A Brief History of the Celts

by Peter Berresford Ellis

  We learn that one tribe, the Senones, had crossed the Apennines in search of new land to settle and had encamped outside the Etruscan city of Clusium. Brennus, their leader, asked the city fathers to grant them lands on which to settle in peace. The city elders viewed the newcomers as a threat and appealed to Rome, which had just exerted its military authority over the old Etruscan empire. Rome sent three ambassadors, the Fabii brothers, to negotiate between the Celts and Clusium. The Fabii brothers were young and arrogant.

  Due to their arrogance, negotiations quickly broke down. An Etruscan army marched out of Clusium to face the Senones. Even Livy says that the Roman ambassadors then made a fatal step: ‘they broke the law of nations and took up arms’. During the battle, the Fabii joined the ranks of the Etruscans and Quintus Fabius killed a Celtic chieftain. When the Celts realised that the supposedly ‘neutral’ Roman ambassadors were actually fighting for the Etruscans, they broke off the battle and withdrew to discuss this breach of international law.

  The Celts were strict believers in law and the role of ambassador was a sacred trust. Indeed, the Romans later incorporated into Latin the Celtic word ambactus, which became ‘ambassador’ in many modern European languages. The Celts were horrified by the Romans’ behaviour. They held a council meeting and decided to send their own ambassadors to Rome to lodge a complaint with the Roman Senate.

  We are told that the Roman Senate, having listened to the Celtic ambassadors, found that the Celtic demand for an apology was reasonable; however, according to Livy and Plutarch, the Fabii were so powerful as patricians that the Senate felt obliged not to take action. They referred the matter to the people of Rome who not only approved of their actions but, to add insult to injury, elected the Fabii as military tribunes with consular powers for the following year. Livy admits: ‘The Celtic envoys were naturally – and rightly – indignant!’

  Plutarch even says that the fetiales, the college of Roman priests, selected for life among the patrician class and specialists in international law and negotiations, denounced the actions of the Fabii. However, Rome had made its decision. The Celtic ambassadors warned Rome of the consequence. The Senones, and we are speaking of one Celtic tribe here, then marched on Rome to exact retribution. It was a distance of 130 kilometres from Clusium. They did not harm anyone on their march to the city.

  Contrary to all expectation the Celts did them [the people of the countryside] no harm, nor took aught from their fields, but even as they passed close by their cities, shouted out that they were marching on Rome and had declared war only on the Romans, but the rest of the people they regarded as friends.

  This scarcely accords with the general view of the mindless barbaric horde which swept down on Rome. The Senones defeated the Roman army at the Allia, 18 kilometres north of the city, in a classic battle and moved on to Rome itself. They occupied the city for seven months before extracting an apology and a ransom in gold. They then withdrew. They did not want to form any empire over the Romans, simply to punish them for a transgression of accepted international behaviour.

  So the image of the Celts as making war for the sake of making war is one we can dispense with. However, classical writers, particularly Roman writers or Greeks in Roman employ or patronage, loved to talk about Celtic savagery, the qualities of being fierce and uncivilised. By Rome’s own bloodthirsty standards, any Celtic cruelty seems to have been quite mild.

  Like all the Indo-European societies, the Celts did have a warrior caste – the equivalent of the Sanskrit kshatriya, the Roman equites and the Greek hippeis, which we generally tend to translate as ‘knights’. The Celts were no different from other Indo-Europeans in that they had gods of war; their aristocracy or warrior caste had ostentatious weapons and armaments and took pride in individual heroism.

  We also learn that they had special élite warrior bands which we will discuss shortly.

  It is lucky that archaeology often acts as an antidote to the prejudices of the Roman writers. As Dr P.F. Stary pointed out: ‘When the Romans described the Celts in terms of war, they did their best to disparage and degrade not only their abilities as fighting men but even their weapons.’ Ironically, the Etruscans and then the Romans learned a great deal from the advanced weaponry of the Celts. Their own weapons, war helmets and shields, and even their tactics, owed much to Celtic innovations. Dr Stary emphasises that the Celtic weapons were ‘a major influence on the Etruscan and Roman military systems’.

  He also says: ‘Fortunately, many Celtic weapons are known from graves, mainly in eastern and northern Italy, which give a good picture of the Celtic warrior’s equipment and point to a longer occupation in the regions. Further, several Etruscan representations of Celtic warriors are known and form the basis for a better understanding of the Celtic influences on the “superior” Etruscan and Roman military systems.’

  When the Celts first emerged into the Mediterranean world, iron helmets had generally ousted the weaker bronze war helmets. From graves we find these iron helmets appearing in the fourth century BC. Some are exquisitely rich, such as the mid-fourth-century BC helmet from Amfreville, France, with repoussé gold and inlaid with red glass, or the Agris helmet decorated with gold and coral inlay. Many of these helmets had fabulous decorations, often with extraordinary crests, hinged cheek pieces, internal neck guards and other embellishments. According to Diodorus Siculus:

  On their heads they wear bronze helmets which possess large projecting figures of enormous stature to the wearer. In some cases, horns form one part with the helmet, while in other cases, it is relief figures of the fore parts of birds or quadrupeds.

  According to Dr Stary, the helmet bearing a round cap surmounted by a knob with neck and cheek guards was a Celtic invention. The Celts brought this design with them to Italy and it was rapidly adopted by the Etruscans and then by the Romans. The knob helmet was very suitable for flexible warfare. Whereas the initial Celtic design has cheek guards of three rounded discs in the form of a trefoil, the Etruscans added a sickle-shaped cheek piece.

  The Celts also had better shields than the early Romans, large shields which were a better protective covering for the body. They were often carried by a central handle but no forearm strap. The Celtic shield doubled as an offensive weapon because it not only protected the holder from blows of the enemy but could be turned to strike the opponent as well. Examples of shields in early La Tène have been found around 1.1 metres tall but others have been depicted in reliefs as around 1.4 metres, which was the size adopted by the Romans. Diodorus Siculus observed:

  They have man-sized shields decorated in a manner peculiar to them. Some of these have projecting figures in bronze skilfully wrought not only for decoration but for protection.

  It is very likely that the Latin word for shield, scutum, has its origin in the Celtic word which provides the basis of the Irish sciath and its Welsh equivalent ysgwyd, meaning both shield and shoulder. The word scutum was used by the Romans particularly for the Celtic-style man-sized shield, which they did not develop until after their first encounters with the Celts. Attempts to explain scutum from the Latin root obscurus or even a more removed Greek root are not convincing.

  The use of body armour by the Celts has been confirmed by archaeological finds and even by Roman representations of Celts in battle. Indeed, yet another Celtic technical innovation was the invention of chain mail around 300 BC. Diodorus Siculus mentions this, and shirts of interlocking iron rings have been found at Celtic sites. These were labour-intensive products and so only leading chieftains or kings probably wore them. Such shirts could weigh as much as 15 kilograms. The chain mail shirts became highly prized as spoils of war among the Romans who later adopted the idea in their own army. The Latin word cataphractes for a chain mail shirt has been argued to come from the Celtic root cat, war or battle, rather than the Latin catena, a fetter or chain. The word caterva, first used for a company of Celtic ‘barbarian’ soldiers, uses the same root.

  Plutarch admits that the Ro
mans soon learned that the Celtic power in battle lay in their swords, and that the Romans had to develop the new-style helmets, the longer shields and the technique of using their javelins to come under the enemy’s swords when raised for the downward stroke, during their encounters with the Celtic warriors.

  At the same time, Polybius, apparently quoting Quintus Fabius Pictor, claims the Celtic swords were inferior to the Roman swords, ‘the Celtic sword being good only for a cut and not for a thrust’. Yet the very word gladius, the short Roman sword, is claimed to be of Celtic origin. Certainly, we find this short sword in use among the Celtiberians. The word is cognate with the Irish claideb and the Welsh cleddyf, a sword.

  We learn from F. Vegetius Renatus (fourth century AD) that the Romans had to learn new methods to combat the tactics and equipment of the Celtic warriors. The ancient Romans, he says, had to be taught not to cut but to thrust with their swords. We hear much on the inability of the Celts to thrust with their swords but many of the Celtic swords have been found to have prominent points as well as long parallel cutting edges.

  The Celts also gave to the Romans words for a variety of spears and javelins which, had the weapons been inferior, would not have been adopted by the Romans. The word lancea, describing a light spear, has remained in English as lance. The mataris, from which come matara and materi, a pike, was also adopted from Celtic. A gaesum was a strong heavy javelin, and the root gae for spear is still easily recognisable in Irish. There was also a tragula, a light javelin, which Pliny says was also the name for a Celtic sledge. Spears from the La Tène period have been found as long as 2.5 metres, together with spear heads whose serrated edges would have been deadly. It is attested that the Celtic warriors also had bows and slings but used them merely as defensive weapons. If their cavalry had to fall back, archers, who had been strategically placed, would support them and cover their withdrawal.

  Perhaps the Celtic ‘secret weapon’ was their use of war chariots and cavalry. The Celtic armies were highly mobile and had developed the use of transport and a transport system, as we shall discuss in Chapter 10.

  Martial spoke of the covinus, a war chariot, which eventually became the Latin covincarius or travelling cart. But the Celtic word covignos actually implied a shared transport. As war chariots were ‘shared’ by the warrior and his charioteer, this is quite acceptable. Martial, however, has the chariot’s axles fixed with scythes, deadly falces or blades.

  Chariots in battle were something new to the Romans. Chariots as war machines had fallen into disuse in the ancient world centuries before the Roman–Celtic collision. The Celts had retained them or redeveloped them in the light of their innovations with working iron. With stronger wheels and the Celts’ ability to open up a transport system, it was easy to move the chariots to where they were needed. As a weapon of war they were used mainly on the flanks with cavalry. In the initial stages of a battle they would drive against the enemy at speed for the purposes of causing panic. A thousand Celtic chariots took part in the battle of Sentium (295 BC) and also at Telamon (225 BC).

  Diodorus Siculus comments:

  When going into battle, the Celts use two-horsed chariots which carry the charioteer and the warrior. When they meet with cavalry in war, they throw their javelins at the enemy, and, dismounting from their chariots, they join battle with their swords . . . they also bring freemen as servants choosing them from among the poor, and these they use as charioteers and shield bearers.

  Livy admits that, in battle, often the first Roman lines would be trodden underfoot by the rush of cavalry and chariots. Once the lines were broken the Celts used their chariots as a means of transporting the warriors to their combat positions as foot soldiers, just as chariots had been used in Homeric Greece.

  After the battle of Telamon the chariot as a war machine fell into disuse among the Continental Celts who came to rely on cavalry and the staying power of infantry. When Julius Caesar, nearly 200 years after Telamon, took his Roman legionaries to Britain, he seemed surprised to find that war chariots were in use there. He wrote:

  In chariot fighting the Britons begin by driving all over the field hurling javelins, and generally the terror inspired by the horses and noise of the wheels is sufficient to throw their opponents’ ranks into disorder. Then, after making their way between the squadrons of their own cavalry, they jump down from the chariots and engage on foot. In the meantime their charioteers retire a short distance from the battle and place the chariots in such a position that their masters, if hard pressed by numbers, have an easy means of retreat to their own lines. Thus they combine the mobility of cavalry with the staying power of infantry; and by daily training and practice they attain such proficiency that, even on a steep incline, they are able to control the horses at full gallop, and to check and turn them in a moment. They can run along the chariot pole, stand on the yoke, and get back into the chariot as quick as lightning.

  Caesar confesses that the soldiers of his VII Legion were unnerved by the British chariots.

  From early Irish documentation and archaeological remains we find that chariots were also in use in Ireland. Irish mythological texts give fine descriptions of chariot warfare, individual heroic episodes as well as warfare on a greater scale, such as the descriptions of the Táin war.

  The other powerful weapon of the Celtic armies was their cavalry. They even won begrudging admiration from the Romans, who adopted the Celtic horse goddess Epona as an accepted deity of the empire as well as recruiting cavalry regiments from the Celts. This was the only Celtic deity they adopted and her feast day was held in Rome on 18 December. According to Strabo the best cavalry in the Roman army were Celtic. He says of the Celts: ‘Although they are all fine fighting men, yet they are better as cavalry than as infantry and the best of the Roman cavalry is recruited from among them.’

  Like the chariots, Celtic cavalry combined mobility and staying power for the cavalryman would not only unnerve the enemy by shock charges but also dismount and fight on foot when the need arose. The Celtiberians were noted for having small pegs attached to their horses’ reins so that they could ride into a battle, dismount and fix the pegs into the ground to prevent the horse from straying while they fought as infantry.

  Pausanias, in describing the Celtic cavalry at the battle of Thermopylae in 279 BC, has this description of a Celtic cavalry formation:

  To each mounted warrior were attached two servants, who were themselves skilled riders and, like their masters, had a horse. When the Celtic cavalry were in battle, the servants remained behind the ranks and proved useful in the following way. Should a horseman or his horse fall, the slave brought him a horse to mount; if the rider was killed, the slave mounted the horse in his master’s place; if both rider and horse were killed, there was a mounted man ready. When a rider was wounded, one slave brought back to the camp the wounded man, while the other took his vacant place in the ranks . . . This organisation is called in their own language trimarcisia, for I would have you know that marca is the Celtic name for a horse.

  Leaving aside the misconception of ‘slave’ in the description, certainly the word marca is accurately recorded as one of the old Celtic terms for a horse. The word is easily recognisable as march (Welsh), margh (Cornish) and marc’h (Breton).

  Flavius Arrianus, or Arrian (b. c. AD 85–90), a Greek from Nicomedia in Bithynia, who made a career in the Roman army, was much impressed by Celtic cavalry and says that the Romans borrowed their cavalry tactics from the Celts. Talking of witnessing some military manoeuvres, Arrian says that the Celts, on one particular training exercise,

  . . . ride into the mock battle armed with helmets made of iron or brass and covered with gilding to attract the particular attention of the spectators. They have yellow plumes attached to the helmets, not to serve any other useful purpose than for display. They carry oblong shields, unlike the shields for a real battle but lighter in weight – the object of the exercise being smartness and display . . . and gaily decorated. Instea
d of breastplates, they wear tunics, made just like real breastplates, sometimes scarlet, sometimes purple, sometimes multi-coloured. And they have hose, not loose like those in fashion among the Parthians and Armentians, but fitting closely to the limbs.

  Livy has much to say about the tactics of the Celtic cavalry. The Spartans respected the Celtic cavalry when they fought for them against the Thebans. The Hellenic kingdoms were among the first to hire the services of Celtic mercenaries, specifically cavalry units. The Carthaginians also used Celtic cavalry to good effect and, as we have seen, even the Romans, in spite of their sneering criticisms, eventually employed Celtic cavalry as auxiliaries in their army after they had conquered the Celts of Gaul. Indeed, Celtic cavalry became an essential part of the imperial army of the Caesars.

  The Celts were among the first Northern Europeans to evolve a saddle and the Celtic saddles were very intricate. A key technical innovation was the four-pommel saddle. Historians once thought that cavalry could have only a limited effectiveness until the invention of the stirrup. However, in the La Tène period the Celts developed a saddle with a firm seat by means of the four pommels, two behind the rump and one angled out over each thigh. The rider sat in, rather than on, this saddle.

  Greek and Roman writers mention the spectacular clothing which the Celts wore in battle. According to Diodorus Siculus, the Celts ‘wear colourful clothing, tunics dyed and embroidered in many colours, and garments which they call bracae [breeches]; and they wear striped cloaks, fastened by a brooch, thick in winter and light in summer, worked in a variegated, closely set pattern.’ The trousers were particularly worn by Celtic cavalrymen; being such a strange garment to the toga-wearing Romans, they were quickly noticed and adopted whence the Celtic word bracae came into the Latin language and from there made its way into other languages including English (as breeches).