A Brief History of the Celts

by Peter Berresford Ellis

  To build a roadway crossing a bogland, strong enough to take wagon transport, was a difficult feat in the second century BC. The Celtic engineers showed a brilliance of ingenuity. Professor Barry Raftery, the leading Irish archaeologist, has said:

  The road at Corlea was no ordinary road . . . The construction of the Corlea road was a gigantic undertaking comparable to the effort involved in the erection of the linear earthworks or in the building of the great royal centres.

  Corlea is the largest stretch of early Celtic roadway which has survived. But it is not unique. Similar roads have been found in other parts of the Celtic world such as in Dümmer, south of Oldenburg, in Lower Saxony, where the road, in former peatland, shows remarkable similarities of construction. This survival also seems to date from the second century BC. The oldest Celtic roadways have been found in Gwent, in southern Wales; these are also of wooden construction and are laid across the mudflats adjacent to the Severn. The first of these to be found, called the Upton track, has been radiocarbon-dated to around 410 BC.

  Evidence for early Irish roads, bridges and causeways abounds in early Irish literature. The five main roads leading to Tara are mentioned in the oldest manuscripts and these were called slige, significantly from sligim, I hew. Cormac’s Glossary says that such roads were built so that two chariots could pass each other comfortably on the road. These five great roads were often referred to in the annals as well as other literature. The Slige Asail ran north-westerly; the Slige Mudluachra went northwards from Tara in one direction and southwards in the other. The Slige Cualan ran south-east through Dublin across the Liffey by the hurdle bridge which still gives the Irish name to Dublin – Baile Atha Cliath, Town of the Hurdle Ford. The Slige Dála ran south-west from Tara to Ossory, Co. Kilkenny. The fifth road, the Slige Mór, ran south-west from Tara to join the Eiscir Riada, a natural ridge running across the whole country from Dublin to Galway. Significantly the name means ‘Sandhill of Chariot Driving’.

  There is an abundance of terms for a road in old Irish, each name apparently denoting the size and the quality of the road, rather like modern M, A and B categories in England. The ancient Irish were more particular and used no fewer than seven categories ranging from the slige to a lámrota, a term for a small byway literally meaning a hand-road, from lámh, hand, and rót, a small road which is defined as being made for a single-horsed chariot.

  The Brehon Laws state that the king or chief of the territory through which the road ran was responsible for its upkeep. If a traveller was injured on the road, compensation had to be paid. If the traveller himself did damage to the road, he had to pay damages to the king or chief. All roads had to have three major renovations, during the winter, at the time of the fairs or horse racing, and during a time of war.

  There was also a system of bridges and the Senchus Mór lays down precise rules on the construction of these bridges. The ancient word in Irish was droichet. As well as bridges, causeways or tóchar were built. Caesar refers to bridges in Gaul during his conquest of the country.

  Long before Caesar’s time, the Latin language had adopted many Celtic words connected with transport and forms of transport, even the measure of distance – a league, entering Latin as leuca or leaga.

  One of the earliest and most popular Celtic words for a chariot entered Latin as carpentum. It came from the Celtic root carbanto, describing a two-wheeled carriage, and was later used by the Romans specifically for a baggage wagon. From this evolved such words as carpenter, car and cart in a number of European languages. The original Celtic word may be seen in such place-names as Carbantorate, Carpentorate and Carbantoritum. Florus uses the word to describe the silver-mounted vehicle in which the Arverni king Bituitus was paraded after his defeat in 121 BC. By Caesar’s day it was in general use in Latin for a civil vehicle built especially for women.

  There was the carruca, a four-wheeled carriage, and the carrus, a four-wheeled goods wagon. The essedum was a war chariot and the warrior who fought from it was an essedarius, from the Celtic ensedo, implying something for sitting in. The essedum became a Roman pleasure vehicle and during the time of Seneca they were all too common in Rome. Professor Piggott points out that ‘we are in a world where foreign names are in use for wholly Roman vehicles, like nineteenth-century London when gentlemen might discuss the relative comfort of the beline or landau as against brougham and tilbury.’

  The reda or rheda was a four-wheeled carriage used for long distance journeys, driven by a redarius, and the petorritum was an open four-wheeled Celtic wagon. It was Martial, himself an Iberian Celt, who introduced another Celtic loan word – covinus, a war chariot, which eventually became a Roman covinarius or travelling cart. The word is from the Celtic covignos, implying a shared transport.

  Another Celtic term for a wagon, plaustrum or ploxenum, was applied to a vehicle used among the Cisalpine Gauls. Catullus, Cato, Varro and Virgil all describe it as a heavy duty wagon drawn by oxen, asses or mules, with disc wheels and iron tyres. Ovid, curiously, says that plaustrum was the Celtic name for the constellation Ursus Major (the Great Bear).

  Celtic words pertaining to horses were also borrowed, including caballus itself – originally a pack horse but eventually evolving into similar words in many languages, for example (in English) cavalier, cavalry and cavalcade. One of the towns of the Aedui was called Cabillonum, now Châlonsur-Saône.

  This high preponderance of Celtic words in Latin at so early a stage is indicative of Celtic pre-eminence in the field of roadways and transport in their early contacts with Rome.

  Obviously the Celtic world was open to land trade and the movement of goods in heavy wagons. Additionally, however, the Celts built river-going craft and traders moved easily along the great Celtic river routes, along the Danube, the Rhine, the Rhône, the Seine, the Loire and the Po. The question that springs to mind is whether the ancient Celts were also a sea-going people.

  At least one area of the Celtic world was, otherwise we would have great difficulty explaining the presence of Celts in the north-western islands of Ireland and Britain. The traditions of migrations from the Iberian peninsula and the later migrations of the Belgae would have been impossible if the Celts were unable to master the turbulent seas off Europe’s north-west coastline. But to what extent were the ancient Celts ship builders?

  Apart from insular records, we have to rely for our most detailed account on Julius Caesar. He says:

  The Veneti are much the most powerful tribe on this coast [western Gaul]. They have the largest fleet of ships, in which they traffic with Britain; they excel the other tribes in knowledge and experience of navigation; and as the coast lies exposed to the violence of the open sea and has but few harbours, which the Veneti control, they compel nearly all who sail those waters to pay toll.

  Caesar is telling us that the Celts of this coast all have fleets but that the Veneti have the largest and are very skilled in navigating the western seas. Caesar goes on:

  The Gauls’ own ships were built and rigged in a different manner from ours. They were made with much flatter bottoms, to help them to ride shallow water caused by shoals or ebb-tides. Exceptionally high bows and sterns fitted them for use in heavy seas and violent gales, and the hulls were made entirely of oak, to enable them to stand any amount of shocks and rough usage. The cross-timbers, which consisted of beams a foot wide, were fastened with iron bolts as thick as a man’s thumb. The anchors were secured with iron chains instead of ropes. They used sails made of raw hides or thin leather, either because they had no flax and were ignorant of its use, or more probably because they thought that ordinary sails would not stand the violent storms and squalls of the Atlantic and were not suitable for such heavy vessels.

  We know that the use of flax and linen was well established, so Caesar’s second explanation appears the more likely. Caesar says the Celtic sea-going vessels were solidly built and weathered the storms easily. They could not be damaged by ramming with the Roman vessels. Caesar’s description o
f the Veneti ships is endorsed by Strabo.

  Unfortunately, archaeologists have not discovered any surviving examples of these sea-going vessels though they have come across remains of river craft, a typical example being a large dug-out type from Hasholme, in East Yorkshire, dated to the third century BC. However, a vessel remarkably like the one described by Caesar, with high prow and stern, appears on a Pictish cross slab from Cossans, Angus, known as St Orland’s stone.

  Certainly, the insular Celts and their Gaulish sea coast neighbours were advanced in this area. In the early centuries of the Christian period the Picts were famed for their fleet, just as the Veneti had been. The Annals of Tighernach allude to the might of the Pictish navy. There are descriptions of a warship from the Dàl Riada kingdom in Argyll – a small compact vessel which, when not under sail, was propelled by twenty-eight oarsmen seated on seven benches with seven oars on each side.

  Caesar himself makes it clear that there was much intercourse between Gaul and Britain during his time. He met several Britons in Gaul who probably gave him false information about the poverty of Britain in order to dissuade him from invading, for not everything he wrote could be put down to sheer propaganda.

  There was trade with the Celts of Britain and Ireland long before Julius Caesar and the Romans made their first military voyages. As has been mentioned, during the century before Rome’s major conquest of Britain, the period in which southern Britain seemed to be under the high kingship of Cunobelinus, Britain’s trade with the Mediterranean world was much valued. Wheat, cattle, gold, silver, iron, leather goods, hides and hunting dogs were the main exports. Indeed, Strabo (60–24 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.

  Ireland, too, had sea-going vessels and it was obvious that there was much contact between Ireland and Britain and Ireland and Europe. Tacitus tells how an Irish king visited Britain and was taken hostage by Agricola, the Roman governor, and, incidentally, Tacitus’ father-in-law, who planned to invade Ireland. A war in northern Britain forestalled him.

  The Brehon Laws list three types of ship: the ler-longa or sea-going vessels, the barca, or small coastal vessels, also called serrcinn, and lastly the river vessels or curragh. The longa is not a loan word from Latin longus or Saxon long, but merely a cognate, as is barc. The Irish word is used in the earliest manuscripts. Certainly in the early Christian period the Irish were making many expeditions to Britain, travelling to Cornwall and establishing larger colonies, such as the kingdom of Dyfed, in what is now Wales, and the kingdom of Dál Riada, in what is now Scotland. Irish traders and missionaries were also making their presence felt in Europe.

  The discovery of early wine amphorae from the Continent in south-western Ireland indicates the extent of the trade. Certainly we know that Phoenician and Greek traders were visiting Ireland several centuries BC and there is no reason not to suppose that Irish traders were making reciprocal visits. As the early Irish texts speak of their ancestors arriving from the Iberian peninsula, and as the Iberian peninsula was settled by the Celts by the start of the first millennium BC, the use of sea-going ships must have been well established among the Celts.

  In the early Christian period we know that groups of Irish missionaries and settlers had reached Iceland before the Norse and were on the Faroes by the time Diciul was writing in the eighth century. In 1976 explorer Tom Severin and his team reconstructed a sixth-century Irish ship using ethnographic, literary and archaeological sources. They built a leather-covered boat some 11 metres long with a beam of 2.5 metres and fitted with sails and oars. Using the Irish classic Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis, which is said to be a factual account of a voyage made by St Brendan of Clonfert (c. AD 486–578), and the earliest manuscript copies of which survive from the tenth century, Severin traced the voyage from Galway, sailing on 17 May 1976, travelling by way of the Hebrides, Faroes, Iceland and Greenland, and making landfall in Newfoundland on 26 June 1977. He thus proved that the Irish of this period would have been capable of crossing the Atlantic as the Navigatio had apparently recorded.

  The ability of the ancient Celts to travel great distances has been underestimated, in spite of the knowledge of their movements through Europe. Henri Hubert has demonstrated that the various Celtic societies in the ancient world not only shared a sense of common origin but were in communication. He cites two instances from the Second Punic War. When the Romans found that Hannibal proposed to march from the southern Iberian peninsula, through southern Gaul, across the Alps and into Cisalpine Gaul, they sent ambassadors to prevent the Celtic tribes supporting Carthage, but found that all these tribes shared a sense of unity against Rome. Shortly afterwards, the Greek Senate of Massilia (Marseilles) asked their Celtic neighbours to contact the Celts dwelling in Galatia (the central plain of Turkey) and ask them not to act with hostility towards Lampsacos. Hubert argued:

  This solidarity of the Celtic peoples, even when distant from one another, is sufficiently explained by the sense of kinship, of common origin acting in a fairly restricted world, all the parts of which were in communication.

  For that ancient world to be in communication to the extent which these references imply, it would have been essential that the Celts had an efficient transport system, via roads and shipping.

  11

  CELTIC ARTISTS AND CRAFTSMEN

  Polybius makes an extraordinary statement when he writes about the Celts of the Po valley: ‘Their lives were very simple, and they had no knowledge whatsoever of any art or science.’ Here we see the ‘superior’ Roman attitude dominating. I say ‘Roman’ advisedly, although Polybius (c. 200–after 118 BC) was a Greek, born at Megalopolis in Arcadia. He became a tutor to the children of Publius Scipio in Rome and was an unashamed Romanophile. In his work charting the rise of the Roman empire he is unquestioning in the belief that Rome was the greatest nation on earth and its constitution ‘perfection’. Polybius waxes lyrical about his pursuit of ‘truth’ and how he was writing a pragmatike historia, a factual history. However, it is hard to imagine that a man of his learning really believed his own comments on the state of Celtic art and craftsmanship. His audience were the upper-class Romans, who were able to read Greek, and he was writing at a time when the Romans were in the middle of a colonisation programme of the Celts of northern Italy having conquered them in a series of bloody wars.

  Archaeology has given the lie to Polybius and the Roman propagandists, revealing the brilliance of early Celtic art and craftsmanship. Indeed, Celtic art, described by Dr Simon James as representing ‘an aesthetic sense fundamentally different from the classical canon which framed the Renaissance and modern Western conceptions of art, was one of the greatest glories of prehistoric Europe’.

  It is, of course, by the distinctive patterns of surviving artefacts that archaeology traces the emergence of the Celts before written records. The brilliance of metalwork, jewellery, weapons, utensils, wagons and other items shows that the Celtic artists and craftsmen were exceptionally skilled and sought technological perfection in their work.

  Celtic arts and crafts began to evolve in the distinctive form we recognise today during the early Hallstatt period. The decorative art is identified by geometric designs, such as chevrons, parallel lines and concentric circles. Archaeologists have identified the centres of the developing Celtic art as being the Hallstatt royal sites such as Hohenasperg, west of Ludwigsburg in Swabia, where there are many princely graves, and Heuneburg.

  Celtic art was basically a design-centred technique developing in the later period with many zoomorphic emblems and representations. There are very few representations of complete human figures on a realistic level such as occur in Greek and Roman art. However, there are stone sculptures of figures such as those at Hirschlanden and Glauberg.

  Human faces did become a popular motif but they are generally given an almost su
rreal appearance. There is some evidence that Celtic artists were also capable of realistic portrayals but they appear to have rejected this approach. The bronze head of a Celtic war goddess from the first century BC, from Dineault, Brittany, is a realistic representation, as is the Celtic warrior appearing on a brooch, dating from the second century BC, and reckoned to be of Iberian Celtic workmanship. There is also the figurine of a goddess from the first century AD, from Chalmalières, now in the Musée Archéologique, at Clermont Ferrand. Dr James has suggested that, in the light of the obvious Celtic ability to make realistic representations of the human body, ‘perhaps human figures and scenes were taboo’. This seems a likely explanation. In Moslem art, too, human representations are taboo; the accent is on design because of religious proscription and not because of an inability on the part of the artists.

  As the Hallstatt period came to its later stages and trade with Etruscans, Greeks, Phoenicians and the Latin world opened up, the Celtic artists were undoubtedly influenced by the new concepts from the Mediterranean world, but they were highly selective as to what they took from these sources.

  The La Tène period of art began to flourish with a continuation of geometric motifs whose intricate detail and ornamentation fascinates modern viewers. Many people think that the intricacy and inexplicable symbolism might have had a religious connotation – again, much as similar motifs are used in Moslem art.