A Brief History of the Celts

by Peter Berresford Ellis

  Magnesia was a major Roman victory. The Romans were aided by Eumenes II of Pergamum. The victorious general was Lucius Cornelius Scipio whose brother had been the victor over Hannibal at Carthage. Hannibal had sought refuge with Antiochus III, one of the major political reasons for Rome declaring war on Antiochus. Rome demanded Hannibal be handed over, but he committed suicide soon afterwards.

  Rome was now concerned to pacify and annex Asia Minor to its overlordship. They decided that the most dangerous people there were the Celts of Galatia and Gnaeus Manlius Volso was given command of a punitive expedition against Galatia in 189 BC.

  Major Celtic defeats followed his invasion of their territory. The Tolistoboii and Trocmi were defeated at the battle of Mount Olympus near the city of Pessinus. Livy says this was won with a great slaughter of non-combatants, women and children and the elderly, before Volso marched on to defeat the Tectosages near Ancyra, at a hill called Magaba. Volso made Galatia a vassal territory of their allies, Pergamum. Livy was inclined to excuse the pitiless Roman crushing of the Galatians as an attempt to show the Galatians, once and for all, who was in charge.

  A Celtic leader named Ortagion now emerged as a man of vision. He was a chieftain of the Tolistoboii and it seems that he was the first to unite the three Celtic peoples of Galatia under a central leadership in order to survive. Polybius was able to interview Ortagion’s wife, Chiomara, when she was in Sardis.

  While Asia Minor was nominally under Roman suzerainty, Rome did not interfere too much in the political developments there. The Galatian leaders, to keep some degree of independence, formed alliances, one with their former enemy Eumenes II in order to drive out Parnaces I of Pontus who attempted to exert his authority over Galatia.

  An alliance with Prusias II of Bithynia then helped the Celts overthrow Pergamum’s overlordship. An alliance with Rome against Cappadocia increased Galatian independence so that by 123 BC the Galatian state was independent and powerful once again. However, a new threat came along in the person of Mithridates V ‘The Great’ of Pontus who made Pontus into a large empire encompassing the coastal regions of the Black Sea, even to the north coast, including the Crimea and the region around the mouth of the River Dniester.

  In 88 BC he invited the sixty major Galatian chieftains to his court to dine and discuss his intentions. It was part of Celtic culture that no one would enter the feasting hall bearing arms and Mithridates relied on this fact. As they started to eat, his soldiers killed them. Only three chieftains had not attended and Mithridates had sent assassins to deal with them. They only managed to kill one. Out of those attending the feast, but a single chieftain escaped – he was Deiotarus, son of Dumnorix, of the Tolistoboii.

  Deiotaros now led Galatian resistance against Mithridates and, in 74 BC, he finally drove out Zeumachus, whom Mithridates had made governor of Galatia. Mithridates had made the mistake of declaring war on Rome and so Deiotaros now emerged as undisputed king of Galatia. He was quick to make treaties of friendship and alliance with Rome. Mithridates was toppled and fled into exile where he ironically met his death at the hands of a Celt.

  Deiotaros made friends with Pompey and Cicero, and even entertained Julius Caesar at his hill-forts in Galatia. However, he was subsequently tried in absentia in Rome where he was charged with attempting to assassinate Caesar. It was a trumped up charge and Cicero conducted his defence in 47 BC. Deiotarus survived and died in old age. His son Deiotarus II became king but ruled for only a few years. Amyntas became the last independent king of Galatia for Rome had already decided to take it over and administer it as a Roman province.

  Rome had made some treaties with the Greek merchant cities of the western Mediterranean, in particular with the city of Massilia. Around 125 BC the Celtic Salyes had attacked Massilia twice and Rome now intervened to protect the city. But once in control of Massilia, and having defeated the Celtic Salyes and the Allobriges, Rome realised that her dominions could now extend across the southern territory of Gaul from the Alps to Massilia. In 118 BC Rome made a formal extension of this new province (Provence) as far west as Tolosa (Toulouse), the capital of the Tolostoboii of Gaul. Then the boundary was taken to Narbon. The new province was now called Gallia Narbonensis. Yet again, Rome had extended its empire at the cost of the lands of the Celts.

  In what is now Rumania, the Celts and Dacians formed an alliance about 109 BC to stop Roman expansion in their territory. Around the same time, in Gallia Narbonensis, the Celts made a last-ditch attempt to throw out the Romans. Tribes called the Cimbri and Teutones (it is a subject of argument whether they were Celts or Germans, although their leaders bore Celtic names and their weapons and what is known about them identify them as distinctly Celtic) swept into the area and defeated a Roman army. Divicio, a Celtic chieftain of the Tugurni, defeated a second Roman army. A Roman garrison in Tolosa was besieged. More defeats of Roman forces followed, including the army of Caepio and of Manlius just north of Massilia. In 102 BC the army of Catalus was forced to fall back.

  In spite of these reverses to their fortunes, the Romans reorganised their army, under the command of Caius Marius, and in 101 BC the Celts, some 120,000, were defeated in a battle at Vercellae.

  It is now that we hear about the pressures on the Celts from the Germanic tribes to the north and the Slavic tribes to the east. Burebista of Dacia launched a war of annexation on the Celts in 60 BC and defeated the Boii of Bohemia, named after them. Some 32,000 Boii left Bohemia to join the Helvetii.

  Against these pressures, the Helvetii, led by Orgetorix and his son-in-law, Dumnorix of the Aedui, formed a Celtic alliance with plans for a westward migration away from the incursions of the Germanic tribes and the Slavs. It was to be a mass migration. Apparently such Celtic migrations had been happening for a while as the Germanic and Slavic tribes pressed on the Celtic territories. Julius Caesar found documents in the Helvetian camp which were written in Greek characters and contained a register of all the people in this migratory alliance. The grand total was 368,000, of whom 92,000 were warriors. The Helvetii numbered 263,000, the Tulingi 36,000, the Latovici 14,000, the Rauraci 23,000 and the Boii 32,000.

  The Celts were desperate to escape from the continuing raids on their homelands.

  Rome had other ideas.

  Julius Caesar had been given the governorship of Cisalpine Gaul. Chance gave him Transalpine Gaul (Narbonensis Gaul or Provence) because the governor died unexpectedly. Now news came of the proposed migrations of the Helvetii and allied tribes. Dumnorix had a pro-Roman brother, who was now ruler of the Aedui, and he was persuaded to seek a Roman alliance in case his territory was swamped by the migration. Thus Caesar was able to make this an excuse to intervene in the affairs of Gaul proper in 58 BC. The Helvetii tried to avoid confrontation with the Roman army led by Caesar but were forced into a battle and defeated at Bibracte. The vast majority were massacred. Only a third of the original band of emigrants were driven back into what is now Switzerland, still calling itself Helvetica.

  Once with an army in Gaul, Caesar showed his true ambition, and Rome’s too. He commenced the conquest of Gaul proper. Tribe by tribe, the Romans extended their power until they reached the Channel shore. The Romans also checked the incursions of the Germanic tribes, keeping them back on the eastern side of the Rhine.

  In 55 BC Caesar even felt strong enough to make an exploratory expedition to Britain where he landed and defeated the Cantii confederation of tribes near Walmer or Deal, before being forced to return to Gaul by impending bad weather and unrest in the newly conquered territory. There were various uprisings which had to be put down. However, in 54 BC, Caesar made a second expedition to Britain and was able to march inland. The British tribes had given command to Cassivellaunus, and Caesar, fighting every foot of the way, was finally able to reach his capital at Wheathampstead, near St Albans, in Hertfordshire. A treaty was negotiated but bad weather made his withdrawal from Britain a necessity.

  Once more he returned to Gaul to find that Celtic resistan
ce there had grown stronger and unified behind a central leader. Indutiomarus of the Treveri appeared as the main leader, following the slaughter of Dumnorix of the Aedui while a hostage of Rome. It is certainly thanks to Indutiomarus that a Gaulish army was established with a central policy. However, the Gaulish leader was soon killed.

  It is now that Vercingetorix of the Arverni is acknowledged commander-in-chief of the Celtic forces in Gaul, and he inflicted a severe defeat on Caesar at Gergovia. In 52 BC Caesar managed to besiege Vercingetorix at Alesia and finally the Gaulish king surrendered, to prevent his people starving as the Celts had starved at Numantia. He was taken to Rome in chains, imprisoned and, finally, in 46 BC was ritually slaughtered as part of the Roman triumphal celebrations.

  However, Gaul was still uneasy under the pax Romana. Commius and the Atrebates of the Belgae decided to leave Gaul and settle among the Atrebates of southern Britain. Britain was able to maintain its independence. The Gaulish Celts continued to assert their independence in a series of insurrections. The Bellovaci rose in 46 BC, the Allobriges in 44 BC, the Aquitani and Morini in 33 BC. More insurrections occurred in 25/7 BC in south-west Gaul. Even into the first century of the Christian era there were uprisings to re-establish their independence from Rome. We find around AD 67 the Druids of Gaul supporting a Gaulish uprising and, according to Tacitus, reminding their countrymen that their ancestors had once captured and occupied Rome itself.

  With Cisalpine Gaul becoming officially part of the Roman state in 42 BC, Galatia became a Roman province, for Amyntas, who was killed in 25 BC, was the last king recognised by Rome. M. Lollius then became the first governor of the Galatian province. The Celts of Galatia became the first non-Jewish population to accept the new Christian religion: St Paul’s famous epistle to the Galatians was written to this Celtic Christian community. Celtic was still spoken in Galatia, according to St Jerome, during the fourth century AD but over the following centuries it vanished, probably completely by the ninth century AD. Iberia had also been subdued and Latinised, although speakers of a Celtic language were resettled in the area of Galicia and Asturias in the fifth and sixth centuries AD. The Celtic world, which had once stretched from one end of Europe to the other, and beyond, was rapidly shrinking.

  Only Britain and Ireland stood outside the Roman orbit at this time. Britain had recovered from the two brief campaigns fought by Caesar in 55 and 54 BC. With the southern British kings minting their own coins from the second century BC, and with a rich trade developing between their kingdoms and the Continent, it appears that Cassivellaunus and his descendants had also united the kingdoms under their overkingship. Cunobelinus, the Cymbeline of Shakespeare, became the best known of these monarchs, reigning from AD 10 to c. 40. As we have seen, Strabo was moved to write that Rome would accrue more financial reward by trading with Britain than attempting to conquer it.

  The Roman emperors did not take his advice and under the emperor Claudius, in AD 43, a full-scale invasion, commanded by Aulus Plautius, took place. It took nine years to smash resistance in south-eastern Britain, ending with the capture of the over-king Caractacus, the son of Cunobelinus, and his family. Betrayed by Cartimandua, queen of the Brigantes, Caractacus was taken in chains to Rome and only his own eloquence saved him from a ritual execution. Britain, however, was never fully conquered. Rome never secured a foothold in the north and its rule elsewhere was tenuous. Its history over the next few centuries is marked by uprisings and finally, in AD 410, Zosimus reports that all Roman officials had been expelled from Britain and a native government re-established. Indeed, the old Celtic rulers, who had survived the three centuries of Roman rule, re-emerged, almost like the Indian princes who survived the two centuries of the British Raj in India. However, whereas in an independent India the old semi-independent principalities and kingdoms were taken over by the new state, it was the Celtic princes who were once more in charge of an independent Britain and with an over-king in control. We hear that around AD 425–450 the ruler of southern Britain was called Vortigern – the name means ‘Overlord’. But the Celts of southern Britain were now faced by a new, even more remorseless enemy than Rome – the Anglo-Saxons, who eventually carved ‘England’ out of the former Celtic territory by forcing the indigenous population to migrate in large waves to such places as Brittany, Galicia and Asturias, and to Ireland. Those that did not migrate were simply massacred.

  In Ireland, the Celts had survived unscathed by the threat of Roman empire, developing their native laws, literature and learning. Although Irish is the third literary language of Europe after Greek and Latin and we have texts surviving from the sixth century AD, recording earlier oral traditions, the history of Ireland prior to that date is obscure. Some historians do not believe that the Celts even arrived in Ireland until c. 200 BC, following the Roman conquest of the Iberian peninsula.

  Ireland had become known to the Roman world by the first century AD. Tacitus records: ‘In soil and climate, and in the character and civilisations of its inhabitants, [it] is much like Britain; and its approaches and harbours have now become better known from the merchants who trade there . . .’ Archaeology certainly provides evidence of trading links. From Tacitus also we hear of an Irish prince ‘expelled from his home by rebellion’, who arrived in Britain in c. AD 80 and whom Agricola considered using as a pretext for an invasion. However, he was too busily occupied trying to conquer northern Britain.

  There was an Irish tradition, recounted in Leabhar Gabhála (Book of Invasions), that Míle Easpain (Soldier of Spain), the progenitor of the Gaels, led his people to Ireland from Spain. Archaeological evidence from the stone chevaux-de-frise fortifications at, among other places, Dún Aenghus, on the Aran Islands, is cited in evidence, for similar constructions are found in Spain and Portugal. However, Irish tradition and the Irish genealogies of kings, the king lists, put the date of the creation of the two major royal lines in Ireland to 1015 BC. These are the lines of Eremon and Eber, the sons of Golamh or Míle. This would place the arrival of Míle’s sons in Ireland 700–800 years before a date archaeologists would be happy to accept.

  Certainly the first known inhabitants of Ireland lived there in 6000 BC and the first farming communities were active in 3000 BC. Around 1500 BC Irish bronze and gold work was actually being exported to Europe. It may be possible that speakers of an Indo-European dialect had reached Ireland by this time. Is there, however, anything to suggest that a new group of people arrived in Ireland around 1015 BC which would give substance to the Irish literary tradition?

  In fact, archaeologists have admitted to noticing ‘a wind of change’ in Ireland after 1200 BC. This ‘change’ was revealed in an important find from Bishopsland, Co. Kildare, where the equipment of a smith was unearthed. He had buried his anvil, vice, saw and other tools such as a socketed axe-head, chisel and palstave. These tools appear to be similar to Celtic developments in southern Germany. Similar finds were made in Lough Gur, Co. Limerick, and Annesborough, Co. Armagh. We also find Hallstatt-type swords in Ireland though these are not of sufficient number to indicate a large-scale invasion. But while it is in the archaeologist’s nature to look for large-scale ‘invasions’, the less dramatic ‘development’ theories must also be considered: changes in society do not have to be brought about by invasions from outside cultures.

  It is possible, therefore, that the first Celtic-speaking groups came to Ireland exactly when the Irish literary traditions say they did; small groups, perhaps, intermarrying with the previous Indo-European population and developing the Celtic language which was spoken throughout Ireland when the country emerged into recorded history. Ireland could still have been a haven for Continental Celts fleeing from the Roman conquests towards the end of the first century BC, which would have reinforced this culture.

  Cecile O’Rahilly, in Ireland and Wales: Their Historical and Literary Relations, demonstrated the evidence of a continuing movement of small population groups between Ireland and Britain from the prehistoric period through
to medieval times. She shows that groups of British Celts fled both Roman and Anglo-Saxon conquests and settled in Ireland.

  The La Tène culture had reached Ireland by the third and second centuries BC, although more examples have been found in the northern half of the country. The surviving archaeological material really gives us no reliable evidence of any large-scale Celtic migrations. The fact is that Ireland was Celtic-speaking from earliest references, such as Avienus’ Ora Maritima. Though surviving from the fourth century AD, this is known to contain material based on earlier Greek exploratory voyages of the fifth century BC. Strabo speaks of Ireland in his Geography.

  It is at this point, the start of the Christian era, that we may leave the world of the ancient Celts.

  Today, the Celtic world has indeed dwindled to the sixteen millions dwelling on the north-west periphery of Europe, of which only two-and-a-half millions still speak a Celtic language. These are the lineal descendants of the once extensive civilisation of the ancient Celts, the inheritors of 3000 years of a unique and rich cultural continuum.

  SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING

  ARMIT, IAN. Celtic Scotland, B.T. Batsford, London, 1997.

  AUDOUZE, FRANÇOISE, and BÜCHSENSCHÜTZ. Towns, Villages and Countryside of Celtic Europe, B.T. Batsford, 1992.

  BRUNEAUX, JEAN LOUIS. The Celtic Gauls: Gods, Rites and Sanctuaries, Seaby, London, 1988.

  CHADWICK, NORA K. The Druids, University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1966.