Beliefs and culture of the Celts. Ancient Celts
G. ALEXANDROVSKY. Based on materials from Der Spiegel magazine.
Tribes close in language and culture, known in history as the Celts (this name comes from the ancient Greeks, the Romans called them Gauls), settled almost throughout Europe about three thousand years ago. Their stay on the continent was marked by many advances in the field of material culture, which their neighbors also enjoyed. Early European literature, or rather folklore, drew a lot from the monuments of creativity of this ancient people. The heroes of many medieval tales - Tristan and Isolde, Prince Eisenhertz (Iron Heart) and the wizard Merlin - all of them were born from the imagination of the Celts. Their heroic sagas, written down in the 8th century by Irish monks, feature fabulous Grail knights such as Percival and Lancelot. Today, very little is written about the life of the Celts and the role they played in the history of Europe. They had better luck in modern entertainment literature, mainly in French comics. The Celts, like the Vikings, are portrayed as barbarians in horned helmets, who like to drink and eat boar meat. Let this image of a rude, albeit cheerful, carefree savage remain on the conscience of the creators of today's pulp literature. A contemporary of the Celts, Aristotle, called them “wise and skillful.”
Ritual holiday of modern followers of the Druids.
A Celtic warrior fights an Etruscan horseman (circa 400 BC).
Bronze image of a chariot filled with people doomed to sacrifice to the gods. 7th century BC
Reconstruction of an altar dating back to the 2nd century BC.
A figurine from the 1st century BC depicts a Druid - a Celtic priest.
Bronze jug. IV century BC
The double-handled jug is an example of typical pottery from a period of Celtic history.
The painting, painted in 1899, depicts the scene of the capture of the Celtic leader Fercingetorix by Julius Caesar. Two million Celts were killed and taken into slavery as a result of Caesar's campaign against Gaul.
This is how historians imagine a Celtic settlement. This reconstruction was carried out on the site where the capital of the Celts, Manching, was once located.
Statue discovered near Frankfurt. This sandstone sculpture provided much insight into the life of the Celts.
Items found by archaeologists studying the history of the Celts: a vessel, a boar figurine, a richly decorated helmet, a clothing pin (fibula), a round buckle, amber jewelry, a bronze head of a man.
Wise and skillful
The skill of the Celts is confirmed today by archaeological finds. Back in 1853, a horse harness was found in Switzerland; the skill with which its details were made has led scientists to doubt: was it really made in ancient times by the Celts or is it a modern fake? However, skeptical voices have long since fallen silent. According to modern researchers, Celtic masters were capable of the finest execution of magnificent artistic designs.
The German researcher Helmut Birkhahn, in his book about Celtic culture, speaks of the genius of the technicians of that time who invented the carpentry workbench. But they also have a much more important task - they were the first to establish salt mines and were the first to learn how to produce iron and steel from iron ore, and this determined the beginning of the end of the Bronze Age in Europe. Around 800 B.C. Bronze in Central and Western Europe is being replaced by iron.
Birkhahn, studying and analyzing the latest trophies of archeology, comes to the conclusion that the Celts, who initially settled in the center of Europe, in the Alps, generous with fossils, quickly accumulated wealth, created well-armed units that influenced politics in the ancient world, developed crafts, and their craftsmen possessed high technologies for that time.
Here is a list of the pinnacles of production that were available only to Celtic craftsmen.
They were the only ones among other peoples who made bracelets from molten glass that did not have seams.
The Celts received copper, tin, lead, and mercury from deep deposits.
Their horse-drawn carriages were the best in Europe.
The metallurgical Celts were the first to learn how to produce iron and steel.
The Celts-blacksmiths were the first to forge steel swords, helmets and chain mail - the best weapons in Europe at that time.
They mastered gold laundering on Alpine rivers, the production of which was measured in tons.
On the territory of modern Bavaria, the Celts erected 250 religious temples and built 8 large cities. For example, the city of Kelheim occupied 650 hectares; another city, Heidengraben, was two and a half times larger - 1600 hectares; Ingolstadt was spread over the same area (here are the modern names of German cities that arose on Celtic sites). It is known what the name of the main city of the Celts, on the site of which Ingolstadt grew up, was called - Manching. It was surrounded by a seven-kilometer-long rampart. This ring was perfect in terms of geometry. Ancient builders changed the flow of several streams to ensure the accuracy of the circular line.
The Celts are a numerous people. In the first millennium BC, it occupied the territory from the Czech Republic (according to the modern map) to Ireland. Turin, Budapest and Paris (then called Lutetia) were founded by the Celts.
There was excitement inside the Celtic cities. Professional acrobats and strongmen entertained the townspeople on the streets. Roman authors speak of the Celts as natural-born horsemen, and all of them emphasize the panache of their women. They shaved their eyebrows, wore narrow belts that emphasized their thin waists, decorated their faces with headbands, and almost everyone had amber beads. Massive gold bracelets and neck rings jingled at the slightest movement. The hairstyles resembled towers - for this purpose the hair was moistened with lime water. Fashion in clothing - bright and colorful in an oriental way - changed frequently. The men all wore mustaches and gold rings around their necks, the women wore bracelets on their legs, which were chained while still a girl.
The Celts had a law - you had to be thin, and therefore many went in for sports. Anyone who did not fit the “standard” belt was fined.
The customs in everyday life were unique. In military campaigns, homosexuality was the norm. The woman enjoyed great freedom; it was easy for her to get a divorce and take back the dowry she brought with her. Each tribal prince kept his own squad, which defended his interests. A frequent reason for fights could be even such a minor reason - which of the elders would get the first, best piece of deer or wild boar. For the Celts this was a matter of honor. Similar discords are reflected in many Irish sagas.
The Celts could not be called one nation; they remained fragmented into separate tribes, despite their common territory (more than one million square kilometers), a common language, a single religion, and trade interests. The tribes, numbering approximately 80,000 people, acted separately.
Journey into the past
Imagine that, wearing a helmet equipped with a miner's lamp, you are descending an inclined working deep into the mountain, into a mine where the Celts have mined salt since time immemorial in the eastern Alps. The journey into the past has begun.
After a quarter of an hour, we come across a transverse excavation; just like the drift along which we walked, it is trapezoidal in cross-section, but all four sides of it are five times smaller, only a child can crawl into this hole. And once upon a time an adult man walked here in full growth. The rock in salt mines is very plastic and, over time, seems to heal the wounds inflicted on it by people.
Now salt is not mined in the mine, the mine has been turned into a museum where you can see and learn how people once obtained the salt that everyone needed here. Archaeologists are working nearby; they are separated from tourists by an iron grate with the inscription: “Attention! Research in progress.” The lamp illuminates a downward sloping wooden tray, along which you can sit down to the next drift.
The mine is located a few kilometers from Salzburg (translated as Salt Fortress). The city's history museum is filled with finds from the mines scattered throughout the area called Salzkammergut. Salt from this region of the Alps was transported to all corners of Europe thousands of years ago. The peddlers carried it on their backs in the form of 8-10 kg cylinders lined with wooden slats and tied with ropes. In exchange for salt, valuables from all over Europe flocked to Salzburg (in the museum you can see a stone knife made in Scandinavia - the mineral composition proves this - or jewelry made from Baltic amber). This is probably why the city in the eastern foothills of the Alps has been famous since ancient times for its wealth, fairs and holidays. They still exist - the whole world knows the annual Salzburg festivals, which every theater and every orchestra dreams of attending.
Finds in salt mines step by step reveal to us a distant and largely mysterious world. Wooden shovels, but also iron picks, leg wraps, remains of woolen sweaters and fur caps - all this was found by archaeologists in long-abandoned adits. A medium containing excess salt prevents the decomposition of organic materials. Therefore, scientists were able to see the cut ends of sausages, boiled beans and fossilized digestive waste. The beds indicate that people did not leave the mine for a long time and slept next to the face. According to rough estimates, about 200 people worked in the mine at the same time. In the dim light of the torches, soot-stained people cut down salt blocks, which they then pulled to the surface on sleds. The sleigh slid along tracks made of damp wood.
The drifts cut by people connect shapeless caves created by nature itself. According to rough estimates, people walked more than 5,500 meters of drifts and other workings in the mountain.
Among the finds made by modern archaeologists in the mines, there are no human remains. Only the chronicles dating back to 1573 and 1616 say that two corpses were found in the caves, their tissues, like those of mummies, were almost petrified.
Well, those finds that now reach archaeologists often make them rack their brains. For example, the exhibit coded “B 480” resembles a fingertip made from a pig’s bladder. The open end of this small pouch could be tightened using an attached cord. What is this - scientists are wondering - is it protection for a wounded finger or a small wallet for valuables?
Sacred plant - mistletoe
“When researching the history of the Celts,” says historian Otto-Herman Frey of Marburg, “surprises fall like raindrops.” A monkey skull was found at the Irish cult site Emain Macha. How did he end up there and what role did he perform? In 1983, archaeologists came across a board with text. It was partially deciphered and it was realized that this was a dispute between two groups of rival witches.
Another sensational discovery made in recent months has added to speculation about the spiritual culture of the Celts. A stylized human figure larger than life-size, made of sandstone, was discovered 30 kilometers from Frankfurt. The left hand holds a shield, the right hand is pressed to the chest, and a ring is visible on one of the fingers. His costume is complemented by neck ornaments. On the head there is something like a turban in the shape of a mistletoe leaf, a plant sacred to the Celts. The weight of this figure is 230 kilograms. What does she represent? So far, experts adhere to two opinions: either this is the figure of some kind of deity, or this is a prince, also invested with religious duties, perhaps the main priest - a druid, as the Celtic clergy are called.
It must be said that there is no other European nation that deserves such gloomy assessments when it comes to the Druids, their magic and commitment to human sacrifice. They killed prisoners and fellow criminals, they were also judges, practiced healing, and taught children. They also played an important role as prophets of the future. Together with the tribal nobility, the Druids formed the upper stratum of society. After the victory over the Celts, the Roman emperors made them their tributaries, banned human sacrifices, took away many privileges from the Druids, and they lost the aura of significance that surrounded them. True, for a long time they still existed as wandering soothsayers. And even now in Western Europe you can meet people who claim that they have inherited the wisdom of the Druids. Books like “Teachings of Merlin - 21 lectures on practical Druid magic” or “Celtic tree horoscope” are being published. Winston Churchill joined the circle of Druid followers in 1908.
Archaeologists have not yet encountered a single Druid grave, so information about the religion of the Celts is extremely scarce. It is understandable, therefore, with what interest historians are studying the figure found near Frankfurt in the hope that science will move forward in this area.
The statue with the turban apparently stood in the center of the funeral complex, which was an earthen hill, led to it by a 350-meter alley, along the edges of which there were deep ditches. The remains of a man about 30 years old were discovered deep in the hill. The burial took place 2500 years ago. Four restorers carefully freed the skeleton from the soil and moved it to the laboratory, where they gradually removed the remaining soil and remnants of clothing. One can understand the impatience of scientists when they saw a complete coincidence of the deceased’s equipment with that depicted on the statue: the same neck ornament, the same shield and the same ring on the finger. One might think that the ancient sculptor repeated the appearance of the deceased as he looked on the day of the funeral.
Workshop of Europe and dark rituals
Elizabeth Knoll, a historian dealing with the prehistory of Europe, highly appreciates the level of development of the Celts: “They did not know writing, did not know an all-encompassing state organization, but nevertheless they were already on the threshold of high culture.”
At least in technical and economic terms, they were far superior to their northern neighbors - the Germanic tribes who occupied the swampy right bank of the Rhine and partially inhabited the south of Scandinavia. It was only thanks to their proximity to the Celts that these tribes, who knew neither time nor fortified cities, were mentioned in history shortly before the birth of Christ. And the Celts at these times had just reached the zenith of their power. To the south of the Main, trade life was in full swing; cities, large for that time, were erected, in which forges rang, circles of potters revolved, and money flowed from buyers to sellers. This was a level that the Germans of that time did not know.
The Celts raised their ritual temple to 1000 meters in the Carinthian Alps near Magdalensberg. In the neighborhood of the temple, you can still find slag dumps two hundred meters long and three meters wide - these are the remains of iron ore processing. Here there were furnaces, in which ore was turned into metal, and there were forges, where shapeless castings, the so-called “kritsy” - a mixture of metal and liquid slag - became steel swords, spearheads, helmets or tools. No one in the Western world did this at that time. Steel products enriched the Celts.
An experimental replication of Celtic metallurgy by the Austrian scientist Harold Straube showed that these early furnaces could reach temperatures of up to 1,400 degrees. By controlling temperature and skillfully handling molten ore and coal, ancient craftsmen produced either soft iron or hard steel at will. Straube's publication on "Ferrum Noricum" ("Northern Iron") sparked further research into Celtic metallurgy. The inscriptions discovered by archaeologist Gernot Riccocini speak of a brisk trade in steel with Rome, which bought steel in bulk in the form of ingots resembling bricks or strips, and through the hands of Roman merchants this metal went to the weapon workshops of the eternal city.
All the more monstrous, against the backdrop of brilliant achievements in the field of technology, is the almost manic passion of the Celts to sacrifice human lives. This theme runs like a red thread in many works of the time of the Caesars. But who knows, maybe the Romans deliberately emphasize this in order to gloss over their own crimes in the wars they waged in Europe, for example, in the Gallic one?
Caesar describes the group burnings used by the Druids. The already mentioned researcher Birkhan reports the custom of drinking wine from a goblet made from the skull of an enemy. There are documents that say that the Druids guessed the future by the type of blood flowing from a person’s stomach after being struck with a dagger. The same priests instilled in the people the fear of ghosts, the transmigration of souls, and the revival of dead enemies. And in order to prevent the arrival of a defeated enemy, the Celt beheaded his corpse or cut it into pieces.
The Celts were equally distrustful of deceased relatives and tried to prevent the deceased from returning. In the Ardennes, graves were found in which 89 people were buried, but 32 skulls are missing. A Celtic burial was found in Durrenberg in which the deceased was completely “dismantled”: the sawed-off pelvis lies on the chest, the head is separated and stands next to the skeleton, the left arm is completely missing.
In 1984, excavations in England brought scientists evidence of how the ritual murder took place. Archaeologists are lucky. The victim lay in soil saturated with water, and therefore the soft tissues did not decompose. The dead man's cheeks were clean-shaven, his nails were well-groomed, and his teeth too. The date of death of this man is approximately 300 BC. Having examined the corpse, it was possible to reconstruct the circumstances of this ritual murder. The victim was first hit in the skull with an axe, then he was strangled with a noose and finally his throat was cut. Mistletoe pollen was found in the stomach of the unfortunate man - this suggests that the Druids were involved in the sacrifice.
English archaeologist Barry Gunlife notes that all sorts of prohibitions and taboos played an inordinate role in the life of the Celts. The Irish Celts, for example, did not eat crane meat, the British Celts did not eat hares, chickens and geese, and certain things could only be done with the left hand.
Every curse, and even wish, according to the Celts, had magical powers and therefore inspired fear. They were also afraid of curses supposedly uttered by the deceased. This also pushed to separate the head from the body. Skulls of enemies or their embalmed heads adorned temples, were displayed as trophies of veterans, or were kept in their chests.
Irish sagas, ancient Greek and Roman sources speak of ritual cannibalism. The ancient Greek historian and geographer Strabo writes that the sons ate the meat of their late father.
An ominous contrast appears between archaic religiosity and high technical skill for those times. “Such a diabolical synthesis,” concludes Huffer, a researcher of the morals of ancient people, “we only find among the Mayans and Aztecs.”
Where did they come from?
Who were the Celts? Scientists are learning a lot about the lives of ancient people by studying their funeral rituals. Around 800 years ago BC, the inhabitants of the northern Alps burned their dead and buried them in urns. Most researchers agree that the ritual of burial in urns among the Celts slowly gave way to the burial not of ashes, but of bodies, although, as already mentioned, mutilated ones. Oriental motifs can be discerned in the clothing of the buried: pointed-toed shoes, the nobility wore trousers. We must also add the round conical hats that Vietnamese peasants still wear. The art is dominated by patterns of animal figures and grotesque decorations. According to the German historian Otto-Hermann Frey, there is an undeniable Persian influence in the clothing and art of the Celts. There are other signs pointing to the East as the homeland of the ancestors of the Celts. The Druid teachings about the rebirth of the dead are reminiscent of Hinduism.
Whether the Celts were born horsemen is a matter of debate among modern experts. Supporters of an affirmative answer to the question turn their attention to the inhabitants of the European steppes - the Scythians - these hunters and natural riders - is it not where the ancestors of the Celts came from? One of the authors of this point of view, Gerhard Herm, commented on it with the following humorous question: “Are we all Russians?” - meaning by this the hypothesis according to which the settlement of Indo-European peoples came from the center of Eastern Europe.
The Celts gave the first material signal of their presence in Europe in 550 BC (At that time, Rome was just being formed, the Greeks were busy with their Mediterranean, the Germans had not yet emerged from prehistoric darkness.) Then the Celts declared themselves by creating burial grounds in the Alps hills for the resting place of their princes. The hills were up to 60 meters high, which allowed them to survive to this day. The burial chambers were full of rare things: Etruscan castanets, a bronze bed, ivory furniture. In one of the graves they found the largest (for ancient times) bronze vessel. It belonged to Prince Fix and could hold 1100 liters of wine. The prince's body was wrapped in a thin red cloth. The threads are 0.2 millimeters thick and are comparable to the thickness of horsehair. Nearby stood a bronze vessel with 400 liters of honey and a cart assembled from 1,450 parts.
The remains of this prince were transported to the Stuttgart Museum. The 40-year-old ancient leader was 1.87 meters tall; the bones of his skeleton are striking, they are extremely massive. At the request of the museum, the Skoda plant undertook to make a copy of the bronze vessel into which honey was poured. The thickness of its walls is 2.5 millimeters. However, the secret of the ancient metallurgists was never discovered: modern craftsmen kept breaking the bronze while making the vessel.
Trade routes
The skilled Celts were interesting to the Greeks as trading partners. Ancient Greece had by that time colonized the mouth of the Rhone and named the port founded here Massilia (present-day Marseille). Around the 6th century BC. the Greeks began to move up the Rhone, trading luxury goods and wine.
What could the Celts offer them in response? Blonde slaves, metal and fine fabrics were popular goods. Moreover, on the path of the Greeks, the Celts created, as they would now say, “specialized markets.” In Manching it was possible to exchange Greek goods for metal products made of iron and steel. In Hochdorf, Celts textile workers offered their goods. In Magdalensberg they not only produced steel, but also traded in Alpine stones - rock crystal and other rare wonders of nature.
Celtic tin, an indispensable element in the smelting of bronze, received special attention from Greek merchants. There were tin mines only in Cornwall (England). The entire Mediterranean world bought this metal here.
In the 6th century BC, brave Phoenicians reached the shores of Britain across the Atlantic, covering six thousand kilometers of sea route. The Greeks used a different method to get to the “tin islands,” as England was then called. They moved north along the Rhone, then crossed into the Seine. In Lutetia (in Paris) they paid tribute for travel through Celtic territory.
Such distant trade contacts are confirmed by arrows with three points, like a fork or a trident, found on the banks of the Rhone. This weapon is typical of the Scythians. Perhaps they accompanied merchant ships as guards? And in ancient Athens, the Scythians served as hired law enforcement officers.
Industry and trade greatly, by the standards of that time, raised the Celtic economy. The princes of the tribes oriented the population towards the production of products that could be sold. Those who could not master a craft, just like slaves, did auxiliary and hard work. The mentioned salt mine in Hollein is an example of the conditions in which people were doomed to slave labor.
A joint expedition of four German universities examined finds in the salt mines where the lower strata of Celtic society worked. Her conclusions are as follows. The remains of fires in the workings speak of a “large open fire.” In this way, air movement in the mine was excited, and people could breathe. The fire was lit in a shaft specially dug for this purpose.
The toilets found underground indicate that the salt miners had a constant digestive disorder.
Mostly children worked in the mines. The shoes found there indicate the age of their owners - even six-year-olds worked here.
Invasion to the South
Such conditions could not but give rise to discontent. Researchers are convinced that from time to time the Druid empire was shaken by serious riots. Archaeologist Wolfgang Kittig believes that it all started with the peasants' demand for freedom. And then around the 4th century BC. the tradition of magnificent funerals disappears, and the entire Celtic culture undergoes radical changes - the big difference between the standard of living of the poor and the rich has disappeared. The dead began to be burned again.
At the same time, there was a rapid expansion of the territory occupied by the Celtic tribes, who moved to the south and southeast of Europe. In the 4th century BC. They crossed the Alps from the north, and before them appeared the heavenly beauties of South Tyrol and the fertile valley of the Po River. This was the land of the Etruscans, but the Celts had military superiority, thousands of their two-wheeled carts stormed the Brenner Pass. The cavalry used a special technique: one horse carried two riders. One drove the horse, the other threw the spears. In close combat, both dismounted and fought with pikes with helical points, so that the wounds were large and torn, as a rule, taking the enemy out of the battle.
In 387 BC. The colorfully dressed Celtic tribes, led by Brennius, began to march on the capital of the Roman Empire. The siege of the city lasted seven months, after which Rome surrendered. Residents of the capital paid tribute of 1000 pounds of gold. "Woe to the vanquished!" - Brennius cried, throwing his sword onto the scales that were measuring out the precious metal. “This was the deepest humiliation that Rome suffered in its entire history,” is how historian Gerhard Herm assessed the Celtic victory.
The booty disappeared in the temples of the victors: according to the laws of the Celts, a tenth of all military booty was supposed to be given to the Druids. Over the centuries since the Celts arrived in Europe, tons of precious metal have accumulated in temples.
Geopolitically and militarily, the Celts had reached the pinnacle of their power by this time. From Spain to Scotland, from Tuscany to the Danube, their tribes dominated. Some of them reached Asia Minor and founded the city of Ankara there - the current capital of Turkey.
Returning to long-established areas, the Druids renovated their temples or built new, more richly decorated ones. In the Bavarian-Czech area, more than 300 cult and sacrificial places were erected in the third century BC. The funerary temple in Ribemont broke all records in this sense; it was considered the central place of worship and occupied an area of 150 by 180 meters. There was a small area (10 by 6 meters) where archaeologists found more than 10,000 human bones. Archaeologists believe that this is evidence of a one-time sacrifice of about a hundred people. The Druids of Ribemont built monstrous towers from the bones of the human body - legs, arms, etc.
Not far from present-day Heidelberg, archaeologists have discovered “sacrificial mines.” A man tied to a log was thrown down. The mine found had a depth of 78 meters. Archaeologist Rudolf Reiser called the savagery of the Druids "the most terrible monuments in history."
And yet, despite these inhuman customs, the Celtic world flourished again in the second and first centuries BC. They built large cities north of the Alps. Each such fortified settlement could accommodate up to ten thousand inhabitants. Money appeared - coins made according to the Greek model. Many families lived in abundance. At the head of the tribes was a man chosen for a year from the local nobility. The English researcher Cunliffe thinks that the entry of the oligarchy into government “was one of the important steps on the road to civilization.”
In 120 BC. the first messenger of misfortune appeared. Hordes of barbarians - the Cimbri and the Teutones - from the north crossed the border along the Main and invaded the lands of the Celts. The Celts hastily built earthen ramparts and other defensive structures to shelter people and livestock. But the onslaught from the north was incredibly powerful. Trade routes passing through the Alpine valleys were cut off by those advancing from the north, and the Germans mercilessly plundered villages and cities. The Celts retreated to the southern Alps, but this again threatened a strong Rome.
Rome's competitor
As already mentioned, the Celts did not know writing. Maybe the Druids are to blame for this. They argued that letters destroyed the sanctity of spells. However, when it was necessary to secure an agreement between Celtic tribes or with other states, the Greek alphabet was used.
The Druid caste, despite the fragmentation of the people - in Gaul alone there were more than a hundred tribes - acted in concert. Once a year, the Druids gathered together to discuss topical issues that concerned not only the religious sphere. The assembly also had high authority in secular affairs. For example, the Druids could stop the war. As has already been noted, very little is known about the structure of the Celtic religion. But there are suggestions that the supreme deity was a woman, that the people worshiped the forces of nature and believed in an afterlife and even in a return to life, but in a different form.
Roman writers left in their memoirs impressions of contacts with the Druids. These testimonies mix up respect for the knowledge of the priests and disgust for the bloodthirsty nature of Celtic magic. 60 years before the new era, the arch druid Diviciacus had peaceful conversations with the Roman philosopher and historian Cicero. And his contemporary Julius Caesar two years later went to war against the Celts, capturing Gaul and the territory of what is now Belgium, Holland and part of Switzerland, and later he conquered part of Britain.
Caesar's legions destroyed 800 cities; according to the latest estimates of French scientists, the legionnaires exterminated or enslaved approximately two million people. The Celtic tribes in western Europe have disappeared from the historical scene.
Already at the beginning of the war, during the attack on the Celtic tribes, the number of victims among them amazed even the Romans: out of 360,000 people, only 110,000 survived. In the Senate of Rome, Caesar was even accused of exterminating the people. But all this criticism was drowned in the flow of gold that poured from the fronts to Rome. Legions plundered the treasures accumulated in places of worship. Caesar doubled the salary of his legionaries for life, and built an arena for gladiator fights for the citizens of Rome for 100 million sesterces. Archaeologist Haffner writes: “Before the military campaign, Caesar himself was completely in debt; after the campaign, he became one of the richest citizens of Rome.”
For six years the Celts resisted Roman aggression, but the last leader of the Gallic Celts fell, and the end of this shameful war of ancient Rome was the collapse of the Celtic world. The discipline of the Roman legionaries coming from the south and the pressure of the German barbarians from the north crushed the culture of metallurgists and salt miners. In the territories of Spain, England and France, the Celts lost their independence. Only in the far corners of Europe - in Brittany, on the English peninsula of Cornwall and in part of Ireland - did Celtic tribes survive, having escaped assimilation. But then they adopted the language and culture of the incoming Anglo-Saxons. And yet, the Celtic dialect and myths about the heroes of this people have survived to this day.
True, even in the 1st century AD, wandering Druids, bearers of the Celtic spirit and the idea of resistance, were persecuted by the Roman state for “political reasons.”
In the writings of the Roman authors Polybius and Diodorus, the Roman Empire is glorified as the founder of civilization, and the Celts are assigned the role of stupid people who know nothing but war and cultivating arable land. Later writers echo the Roman chronicles: the Celts are invariably gloomy, clumsy and superstitious. And only modern archeology has refuted these ideas. It was not the pitiful inhabitants of the huts that Caesar defeated, but the political and economic competitors who, several centuries earlier, were technically far ahead of Rome.
However, the panorama of Celtic life today is far from completely open; it still has many blank spots. Many places where Celtic culture once flourished have not yet been explored by archaeologists.
Despite the obvious interest in Celticology not only in secular academic science, but also among church historians talking about the phenomenon of the Celtic church, the answer to the fundamental question is not generally known and clear: who are the Celts? The author of this publication tries to answer this question.
The ancient writers called the people who played a key role in the historical formation of Central and Northern Europe by different names - “Celts” (keltoi/keltai/celtae), “Galls” (galli), “Galatians” (galatae). This group of tribes of Indo-European origin came to Western Europe earlier than other Aryans.
“Herodotus in the middle of the 5th century mentions this people, speaking about the location of the source of the Danube, and Hecataeus, who became famous a little earlier (c. 540-775 BC), but whose work is known only from quotations given by other authors, describes the Greek colony of Massalia (Marseille), located, according to him, on the land of the Ligurians next to the possessions of the Celts."
“About a quarter of a century after the death of Herodotus, northern Italy was invaded by barbarians who came along the Alpine passes. The description of their appearance and names indicate that they were Celts, but the Romans called them “galli” (hence Gallia Cis- and Transalpina - Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul). More than two centuries later, Polybius refers to the invaders under the name "galatae", a word used by many ancient Greek authors. On the other hand, Diodorus Siculus, Caesar, Strabo and Pausanias say that galli and galatae were identical designations for keltoi/celtae, and Caesar testifies that contemporary galli called themselves celtae. Diodorus uses all these names indiscriminately, but notes that the version keltoi is more correct, and Strabo reports that this word was known to the Greeks firsthand, since the keltoi lived in the vicinity of Massalia. Pausanias also prefers the name "Celts" in relation to the Gauls and Galatians. It is now impossible to establish what is causing this terminological uncertainty, but we can confidently conclude that the Celts called themselves keltoi for a long time, although other names may have appeared during the 5th and 4th centuries BC.”
The polymath, lawyer and popularizer of history Jean Bodin (1530-1596) sets out the medieval view of this issue as follows: “Appian establishes their origin from Celt, the son of Polyphemus, but this is as stupid as the fact that our contemporaries establish the origin of the Franks from Frankino , son of Horus, a mythological personality... The word “Celt” is translated by many as “horseman”. The Gauls, inhabiting the temperate climatic regions of Europe, were called the first Celts, because among all peoples they were the most capable horsemen... Since many argued about the origin of the word "Celt", Caesar wrote that those who live between the rivers Seine and Garonne, truly and justly called Celts. Even despite the similarity of language, origin, birth, and repeated migrations, the Greeks always called our ancestors Celts, both in their own language and in the Celtic language. Where the name “Gauls” came from and what it means, as far as I know, no one can explain for sure... Strabo, relying on the opinions of the ancients, divided the world into four parts, placing the Indians in the east, the Celts in the west, the Ethiopians in the south , the Scythians in the north... The Gauls were located in the lands of the distant western region... In another passage, Strabo placed the Celts and Iberians in the west, and the Normans and Scythians in the north... It is a fact that Herodotus and then Diodorus expanded the Celtic borders in Scythia to the west, then Plutarch brought them to Pontus, showing quite clearly that the Celts managed to spread their tribe everywhere and fill the whole of Europe with their numerous settlements.”
Modern celtologist Hubert believes that Keltoi, Galatai and Galli may be three forms of the same name, heard at different times, in different environments, transmitted and written down by people who did not have the same spelling skills. However, Guyonvarch and Leroux take a different point of view: “Is it difficult to understand that the ethnonym Celts designates a set of ethnic groups, while other ethnonyms: Gauls, Welsh, Bretons, Galatians, Gaels, are used to designate different peoples?”
With reference to the era of the Roman conquests in northern Europe in the middle of the first century BC. Celts are the peoples of northwestern Europe who became part of the Roman Empire and separated from the Germanic tribes living east of the Rhine. Despite the fact that ancient writers did not call the inhabitants of the British Isles Celts, but used the names brettanoi, brittani, brittones, these were also Celtic tribes. The closeness and even identity of origin of the island and mainland inhabitants is confirmed by the words of Tacitus about the inhabitants of Britain. “Those living in the immediate neighborhood of Gaul are similar to the Gauls, either because the common origin still affects them or the same climate in these countries located opposite each other gives the inhabitants the same features. Having weighed all this, it may be considered probable that, on the whole, it was the Gauls who occupied and peopled the island nearest to them. Due to adherence to the same religious beliefs, one can see here the same sacred rites as among the Gauls; and the languages of both are not much different.” Julius Caesar also mentions the close relations between the inhabitants of Britain and the tribes of the Armorican Peninsula in his Notes on the Gallic War.
For a linguist, the Celts are peoples who speak Celtic languages that arose on the basis of the ancient common Celtic dialect. The so-called Celtic language is divided into two groups: Q-Celtic, called Gaelic or Goidelic. It contains the original Indo-European
To the archaeologist, the Celts are people who can be classified into a particular group on the basis of their distinctive material culture. Archaeologists distinguish two major phases in the evolution of Celtic society, which are called Hallstatt and La Tène. In the 19th century in Austria, near Lake Hallstatt in a beautiful mountainous area, a huge number of Celtic antiquities dating back to the 7th century BC were found. Ancient salt mines and a cemetery containing more than two thousand burials were discovered. Salt protected many objects and remains of bodies from destruction. Numerous "imported" items indicate trade relations with Etruria and Greece, as well as with Rome. Some items come from the regions where Croatia and Slovenia are located today. Amber indicates connections with the Baltic region. Traces of Egyptian influence can also be seen. Fragments of clothing made of leather, wool and linen, leather hats, shoes and gloves were found. Leftover food contains barley, millet, beans, varieties of apples and cherries.
“Halstatt was a settlement with a thriving local salt industry, and on it depended the wealth of the community, as evidenced by the cemetery. The Hallstatt people used iron, and it was in honor of this unusually rich and interesting place that the entire early Iron Age began to be called the Hallstatt era.” This civilization was far superior to that of the Bronze Age. The second phase of the evolution of the Celts is associated with archaeological discoveries in the town of La Tène in Switzerland. The number of finds and the nature of the site are less impressive than Hallstatt, but the quality of the objects found made the discovery no less significant. Analysis of the found objects showed their Celtic origin, dating back to a more recent era compared to Hallstatt. As an example, two-wheeled war chariots, which differed from the four-wheeled carts of Hallstatt. Thus, from the archaeologist's point of view, "the first people we can call Celtic are the tribes of Central Europe, who used iron and new technologies, who left impressive monuments in Hallstatt and in other areas of Europe."
Today, when we talk about the Celts, we represent the few peoples who are speakers of Celtic languages on the periphery of the western regions of Europe, but for historians “the Celts are a people whose culture covers vast territories and long periods of time.” After all, it was they who created most of the cities, borders or regional associations to which we are accustomed. “Their languages were not preserved in this vast space, but they left their traces. Major cities in Europe bear Celtic names: Paris (Lutetia), London (Londinium), Geneva (Genava), Milan (Mediolanum), Nijmegen (Noviomagus), Bonn (Bonna), Vienna (Vindobona), Krakow (Carrodunum). “We still find their tribal names in some modern place names that have already lost their Celtic connections: Boii (Bohemia), Belgae (Belgium), Helvetii (Helvetia - Switzerland), Treveri (Trier), Parisi (Paris), Redones (Rennes) , Dumnonii (Devon), Cantiaci (Kent), Brigantes (Brigsteer). Ukrainian Galicia, Spanish Galicia, Asia Minor Galatia and many other geographical names, such as Donegal, Caledonia, Paidegal, Galloway, with the root “gal-” in their names, testify to the Celts who once lived and ruled in these places.
One of the “calling cards” of the Celtic civilization is the Druid religion. With all the diversity of the Celtic world, “... this heterogeneous ethnically huge composition of tribes was united [...] by the mysterious Celtic religion and a single sacred language, which has only an oral tradition of transmitting sacred knowledge, the custodians of which were no less mysterious Druid priests, standing in their own way position above tribal leaders."
Scientists say that the main “problem” of the Celtic civilization is caused by the fact that the Celtic people lived the longest and most interesting period for researchers outside of written, recorded history. Unlike the civilizations of the Mediterranean and the Middle East, the Celts were carriers of an oral cultural tradition. This order of things is not unique to regions that are peripheral compared to developed civilizations. It is explained by the fact that “the agrarian and aristocratic society of the Celts, like many other peoples, was not so complex as to require written recording of legal norms, financial statements and historical events.” Social norms, religious traditions and folk customs were transmitted through oral transmission from generation to generation. When it was necessary to preserve large amounts of information, continuity was supported by a corporation of specially trained experts in traditional wisdom - the Druids. In classical texts the word "Druids" appears only in the plural. "Druidai" in Greek, "druidae" and "druides" in Latin. Scientists debate the origin of this word. Today the most common point of view, coinciding with the opinion of ancient scientists, in particular Pliny, is that it is associated with the Greek name for oak - “drus”. The second syllable of the word is seen as coming from the Indo-European root "wid", equating to the verb "to know". Pigott states that "the special connection of the Druids with oak trees has been repeatedly confirmed."
Classical sources, as Pigott writes, attribute three important functions to the Druids. Firstly, they were bearers of traditional beliefs and rituals, as well as keepers of the history of the tribe and other information about the world, be it information about the gods, space and the afterlife, be it a set of everyday laws and practical skills such as drawing up a calendar. The bulk of this knowledge was transmitted orally, perhaps in poetry, and continuity of knowledge was ensured by strict apprenticeship. The second function was the practical application of laws or the administration of justice, although it is not explained how this power related to the power of the chiefs. The third function was control over the offering of sacrifices and other religious ceremonies. “It is hardly reasonable to absolve the Druids of blame for their faith and participation in human sacrifices, perhaps even very active participation.” In the civilized Roman world this was only done away with at the beginning of the 1st century BC. The Druids were the sages of a barbarian society, and the religion of that time was their religion with all its barbaric savagery and brutality. Defending the Celts, Poisson notes: “In any case, the Celts did not have the massacre that took place in the circuses and dedicated to the monstrous idol, which was called the “Roman people”.”
Mainly, the Druids were prophets, clairvoyants; they predicted, they interpreted omens. Celtic traditions indicate that the Druids spoke at public meetings and imposed punishments on those who did not accept their decisions or the decisions of the king. They played the role of ambassadors and thus, despite the rivalry of clans, cemented the spiritual union of the Celts. “The education of youth existed as far as it was connected with Druidry, Druids will exist in Roman Gaul as professors of high schools.” This education took the form of countless poems learned by heart, including epics and historical works on the origin of the race, cosmological digressions, and journeys to another world. The ancients attributed to the Druids the creation of the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. The Celtic faith was so vibrant that it surprised the Romans. The teachings of the Druids were supplemented by mythology and corresponding funeral rites. Death for the Celts was only a transfer, when life continues in another world, “which they considered as a reservoir of souls.”
Here is what Caesar wrote about the Druids: “Druids take an active part in matters of worship, monitor the correctness of public sacrifices, interpret all questions related to religion; Many young people come to them to study science, and in general they are held in great esteem by the Gauls. Namely, they pronounce judgment on almost all controversial cases, public and private; whether a crime or murder has been committed, whether there is a dispute over inheritance or boundaries - the same Druids decide; They also assign rewards and punishments; and if anyone - whether it be a private person or a whole nation - does not obey their determination, then they excommunicate the culprit from the sacrifices. This is their heaviest punishment. Anyone who is excommunicated in this way is considered an atheist and a criminal, everyone shuns him, avoids meeting and talking with him, so as not to get into trouble, as if from an infectious disease; no matter how much he strives for it, no judgment is carried out for him; He also has no right to any position. At the head of all the Druids is one who enjoys the greatest authority among them. Upon his death, the most worthy one succeeds him, and if there are several of them, then the Druids decide the matter by voting, and sometimes the dispute about primacy is even resolved by force of arms. At certain times of the year, the Druids gather for meetings in a sacred place in the country of the Carnuts, which is considered the center of all Gaul. All litigants come here from everywhere and submit to their determinations and sentences. Their science is thought to have originated in Britain and from there carried into Gaul; and to this day, in order to get to know it more thoroughly, they go there to study it.
Druids usually do not take part in war and do not pay taxes on an equal basis with others; they are generally free from military service and from all other duties. As a result of such advantages, many people partly join them in science, partly they are sent by their parents and relatives. There, they say, they learn many poems by heart, and therefore some remain in the Druid school until they are twenty years old. They even consider it a sin to write down these verses, while in almost all other cases, namely in public and private records, they use the Greek alphabet. It seems to me that they have this order for two reasons: the Druids do not want their teaching to be made publicly available and so that their students, relying too much on writing, pay less attention to strengthening their memory; and indeed it happens to many people that, finding support for themselves in writing, they are less diligent in learning by heart and remembering what they read. Most of all, the Druids try to strengthen the belief in the immortality of the soul: the soul, according to their teaching, passes after the death of one body into another; they think that this faith eliminates the fear of death and thereby arouses courage. In addition, they talk a lot to their young students about the luminaries and their movement, about the size of the world and the earth, about nature and about the power and authority of the immortal gods.”
After all, it was Celtic mythology with its bizarre magical creatures that gave rise to almost all the storylines and creatures used by modern fantasy writers.
Even the most popular symbols of fairy tales and magic were generated by the Celtic culture, long ago making Avalon, the Holy Grail, druids, and elves household names.
What is the strength of the Celts?
According to historical data, it can be determined that the Celts lived throughout almost all of Europe and partly in Western Asia, starting around the beginning of the last millennium BC. The popularization of the nation occurred through countless bloody wars with neighboring tribes and states.
Looking ahead: it was the tendency to war that became one of the reasons for the disappearance of the Celts - the warlike people were at enmity not only with strangers, but also with each other. Therefore, they never managed to create a unified state - the freedom-loving, proud representatives of this people did not tolerate excessive power.
Their leaders were more like army leaders than kings in the full sense of the word. Religion and the judicial system were represented by Druid priests, culture was brought to the masses by bards. There were no teachings as such in the tribes, so no authentic written evidence from the primary source about the life and way of life of the Celts has been preserved.
Even the language of the tribes often differed. The strength of the Celts lay elsewhere - in their faith. They were so supported by their common religion and trust in the word of the Druid that for many centuries no one could cope with the Celts, nor could they withstand their onslaught for long.
Why we know little about the Celts
The fact that the Celts once inhabited our land is evidenced, first of all, by the written archives of neighboring states and archaeological finds. The most complete written description of the Celts remains from the famous Roman conqueror Julius Caesar. He recognized that they were brave, dexterous, courageous warriors, but at the same time noted their naivety and penchant for pomp and luxury.
The Celts, according to Caesar, loved everything new and sought to imitate. Therefore, attributes of different cultures often coexisted in their chambers.
However, judging by archaeological finds, the Romans were somewhat disingenuous. The tendency to imitate can be explained by the ordinary love of beautiful things, inherent in all developed civilized peoples. But the Celts’ own skills indicate that this people carried their knowledge from generation to generation, constantly honing and improving it.
It is because of this that many scientists still believe that perhaps the Celts came from Atlantis or even from a parallel world, where the level of knowledge was much higher than that existing at that time on Earth. Science has never been able to find out where the Celts came from, but their influence on the culture of Europe, and partly Asia and America, is undeniable.
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“Celts. Origin, culture, religion"
Novosibirsk, 2011
Introduction
Origin of the Celts
Definitions and criteria
Geography, distribution area, cradle of civilizations
Nationality: Celts and Germans
Celtic World Organization
The end of the Celtic world
The spiritual world of the Celts (gods, druids, holidays, calendar)
Conclusion
Bibliography
Introduction
When starting to study the Celts, one cannot help but say how complex and difficult it is. The world of the Celts is too extensive in time and space to neglect the achievements of certain works, whatever their nature and consequences. Conversely, no discipline can claim universality, for there is no method that is equally applicable to all aspects of Celticology.
Those who think that it is possible to give a satisfactory definition of Celtic civilization based only on the moment when it becomes the subject of speculation by Greek authors of the 6th or 5th century BC, and without relating it to the general Indo-European context, are deeply mistaken. Another misconception is the attempt to study the Celts within a narrow geographical framework, when the inhabitants of Gaul are considered as if they had no kinship with their island brethren; It is completely wrong to separate them, guided by particular features that only occasionally violate the fundamental unity, or by referring to chronological distance, which is negated by the archaism of Irish myth. Camille Julian refused to take into account the insular texts on the pretext that the Irish and Britons were peoples who were “Celticized” much later than the Gauls! Many have openly stated that such an argument contradicts all Western archeology and philology. However, the consequences of this statement are felt, because Camille Julian and his followers continue to be read. The third fallacy is the desire to reconstruct the religious or political history of the Celts on the basis of the material context of archaeological discoveries alone, for all this material, with very rare exceptions, is not epigraphic, that is, devoid of any inscriptions, and this means that such material is silent about everything that thought or said by its creators and those who used it. So the history of the Celts is silent, and the myth has no history. Another mistake always concerns the consideration of Insular, Irish and Welsh texts solely from a philological point of view, without taking into account their conceptual content, to which it is impossible to assign a historical date. Myth exists outside of time.
I have tried not to deal in this work with the marginal or minor works which, through a mixture of speculation, ignorance and sometimes bad faith, clutter store shelves and make Celts past and present the subject of commercial speculation. The general public can always become easy prey for various dropouts. However, there is not only the nonsense of the ignorant, there are also the errors of scientists: they explain Irish legends with the help of vague symbols on Gallic coins; they use all the island literature, Irish and Welsh, and even Breton, or even the works of the Arthurian cycle to justify some modern literary movement; argue that France of the twentieth century, sick from birth for two thousand years, still remains the “Gallic homeland”, proudly aware of its mission - these are the ideological postulates of such works, which do not even require refutation. Some "researchers" remain convinced that the Celtic world is so simple that it is not necessary to know it at all in order to write books about it.
Therefore, it is very difficult to achieve the truth in the current situation. It took a lot of processing of sources to somehow connect contradictory or overly generalized information about the truly mysterious and unique culture of the Celts.
ancient celt history people
Origin of the Celts
Who are the Celts?
There is no more vague concept for modern Europeans than the concept of "Celtic civilization", if they even suspect it. Therefore, the pressing question is the definition: who are the Celts? How, by what means, using what criteria, can they be identified? Here we are confronted with a very pressing problem that owes its origin exclusively to modernity: the concept of nationality. Should we consider as Celts those who were or wanted to be by virtue of their language and self-name inherited from the distant past, or those who are still them, although often did not want to be them?
Do the Helvetians, who have turned into Swiss and speak German or French, continue to remain Celts, and if they do, then to the extent that they can be considered as the Dublin Irish who speak Irish, or the Bretons from Upper Brittany who use Romanesque? language for ten centuries now? The first, broad approach to this problem includes among the Celts almost all of Europe from Bavaria to Bohemia or from Belgium to Northern Italy; in the second, the vast majority of the Irish and Scots are English-speaking without much original features, and the Celts remained only in the remote areas of Kerry and Donegal.
French textbooks that mention “our ancestors of the Gauls” most often forget to specify who these Gauls were in relation to the other Celts, who are inevitably defined so generally that the definition borders on imprecision. The Romans called them Celtae, Galli, Celtici, but until the time of Caesar and Tacitus, that is, until the first century AD, the ancients confused them with the Germans, and, unfortunately, there are many French who, without blinking an eye, agree with this that the name Galli is derived from the Latin gallus, thus supporting the dubious pun "Gallic rooster". Even in the 20th century, the Gaelic language was easily attributed to the Gauls, and Welsh literature to the Bretons. We will keep silent about bad novels that describe adventures of Verkingetorix2 or Caesar about which history says absolutely nothing and which could hardly have taken place at all. Is it difficult to understand that the ethnonym Celts designates a set of ethnic groups, while other ethnonyms: Gauls, Welsh, Bretons, Galatians, Gaels - are used to designate different peoples? As for the term Gallo-Romans, it does not define any other people than the Gauls, who lost their linguistic, ethnic and religious characteristics over a period of time that is very difficult to evaluate and accurately define.
A simple semantic definition of the word Celtic, applied either to ethnic groups or to languages, has long been the work of specialists. Just think how small the elite is for whom this word has a certain value, independent of their personal feelings and preferences! In modern French it is almost impossible to maintain a correct distinction between the terms Celt (a noun defining ethnicity) and Celtic (an adjective defining linguistic and religious affiliation). “Celtic language” is a misnomer, while “Celtic woman” is a term only possible within the framework of feminism, of which we have not found the slightest trace in our written sources (see pp. 76-78). As for “celtitude”3, a dubious neologism, its suffix is very reminiscent of “negritude” and the xenophobic contempt that is associated with this term.
Nevertheless, the Celts occupy a huge place in the history of ancient and medieval Europe: it can be said that they are the main characters in the protohistory of all of Western and Central Europe and belong to the number of peoples who most interested ancient historians. Such a statement may seem paradoxical in our era, when the Celts are reduced to small historical or linguistic communities in the far west of Europe. However, in Gaul before its conquest by Caesar, the Celtic settlement cannot be explained without taking into account the neighboring countries - Spain, Great Britain, Northern Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, Central Europe and the Danube regions. Is the participation of the Britons, island and continental, in Merovingian politics, the role of Scotland in the politics of the English kings, the role of the Dukes of Brittany, the allies of Burgundy and the Holy Roman Empire at the end of the 15th century, always fairly assessed and recognized? Forgetting the role of the Celts is a commonplace of European historiography, unwilling to admit that these late Christianized “barbarians” saved classical culture from the night of Merovingian times, and perceives post-medieval Celtic survivals as a false note of history.
Turning to the basic definitions, we see that the concept of “Gallia” as a geographical and “national” (in the modern sense of the word) unit is indeed very ancient. But what was it like as a “homeland” for the Gauls? We are not sure that Camille Julian, in his History of Gaul, gives us the correct answer. And what was the geographical extent of Gaul, recognized by the Celts themselves in ancient times? There is a contradiction between the concept of a single Gaul, reduced to its “natural boundaries,” and the multitude of heterogeneous linguistic and archaeological facts that fit within the same boundaries, which sounds like a real alarm bell. From our point of view it is not always appropriate to identify a general term with its specific application, confining the Celts of the first century BC to the space limited by the Garonne and the Seine. As a brief illustration, we could say that in the debate about whether the bearers of the Hallstatt culture were or were not Celts between the 10th and 5th centuries. BC, makes no more sense than the question of whether Clovis was of French nationality at the beginning of the 6th century. Clovis was a Frenchman, since Gaul became France, but in his era they hardly thought about it, because the historical future is the unknown that you do not expect. The Celts spoke Celtic, but they never had a unified Celtic empire.
The Celtic Empire undoubtedly existed, but it was not a political, but a linguistic, religious and artistic community; Nor was it a historical formation, since only insignificant fragments have reached us from the events that accompanied its long existence, and at the same time this formation was very influential. We have sufficient proof of its legendary reality: the first of these proofs is the Celticum Ambigata, described by Titus Livius, who reports the founding of Milan (Mediolanum) in Cisalpine Gaul; Through this meeting of Celtic myth with Roman historian, the position of the Celts in relation to history begins to be determined.
Definitions and criteria
Archeology
The archaeological criterion is the clearest and therefore much more useful. But if it is permissible to think that the Indo-Europeans were much better armed than the people of the Neolithic era, then it does not at all follow that the material civilization they brought was from the very beginning free from all kinds of borrowings. In this sense, the use of a horse and the use of iron do not prove anything, since they were known to other peoples in Mesopotamia and the Middle East.
The Indo-Europeans often borrowed, and borrowing in no historical period was a form of intellectual inferiority: thanks to the fact that the Hittites adopted cuneiform in the second millennium BC, we can now get acquainted with their archives; in the same way, the Greek alphabet, from which the Latin alphabet is derived, is of Phoenician origin. However, it is assumed that writing, in addition to recorded magical operations, was alien to the Celts, in ancient times it was also alien to the first Indo-Europeans. The shape of the Greek megaron is reminiscent of the construction skills of the people who came from somewhere in the north, from regions with a cold climate, and in general the Greco-Roman urban planning traditions are not local, but imported. There must also be something very ancient in the quadrangular shape of the Celtic temples and enclosures of Roman and pre-Roman times (Viereckschanzen of German archaeologists). The Etruscans, who did so much for the cultural development of Rome and Greece, never denied what they owed to Crete and Egypt. All these facts are known to both specialists and the cultural public. However, the Celts are very rarely included in this synthesis, either because little is known about them, or - which is the same thing - because their culture is considered secondary.
If there is a certain proto-history of the Romans, Greeks, Celts or Germans in various stages of its development, then there has never been a general Indo-European proto-history. Moreover, the interpenetration and layering of various Indo-European cultures extremely complicate their analysis and make synthesis almost impossible. It can be said with certainty that the Iron Age civilizations such as Hallstatt and La Tène (from the names of places in Austria and Switzerland) were Celtic, because chronology places them in the period when the Celts settled in Western and Central Europe, and also because these civilizations represent a collection of similar traits that existed in Gaul, Western Germany, Central Europe, the Danube regions and the British Isles until the beginning of the historical period. However, the reliability of the archaeological criterion depends on one preliminary question, the urgency of which in this case is much greater than in the case of the linguistic criterion: to what extent can objects found in burials serve as an ethnic, social or functional identification of the deceased? After all, it is much more difficult to prove a Celtic presence in the Bronze Age civilization and urn field culture that preceded the Celts. Here we encounter the first interdisciplinary disagreements. Many French archaeologists still find it more convenient to date the appearance of the Celts in Gaul around 500 BC. e., which hardly leaves time for the last to reach the 3rd century. BC. reach the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean, not to mention Britain and Ireland. Linguistic dating, on the contrary, suggests that the Celts were already present in Europe from the end of the third millennium BC.
But how to identify them? No archaeological site confirms its "Celticity" in writing, and Albert Grenier was right to argue that one should beware of identifying the La Tène civilization with Celtic nationality. This assertion, based on a lack of concrete evidence, is, however, a statement rather of the limitations of archeology than of the fallacy of such an identification, for it is impossible to say a priori to what other marginal “nationality” the La Tène civilization could be attributed. The most recent discoveries and research even prove that the Celtic nationality must necessarily correspond to the Hallstatt civilization. Meanwhile, one must beware of misleading and exaggerated identifications: to claim that the Gallo-Roman Minerva was called Brigid (a Celtic island name that appears at least half a dozen centuries later) because she was discovered at Menez-Home is to admit an inconsistency bordering on the naivety. A common material civilization is far from the same thing as a reflection of linguistic unity (just consider modern Europe). Moreover, it is not proof of political or religious unity. As an assistant to history, archeology is an indispensable discipline for understanding culture in its most specific aspects: tools, weapons, jewelry, coins, ceramics, various structures that tell us in detail about the technical level achieved by the cultures of Hallstatt and La Tene. This information is quite rich and impressive, but we are missing the main material of Celtic art and industry - wood, which, unlike stone, is short-lived. Only the wooden simulacra4 (from the sources of the Seine) and very rare objects found here and there have survived.
Archeology remains the only sufficient argument for the exclusion from the Celtic context of megalithic monuments, which for a very long time were mistakenly considered Celtic. The 19th century Romantics were responsible for the Breton names of dolmens and menhirs. And Celtomania - which could not leave the megaliths alone, since they were part of the rituals associated with it - was, to some extent, nothing more than a stupid and naive manifestation of romanticism, which modern archeology, fortunately, has not preserved.
What remains is metal (iron, bronze, gold, copper, silver), glass and all kinds of ceramics, which tell a lot about both technology and the history of art. At one point or another, the history of art, based on archeology, is reunited with the history of religion, and here knowledge of the texts helps to interpret the motifs:
– For example, it was noted that the distribution zone of sword scabbards with an ornament of two opposing dragons covers most of Europe from the Seine to the Danube, Italy, Yugoslavia, Transylvania, and most of these examples were noted in Hungary (this ornament is also present on helmets). Variations in detail do not change the deep unity of the motif: it begins as two opposing S's and evolves either into "zoomorphic lyres" or into dragons or griffins (or even horses on a vessel from the Marne), constantly opposing each other, but almost always separated by a large vertical line, which was considered as a schematic representation of the cosmic tree. On a belt buckle from Hölzelsau (Austria), even a schematic human figure appears between two opposing zoomorphic figures, appearing to hold or support the head of each of the two animals. Without giving any definite explanation at this point, it can be said that this widespread metal design, Greek or Scythian in origin of the linear design, reunites the themes of dragons and the lord of animals from the Welsh tradition and the Irish legend "The Metamorphosis of the Two Swineherds" .
So, let us remember that the gigantic progress of archaeological technology and methodology since the end of the Second World War has led to the fact that we now know much better the stages of the advancement and settlement of the Celts in Western and Central Europe, as well as in the Danube regions. Today's Western archaeologists have begun to process a gigantic amount of material; their works are published in all European languages: not only in English and German, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian, but also in Romanian, Czech, Polish, Russian, Slovenian and Serbo-Croatian. On the other hand, this unprecedented documentary wealth makes any synthesis more and more difficult. Meanwhile, someday the day will come to begin this synthesis. As a small illustration, we mention here two more details taken from the grave (more royal than “princely”) in Hochdorf, in Württemberg (Ludwigsburg district), opened in 1978:
– A 1.66 m long butt was found, an elderberry pole decorated with a bronze ribbon. The butt “had a short bronze handle at one end and a tip with an iron point at the other. Meanwhile, in the Irish epic “The Stealing of the Bull from Cualnge” it is directly stated that the horses were controlled with the help of a butler. The word brot still exists with the same meaning and in almost the same form in modern Breton broud.
– The back (of bronze and iron benches) was decorated with ornaments with lines and knobs (Catalogue, p. 174). One of them contains three groups, “consisting of two opposing dancers holding one sword. […] Dancers have long hair that flows down their backs; they are depicted as ithyphallic and wearing stripes attached to a belt or skirt. In their hand raised back they hold a sword with a lancet-shaped blade and a handle consisting of a ball and a clearly defined guard.” This description is reminiscent of a passage from Appian (VI, 53), which reports the duel of Scipio Aemilianus in 158 BC. BC, in which he defeated the great Celtiberian warrior who was approaching him, dancing between the two armies. Such a war dance was also attested in the 20th century among the Scottish Highlanders.
– The third detail does not need any comments or island comparisons, it is so obvious. We are talking again about Hochdorf, namely about a cauldron of Greek workmanship with a capacity of five hundred liters, which was left in the grave during burial. Unlike the Vix crater, which was found empty, this cauldron contained residual liquid. However, it was not the blood of human victims and not imported Greek or Italian wine, but a drink based on honey, a drink of immortality, which was probably drunk at a feast during a magnificent funeral (Catalogue, op. cit., pp. 125-126).
Folklore and ethnography
In comparative studies they also tried to use folklore along with everything that could be preserved in it from previous eras. The basic principle of this method is indisputable, although in most cases folklore is a matter as vast as it is difficult to define. This equally applies to ethnography and “folk legends,” the essence and time of which often remain unclear. The term "folklore" can equally easily describe Frazer's extensive research on peoples called "primitives", the fashion for bagpipes at summer tourist festivals in Brittany in the 20th century, and perhaps even the French legends of Gargantua and Melusine. All these phenomena, of course, must be studied, but require different approaches.
Is it necessary to clarify that folk memory in any case cannot go back to the Celtic period? When one Breton gwerz (plaintive song - G.B.) reports the events of the time of Louis XV, this is almost the extreme chronological limit of folklore. Attempts to interpret Gallic or Gallo-Roman religious facts through folk analogies or modern superstitions are pure utopia. Under headings such as "French mythology" or "Swiss mythology", if they mean something other than the field of study, nothing can be hidden except hasty generalizations or risky comparisons, since it is obvious that neither France nor Switzerland has national mythology with the exception of a few common mythologies throughout folklore. It is hard to believe that Calvinism could allow Gallic mythology to exist in the folklore of the Cevennes or the canton of Geneva. However, the methodology and terminology are treated very cavalierly.
Mythological themes may have been preserved in folk legends in the form of very accurate but accidental reminiscences, and there are only a few Irish and a few Breton tales (some of them were both rescued and destroyed by Emile Souvestre in Le Foyer Breton) that could serve as a clear illustration of these themes. The most striking example relates to the Breton "night washerwoman", who functionally inherits Morrigan, the Irish goddess of war. But these mythological themes are no longer incomprehensible to the storytellers themselves. Moreover, they migrate along with the fairy tales in which they are included, so that their national identity sometimes seems uncertain.
This is not at all about us asserting or implying the superiority or insignificance of a particular discipline. It must be stated and recalled in this case that each discipline has its own methods and its own goals. It is impossible and should not consider Irish myth as real literature - it, of course, is not - while the mythological schemes of the four branches of the Welsh "Mabinogi" have already undergone medieval literary treatment, and the folklore of all Celtic (and former Celtic!) countries represents a long and the deep degradation of previous mythology caused by Christianity. If it is possible without much difficulty, knowing the themes and motives, to descend from mythology to folklore, then the reverse action, even with rich folklore documentation, is absolutely impossible when the previous mythology is unknown: folklorists must determine in their material the ancient and the new, the original and the recent layers.
Encyclopedic reference.
Celtic languages.
“A ghost is haunting Europe - a ghost...”
Technical achievements and applied arts
Spiritual culture.
Functions of the Druids.
Religious ideas.
Ideas about the soul.
Literature.
Encyclopedic reference.
Celts (Greek Keltoi), tribes close in language (see Celtic languages) and material culture, who originally lived in the 1st half of the 1st millennium BC. e. in the basins of the Rhine, Seine and Loire and the upper reaches of the Danube and later populated the territory of modern France, Belgium, Switzerland, southern Germany, Austria, northern Italy, northern and western Spain, the British Isles, the Celts of Britain were called Britons), the Czech Republic, partly Hungary and Bulgaria. The Romans called them Gauls (lat. Galli), hence the name of the main territory of their settlement - Gaul. Celts, who penetrated into the 3rd century. BC e. to Asia Minor, they were called Galatians.
Celtic languages.
Celtic languages, languages of the Indo-European family. Includes: Gaulish, Celtiberian, Irish, Manx, Gaelic (Scottish), Welsh (Cymric), Cornish and Breton. The Gaulish languages became extinct by the 5th century. n. e., Celtiberian (western and central part of the Iberian Peninsula) - somewhat earlier. The last speakers of Cornish lived at the end of the 18th century. Only a few people living on the Isle of Man (Great Britain) speak Manx. K. I. are usually divided into 3 groups: Continental (Gaulish and Celtiberian), Brythonic (Welsh, Cornish and Breton) and Goidelic (Irish, Gaelic and Manx). Epigraphic monuments of the Gallic and Celtiberian languages indicate their archaic nature. In modern Celtic languages, as a result of accent factors, final syllables dropped. In Irish, the case system is partially preserved. Differences in stress placement led to contrasting verb forms in Old Irish. In modern Celtic languages, the order of words in a sentence is fixed: predicate - subject - object. But in the most ancient monuments of the Irish language the verb can appear in last place.
“A ghost is haunting Europe - a ghost...”
It is unknown where these tribes came from, who called themselves Celts, but it is known for sure that at the end of 2 thousand BC. they chose the east of France, the north of Switzerland, the southeast of Germany, and later began to explore Britain, Ireland and the Iberian Peninsula. These tribes were heterogeneous, so they usually talk not about one culture, but about a cultural community that unites a large number of independent, but very similar cultures.
Celtic tribes occupied vast areas in Central and Western Europe. In the 5th century BC. they lived in the territory of modern Eastern France, Central Germany and partly Switzerland, and in the 3rd century. BC. settled in Spain. Northern Italy, in the north of the Balkan Peninsula and settled in the British Isles.
From ancient evidence it is known that in 390 BC. Celtic tribes (the Romans called them Gauls) besieged and sacked Rome, and in 289 BC. destroyed Delphi and even advanced into the Middle East - they were enemy number one for the civilizations of the Mediterranean. In addition, the Celts were a very colorful people. Their customs of wearing bright checkered clothes, painting their body, face and even hair with bright colors, entering battles naked and collecting the heads of killed enemies made an indelible impression on the educated and raised in other traditions of the Greeks and Romans.
It is quite strange why such a wide spread of the Celts was not accompanied by the formation of a developed statehood. The Celts never sought to create a powerful military state. Their military campaigns can, with great stretch, be called conquests, since, occupying new territories, the Celts did not seek to subjugate the local population, but partly merged with it, partly preferred peaceful coexistence and, most importantly, never had any semblance of a state and political center.
By the beginning of the Middle Ages, the Celts retained their identity only in the British Isles. Two groups of Celtic tribes lived here - the Britons in Britain proper, and the Gaels in Ireland, and later in Scotland. The Britons were exposed to a certain amount of Roman culture, but still retained their language and many customs. The Gaels remained outside the borders of the Roman Empire and harassed it with raids.
The Germanic tribes of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes who came to the islands in the 5th - 6th centuries partially exterminated and partially ousted the Britons. The latter had Wales, the Cornwall peninsula, in the south-west of England, and several islands at their disposal. In addition, a fairly large group of Britons moved to the other side of the English Channel, within the former Roman province of Armorica, which from this period received the name Brittany. As for the Gaels, they suffered less as a result of the German invasion, and on the contrary, they themselves actively advanced. The Gaelic tribe of Scots moved from Ireland to Scotland, where they took a dominant position, pushing aside the aboriginal Pictish tribe. The name Scotland itself comes from the Scots.
Thus, by the end of the Middle Ages, Celtic populations survived mainly in Wales (Welsh), Cornwall (Corns), Ireland and Brittany (Bretons). As for Scotland, there were Britons, Gaels, Saxons and Vikings intricately mixed with each other. Celtic traditions and language were preserved only by the Scottish Highlanders; in the rest of Scotland, the English language (in the form of a special dialect) and customs similar to English are used everywhere. The fashion for tartan fabric, men's skirts - kilts (cilt), and playing bagpipes spread later, under the influence of the highlanders, who most stubbornly defended their independence from the British.
Modern descendants of the ancient Celts inhabit only a small area in the British Isles (Ireland and Wales) and the Brittany peninsula, located in northwestern France. The Irish, Scots, and Welsh speak mostly English (and the Bretons speak French).
Technical achievements and applied arts.
The Celts played the same role in Central Europe as the Greeks did in the Mediterranean. They created and spread their culture and their technical achievements everywhere. If we start with the ordinary, the Celts invented and introduced a new type of horse harness that has survived to this day, a rotating millstone for grinding flour, and also chain mail. They did not invent, but brought to the interior of Europe the technology of mass production of iron, the potter's wheel, the roller bearing, the long double-edged sword, and a strong large shield with a metal reinforcement in the center - the umbo. The Germans, for example, borrowed a lot from the Celts in the early stages of their history, from swords to funeral customs, such as the tradition of placing broken or bent weapons in graves. Even the Romans borrowed something from the Celts. For example, the same chain mail, saddle design, and military standards in the form of metal figures placed on a pole.
