach (AD c.1020-8 8) wrote the history of Ireland down to his own times, attempting to correlate i t with major events in Europe. Among other early surviving historical works are the Annals of Innisfallen, compiled between the eleventh and fourteenth centurie s AD by Maelsuthan Ua Cerbaill (d. 1010) - a tutor of Brian Boroimhe (Brian Boru , the High King) - and the Annals of Ulster, compiled in 1498 AD by Cathal Mac M agnus (or Magnusa Mheg Uidhir). During the twelfth century AD a new book appeared in Ireland called Leabhar Gabh ala The Book of Invasions (or takings). This work gathered into a single volume most of the traditions of the past, presumably both oral and written, on the anc ient history of Ireland, giving an account of the origins of the Irish, the vari ous invasions and the formation of an Irish monarchy. While it is classed as a w ork of mythology there is undoubtedly much in it that is historically true. Ther e are dim echoes of the Bronze Age and of the Iron Age. What is described in pla ces is the society which the Romans found in Gaul in the first century BC. When the Lebor Laighnech (Book of Leinster) was compiled by Aed Mac Crimthainn a nd Fionn Mac Gorman in the late twelfth century, the Leabhar Gabhala held undisp

uted authority as the history of early Ireland. In the seventeenth century it wa s re-edited by Micheal O Cleirigh and was also used by Seathrun Ceitinn (AD c.15 70-1647) as a basis for the early part of his history Foras Feasa ar Eirinn. Pro fessor Eoin Mac Neill has described the Leabhar Gabhala as 'a true national epic '. Unfortunately, we cannot regard it as reliable history. We know that as early as 3000 BC there were farming communities in Ireland and s ome of the earliest megaliths were then under construction. The Bronze Age in Ir eland, starting around 1500 BC, saw Irish metalwork being exported to the Europe an mainland. It is in the Bronze Age period that scholars place the origins of C eltic society. Yet there are still some Irish scholars who place the arrival of the Celts in Ireland at a very late date. Dr David Greene accepted the dating of the arrival of the Celts to the third century BC. He wrote: 'Eoin Mac Neill fou nd that the early Irish historians writing in the eighth century AD placed the c oming of the Gaels to Ireland in the same period as that of the conquests of Ale xander the Great at 331 BC.' Dr Greene, admitting that neither traditional nor a rchaeological evidence is worth much in dealing with identification of a people speaking a particular language, felt that 300 BC was a reasonable date and one n ot likely to be more than two centuries out. Yet Professor Kenneth Jackson has argued, along with other eminent Celtic schola rs: 'It is probable that Gaelic represents a rather early offshoot from this [Co mmon Celtic], whereas the speech of those Celts who remained on the continent ev olved with time into what we call Gaulish.' Now if Goidelic, or Gaelic-speaking, Celts arrived in Ireland from Europe only in the third century BC, it would mea n that the evolution of Celtic on the continent from Goidelic to Brythonic would have commenced at that time. Yet from the linguistic evidence on the continent we have seen that the development to what is popularly called the Brythonic form of Celtic, or Gaulish, had already taken place by the third century. How could the descendants of the Celts of Galatia, arriving in Galatia in the third centur y, have spoken a similar Gaulish to the Celts of northern Gaul if the language h ad not already evolved? The Goidelic or Gaelic-speaking Celts had already departed from Europe long befo re the third century BC. And Professor Mac Neill was not entirely correct about ancient writings for the ancient king-lists of Ireland go back centuries prior t o the third century BC. Heremon, or Eremon, for example, is listed as the ninete enth King of Ireland, being the first of the Milesians or Gaels, around 1015 BC. If the old king-lists could be regarded as evidence, then the date is more in a ccordance with the accepted theory that the Celts originated in the Bronze Age. However, the surviving king-lists date from the Christian era with Mael Muru (AD 820-884/6) as the first-known writer to deal with Irish kings in any depth. The existence of Ireland was known in ancient Greece, which used the name Hierne (Ierne), obviously derived from the native genitive form of Eire (Eireann and E irinn). Eratosthenes of Cyrene (c.285/ 280-194 BC) was head of the great library at Alexandria. He correctly placed Ireland on the map contained in his three bo oks of Geographica, the first complete descriptions of the inhabited ancient wor ld which survive. Poseidonius (c.135-50 BC) of Apamea in Syria, historian, scien tist and philosopher, who became head of the Stoic School at Rhodes, also wrote about Ireland. Nothing remains of his works, however, but we are indebted to quo tations from them by Strabo (64 BC-AD c.24), a Greek geographer from Amasia in P ontus. Strabo quotes Poseidonius in his seventeen books of Geography, compiled a bout 7 BC. Poseidonius' information on Ireland is pretty vague and he does admit that his a uthorities are not exactly trustworthy. Whereas later Roman writers supposed tha t Ireland lay between Britain and Spain, Poseidonius places it more accurately t o the west of Britain. According to him, the Irish were cannibals and fiercer th an the inhabitants of Britain. He also claims that the Iberians and Scythians we

re cannibals (Scythia being the ancient region extending over eastern Europe and Russia). Strabo adds very little to Poseidonius except that Ireland, which he t hought extended farther northward than Britain, would have a much colder climate . Julius Caesar was also aware of the existence of Ireland, which he Latinizes fro m the Greek as Hibernia. He estimated that the island was half the size of Brita in and as far distant from Britain as Britain was from Gaul. Pomponius Mela of Tingentera (near Gibraltar), writing during the first century AD, was the author of the earliest-surviving work in Latin on geography. De Chor ographia, sometimes called De situ orbis, On Places, was a work in three books. It is invaluable because, for example, he gives information on the druids which is not found in any other sources. Mela also dealt with Ireland. He was writing about AD 43, at the time of the Claudian invasion of Britain, and may have obtai ned his information from Britons trading with Ireland or Irish exiles in Britain . He calls the country Iuverna, a close approach to the British Celtic form, whi ch would indicate that his sources were Britons. Mela talks about the relative s ize of the country, about the climatic conditions and, very accurately, about th e abundance of excellent pasture for cattle. However, Mela adds: 'The inhabitant s of Ireland are uncivilized and beyond other nations are ignorant of all the vi rtues and extremely devoid of natural affection.' Needless to say, the Roman view of Ireland was just as inaccurate when it came t o the structure of society and the law system as was Caesar's account of the Bri tish Celtic society. Roman knowledge of Ireland continued to be hazy. Pliny the Elder (Gaius Plinius Secondus, AD 23/24-79) mentions Ireland but his source, Mar cus Vipsanius Agrippa (64-12 BC), had estimated Ireland at four times the size i t actually was. While native historical records of traditions are not contemporary sources, I be lieve we can reasonably look at some of the main personalities which emerge in t hem. Although we cannot treat them as entirely accurate we must remind ourselves that they were the end result of countless generations of oral tradition, hande d down in strict rote, word-perfectly, by a professional class of historians fro m remote times. Why then should we discount them as historical sources simply be cause they were not written down? As an example of the truths that may be found in Irish mythology we may take the story of Etain Echraidhe, the beautiful daughter of Ailill of Echraidhe in Ulst er, with whom the god Midir the Proud fell in love. Midir's jealous first wife, Fuamnach, changed her into a fly. Ultimately, in the time of Conchobhar Mac Ness a, the fly alighted on the roof of a house in Ulster and fell through it into th e cup of the wife of a warrior named Etar. Etar's wife drank and became pregnant . The child was a beautiful girl whom they called Etain. In this reincarnation t ale we find the High King of Ireland, Eochaidh Airemh (Eochaidh signifies horse and Airemh ploughman), who, according to the king-lists, ruled around the fourth or third centuries BC, falling in love with and marrying Etain. Now in this sto ry we find a reference to Eochaidh imposing a task on the clans who dwelt in Tet hba, an area which includes parts of Longford and Westmeath - the task of buildi ng a road and causeway across the bog of Lamrach. The story tells how the founda tion of the road was laid with the trunks of trees. In 1985, during operations in a Co. Longford bog by Bord na Mona, evidence of a roadway was found. The Department of Archaeology of University College, Dublin, took over the excavation and discovered 1,000 yards of road which had a foundati on of oak beams placed side by side on thin rails of oak, ash and alder. Radioca rbon dating placed the date of the road from approximately 200 to 150 BC. In thi s discovery we have not only further evidence of the sophisticated road-building of the ancient Celts but proof of a reference in a mythological tale.

Perhaps the first King of interest is Tigernmas, son of Follach, who is recorded as the twenty-sixth ruler of Ireland, commencing his reign in 939 BC. It is rec orded that during his reign the mining of gold and silver was introduced and tha t he also introduced the wearing of variegated colours in the clothing of his pe ople - that is, the tartan. The number of colours varied and went up according t o the rank of the wearer. His name signifies lord of death and it is said he for sook the peaceful ways of the druids and introduced the worship of an idol calle d Cromm Croich (or Cromm Cruach Bloody Crescent), which involved human sacrifice . The idol was worshipped on Magh Slecht (Plain of Adoration) at the feast of Sa mhain (31 October / I November). Tigernmas is said to have been slain during the frenzied worship of the idol and the people then returned to the ways of the dr uids. In 714 BC it is recorded that Ollamh Fodhla became King of Ireland and founded r ule by legislature, giving the country a codified system of law. The term ollamh denoted the highest grade of bard, top of the seven grades, and it took a candi date nine to twelve years to memorize the 250 prime stories and 100 secondary st ories to become an ollamh. Ollamh, in fact, remains the modern Irish word for a professor. Whether or not Ollamh Fodhla was entirely mythical and whether or not he had anything to do with the foundation of the Brehon Law system, when the Ir ish legal system was first codified in the early Christian era it was clear that it had evolved from centuries of careful oral preservation. The ancient laws of Ireland, named from breitheamh - a judge - are the oldest-su rviving law system in Europe. The laws are very sophisticated and complex, the r esult of many centuries of practice. Their roots are in ancient Indo-European cu stom and not in Roman law, from which other European systems have derived. In pa rts of Ireland this law system survived until its final suppression by England i n the seventeenth century AD. Ollamh Fodhla is also claimed as the founder of the great festival, held every t hree years, at Teamhair (Tara), the site in Co. Meath generally regarded as the capital of ancient Ireland and main royal residence of the high kings. Tara was certainly in use in 2000 BC. It seems to have declined in importance shortly aft er AD 734 when the high kings of the period tended to take up residence where th ey pleased, usually within the safety of their native province. Another outstanding name in the early king-list is that of the female ruler Mach a Mong Ruadh, or Macha of the Red Tresses. She is said to have commenced her rei gn in 377 BC, being the daughter of Aedh Ruadh. It is claimed that she built Ema in Macha (Navan Fort), which became the capital of the kings of Ulster, the plac e where Conchobar Mac Nessa ruled during the heady days of the Tain saga when th e great Ulster champion Cuchulain single-handedly protected the province. Macha is also said to have built Ard Macha (Macha's Height, Anglicized as Armagh) and to have established the first hospital in Ireland Bron Bherg, the House of Sorro w), which was in use until its destruction in AD 22. The Brehon Law system has a highly intricate section of laws dealing with the pr actice of medicine and the running of hospitals. Although St Fabiola is generall y accorded a place in European history as founding the first hospital in Rome in the fourth century AD, we can be sure, judging from the evidence, that hospital s existed in Ireland long before this time. Hospitals, according to the Brehon L aws, should be staffed by qualified personnel, should be free from debt, should have four doors and fresh water, and should be freely available to the sick, fee ble, elderly and also orphans. Under the Brehon Laws no one in early Irish socie ty needed to fear illness. Not only were they assured of treatment and hospitali zation, but the society would not let them or their dependants lack food or mean s of livelihood.

During the Dark Ages this long tradition of the practice of Irish medicine was w idely known in Europe. The skill of Irish physicians was proverbial and the Iris h medical schools were famous. The premier medical school of Europe during the p eriod was that founded in the fifth century AD at Tuaim Brecain (Tomregan, Co. C avan), where the eminent physician Bracan Mac Findloga was chief professor. From the medieval Irish medical tracts we can see that the skills and knowledge of t he Irish physicians were highly advanced. The oldest-surviving medical tract is dated AD 1352. Most of the works date from between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. Yet from the myths and sagas, and from archaeological evidence, we ca n state categorically that physicians in ancient Ireland were skilled not only w ith herbal remedies but in performing Caesarean operations, amputations and even brain-surgery. The surviving medical literature written in Irish is regarded as the largest col lection of medical literature before the nineteenth century existing in any one tongue. Another ruler of interest is Labraid Loinseach, the Mariner Who Speaks, who beca me King in 268 BC. Although he is regarded as a mythological personality, there is a degree of reality and plausibility in his story. He was the son of Ailill A ine, a king of Leinster. Ailill was poisoned by his brother Cobhthach. Cobhthach then forced his nephew to eat his father's heart, after which the boy was struc k dumb in shock and revulsion and was eventually called Moen, signifying dumb. H e was taken out of Ireland to save him from a worse fate at the hands of his evi l uncle and resided first in Britain and then in Gaul. He eventually recovered t he power of speech. In Gaul he came to the kingdom of the Fir More, ruled by Scoriath. Scoriath had a beautiful daughter named Moriath. They fell in love and married. Scoriath then gave Moen an army of Gauls to accompany him back to Ireland to overthrow the ev il Cobhthach. Fearful of the return of Moen, Cobhthach had sent an envoy to ask if the leader of the Gaulish army had the power of speech. He was told that the leader was Labraid Loinseach, the Mariner Who Speaks. Moen and his Gauls stormed Dinn Righ, the fortress of the King. There are two versions of the conclusion o f the story. One is that Cobhthach surrendered and Moen made peace but subsequen tly killed him after more treachery. The second version is that Cobhthach and th irty of his warriors were shut into a hall and burned to death. Now the name of Leinster, the kingdom where these events happened, in Irish is L aighin, said to be taken from the word for spearmen, being named after the Gauli sh warriors who accompanied Moen. The Gauls were said to have used a broad-point ed spear called laighen made of a blue-green iron. The province had previously b een called Galian but after Moen became King it was named Laighin. The terminati on -ster was added at the time of Norse settlement from stadr - a place - hence Laighin-ster or Leinster. Contemporary with Cunobelinos, ruling in Britain before the Roman invasion, was Conaire Mor, recorded as ruling from AD 1 to 65. He was therefore also a contemp orary of Boudicca. In the annals his story is firmly interwoven in myth - as the son of Nemglan, a mysterious bird-god, and of Mess Buachalla. He was slain at t he siege of Da Derga's hostel, one of the great tales of the mythological sagas. Conaire Mor's successor was Lugaid Riab nDerg, Lugaid of the Red Stripes, who a lso had a supernatural birth. He was said to be the son of Clothra, a daughter o f an earlier high king, who was a rather vicious lady. She drowned her own siste r Ethne when she was pregnant and had affairs with each of her three brothers, t hen bearing a son named Lugaid. He was called Riab nDerg because his body was di vided into three by two red stripes which proclaimed him to be the son of all th ree brothers. When he grew to manhood, Lugaid is said to have begotten a son by his own mother.

Lugaid's son was called Crimthann Ma Nair, the modest warrior, who was King when Agricola turned his speculative eyes towards Ireland and contemplated an invasi on. Crimthann had succeeded in overthrowing the High King Conchobar Abrat Ruadh, of the Red Brows, in AD 73. Conchobar had succeeded Lugaid but appears to have been something of a tyrant. Crimthann ruled until AD 90. He might well have emer ged into Roman history as forcibly as Caratacos had the Roman General Agricola f ollowed his plan to invade Ireland. Agricola (AD 40-90) was from Frejus (Forum Julii) in Gaul, the same town as the poet Gallus, but, unlike Gallus', Agricola's family were Roman colonists who had settled in the area soon after the conquest of the Celts there. As a young mili tary tribune he had served with Suetonius Paulinus in Britain during the Boudicc an uprising. In AD 71-3 he was commander of the XX Legion in Britain and then we nt to Gaul as Governor of the Aquitani. In 77/8 he returned to Britain as Govern or, where he immediately set out to pacify the rebellious tribes and extend the influence of Rome into the north of the island. Agricola's career is well known through the pen of his son-in-law, Publius Corne lius Tacitus (AD 56/57-117). Tacitus was, like his father-in-law, born in a form er Celtic territory in Narbonensis Gaul. He married Agricola's daughter in AD 77 and subsequently was able, at first hand, to learn of Agricola's campaigns agai nst the Celts in Britain. His biography of Agricola was produced in AD 98. From AD 80 Agricola, as Governor of Britain, consolidated the Roman advance nort hwards by building a series of fortifications on a line between the Forth and Cl yde. It was during the summer of his fifth campaign, in AD 82, that Agricola, ha ving moved the Roman army into what is now southern Scotland, had a visitor from Ireland. According to Tacitus it was 'one of their petty kings, who had been fo rced to fly from the fury of a domestic faction'. This unnamed king was 'receive d by the Roman General, and, under a show of friendship, detained to be of use o n some future occasion'. Agricola managed to gather a lot of intelligence about Ireland, although he thought it lay between Britain and Spain. 'By means of merc hants resorting thither for the sake of commerce, the harbours and approaches to the coast are well known,' observed Tacitus. Agricola concentrated his troops o n the coast, presumably at the site of modern-day Stranraer, in preparation for the invasion. Tacitus recalls: 'I have often heard Agricola declare that a singl e legion, with a moderate band of auxiliaries, would be sufficient to complete t he conquest of Ireland.' While one must accept Agricola's credibility as a seaso ned campaigner, it does seem a very sanguine estimation in the light of what we know about subsequent attempts to conquer the country. Agricola's justification for a conquest was that 'he saw that Ireland, lying bet ween Britain and Spain, and at the same time convenient to the ports of Gaul, mi ght prove a valuable acquisition, capable of giving an easy communication and, o f course, strength and union to provinces disjoined by nature.' In addition to i ts strategic value, 'such an event would contribute greatly to bridle the stubbo rn spirit of the Britons, who, in that case, would see, with dismay, the Roman a rms triumphant, and every spark of liberty extinguished round their coast.' However, Agricola did not launch his projected invasion. The Celtic tribes of th e north, the area called Caledonia by the Romans, had united under their leader Galcagos, whose name means the Swordsman, and began to worry the Romans by skilf ul guerilla warfare. In AD 84 Agricola's army met the Celts in a pitched battle at Mons Graupius, a much sought battlefield site. The discovery of a large Roman encampment near Inverurie, in Aberdeen, suggests that the site of Mons Graupius is the mountain now called Bennachie. The speech which Tacitus put into the mou th of Galcagos, the Celtic leader, before the battle contains several phrases wh ich became famous, such as omne ignotum pro magnified est what men know nothing about, they see as wonderful-and ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant when th ey create a desolation, they call it peace.

Agricola's victory over Galcagos at Mons Graupius secured a precarious Roman foo thold in northern Britain. But in AD 85, before he could consolidate his victory , Agricola was recalled to Rome. He lived long enough to see Rome abandon its cl aims on northern Britain, withdrawing to fortifications on a line of the Forth a nd Clyde. Then a wall was built during Hadrian's time, being started about AD 12 2 and finished by 127. Hadrian's Wall marked the border with the north. However, in AD 140-42 Quintus Lollius Urbricus, then Governor of Britain, tried to recla im the north, moving into the Forth-Clyde isthmus. Here he built a second barrie r, using Hadrian's Wall as a model, a continuing rampart stretching from sea to sea which became known as the Antonine Wall. This wall proved powerless against the attacks of the northern Celtic tribes and it was eventually abandoned about AD 180-4, when it was destroyed. The Romans fell back to Hadrian's Wall and held it for at least another century as the most northerly frontier of the Roman emp ire. The fierce resistance of the Celts of Caledonia had gained for Ireland safety fr om Roman invasion. But Ireland was not cut off from the Roman world. Trade conti nued. Claudius Ptolemaeus, known as Ptolemy (AD c.100-178), a Greek astronomer a nd geographer, born in Ptolemais Hermius in Upper Egypt, and a citizen of the gr eat cultural centre of Alexandria, wrote about Ireland in his Geography, a work of seven books. Ptolemy gave the most detailed account of his time of Ireland an d it has been suggested that he was using the works of other writers which have not survived. At least half the names he gives to peoples and settlements of Ire land are authentic, other names, significantly on the western and northern coast s of Ireland, are not recorded in other sources. Ptolemy named several estuaries, which showed that his informants were sea-going traders, informed about safe havens in which their ships could find shelter. Se veral townships are also named, like Tara and Emania (Navan). Eblana is listed a s a city name in the area of Dublin and some think it an ancient name for Dublin . But Dublin was not constructed until the Norse fortified the area in AD 841. A lso Eblana, according to Ptolemy's map, is further north on the coast of Co. Lou th. Julius Solinus (writing AD c.200) made an intriguing reference to Ireland when h e edited a version of Pomponius Mela's Geography. 'Hibernia is barbarous in the manner of living of its inhabitants, but is so rich in pasture that the cattle, if they be not kept now and then from grazing, are put in danger from over-eatin g. There are no snakes.' So two centuries before St Patrick, Solinus has robbed the patron saint of Ireland of one of his traditional glories, the banishment of snakes from Ireland. By the middle of the third century AD the Irish were raiding and settling Britai n, particularly along the western coast from Cornwall to Wales and Scotland. In the middle of the second century AD certain clans from the southern province of Munster had fled from a famine during the kingship of Conaire Riada. They settle d for a while in Ulster. Then they, the Dal Riada, crossed into Argyll (Airer Gh aidheal - the seaboard of the Gael) and formed another Dal Riada kingdom. The na me given to the Irish raiders of this period was Scotti, a name which was eventu ally to be applied to the people of northern Britain -Scotland and the Scots. Ye t until the twelfth to fourteenth centuries AD, a Scot was usually an Irishman. The Celtic people of Ireland were to emerge as a strong and cultured nation. It was not until AD 795 that Ireland was to suffer the first serious invasions from the Vikings, who established small city kingdoms there. But in AD 1014, at the battle of Clontarf near Dublin, the High King Brian Boroimhe defeated the combin ed Norse armies and repulsed the Norse threat to Ireland once and for all. The N orse enclaves remained but accepted the power of the high kings and eventually m erged into a unified Irish state which then met the first Anglo-Norman invasion

in AD 1169. During the so-called Dark Ages, the Celts of Ireland were experiencing an age of great enlightenment and cultural achievement. Christianity had become widesprea d in the country during the fifth century AD and, while the European centres of Christendom had been devastated by the barbarian hordes sweeping through Europe, Ireland became a centre of learning. Soon monks were leaving Ireland to rekindl e the Christian faith in Europe, establishing monasteries and churches as far ea st as Kiev in the Ukraine, as far south as Taranto in Italy and north to the Far oes and Iceland. Perhaps ironically it was Ireland which kept alive the learning and literacy of Greece and Rome until the Renaissance. Irish is now recognized as the third-oldest written language after Greek and Lat in. The Irish scribes and scholars prided themselves on their proficiency not on ly in their native tongue but in Greek, Latin and Hebrew, seeking out manuscript s in those languages and copying them for future use. Large libraries of such ma nuscripts were accumulated in Ireland, copies were made and redistributed to Eur ope. Copying manuscripts was an important part of the monastic occupation. The I rish monks were the innovators of the 'pocket book': liturgical works and religi ous tracts which had to be made small enough to allow them to be carried in a pu rse or satchel, or tiag liubhair. The Stowe Missal, for example, is only five an d a half inches by four. It was the Irish who brought Christianity and literacy to the ancestors of the E nglish. Many of the English kings, for a while thereafter, would send their chil dren to the monastic schools in Ireland for their education. Aldfrith of Northum bria, for example, was educated at Bangor, Co. Down, and was a poet in Irish, so me of his poems surviving today. He is also said to have been the 'begetter' of Beowulf, the earliest epic written in English (or indeed any Germanic language). Celtic experts, Professor C.W. von Sydow and Professor Gerald Murphy, have argu ed that there are many extremely close similarities between Beowulf and the olde r Irish saga, the Tain Bo Fraich, which might be because the Irish saga was the model for the English one. However, few English commentators would admit to such a possibility. Perhaps there is an irony in Ireland's role in bringing Christia nity and learning to England during the Dark Ages and England's subsequent role in Ireland. ----------------------------------14 - The Roman Conquest of Britain THE war in Gaul had saved Britain from further invasion and attempted conquest b y the Romans. However, within a few years of the departure of Caesar, there came a new wave of emigration from Gaul which, in fact, was to be the final Celtic m igration from the continent to Britain. Commios of the Atrebates, chieftain of t he Atrebates both of Gaul and of Britain, had taken part in Vercingetorix's war against the Romans and he was subsequently named as one of four Gaulish chieftai ns whom the Romans wanted executed for 'rebellion'. Commios was one of the last to hold out against Caesar's conquest and when his position became untenable in the lands of the Gaulish Atrebates, he and his followers withdrew into German te rritory, where he continued to conduct a series of guerilla raids against the Ro mans. Aulus Hirtius, who had been one of Caesar's officers during the Gaulish campaign and who became Consul of Rome in 43 BC with Vibius Pansa, wrote a continuation of Caesar's account of the Gallic War, Commentario de bello Gallica. He relates that Caesar's second-in-command, Titus Labienus, decided that if Commios could n ot be captured by Rome, an agent should be sent to attempt to assassinate him. O bviously, Commios was considered a major threat to Roman control of Gaul. To thi s end Labienus sent an officer named Gaius Volusenus, the same officer despatche

d by Caesar to reconnoitre the coast of Britain before the 55 BC landing. Voluse nus must have spoken excellent Gaulish to have been chosen for both missions. Ne vertheless, he failed in his later mission, although he did meet with Commios an d apparently befriended him, for when Commios discovered Volusenus' intention he vowed never to speak to a Roman again. Subsequently, Commios met Volusenus in s ingle combat and wounded him. About 51/50 BC, realizing that Gaul now lay firmly under the Roman yoke, Commios decided to withdraw his Gaulish Atrebates to the lands of the British Atrebates in southern Britain. The migration is confirmed by archaeological evidence. The Atrebates consolidated their tribal lands in Hampshire and the Belgae kingdom g rew strong. Their main city was recorded by Ptolemy as Kaleoua (related to the W elsh ceilli, a wood), which became Silchester. The tribal lands also spread into Sussex. About the time of this migration the old hill-fort of Trundle was aband oned and the prosperous Atrebates built another township which the Romans were t o call Noviomagus, which is modern Chichester. The Atrebate kingdom spread as fa r east as the River Adur in Sussex, north to Swindon, along the crest of the Mar lborough Downs from Ashdown to Devizes, and east to Bournemouth. Hill-forts duri ng this period were abandoned in favour of townships and a highly prosperous agr icultural community sprang up. Commios struck his own coinage using Latin characters on them. His descendants, regarded as his sons, also struck their own coinage. They were Tincios or Tincom mios, Eppillos and Verica, or Virica. These coins likewise made use of the Latin alphabet. Eppillos had also exchanged a Celtic name-ending for a Latin ending, Eppillus, and the letters R and F on the coins are obviously abbreviations for R ex and Filius. From the coins being struck in Britain we have a glimpse of other elaunos was a chieftain of the Trinovantes and is thought to have Mandubratios, who had been installed as chieftain by Caesar. Then rmaros (c.15-1 BC), who may have been ruler of the Iceni. Further coins of Antedrigos, Buduoc, Catti, Comux, Eisu and Voconoad. rulers. Dumnov been a son of we have Addedo west there are

However, in spite of these chieftains and their coins, Cassivelaunos was still r egarded as the High King, striking his own distinctive coinage. He was succeeded by Andoco, and Andoco was in turn succeeded by Tasciovanos. The coinage of thes e chieftains is widespread and numerous, indicating long and prosperous terms of office and positions of power exceeding other chieftains, thus underlining the high-kingship theory. Tasciovanos was succeeded about AD 10 by one of the most famous Celtic kings in popular folk memory - Cunobelinos, whose name means hound of Belinos and thence emerges into English literature as Shakespeare's Cymbeline. The modern Welsh nam e Cynfelyn derives from it. He became the figure of numerous medieval tales befo re being given his final degree of immortality by Shakespeare via Holinshed. Cun obelinos was, without doubt, a high king, exercising authority over a confederat ion of many southern British tribes. He had moved his capital from the fortress of Cassivelaunos at Wheathampstead to a prosperous township further east named t he fortress of the Celtic god Camulos - Camulodunum (Colchester). Its defensive works occupied an area of twelve square miles. Cunobelinos' authority might well have spread further than is known. Certainly h e exercised authority over at least five tribal kingdoms from the Wash, on the e ast coast, to the Devon borders in the west and all south-east Britain. South of the Thames, his brother Eppaticos exercised authority on his behalf as far as S alisbury Plain. During this period Britain was continuing her valued trade with the Mediterranea n world, particularly with the Roman empire. Scholars are inclined to believe th

at Britain did not have her own fleet of commercial vessels nor any warships, su ch as the Venetii of Gaul had possessed. The reason for this assumption is that no such ships were used by Britain in attempting to repel Caesar's invasions. It is assumed that Britain relied on the merchant fleets from Gaul. But it seems r emarkable that all Britain's trade with Greece and Rome could have been done thr ough foreign intermediaries. A few centuries later we hear of the shipbuilding s kills of the Celts in northern Britain. And who provided the large fleets involv ed in the massive migrations of the Celts ? I would venture an informed guess th at the British kingdoms did have their own merchant ships, for Strabo enumerates the tremendous exports from Britain at this time - wheat, cattle, gold, silver, iron, leather goods, hide and hunting dogs. The Britons were in the market for amber, glassware, jewellery and wine. Indeed, the wine trade was considerable fo r amphorae, in which wine was imported from the continent, are found in large qu antities. Some scholars consider that it was during this period of vastly increased trade, under Cunobelinos, that London grew to prominence as a trading port. Britain ha d become a leading commercial centre outside the Roman empire. Strabo (64-24 BC) argued that trade with Britain produced more revenue for Rome than would accrue if the island were to become a Roman province and the Roman treasury had to pay for a standing army and civil service to run the country. But the rulers of Rom e were apparently not swayed by this powerful economic argument. Augustus, the first Roman Emperor (63 BC-AD 14), born Gaius Octavius and known a s Octavian until 27 BC when he became known by his title, had been adopted by Ju lius Caesar. According to Cassius Dio (AD c. 150-235), the Roman historian from Nicaea in Bithynia, he actually set out to invade Britain 'in order to outdo the feats of his adoptive father'. However, Augustus had to abandon his plans becau se of insurrection in Dalmatia in 34 BC. Cassius Dio says that in 27 BC he made another attempt to invade Britain but became tied up in Gaul due to the unsettle d nature of the country. Augustus expected envoys from the rulers of Britain to cross to Gaul to make submissions to him and became angry when they did not appe ar. He embarked on a third plan for invasion in 26 BC but, once again, it had to be postponed, because of insurrection in Spain. This third invasion plan is con firmed by a reference in the work of Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus, 65-8 BC) and in the writing of Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro, 70-19 BC). It appears that after the abortive attempt of 26 BC any further plans for the co nquest of Britain were abandoned. Augustus, in his Rex Gestae, recorded the name s of the various countries outside the Roman empire whose rulers had sought his friendship. Britain is not mentioned. However, the names of two exiled chieftain s from Britain who sought Augustus' help in replacing them on their thrones are recorded their names are Dumnovelaunos and Tincommios, whose names appear on sev eral surviving coins from southern Britain. Cunobelinos never sought Roman friendship but he certainly did nothing to excite Roman enmity. There is no record of him aiding his fellow Celts in Gaul to rise against Rome. Indeed, we find one act of friendship with Rome recorded. In AD 9 Quintilius Varus, a Roman general, had been sent to quell the Germanic tribes a cross the Rhine. He was given command of three legions - the XVII, XVIII and XIX . The German chieftain Arminius (known in German folklore as Hermann) ambushed V arus and annihiliated his three legions; Varus committed suicide. Roman expansio n into northern Germany was checked. Some time afterwards Nero Claudius Germanic us (15 BC -AD 19), nephew of the Emperor Tiberius, waged a successful war of rev enge on the Germanic tribes. During this warfare, AD 14-16, a number of Roman so ldiers sailing north along the coast of the European mainland were blown off cou rse and shipwrecked on the shore of Britain. Cunobelinos had them treated with t raditional Celtic hospitality and sent back to Gaul. At about the end of the fourth decade AD, when Cunobelinos was growing elderly,

a quarrel appears to have occurred at his court. Pro-and anti-Roman parties seem to have been established among his sons. How many sons Cunobelinos had we do no t know, although he must have had at least five. The pro-Roman party was led by Adminios and the anti-Roman party by Caratacos and Togodumnos. Adminios appears to have been swayed by the wealth and power of the Roman empire and believed tha t Britain would be better off within it. About AD 39/40 Cunobelinos took the ste p of banishing Adminios from Britain. Adminios went straight to Gaul and contact ed the Romans. The Emperor Gaius was then ruling Rome. He is better known by his nickname - Caligula, or 'little boots' (AD 12-41). Caligula suffered from some mental illness which was marked by an increasing despotism, wild extravagance, a rbitrary executions and aspirations towards deification. He was finally murdered by his bodyguard. Emperor Gaius was campaigning against the Germans and was enc amped at Mainz when Adminios was brought to him. He immediately broke off his Ge rman campaign and marched his legions to the Gaulish coast opposite Britain. It is said that he prepared for an invasion by ordering a lighthouse to be built at Boulogne. However, instead of ordering his legions to embark in the ships, he t old them to march down to the seashore and cast their spears into the water, sla shing at it with their swords. Then they were told to gather seashells in their helmets as spoils of the battle. Solemnly the mad Emperor told them that they ha d won a great victory over Neptune, the ocean god. Adminios may well have had second thoughts about seeking an alliance with an emp ire which could be ruled by such a madman. However, he seems to have remained in exile. Cassius Dio mentions that he was joined by another British chieftain nam ed Bericos, who might well have been the Verica of British coins. Bericos sought refuge with Claudius, who had become Emperor on the death of Gaius, and his arr ival provided Rome with a diplomatic excuse for her invasion. Some time between AD 40 and 43 Cunobelinos died. Perhaps it was the death of Cun obelinos which prompted Rome to seize her chance. Caratacos had succeeded his fa ther, and some coins of his confirm his kingship. Britain was still a powerful k ingdom. Just how powerful it was appears in an interesting glimpse given by Gaiu s Suetonius Tranquillus (b. AD c.70), one of our two main sources for the accoun t of the Claudian invasion. As a reason for the invasion he says 'the Britons we re now threatening vengeance because the [Roman] senate refused to extradite cer tain deserters who had landed in Gaul during Caligula's reign'. This can only be a reference to Adminios and Bericos. Is Suetonius using an excuse or did Britai n really feel secure enough to make threats against the powerful empire of Rome? Claudius (10 BC-AD 54) approved the invasion in AD 43. He appointed Aulus Plauti us as commander of the expedition. According to Cassius Dio, Plautius was 'a sen ator of great renown'. Unfortunately, unlike Caesar's expeditions, for this inva sion we have no first-hand account, and our sources are Suetonius, writing fifty years afterwards, and Cassius Dio, writing over one hundred years afterwards, a lthough they are doubtless using contemporary sources which are now lost. Aulus Plautius selected four legions: the II Augusta, the XIV Gemina, the XX Val eria and the IX Hispania. All the legions were tough frontier troops. The II Leg ion, for example, was serving at Argent-orate (Strasbourg), the XIV Legion was a t Mogontiacu, (Mainz) and the XX Legion was at Novaesium (Cologne), keeping the warlike Germanic tribes from flooding into Gaul. The IX Legion was in Pannonia. The total Roman legionary force numbered 25,000 men. In addition to these troops an auxiliary force was raised, mostly cavalry, which came from various parts of the empire. The total invasion force was somewhere in the region of 40,000 to 5 0,000 men. According to Suetonius, when Aulus Plautius was within sight of a maj or victory against the Britons, he, by prearrangement, was to halt and send for Claudius himself. The Emperor would arrive in Britain with his Praetorian Guard, the VIII Legion and a detachment of elephants. Thus Claudius would be accorded the victory. Suetonius comments: 'The senate had already voted him triumphal reg alia but he thought it beneath his dignity to accept these, and decided that Bri

tain was the country where a real triumph could be most readily earned.' The troops were sent to their embarkation ports. But there was trouble. Britain lay on the borders of the known world and a rumour was spread, perhaps by Britis h agents, that if one sailed too far one's ships would topple over into a bottom less abyss. Claudius sent to Gaul Narcissus (d. AD 54), a former Greek slave, bu t now a freedman and private secretary to the Emperor, who exercised great polit ical influence. He was eventually forced to commit suicide upon the accession of Nero. Narcissus was told to reason with the troops. According to Cassius Dio: The soldiers were indignant at the thought of carrying on a campaign outside the limits of the known world, and would not yield obedience until Narcissus, who h ad been sent out by Claudius, mounted the tribunal of Plautius and attempted to address them. Then they became much angrier at this and would not allow Narcissu s to say a word. The tension was broken by some soldier with a sense of humour who cried out 'Io Saturnalia!' It was the greeting used on the feast of the Saturnalia (25 Decembe r) when slaves were allowed to dress in the robes of their masters and assume th eir functions. The tension broke and Narcissus managed to avert the mutiny. Cassius Dio says that the invasion fleet sailed in three divisions so that they could outflank any attempt by the British to stop their landing on the beaches. The major landing was at a township called Routoupiaci by Ptolemy and Latinized as Rutupiae. The Celtic word-root seems to signify somewhere which is dug out. T his is modern day Richborough, the 'burg' being added when the English arrived. The Romans eventually raised a marble monument here, the foundations of which st ill exist, to commemorate their landing. We are told that the landings were unop posed. It could not be that the British were caught unawares. There was enough i ntercourse with Gaul to know exactly from where and when the Roman fleet had sai led. It became obvious immediately that the Romans were dealing with one military com mander, Caratacos, and it seems that it was part of his policy, as it had been o f his ancestor Cassivelaunos, not to come into open conflict with the Roman legi ons. Cassius Dio says that the Britons would not come close but withdrew into th e forests 'hoping to wear out the invaders by fruitless effort, so that, just as in the days of Julius Caesar, they should sail back with nothing accomplished'. After the initial beachhead had been secured, Plautius seemed to have establishe d fortified ports at Rutupiae (Richborough), Dubris (Dover) and Lemanae (Lympne) , obviously having taken to heart the lesson learned by Caesar when, on two occa sions, his fleets were destroyed. Dubris was already in existence when the Roman s came, for the name is Celtic, being Dobra, the plural of dubro, water (modern Welsh, Breton and Cornish forms are dwfr, dovr and dour). Streams met there and thus the meaning was the meeting of the waters. The name Lemanae (Lympne) was al so given to the river there and meant the river by the elms. With his base secured and supplies being landed, Plautius pushed his invasion fo rce inland. As had Cassivelaunos before him, Caratacos and his brother Togodumno s began to harass the invaders. However, Aulus Plautius reached the Medway and h ere Caratacos decided to fight a major engagement. According to Cassius Dio: The Celts thought that the Romans would not be able to cross it without a bridge , and consequently bivouacked in rather careless fashion on the opposite bank; b ut he [Plautius] sent across a detachment of Batavi, who were accustomed to swim easily in full armour across the most turbulent streams. These fell unexpectedl y on the enemy but instead of shooting at any of them they confined themselves t o wounding the horses that drew their chariots; and in the confusion that follow ed not even the enemy's mounted warriors could save themselves.

The reference is of interest in that it also tells us that the Celts of Britain were still using war-chariots at this time. Aulus Plautius now ordered Titus Flavius Sabinus Vespasianus (AD 9-79), commande r of the II Augusta Legion, and the future Emperor of Rome, to cross the river f urther downstream and flank the Celts. According to Cassius Dio: So they too got across the river in some way and killed many of the foe, taking them by surprise. The survivors, however, did not take to flight, but on the nex t day joined issue with them again. The struggle was indecisive until Gnaeus Hos idius Geta, after narrowly missing being captured, finally managed to defeat the Celts so soundly that he received the ornamenta triumphalia. After this defeat at the Medway, Caratacos and his army 'retired to the Tamesis, at a point where it empties into the ocean and at floodtide forms a lake'. This would appear to be a spot on the Thames Estuary. But Cassius Dio's account is full of inconsistencies. For example, his account w ould have a tribe called the Bodunnu surrender to Aulus Plautius at the Medway. Is this simply a transposition for the well-known Dobunni, whose tribal area was in Gloucester? If so, why were they at the Medway? He also has the Romans cross ing the Thames Estuary by a bridge! And he has Togodumnos being killed before th e battle at the Medway. These inconsistencies seem to indicate that Cassius Dio was misinterpreting his original sources or, indeed, that those sources were als o inaccurate. Cassius Dio says that the Celts crossed the Thames easily enough 'because they k new where the firm ground and the easy passages were to be found; but the Romans , in attempting to follow them, were not so successful.' Once more he has the Ba tavi swim across and then others crossing by the bridge 'after which they assail ed the Celts from several sides at once and cut down many of them,'. He adds tha t the Romans got into difficulties when they pursued the Celts into swamps. This would indicate that the crossing was just west of Tilbury and that the swamps w ere probably Lea Marshes. It was during this conflict that Togodumnos, Caratacos ' brother, was killed. Caratacos withdrew to his fortified capital at Camulodunum. Aulus Plautius surro unded the township with its massive fortifications. Victory was in sight. This w as the time to send for the Emperor, Claudius. The Emperor gathered his reinforc ements and sailed from Ostia, the port of Rome, to Massilia, being nearly wrecke d off the Ligurian coast, according to Suetonius. But he reached port safely. 'T hence,' says Cassius Dio, 'advancing partly by land and partly along the rivers, he came to the ocean and crossed over to Britain, where he joined the legions t hat were waiting for him near the Tamesis.' With the Emperor in command, the Romans began their attack on Camulodunum. Altho ugh there is no full description of the taking of the city, it would appear that Caratacos had fought a battle outside the fortifications of the city and that C laudius' elephant detachment played a crucial role in turning the tide of the ba ttle against the Celtic chieftain. Caratacos, his family, and many of his follow ers were able to escape to the west. Claudius entered Camulodunum in triumph and spent a total of sixteen days in Bri tain taking the formal submission of several tribal chieftains. From the speech made by Caratacos nine years later, it would seem that Claudius offered a truce and was willing to make him a client king under Roman suzerainty. But Caratacos preferred to head westward to raise the tribes there against the invaders. Camul odunum was made the capital of the new Roman province and was garrisoned by troo ps of the XX Valeria Legion. Others troops of the same legion were despatched to

Verulamium, near Wheathampstead, and a fortress was built there. Adminios and Bericos appear to have been established by the Romans as client kin gs and we learn that Cogidumnos, an Atrebate chieftain whose capital was Novioma gus, was made 'rex et legatus Augusti', a rather unique title, and solemnly took a Romanized name, Tiberius Claudius Cogidumnus. His tribe was afterwards called the Regni. An inscribed stone, giving his title and name, was found in 1723 at Noviomagus, then Chichester, and is now part of the wall of Chichester town hall . Cogidumnus is said to have built the famous villa at Fishbourne. Among other s ubmissions to Claudius was that of Prasutagos, King of a powerful tribe called t he Iceni, whose lands were in East Anglia. His wife was Boudicca (Victory), who was eventually to fight the Romans with a savage fury nearly twenty years later. When Claudius returned to Rome, Aulus Plautius set about securing the conquest. Titus Vespasianus (Vespasian) and his brother Sabinus, commanding the II Augusta Legion, were ordered to move south-west, moving through Sussex and Hampshire. I t is recorded that the future Roman Emperor fought thirty battles and captured t wenty fortresses during this campaign. He reduced Vectis (Isle of Wight), whose Celtic name means what rises above the sea (an island). He subsequently marched his legion westward to the River Frome (the Celtic name being cognate with the W elsh ffraw meaning fine, fair or brisk). Overlooking the Frome the Romans saw on e of the strongest hill-forts in the country, Mai-dun (the fortress of Mai - Mai den Castle). This was one of the major hill-forts of the Durotriges with sevenfo ld ramparts rising one hundred feet in height enclosing an area two-thirds of a mile long by a third of a mile wide. Having heard of the approach of the Romans, the Celtic chieftains had gathered t heir people into the enclosure and prepared to withstand a siege. Now they watch ed as the Roman soldiers marched into position. Vespasian could see the complica ted western gateway and realized that it would be a difficult obstacle to overco me. He marched his men to the eastern gateway and found it less strong. He set u p his artillery - the ballista, which would machine-drive its arrows over longer ranges than the Celts were used to, and the catapultae, which could throw stone s and boulders considerable distances. The chieftains of the Durotriges perhaps had no notion of the new weapons and their capability perhaps they were mown dow n in the first barrage before they could reorganize their defences. The hill-fort was also weakened by the fact that a cluster of dwellings of wood had been built up outside the east gate and these were soon set on fire by the R oman troops. Under cover of the smoke and barrage of machine arrows, the legiona ries were able to rush each rampart, forcing their way over rather than entering through the gates. Once inside the great walls of Mai-dun, the soldiers seem to have lost their heads, for something caused them to start a massacre of the men , women and children. Archaeologists have discovered that people were killed wit h blows struck at their backs and that many bore signs of blows struck at them a fter they were dead. By nightfall one of the strongest hill-forts in Britain had fallen to the Romans . The next day they marched on, leaving the few survivors to bury their dead in the ashes of the burnt buildings on the edge of the town. The hurry is proved by the shallowness of the graves and the way the corpses were tumbled in instead o f being carefully placed according to custom. In this cemetery archaeologists fo und evidence of the use of the ballistae, with their heavy machine-driven arrows . In addition, some 20,000 pebble sling-shots were also found piled in one spot. Evidence also of the merciless killing is shown in the way one woman was buried , her arms pinioned behind her and her skull smashed in by three death-dealing b lows. Many of the skulls were scarred with sword-cuts. For a few years the survivors of Mai-dun eked out an existence in the ruins of t he hill-fort but, finally, about AD 70, they left to live in the unfortified tow

nship of Dorcic (Dorchester), which name meant a bright or splendid place. To th e Celtic name the Romans simply added their ceastor, signifying that it was a mi litary station. Unfortunately Tacitus' book, which covered this period and would have given a de tailed account of the storming of Mai-dun, has been lost. So apart from the move ment of Vespasian, we know little of the movements of the other legions. We know that the IX Hispania moved north and by about AD 47 had probably reached Lincol n, whose Celtic name Lindon meant a settlement by a lake. The XIV Gemina and uni ts of the XX Valeria seem to have reached Deva (Chester), the settlement taking its name from the River Dee, on which it stood, its early Celtic form being Dubr -duiu, the holy river or the place of the river goddess. And Vespasian, in the s outh with his II Augusta, had reached Isca Silurum (Caerleon), a settlement of t he Silures on the River Usk. Isca was the Latin pronunciation of the Usk, identi cal also with Axe, Esk, Isc, and meaning ease water. The Romans later called the spot camp of the legion or Caerleon. In the autumn of AD 47 a new governor arrived in Britain to continue the work of conquest. This was Publius Ostorius Scapula, a former consul. Caratacos was now in the mountains in the western peninsula across the River Severn (what is now Wales). Here he had the support of the Ordovices, Deceangli, Demetae, Cornovii a nd Silures. Among the place-names which this energetic Celtic leader left behind is Caradoc in Herefordshire, first recorded as Caer Caradoc, Caratacos' fortres s. Tacitus says that Caratacos had established himself in a strong military and political position by the time Ostorius came to govern Britain and attempted to complete the work of conquest. Almost as soon as Ostorius arrived, Caratacos wen t on the offensive. In an aside, Tacitus tells us that the new Governor's son, M arcus Ostorius Scapula, who had come to serve as an officer under his father, wo n the Oak Leaf for saving a comrade's life in an encounter with the Celtic chief tain's forces. Marcus was later forced to commit suicide by the despotic Emperor Nero. Ostorius countered Caratacos' offensive by making a punitive raid on the country of the Deceangli (modern Clwyd) because this was the area from where the Romans believed that Caratacos was conducting his campaign. A series of uprisings bega n from tribes across southern Britain, many of whom the Romans thought 'pacified '. Ostorius decided to disarm the Celtic tribes behind his 'front lines'. Accord ing to Tacitus, the Iceni were the first to rise up because of this policy. Thei r ruler, Prasutagos, was angered by this affront to his integrity, having sworn fidelity to Claudius. The Dobunni of Gloucestershire began to harry the Romans, and the Silures joined them. Ostorius established a permanent garrison at Glevum - the bright or splen did place - modern Gloucester. The permanent garrison of the II Augusta was able to maintain control of the area. But the largest tribe in Britain, the Brigante s, in the north, had become active. Their tribal area reached from the Mersey an d Humber as far north as the line of what was to become Hadrian's Wall. Roman tr oops had to move against them and finally a truce was made with their ruler, a c hieftainess named Cartimandua, whose name means sleek pony. About AD 50 the decisive battle of the initial Roman conquest took place. Carata cos had been an astute leader, realizing that a full-scale battle between the Ro man legions and his united tribes was one to be avoided until he held the upper hand. His skill as a guerilla leader was unquestionable. Tacitus says: 'The natu ral ferocity of the inhabitants [the Celts] was intensified by their belief in t he prowess of Caratacos, whose many undefeated battles, and even many victories, had made him pre-eminent among British chieftains.' But now, with the Romans pressing closely into the western peninsula, Caratacos decided that an outright battle was inevitable. It had to be on ground of his ow

n choosing. Scholars have attempted to identify the site of the battlefield from Tacitus' account but in the area described there are a number of hill-forts all of which fit his description equally well. One of the most likely spots is Crig gion in Powys, although Tacitus seems to place it in the territory of the Ordovi cians in Clwyd. Somewhere in those areas, perhaps on what is the modern Welsh-En glish border, Ostorius and Caratacos met in battle. Tacitus puts this speech int o the mouth of the Celtic leader before the battle.

This day, my fellow warriors, this very day, decides the fate of Britain. The er a of liberty, or eternal bondage, begins from this hour. Remember your brave and warlike ancestors, who met Julius Caesar in open combat, and chased him from th e coast of Britain. They were the men who freed their country from a foreign yok e. , Who delivered the land from taxations imposed at the will of a master; who banished from your sight the fasces and the Roman axes; and above all, who rescu ed your wives and daughters from violation. Tacitus remarks that Ostorius was astonished at the spirit which animated the Br itish army. Here was no easy victory, although the subsequent Roman account make s it seem like one. The battle cry of the Romans was 'all things give way to val our'. They marched forward and, we are told, the fighting was fierce. Eventually the Celts were pushed back. 'The Britons, having neither breastplates nor helme ts, were not able to maintain the conflict,' says Tacitus. This seems a strange comment for we have evidence of the remarkable workmanship of Celtic helmets, sh ields and even horse armour at this period. However, the victory was decisive. C aratacos' brother, whose name we are not told, 'surrendered at discretion'. His wife and daughter were also taken captive. Caratacos managed to escape and fled northwards, seeking refuge in the land of t he Brigantes. Presumably he hoped to continue the struggle against Rome from the re but the ruler of the Brigantes, Cartimandua, had done a deal with Rome. Betra ying the sacred law of hospitality, she had Caratacos bound in chains and handed over to Ostorius. Cartimandua, the sleek pony, was one of those powerful female Celtic rulers whos e names have become almost legendary - Boudicca of the Iceni, Medb, the semi-myt hical Queen of Connacht, Grainne O Maillie, chieftainess of the tribes of West-C onnacht, and many others. She remained loyal to Rome. Some years later in AD 68 she divorced her husband Venutios in favour of Vellocatos, his charioteer. Venut ios put himself at the head of an anti-Roman faction and overthrew her. Aulus Di dius Gallus, the new Governor, had to send legions north and succeeded in restor ing her to her throne. Venutios managed to escape capture and some time later ra ised a new insurrection against Cartimandua. Yet again the Queen of the Brigante s appealed for Roman aid and this time Vettius Bolanus sent an army north. Howev er, Venutios was so popular with the people of the Brigantes that all the Romans could do was rescue Cartimandua and leave the Brigantes in the hands of Venutio s. It was not until AD 74 that Venutios and the Brigantes were finally subdued b y Rome. Thanks to Cartimandua's betrayal, Caratacos, his family and faithful retinue beg an their long journey to Rome in chains. Southern Britain was now firmly in Roma n hands. It was the end of an epoch in Celtic history. -------------------------------------Epilogue Celts, Etruscans and the New World

Few ancient civilizations have been so romantically portrayed as that of the Cel ts. From the nineteenth century there have been countless volumes which have mer ged fact and fiction, conjuring images of the Celts, on the one hand, as 'noble savages' - the American Indians of Europe - and, on the other, as all-wise, allknowing ancient mystics who, in spite of their ancient wisdom, went under before the barbarity of the Roman Empire. There are, in fact, many similarities in the way the Celts have been treated by popular writers and the way the American Ind ian has been treated. The real history of the American Indian did not have an im pact on popular consciousness until Dee Brown wrote Bury My Heart at Wounded Kne e: An Indian History of the American West (1970). For the Celts, such an act of rehabilitation in history has yet to be made. The conqueror always writes the hi story books and for centuries the Celts have been almost edited out of their tru e place in the historical development of European civilization. Some recent popu lar works, such as The Celts by Frank Delaney (1986), have served merely to cont inue the confusion. With the remnants of the ancient Celtic peoples giving way before the conquests of the English and French, much of their pre-Christian past was 'mislaid'. Redis covery came accidentally during the European Renaissance when scholars began to examine the works of ancient Greek and Latin writers and found references to the Celts and their 'priesthood' - the druids. Soon a veritable 'druid industry' ha d mythologized them beyond recognition. The English and French began to seize ho ld of Celtic figures and weave them into their own national history-myth. Arthur , for example, was turned from a Celtic chieftain, fighting for the independence of his people against the invasion of the pagan Germanic ancestors of the Engli sh, into a suave medieval English king. Tristan and Iseult became part of French folklore. Boudicca (Boadicea) has even been referred to in an English history t extbook for schools as 'Queen of the English'! However, even the Celts themselves have contributed to some extent to this mythmaking. A Welsh stonemason named Edward Williams, taking the name Iolo Morganwg, established a Gorsedd of Bards on 21 June 1792, maintaining that the Gorsedd wa s a traditional Celtic assembly, traceable into ancient times. In 1819 the Gorse dd became an integral part of the Eisteddfod, which in its modern form dates fro m 1789. Professor Gwyn Williams has said: 'The inventions of Iolo Morganwg in th e eighteenth century. . . helped to throw a mist of unreliable antiquarianism ab out the subject which scholarship has not the means completely to dispel.' The G orsedd is now an annual and almost integral part of the national life not only o f Wales, but of Brittany, where a Gorsedd was formed in 1901, and in Cornwall, w hose Gorsedd dates from 1928. The 'Celtic Renaissance' of the nineteenth century in some ways did a disservice to ancient Celtic civilization for it saw the creation of a new era of myth-mak ing as poets and novelists and musicians contributed to the production of a 'nev er-never world' of pre-Christian Celtic society. However, before concluding this history of the pre-Christian Celtic world, there are two pieces of historical m yth-making which have been given serious consideration by scholars and which I f eel need discussion. Both ideas seem to be gaining some credence in the mind of the general public. One idea is that the Etruscan civilization was, in fact, a C eltic one and that the so far undecipherable Etruscan written remains can be tra nslated through the medium of a Celtic language. The second idea is that the Cel ts managed to navigate the Atlantic before the sixth century BC and established themselves on the North American continent. This second claim was the subject of a bestselling book by a Harvard professor in 1976. Let us deal first with the Etruscan-Celtic theory. The Etruscan civilization of northern Italy flourished in the period 700-400 BC and was engaged in a constant struggle with the Romans until the Etruscans were conquered and incorporated into the Roman state during the third century BC. The

ir language, which lasted a little longer, is represented in an alphabet of twen ty-six characters whose history is unknown. In spite of over 10,000 surviving ex amples of Etruscan texts, mainly funerary inscriptions, linguistic identificatio n and translation has not been successful. The Etruscan language remains one of the great mysteries of the ancient world. In 1964 the Celtic polemicist and writer Domhnall Gruamach of Islay, Scotland, b rought down the scorn and derision of the academic world when he suggested that Etruscan could be interpreted through the means of Celtic and, more particularly , through the Goidelic branch. In a contentious book, The Foundations of Islay, he used Scottish Gaelic word-roots to effect a translation of an Etruscan funera ry inscription. Before publication of the book, the London Times noted the trans lation, and there followed a brief correspondence. The furore lasted a short whi le. Kenneth H. Jackson, Professor of Celtic Languages, Literature, History and A ntiquities at the University of Edinburgh, dismissed Gruamach as 'a crank' and s tated unequivocally that 'any Celtic origin for Etruscan is quite impossible.' Gruamach and his supporters would deny the impossibility of the Etruscan-Celtic contention. The Celts were, of course, next-door neighbours of the Etruscans and the date of their move into northern Italy is still a matter of speculation, ma ny scholars pushing it back to a period concurrent to the rise of the Etruscan c ivilization. Gruamach's argument is, why is it so impossible for the Etruscans t o have been an earlier offshoot of Celtic migration? Gruamach was not presenting an original thesis. The theory that the Etruscans we re Celtic had been a popular one during the early nineteenth century. W. C. Tayl or, of Trinity College, Dublin, in his introduction to Dr Goldsmith's popular Hi story of Rome (thirteenth edition, 1834), stated: The Etruscans appear to have b een Celts who descended from the Alps.' Some of the early Etruscan scholars, suc h as R. Lepsius and B. G. Neibhur, appear to have given their weight in support of this theory and another Etruscologist, Luigi Lanzi, mentions as early as 1806 (in his Dei Vasi antichi dipinti volgamente chiamati etruschi) that an attempt had been made to render Etruscan comprehensible through Celtic. It has proved im possible, to date, to trace this early attempt. The thesis is supported by only one specific reference among 'classical' writers : Gaius Sempronius Tuditanus, who distinguished himself as a young tribune in th e Second Punic War, wrote: 'et Etruscos veteres Gallos conditos'. Yet even this reference is suspect. While the work of Sempronius is mentioned by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, it is generally regarded as lost. This reference occurs in a work published in Venice in 1498, the attribution of the text to Sempronius now bein g considered spurious. It is true, however, that some early writers were clearly confused about the relationship between the Etruscans and the Celts, a situatio n which caused that most trustworthy of historians of ancient Rome, the Greek Po lybius (c.200-118 BC) to comment about 'the Celts, who were much associated with the Etruscans because they were neighbours ...' (my italics). This, I believe, makes clear how confusion arose. Apart from the unknown attempt at translation through Celtic referred to by Luig i Lanzi in 1806, the first attempt of which we have a record is a paper read to the Royal Irish Academy on 28 November 1836, which rendered some Etruscan placenames into English through the medium of Old Irish. This paper was read by Sir W illiam Betham, who was vice-president of the Royal Dublin Society, fellow of the Antiquarian Society, member of the Royal Irish Academy, member of the Royal Aca demy of Sciences of Lisbon (Portugal) and recipient of several distinguished aca demic accolades. He was the author of such works as Irish Antiquarian Studies, G ael and Cimbri and History of the Constitution of England and Ireland. In short, Betham was no lightweight scholar. He is still remembered at the Public Record Office in Ireland for his diligent collections of Irish manuscripts.

Betham followed up his initial paper two years later with a more contentious one , this time clarifying his thesis that Etruscan could be translated through the medium of Old Irish. This time he translated the Eugubian Tables, a series of br onze tables found in La Scheggia, near Gubbio. Betham's paper was considered by the Academy's committee and rejected. According to the secretary of the day: With respect to the paper on the Eugubian Tables, the Committee are of the opini on that the alterations which you have made in the text of these tables (especia lly in the division of the words) are altogether arbitrary and unauthorized, and that the translation given (though composed of Irish roots) is not the Irish la nguage either of the present day or any other period. Indeed, when it is considered that the Irish Records are more than two thousand years more recent than the assumed date of these tables, and offer the greatest difficulties to the best Irish scholars, it is not to be supposed that the moder n dialect of Irish could afford any clue to their interpretation even supposing them to be a language kindred to the Irish. Betham, in annoyance, dismissed the committee of the Academy by saying that it d id not, so far as he was aware, include 'any one who even pretended to be an Iri sh scholar, or at all to understand the language' and pressed on with his work. This resulted in a fascinating two-volume study published by Philip Dixon Hardy and Sons, Dublin, in 1842, entitled Etruria-Celtica. In the work, Betham transcr ibes not only the entire Eugubian Tables and the Perugian Inscription, but many smaller inscriptions. In view of the weight of Betham's scholastic reputation, h is work was deserving of careful consideration and answer. However, it appeared to vanish without trace until Domhnall Gruamach reopened the controversy. Intere stingly, when Gruamach made his contentions, he was totally unaware of Betham's work. Let us take Gruamach's contentions, as the latest work in this field, first. He chose for his exercise an Etruscan tomb inscription from the Tomba degli Scudi a t Tarquinia dated to the third or second century BC. In his study he does not gi ve the original Etruscan lettering, but published his text in modern lettering. The original lettering can be found illustrated in Corpus Inscriptionum Etruscar um, II, 1.3 (1936), no. 5388. ZILCI: VELUS: HUL CNIESI: LARTH: VEL CHAS: VELTHURS: APRTHNAL C: CLAN: SACNISA: THU IETH: SUTHITH: ACAZR It is clear from the original inscription that the spacing between these groups of letters was intended and thus the letters comprise the actual Etruscan words. Gruamach decided to ignore this and make his own grouping of letters, reducing the inscription thus: ZIL CIVEL U SHUL CNIES IL ARTH VEL CHAS VEL THURSA PRTHN ALC CLAN SACN IS A THUIETH SUTHITH A CAZR Having completed this arbitrary exercise, he can then render the 'sounds' throug h Scottish Gaelic word-roots as follows: ---[Insert Pic p210] ----

Gruamach renders this as: Shed rain of tender tears in plenty O god Bel. Pity O Bel the sorrow of the nobl e kindred of the Sabine Tribe [and] whom Northern Warriors slaughtered. Gruamach is so excited by his 'success' that he goes on to make several more con tentious claims. For example, 'if the Tomba degli Scudi is an early name for thi s tomb, it is certainly a later rendering of the Gaelic Tuama de Sgudaigh, which means "Tomb of those cut off at one stroke".' Gruamach overlooks the fact that tuama (tomb) is a loan-word adopted into Irish from Latin in the Christian era, which, in its turn, was borrowed into Latin from the Greek [Insert GK letters p2 10a] tymbos. The pitfalls into which Gruamach has blithely rushed will be obvious to philolog ists and, indeed, to any competent linguist. His methods are hopelessly unscient ific. He has argued that this does not matter; only the results are important. H owever, Gruamach admitted that his only guide had been R. A. Armstrong's 1825 Sc ottish-Gaelic Dictionary and Edward Dwelly's Scottish-Gaelic Dictionary 1902-11. He has ignored the linguistic changes that have occurred in Scottish Gaelic sin ce its divergence from Old Irish, which started about the tenth century AD. Not only this, Gruamach assumed that modern Scottish Gaelic resembled the language o f the European Celts of the pre-Christian period. But both Goidelic and Brythoni c branches of Celtic underwent cataclysmic changes in the centuries preceding th eir emergence into manuscript form circa the sixth century AD and, indeed, there is no simple way they can be compared with the older surviving fragments of con tinental Celtic, much less with any other language. One should compare Gruamach' s attempts with the more painstaking analysis of continental Celtic inscriptions by, for example, Professor Karl Horst Schmidt in Bulletin of the Board of Celti c Studies (vols xxvi, xxviii and xxix). Looking at such work one gets an idea of how the Celtic language of pre-Christian times really looked. There is no word in them which could be equated with any modern Scottish Gaelic word without goin g through a process of linguistic analysis to account for the resemblances and d ifferences between them. Even on a simplistic level, the respacing of the letters by Gruamach into new gr oupings in order to arrive at ones which would fit his word-roots is quite arbit rary, and the exercise can be done to practically any language with similar resu lts. I do not wish to imply that Gruamach was a charlatan, merely misguided. Hav ing corresponded with him on the subject in the 1960s, I found that he sincerely believed in the accuracy of his method. But, in this matter, enthusiasm and lac k of linguistic expertise overcame considered scholarship and his contentions ca nnot be taken seriously. However, because Gruamach's contentions were backed by the more reputable schola rship of Sir William Betham, there are still many who take the thesis seriously. Did Betham, therefore, apply a more scientific basis to his work, or can it be similarly dismissed? The short answer is that Betham achieved his results by the same method as Gruamach. His comparison of Etruscan and Irish belongs to the pr e-scientific period, and his knowledge of Irish is practically nil. Where Gruama ch sought his word-roots in Armstrong's and Dwelly's dictionaries, Betham sought them in John O'Brien's and Edward O'Reilly's dictionaries. And it seems that it was O'Brien's dictionary which was Betham's main inspiration. Dr John O'Brien w as Bishop of Cloyne, and published his dictionary primarily for the use of pries ts in Ireland. His Focaloir Gaoidhlige-Sax Bhearla (An Irish-English Dictionary) was printed by Nicolas Francis Valleyre for the author in Paris in 1768. Betham may have had access to it through the second edition, revised and corrected by Robert Daly in Dublin in 1832. O'Reilly's Irish-English Dictionary was published in Dublin in 1817.

In reference to O'Brien's dictionary, Betham already demonstrates his inadequate knowledge of the Irish linguistic field when he calls O'Brien 'the compiler of the first published Irish Dictionary'. The first Irish dictionary had been publi shed in 1643 in Louvain by the Franciscan Brother Micheal O Cleirigh and was ent itled Focloir no Sanasan Nua. Additionally, there was another English Irish dictio nary published in Paris thirty-six years before O'Brien, compiled by Father Conc hobhar O Beaglaoich with the assistance of the poet Aodh Buidhe Mac Crutin (d. 1 755), who was also the author of an Irish Grammar. O'Brien, in his preface to his dictionary, makes the claim that the 'Umbrians, S abines and others were certainly Celts'. Umbrians he equates with Etruscans. Bet ham, echoing this statement, adds: 'Dr O'Brien's acute notion that it [Etruscan] was a dialect of Celtic was never followed up with any farther [sic] investigat ion by himself, or as far as it is known by others.' This, then, was obviously t he inspiration for Betham's claims in his work Etruria Celtica (1841). The major part of his first volume is devoted to an examination and translation of the Eugubian Tables. These tables were found in La Scheggia, near Gubbio, in 1444. It must have required tremendous effort in respacing letters until they fi tted into a word pattern which resembled Irish and then in translating them from word-roots gleaned from his Irish dictionaries to make some sort of sense. There is one immediate problem. Though the first five tables are written in Etruscan lettering and the last two in Latin lettering of the third century BC, the Eugubian Tables are attested as Umbrian, which has been clearly identified now as an Italic language and a close relative of Latin, Faliscan and Oscan. It is not Etruscan. Admittedly the texts were known to be Umbrian in Betham's time, but Betham, along with Dr O'Brien, b elieved Umbrian was the same language as Etruscan. 'It is substantially the same as the Etruscan,' he claimed. The fact that Betham could 'translate' an attested Italic language via Irish wor d roots by a regrouping of letters is enough to explain the philologists' critic ism of his work. Perhaps one need not delve further, yet in fairness to Betham, we should at least consider his work on an attested Etruscan inscription. As well as the Perugian Inscription and several minor ones, Betham devotes consi derable space to an examination of the second-century BC tomb of the Volumnii fa mily, which is the most outstanding tomb found in Perugia. Betham interprets the inscription on the door and on the six sarcophagi contained inside. To underlin e the spuriousness of Betham's translations, I chose at random one of these insc riptions for analysis and comment by Gearoid Mac Eoin, Professor of Old and Midd le Irish and Celtic Philology at University College, Galway, Ireland, one of the most outstanding modern Celtic scholars. The result of this work was published in The Incorporated Linguist (Winter, 1984, vol. 23, no. 1). The inscription tha t I had chosen was from the fifth or principal sarcophagus which (remembering Et ruscan reads right to left) was as follows: ---[Insert Characters p213] Betham had respaced the letters to arrive at the Irish, reading left to right: [Insert Characters p213a] Ar an ti fel i mna is a u leas He translates this as: 'With the lamentations of women he was taken from the lig

ht.' ---Taking the words of Betham's text one by one, Professor Mac Eoin translated and annotated them as if they were Irish, illustrating the wide divergence of both t ext and translation not only from Old Irish but from the more primitive form of the language which existed at the time the inscription on the Volumnii tomb was written in the second century BC: ---[Insert p213b] ar: The Royal Irish Academy's Dictionary of the Irish Language based mainly on t he Old and Middle Irish materials (1913-76) - henceforth DIL - lists about ten w ords spelt arlar, ranging in meaning from the prep, 'before', through the poss. pron. I plur., to nouns meaning 'ploughing' and 'slaughter'. Apart from the fact that none of them fits the context of Betham's translation, they have undergone major changes in form in the centuries between the 3rd and 6th AD, so that none of them would have appeared as arlar in the 2nd century BC. ---[Insert p214] an: This might be said to resemble any of the nine words spelt an/an in DIL. The meanings range widely from the definite article to nouns meaning 'water' and 'd rinking cup' and to adjectives meaning 'brilliant', 'swift' and 'true'. These wo rds are of varying origin but they have all lost a second syllable during the pe riod between the 3rd and 6th centuries AD. Authentic forms from the 2nd century BC would certainly show this syllable. ---[Insert p214a] ti: DIL lists two nouns with this form: 1. 'cloak' and 2. 'line, circle'. These are regarded as one word by J. Vendryes, Lexique etymologique de l'irlandais anc ien, T-56, and derived from earlier *teg-s with the primary sense of 'covering'. ---[Insert p214b] fel: Apart from its occurrence as a rare variant spelling of fil 3 sg. rel. pres . ind. of the substantive verb, this has no existence in Irish as a real word. T he medieval glossaries contain two words fel which were extracted by the glossar ists from compounds of fell 'evil' or fill 'poet'. Neither of these had any plac e in the real language. Furthermore, the sound f did not exist in Irish before t he 7th century AD. ---[Insert p214c] i: Superficially resembles the prep, i n- 'in' or the 3 sg. fern, personal pron. i or any one of several similar words listed in DIL. But these forms from the 8 th century AD or later give no indication of the shape these words would have ha

d in the 2nd century BC. ---[Insert p214d] mna: This is clearly one of the starting-points of Betham's translation. It rese mbles mna gen. sg. or nom. plur. of ben 'women'. But Betham's translation demand s a gen. plur. which would be ban in the Irish of any period, up to and includin g most of the modern dialects. The form mna derives in the first instance from * bna, more remotely from *gwnas, and it is somewhere along this line of developme nt that we would expect to find a form datable to the 2nd century BC, eight hund red years before the first attestation of mna. ---[Insert p214e] is: Resembles the 3 sg. pres. ind. of the copula, is, in Irish. Apart from the f act that this derives from *esti and one would have expected a more archaic form than is in the ind century BC, there is no place in Betham's translation for a copula form. ---[Insert p214f] a: DIL lists 13 different words and particles with this form. They are all much reduced in form and none of them provides a meaning to suit Betham's translation . ---[Insert p215] u: No such word occurs in the Irish of any period, though the spelling u occurs infrequently as an irregular variant of ua 'grandson'. ---[Insert p215a] leas: This is the second of Betham's starting-points in his attempt at a transla tion. In form it resembles the Modern Irish spelling of the Old Irish les 'light '. But this is considered by DIL to be a borrowing of Old Norse ljos 'light', wh ich etymology is supported by early spellings of leos. If this is so, the word c annot have entered the Irish language until the 9th/10th century AD, excluding a ny connection of the Etruscan word with the Irish. ---Therefore, only the words for 'women' and 'light' seem to correspond to Betham's rendering from Irish to English, and they are not valid in the given context. G iven this examination of each word it is difficult to understand how Betham arri ves at his translation in English. Professor Mac Eoin comments: 'In illustrating Betham's ignorance of Old Irish from the sentence you propose, I hardly know wh ere to begin, because it contains so little that corresponds in any way to the t ranslation he gives or indeed to any coherent sort of Irish.' Professor Mac Eoin felt, as I do, that 'we cannot blame Betham for his methods.

They were those of his time and comparative linguistics has come a long way sinc e 1842.' It was only in 1853 that the publication of Johann Kasper Zeuss' volume Grammatica Celtica put the study of the Celtic languages on a sound scientific basis. We can make one final comment on Betham's contention. He mentions that his study was inspired by discovering that the word for god in Etruscan was aesar. In reading in Suetonius, the Life of Augustus, I found that Aesar, in the Etrusc an tongue, signified God. The import in Irish being the same, it struck me forci bly that this might not be accidental but that the Etruscan language might be es sentially Celtic, and, therefore, capable of interpretation by Irish. However, the Royal Irish Academy's Dictionary of the Irish Language lists no wor d found in Old or Middle Irish in any way similar to aesar for god. Betham might well have been confusing the word with aesir, plural of the Old Norse word as, a Norse god, inhabitant of Asgard, whose form is seen in survival in the proper names Oswald and Osric. If the word aesar had any currency in Irish, which seems unlikely, and Betham encountered it in some now forgotten manuscript gloss, its introduction could not have been made until the ninth or tenth century AD with the Norse settlements in Ireland - thus cancelling his contention. Betham's work, more so than Gruamach's more recent study, remains fascinating an d intriguing but totally misleading to unwary students and enthusiasts who have sometimes become so involved that they are enticed into this stagnant backwater when their time might be put to more fruitful pursuits. The Etruscan-Celtic theo ry has enjoyed a considerable following in the United States from where the seco nd piece of historical myth-making has emanated. In 1976 Professor Barry Fell of Harvard University caused a sensation with the p ublication of a book entitled America BC: Ancient Settlers in the New World. In this work, Professor Fell claimed: 'The evidence now in our hands furthermore sh ows that Celts in considerable numbers did settle here [America] particularly in New England.' The date of these Celtic settlements, according to Professor Fell , was about the eighth century BC and certainly no later than the sixth century BC. To sum up his argument, Professor Fell maintains that the Celtiberians, the Celts living in what is now Portugal and Spain, speaking a form of Goidelic Celt ic, migrated to the New World. Now the argument that the first Celtic settlers in the Iberian peninsula spoke a Goidelic form of Celtic is generally accepted among scholars who say that these first settlers were later absorbed when new waves of Gaulish-(Brythonic)-speaki ng Celts arrived at a later date. But Professor Fell says he has personally iden tified inscriptions dating from the eighth to sixth centuries BC in Spain and Po rtugal, especially in the Douro Valley, where the Duoro river flows from Spain, through Portugal and into the Atlantic at Porto. But what script did these Celts use, having regard to their custom not to commit their knowledge to writing? Pr ofessor Fell says the inscriptions are in Ogham. Ogham (Ogam) is the earliest form of Irish writing in which alphabetical units a re represented by varying numbers of strokes and notches marked on the edge of s tone monuments; it may also have been used on lengths of wood or bone, although none has survived. It is a cipher based on the Latin alphabet and the bulk of su rvivals are dated around the fifth and sixth centuries AD. Ogham inscriptions do not date prior to the Christian period in Ireland. In fairness, the language of the inscriptions demonstrates an archaic form of Irish which caused Johann Kasp ar Zeuss, the linguistic pioneer of Celtic studies, to believe that Ogham did ex ist before Christianity arrived in Ireland in the fifth century AD. There are 36 9 known Ogham inscriptions, the majority in Ireland, with the highest concentrat ions in the south-west. This has led Dr Mairtin O Murchu, former Professor of Ir

ish at Trinity College, Dublin, to argue that Ogham actually originated in south -west Ireland. But if Ogham originated in south-west Ireland during the early Christian era of the fifth century AD, how could Ogham be used on memorials in the Douro Valley i n the Iberian peninsula in the eighth century BC? First, let Professor Fell continue his thesis. Having ascertained that the 'Celt iberians' were writing Ogham, during the eighth century BC, which is surprisingl y decipherable through modern Gaelic, Professor Fell transports them to the New World. He correctly points out that the Celts, at least in Caesar's time, had th e nautical technology to sail the Atlantic. Therefore, it is easy to bring them across the Atlantic where, he maintains, they settled in concentrations in New E ngland. We have, conjured before us, an amazing picture of druids in New England building monuments, standing stones and teaching Gaelic to the natives, such as the ancestors of the Algonquin Indians, so that pure Gaelic words are recogniza ble in Algonquin nearly three millennia later! Not only did the Celts leave tang ible evidence in standing stones but they are also claimed to have carved inscri ptions all over America, even in the West Indies, where at Barouaillie, St Vince nt Island, Professor Fell identifies and translates the inscription as belonging to the eighth century BC. Many of the Algonquin place-names of New England are translated by Professor Fell using the medium of modern Scottish Gaelic. Professor Fell's book proved a bestseller, perhaps naturally enough, as the Amer icans delightedly discovered that, thanks to the Professor, they now had an anci ent European lineage. If his claims were true, then it was a truly epic and exci ting story. However, the world of Celtic scholarship was not so credulous. Profe ssor Mac Eoin summed up their view: 'The rock scratchings resemble Ogham script only insofar as they are lines on rocks ... Dr Fell ignores completely the quest ion of Celtic history.' Indeed, the words which Professor Fell deciphered from his inscriptions bore eve n less resemblance to the early forms of Goidelic than Betham's remarkable Etrus can translation. The alleged Celtic loanwords in Algonquin suffer from the same weakness as Betham's etymologies. Professor Fell had visualized the Celtic langu ages as somehow fixed in time, unalterable since their first historical appearan ce. All one needs to do is view the differing forms of Old, Middle and Modern Ir ish to see how a language is constantly evolving and changing. Yet the Goidelic Celtic spoken by Professor Fell's eighth-century BC intrepid Celtic navigators i s still readily understandable to Scottish Gaelic speakers of today! To illustrate the pitfalls, take the word cuithe, which Professor Fell claims wa s borrowed from the Celts into the Algonquin Indian language to survive today, i ts meaning being a gorge. He correctly points out that cuithe in modern Scottish Gaelic means a pit. But the word cuithe is in fact a loan-word from Latin into Old Irish, coming from the word puteus. This would put its appearance in Old Iri sh not much before the fifth or sixth centuries AD. How, then, could it have exi sted in the Celtic of Professor Fell's intrepid explorers of the eighth century BC? Once again we see a demonstration of the same linguistic inability which pla gued the work of Betham and Gruamach. To make such contentious linguistic compar isons one would need to investigate the history of the words to be compared in b oth languages before declaring a relationship between them, much less a borrowin g. The lay readers who flocked to read Professor Fell's work were obviously impress ed that it was a study by an eminent scholar a Harvard professor. However, Barry Fell was a professor of zoology, not of Celtic studies nor even linguistics. Ev en so, one would have expected more detailed collation and evaluation, of the ev idence, with advice from linguistic experts, before a scholar made such claims. Perhaps one should leave it to the Gaelic-speaking Celts to have a final word on

Professor Fell's remarkable work. There is an old proverb in Irish oscar each i gceird araili which means that everyone is agile at doing something but, uttere d in sarcastic fashion, implies that every man is a beginner at another man's tr ade. I have felt it necessary to make some comment upon these two popular myths about the pre-Christian Celts before drawing my history of the first millennium of Ce ltic civilization to a close. In many ways, it is a sad history, especially in its later stages, with the Celt s slowly being overtaken and absorbed by the ruthless efficiency of the Roman em pire. History has a way of intruding on the present and the continued slow decli ne of the Celtic peoples, their languages, their cultures and their unique contr ibution to European civilization, has lasted until the present day. The descendants of the ancient Celts, now confined in six small nationalities on the north-western seaboard of Europe, are reaching the ultimate crisis of their long march through history. Their languages and cultures, and even their histor ies, are all but lost. Of the sixteen millions who inhabit the Celtic area of Eu rope, scarcely two millions speak a Celtic language. The Celts have been called the American Indians of Europe, and the comparison is valid for, over the centuries, they have been subjected to conquests and ruthle ss policies of genocide, such as Oliver Cromwell's 'solution' for Ireland and th e notorious Highland Clearances in Scotland. Their languages have, over the year s, been forbidden by law and, during the Victorian Age and afterwards, were lite rally beaten out of the children. Programmes of assimilation have sought to dest roy their distinctive cultures. They, like the American Indians, have been subje cted to greedy exploitation and violence which has all but destroyed their civil ization - a civilization which has lasted 3,000 years. If it is now the sad fate of the Celts to plunge into the abyss of lost civilizations, for today they sta nd on the very edge of that bleak future, then it is my hope that this volume wi ll, at least, have accorded them their proper place in the historical tapestry o f ancient Europe. -------------------------------------Chronology BC c.1200-750 - 'Proto Celtic' (Urnfield) civilization of the Bronze Age. c.750-500 - Hallstatt (Iron Age) Celtic civilization. c.500-100 - La Tene (Iron Age) Celtic civilization. c. Sixth Century - By this time settlements of Celts, migrating from the area of the headwaters of the Danube and Rhine, had been established through France and Spain, as far south as Cadiz, into the Po Valley of northern Italy and north-we st to Belgium and the British Isles. It is generally accepted that Goidelic-spea king Celts, regarded as the more archaic form of Celtic, had settled in Spain, I reland and Britain at least by the start of the first millennium BC. The ancesto rs of the Brythonic Group (including Gaulish) were part of a later expansion sti ll continuing in the fourth century BC when Celts expanded eastwards along the D anube Valley. c.474 - Celts defeat Etruscans near the Ticino (north Italy). 396 - Celts capture Melpum in Po Valley

c.390-387 - Clusium, Etruscan city, besieged by Celtic army led by Brennos. Roma n intervention. 18 July battle of Allia (twelve miles north of Rome). Celts defe at Roman army. Sack of Rome but Celts fail to capture Capitoline Hill. Rome pays ransom for Celtic withdrawal. 379 - Dionysios I of Syracuse recruits Celtic mercenaries. 367 - Celts besiege Rome for second time. 366 - 2,000 Celtic mercenaries serve Sparta in war against Thebes. 362 - Battle of Maninea (Spartan-Theban War). Celtic cavalry play decisive role. 361-360 - Celts in vicinity of Rome again. Roman army too weak to meet them in b attle. 358 - Celtic eastward movement reaches Carpathians. c.350-300 - Pytheas of Massilia, Greek explorer, surveys Britain. 349 - Celtic raids as far south as Apulia in Italy but Roman army defeats them f or the first time in battle. 340 - Consul Titus Manlius Imperiosus Torquatus of Rome forbids Roman commanders to settle warfare by single-handed combat with Celtic chieftains (in Celtic tra dition). 335-334 - Alexander the Great meets Celtic chieftains on the Danube. 310 - The Antariatae, largest of Illyrian (Bulgaria/Albania) nations, flee befor e the advance of the Celts led by Molistomos. 307 - Celtic mercenaries serve Agathocles of Syracuse in war with Carthage. c.300 - Celts and Etruscans form alliance against Roman expansion. Celts in the east settle in Moravia region. Ireland correctly placed on map of world by Erato sthenes of Cyrene. 298 - Celtic alliance with Samnites against Rome. Celtic-Samnite victory over Ro me at Camerium, ninety miles north-east of Rome. Celts led by Cambaules conquer and settle Thrace. Thrace now a Celtic kingdom. 295 - Roman victory over Celts and Samnites at Sentium. 284 - Celts besiege Arettium. Defeat of Roman army of Caecilius, who is slain in battle. Celtic victory checked by new commander of Roman forces. 283 - Defeat of Celts and Etruscans at Vadiomonian Lake, forty-five miles north of Rome. 280 - Celtic alliance with Pyrrhus of Epirus against Rome during Pyrrhus' campai gn to prevent Greek colonies of southern Italy falling under Roman domination. R oman defeat at battle of Heraclea in which Celts take part under Pyrrhus' comman d. Three Celtic armies of immense size gather on northern border of Macedonia. 279 - Asculum. Romans defeated by Pyrrhus with strong Celtic element in his army . Celtic army of Bolgios defeats Macedonian army. Ptolemy Ceraunos, King of Mace donia, is slain in battle. Celtic army of Brennos and Acichorios enters Greece. Battle of Thermopylae in which Brennos defeats a combined Greek army, though pre

dominantly Athenian, commanded by Callippus, son of Moerocles. Sanctuary of the oracle, the Pythia, priestess of Apollo at Delphi, sacked by the Celts. Celtic w ithdrawal suicide of Brennos? Greece devastated by Celtic victories. Panathenaea (annual games) cancelled for 278 BC. 278 - Celtic army of Cerethrios defeated by Antigonus Gonatas, new King of Maced onia, near Gallipoli peninsula. Antigonus Gonatas recruits defeated Celts as mer cenaries for Macedonian army and also for the armies of Nicomedes of Bithynia an d Ptolemy of Egypt. 20,000 Celtic warriors and their families, the Tolistoboii, Tectosages and Trocmi, led by Leonnorios and Lutarios, cross into Asia Minor to serve Nicomedes of Bithynia against Antiochus of Syria. 277/276 - 4,000 Celts arrive in Egypt to serve Ptolemy II. 275 - Antiochus I of Syria defeats the Celts in Asia Minor and they are settled in a central area to become known as Galatia. Roman victory over Pyrrhus at Bene ventum, 130 miles south-east of Rome, ending Pyrrhus' campaign. Pyrrhus returns to Epirus. 265 - Celts of Galatia defeat Antiochus I of Syria at Ephesus and slay him in ba ttle. 263 - 3,000 Celts serve in Carthaginian army during the First Punic War between Carthage and Rome. They are commanded by Antaros. c.260 - Timaeos first to use term 'Celtiberians' to describe Celts living in Spa in. 259 - Celtic mercenaries in Egypt mutiny against Ptolemy II. Imprisoned on islan d in Nile where they are starved to death, some committing suicide. Ptolemy stri kes gold coin with Celtic motif. Ptolemy recruits new Celtic mercenaries for his army. 249 - Antaros leads mutiny of Celtic mercenaries in Carthaginian army at the end of the First Punic War, causing Roman intervention and seizure of Carthaginian territory. 245 - Large recruitment of Celtic mercenaries by Egypt for war against Syria. 243 - Celts of northern Italy seek Transalpine Celtic allies to protect them aga inst Rome. Internal clashes in Cisalpine Gaul. 241 - Attalos I of Pergamum throws off Galatian overlordship and defeats Celts o f Galatia in battle near source of the Caioc. 237 - Rome seizes territory of Senones Celts of Picenum for colonization. Cartha ge begins to build new empire in Spain, conquering Celtiberian territories. 232 - Tolistoboii of Galatia are decisively defeated by Attalos I of Pergamum. 225 - Celts of northern Italy seek new allies from Celts of Transalpine Gaul aga inst Rome. Battle of Clusium, eighty-five miles north of Rome. Celtic army of Co ncolitanos and Aneroestos defeat Roman army. Battle of Telamon. Major Celtic def eat by Rome. Concolitanos captured and Aneroestos commits suicide. 224 - Romans invade and devastate Cisalpine Gaul. 223 - Second Roman campaign in Cisalpine Gaul. 222 - Celts of Cisalpine Gaul send peace envoys to Rome to ask for terms. Rome r

ejects negotiations and invades for a third time. Battle of Clastidium, major de feat for Celts. Celtic leaders Viridomar (sometimes given as Britomaros) is slai n in single combat by Roman commander Marcellus. First emergence in history of t he Germanic people, who appear fighting as mercenaries for the Celts. 222-205 - Celts still noted serving in Egyptian army. 221 - Hamilcar of Carthage, conqueror of Celtic territories in Spain, assassinat ed by a Celt. 221-218 - Hannibal of Carthage continues Spanish conquests. Recruits Celtiberian s to his army. Plans war against Rome and seeks Celtic allies in both Gaul and C isalpine Gaul before beginning his famous march on Rome. 218 - Attalos of Pergamum recruits European Celts (Aegosages) to his army. Tecto sages of Gaul defeated by Hannibal on the Rhone. Celtic tribes of the Alpine reg ions provide Hannibal's army with guides through mountain passes. Hannibal's arm y is now 50 per cent Celtic. Hannibal enters Cisalpine Gaul. 10,000 Cisalpine Ce lts join him in his war against Rome. 218-207 Celts play prominent role in Hannibal's army, usually occupying the cent re position in his battles, as at the battle of Cannae in 216 BC. 217 - Massacre of the Celtic Aegosages by Prusias I of Bithynia. 14,000 Celts co nstitute the major part of the Pharaoh's army at the battle of Raphia between Pt olemy IV and Antiochus II of Syria. It is an Egyptian victory. 216 - Roman successes against Carthage in Spain. Some Celtic tribes form an alli ance with Rome. 212-211 - Carthaginian successes against Rome in Spain. 207 - Hannibal's brother Hasdrubal in northern Italy. Joined by Cisalpine Celts but defeated at Metaurus river. 206 - Carthaginians driven out of Spain by Rome. Some Celtiberian troops go with them. 203 - Battle of Utica. Roman victory over Carthage. Celtic troops stop retreat f rom becoming a rout. 202 - Hannibal recalled from Italy to defend Carthage. 201 - Battle of Zama. Hannibal's last battle. Celts hold centre positions in his battle-line. Hannibal defeated by Scipio Africanus. Roman army defeated by Celt s in Cisalpine Gaul. 198 - Rome begins conquest of Cisalpine Gaul. 197 - Formal end of Second Punic War. Rome annexes Spain. Cenomani of Cisalpine Gaul defeated. 197-159 Celts of Galatia exert overlordship over Pergamum and form an alliance w ith Antiochus III of Syria. 196 Insubres of Cisalpine Gaul defeated. 195 Insurre ction among Lusitani of Spain. 193 - End of Thrace as a Celtic kingdom? Appearance of last Thracian king bearin g a Celtic name. 192 - Chieftain of Boii (of Cisalpine Gaul) and his family surrender to Rome but

are slaughtered by a Roman consul for 'entertainment'. 191 - Boii finally defeated. 190 - Celts of Galatia serve in army of Antiochus III at battle of Magnesia agai nst Rome. Roman victory. Celtic victory over Roman army in Spain. Paullus and Ro man army achieve victory over Celtiberians. 189 - Roman punitive expedition into Galatia. Tolistoboii and Troci of Galatia d efeated at battle of Olympus. Tectosages of Galatia defeated at battle at Ancyra . 187 - Cenomani of Cisalpine Gaul disarmed by Rome but protest to senate against violation of treaty agreement. 186-185 - Last records of Celts serving in Egyptian army. 186-183 - Carni, Transalpine Celtic tribe, try to settle in Po Valley but are dr iven out by Roman army. c.181 - Rise of Ortagion of the Tolistoboii of Galatia, who attempts to unite th e Celtic tribes of Galatia. c.180 - Belgae (Celtic confederation of tribes from Belgium) settle in southern Britain. 179 - Carsignatos and Guizatorix lead Celtic alliance of Galatians with Eumenes II of Pergamum. 178 173 - 3,000 Celts and families try to settle in Cisalpine Gaul but are rounded up and sold into slavery by Rome. Rome commences a colonization policy in Cisal pine Gaul. Celtic languages and customs last into imperial times and area produc es many writers. 167 - Celts of Galatia in alliance with Prusias II of Bithynia. 165 - Celts of Galatia expelled from Pergamum territory. 164 160 - Celts of Galatia raid Cappadocia. 154 - Celtiberian uprising against Rome. Celtic Salyes attack Massilia. 153 - Roman army besieges Celtic hill-fort of Numantia in Spain for the first ti me. 151 - Roman commander in Spain offers Celts moderate terms for surrender. Agreem ent reneged upon by senate. Roman army under Galba forces Celtic surrender, disa rms and massacres them. Survivors sold into slavery. 148 - New Celtic insurrection in Spain led by Viriathus. Defeat of Roman army. R oman Governor slain. 141 - Viriathus defeats a Roman consular army. 140 - Rome agrees treaty with Viriathus but hires a Celtic traitor to assassinat e him. 138 132 - Celtic resistance to Rome continues in Spain. 136 - Roman army besieges Celtic hill-fort of Pallantia in Spain. Celts break si

ege and put Roman army to flight. 133 - Scipio Aemilianus, Roman Consul, sent to Spain to subdue Celts. Siege of N umantia hill-fort (for the second time), defeat by slow starvation and eventual slaughter of all inhabitants and their leader Avarus. 125 - Celtic Salyes of Gaul attack Massilia for second time. Roman intervention to protect the city. 122 - Roman victory over Salyes. Roman army also attacks Allobriges, allies of t he Salyes. Allobriges chieftain Bituitis taken captive to Rome. Rome now control s Transalpine Gaul, a province stretching from the Alps to Massilia. 118 - Formal extension of the new province (Provence) to Tolosa (Toulouse) and N arbon. New name Gallia Narbonensis. 113 - Cimbri attack Boii in Bohemia but are checked. 109 - Celts and Dacians form alliance to stop Roman expansion in the east (Ruman ia) but are defeated. Cimbri appear in Gaul with allies, the Teutones. Defeat of Roman army of Silanus. 107 - Divico of the Tigurni defeat a Roman army led by Cassius in southern Gaul. Caepio and Roman army manage to raise siege of Roman garrison in Tolosa. 105 - Cimbri and allies defeats Roman armies of Caepio and of Manlius north of M assilia. 105-102 - Cimbri and Teutones raid Spain but are eventually driven out by Celtib erians. 102 - Cimbri in Cisalpine Gaul force Roman army of Catalus to fall back from pos itions in the Po Valley. Marius defeats the Teutones at Aquae Sextiae in Gaul. 101 - August. Marius defeats the Cimbri and their allies near Vercellae. Some 12 0,000 members of the Celtic army are slain. 93 - Roman commander Didius conducts savage war of repression against Celtiberia ns in Spain. Celts of Spain finally submit to pax Romana. 88 - Mithridates V of Pontus assassinates sixty Galatian chieftains at a feast i n an attempt to destroy Galatian leadership. c.87 - Rise of Deitaros of the Tolistoboii of Galatia. Galatian tribes unite in war against Pontus. 82 - Cisalpine Gaul declared a Roman province. 81-73 - Celtiberians support revolt of Roman Governor Sertorius against Rome. 74 - Deiotaros of Galatia enters alliance with Rome and drives army of Pontus ou t of Galatia. 71 - Sequani Celts of Gaul make alliance with Ariovistus of the Germanic Suebi t o help them in a war against their fellow Celts, the Aedui. 66 - Deiotaros of Galatia in alliance with Roman General Pompeius (Pompey) and a friend of Cicero. 61 - Ariovistus and Germans defeat Aedui. Divitiacos of the Aedui goes to Rome a

nd is allowed to address the senate. He seeks a Roman alliance against the Germa ns but the senate decides to make an alliance with Ariovistus. 60 - Burebista of Dacia launches war of annexation on Celts of the east and defe ats the Boii in Bohemia. 32,000 Boii leave Bohemia to join Helvetii in Austria a nd Switzerland. 58 - Helvetii led by Orgetorix and his son-in-law Dumnorix, brother of Divitiaco s of the Aedui, form a Celtic alliance and begin plans for a westward migration away from incursions of Germans from the north-east and Romans from the south-ea st. Julius Caesar, given command of Cisalpine Gaul and Gallia Narbonensis, takes opportunity to intervene in affairs of Gaul proper. Helvetii and allies defeate d at Bribacte and massacred. Caesar drives Germans back across the Rhine and def eats Ariovistus at Vesontio. Caesar begins conquest of Gaul. 57 - Roman victory over Belgae on the Sambre. 56 - Roman sea power established by victory over Veneti in Morbihan Gulf. 55 - Council of all pro-Roman Gaulish chieftains held. Caesar checks German incu rsions near Coblenz. Roman reconnaissance of Britain in force. Caesar defeats Ca ntii army near Walmer/Deal. 54 - Roman victory over Indutiomaros of the Treveri in Gaul. Romans kill Dumnori x, their hostage, now regarded as chieftain of the Aedui. Roman invasion of Brit ain. Hill-fort at Bigbury besieged and sacked. Roman victories at Medway, Thames and Wheathampstead. Roman withdrawal after submission of main British chieftain , Cassivelaunos. Ambiorix leads Gaulish uprising at Tongres. Annihilation of Rom an legion commanded by Sabinus and Cotta. Signal for general uprising. Ambiorix besieges Roman garrison at Namur but siege is raised by Caesar. 54-53 - Winter. Indutiomaros builds up Gaulish army. Romans conduct scorched-ear th policy. Indutiomaros slain. Ambiorix driven across the Rhine. 53-52 - Carnutes capture Roman garrison at Cenabum. 52 - Vercingetorix of the Averni now commander-in-chief of all Celtic forces in Gaul. Caesar massacres inhabitants of Avaricum. Vercingetorix defeats Caesar at Gergovia. Roman victory over Camulogenos at Agendicum. Caesar defeats Vercingeto rix at Alesia. 52-51 - Winter campaign by Caesar to suppress spirit of insurrection. 51 - Romans besiege and destroy last independent Celtic hill-fort, the Aquitani fort of Uxellodunum. 51-50 - Atrebates, of the Belgae, settle in Britain under their leader Commios a mong the Atrebates already settled there. Rise of southern British Atrebate king dom. 47 - Deiotaros of Galatia tried for complicity in plot to kill Caesar, having si ded with Pompey in Roman civil war. Defended by Cicero and found not guilty. 46 - Vercingetorix publicly beheaded in Rome. Twenty days of celebration held fo r the conquest of Gaul. Bellovaci in insurrection in Gaul. 45-30 - Deiotaros II succeeds as King of Galatia. Friend of Mark Antony. 44 - Insurrection of Allobriges in Gaul.

42 - Cisalpine Gaul official part of the state of Rome. 40 - Rome strikes silver denarius with head of Vercingetorix as token of complet e victory in Gaul. 33-30 - Aquitani and Morini of Gaul in insurrection. c.30 - Cassivelaunos of Britain dies and is succeeded by Andoco. c.25 - Amyntas succeeds Deiotaros II in Galatia but Galatia now declared an offi cial province of Rome. 25-7 - Series of uprisings against Rome in south-east Gaul. Gaul finally pacifie d and declared a Roman province. 20 - Tasciovanos succeeds Andoco in Britain. The fortress of Wheathampstead is a bandoned and new capital is Camulodunum. 7 - Strabo speaks of Ireland in his Geography. ~~ AD ~~ 1-65 - Conaire Mor, King in Ireland. 10 - Tasciovanos succeeded by Cunobelinos (Cymbeline). 26 - Roman plans to invade Britain abandoned. 39-40 - Cunobelinos banishes son Adminios, who seeks Roman allies against his fa ther. The mad Roman Emperor Gaius (Caligula) marches legions to seashore of Gaul and tells his soldiers to attack the waves, declaring a 'victory' over Neptune. 40-50 - Paul of Tarsus preaches Christianity in Galatia and makes converts. Late r Epistle to the Galatians. 40-3 - Cunobelinos of Britain dies. Succeeded by son Caratacos. 43 - Claudius of Rome orders invasion of Britain. Forces commanded by Aulus Plau tius land unopposed. British defeated at Medway and Thames. Claudius arrives in Britain with reinforcements. Siege of Camulodunum. Caratacos escapes to the west but surrender of many British chieftains. 43-51 - Celtic resistance to Roman conquest of Britain led by Caratacos. 47 - Scapula given command in Britain with orders to step up conquest. 50 - Roman victory over Caratacos. 51 - Caratacos betrayed to Romans by Cartimandua of the Brigantes of northern Br itain. Caratacos, his wife, daughter, brother and their retinue, taken in chains to Rome. Makes a speech to Claudius and senate and is allowed liberty in exile in Rome. Southern British resistance to Roman conquest is ended for the time bei ng. 74 - Galatia united with Cappadocia as single province. Separated again in 106 A D by Emperor Trajan. Mention of Galatia existing as a separate province occurs a

s late as the eighth century AD. In the fourth century AD St Jerome attests that Celtic was still spoken there. 82 - Agricola, Governor in Britain, considers a Roman invasion of Ireland. Crimt hann Nia Nair (74-90 AD) is High King. Agricola welcomes some disgruntled Irish chieftains to his camp in northern Britain. Invasion plans are shelved and Irela nd continues to avoid a military conflict with Rome. With the exception of Ireland, northern Britain (Caledonia) and the surrounding smaller islands, the Celtic world, from Galatia in the east to Britain in the we st and south to Cisalpine Gaul and Iberia, is now under the rule of Rome. ---------------------------Select Bibliography (Removed) Index (Removed) END

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