Part 2

Let it be noted at this point that so far as history casts light on the subject, the known period of Celtic expansion on the Continent lies within the years 650 B.C. and 250 B.C. We shall have to recur to this fact when we come to consider, in the following lecture, the probable date of the Celtic colonisation of Ireland. We shall see also that the evidence from archæology leads to the same conclusion as the evidence from history.

History recognises the expansion of the Celts from inland and central Europe southward, westward and eastward, but is silent about any expansion northward. No one doubts that in these early times the parts of Europe northward of the old Celtic country already described were occupied by the Germans, but Greek and Latin writings have no word of the Germans until the last quarter of the third century B.C. Yet we know from archæology that there was trade intercourse long before that time between the Mediterranean countries and the shores of the Baltic, extending even to Scandinavia. As geographical facts, the Baltic and Scandinavia were known to the Greeks, if only vaguely known to them, in the time of Eratosthenes, _i.e._, about 200 B.C. How is it, then, that the Germans are not mentioned by that name or by any name? I suggest that the reason was that the Germans of that period were so much under Celtic domination that they were not recognised as a distinct people of importance.

The first mention of Germans in history is found in the Roman Acta Triumphalia for the year 222 B.C., in the record of the battle of Clastidium. Clastidium, now called Casteggio, is in northern Italy, on the south side of the river Po and a few miles from that river. It is a little west of the meridian of Milan, which at the time of the battle was Mediolanum, the chief town of the Insubrian Gauls. In the battle, the Roman consul Marcellus overcame the Insubrians and gained the _spolia opima_ by slaying with his own hand their commander Virdumarus. The Acta Triumphalia state that he triumphed "over the Insubrian Gauls and the Germans." Now so far as is known or thought probable there was no German population at the time settled anywhere within hundreds of miles of Clastidium, whereas the Insubrian Gauls were settled on the spot or in its near neighbourhood. Moreover, unless the Germans were there fighting in considerable force, it is most unlikely that any notice of them would have appeared in the record. The commander was a Gaul, bearing an undoubted Celtic name. Therefore the Germans at Clastidium were not fighting for their own hand, they had not come there as invaders. Thus we are brought to the interesting conclusion that, on this first appearance of the Germans in history, they had been brought from their own country, hundreds of miles away, to assist a Celtic people resident in the valley of the Po. To assist them in what capacity? Undoubtedly either as hired troops or as forces levied on a subject territory. Whichever view we take, the presence of German forces at the battle of Clastidium in 222 B.C. must be regarded as an indication that the German people, or portion of them, were still at that time under Celtic predominance. I say "still at that time," because it will be seen that the Celtic ascendancy over the Germans soon afterwards came to an end.

What is thus inferred from the historical record is corroborated by philology. A number of words of Celtic origin are found spread through the whole group of Germanic languages, including the Scandinavian languages and English, which was originally a mixture of Low German dialects. Some of these words are especially connected with the political side of civilisation and are therefore especially indicative of Celtic political predominance at the time of their adoption into Germanic speech. Thus the German word _reich_, meaning realm or royal dominion, is traced to the Celtic _rigion_, represented in early Irish by _rige_, meaning kingship. From the Celtic word _ambactus_, used by Cæsar in the sense of "client" or "dependent," indicating one of the retainers of a Gallic nobleman, but originally signifying "one who is sent about," a minister or envoy--from _ambactus_ is derived the German word _amt_, meaning "office, charge, employment." From _ambactus_ are also derived the words _embassy_ and _ambassador_, with their kindred terms in the Romance languages. From the Celtic word _dunon_, a fortified place, represented in Irish by _dun_, is derived the word _town_ in English and the cognate words in the other Germanic languages. Professor Marstrander holds that several of the names of the numerals in all the Germanic languages, and therefore in the original German speech from which they have diverged, are formed from or influenced by Celtic names of the same numerals. If this is so, it indicates a thoroughly penetrating Celtic influence among the ancient Germans, for the names of the numerals may be regarded as among the most native elements of speech, so much so that it is said that facility in the speaking of two languages rarely exists to the degree of being able to reckon numbers with equal readiness in both, and that the language a person uses in ordinary reckoning must be regarded as his native and natural speech.

This matter of the early intermingling of Celts and Germans in northern Mid-Europe will be afterwards seen to have a special interest in reference to the Celtic colonisation of Britain and Ireland. Before concluding the evidence I have to bring forward on the subject, it will make the drift of the matter clearer if I state the later outcome of the Celtic migrations northward among the Germanic population. We have already seen that, as archaeologists are agreed, the Celts north of the Alps were in possession of iron long before the use and manufacture of iron was established in the more northern parts of Europe. It is mainly to this advantage that we may ascribe the predominance acquired by the Celts among the Germans. In the German regions, however, the Celts were for the most part an ascendant minority. Their domination must have lasted for several centuries. A time came when, in those parts which in the Celts were numerically and otherwise in greatest strength, a fusion of peoples took place, resulting in a Celto-Germanic population, Celtic in language but mainly Germanic in race. Meanwhile, the less blended section of the Germans, retaining their native language, had acquired the craft of ironwork, and were advancing in civilisation and no doubt increasing at the same time in numbers. Eventually the German-speaking Germans became more powerful than the once dominant Celtic minority and more powerful also than the Celto-Germanic folk who had become Celtic in language. A sense of distinct nationality grew up between the two populations. The Celticised Germans were located in western Germany, towards the Rhine, the un-Celticised Germans farther east. Under hostile pressure from the German-speaking element, the Celtic-speaking element were forced westwards across the Rhine into Gaul. Here they in turn pressed back the Celts who had settled in north-eastern Gaul, and modern events will help to fix in the mind the fact that this overflow of Celto-Germans into Gaul extended as far west as the river Marne, where it was brought to a stand by the resistance of the earlier Celtic inhabitants. The date of this migration was probably later than that of the battle of Clastidium, 222 B.C., when, as we have seen, the Celts appear to have still held sway over the Germans. The Celto-Germanic settlers between the Rhine and the Marne were the Belgae of Cæsar's time.

At first sight, this account may seem to be too precise an effort to fill up a blank in history, but the testimony of Cæsar and Tacitus, witnesses of prime authority, seems to leave no room for any alternative view.

Cæsar is the first writer in whom any mention of the Belgae is found. Holding the Gallic command for about nine years, he reduced the whole of Gaul to obedience to the Roman power. For him, Gaul, Gallia, signified the whole country between the Rhine and the Pyrenees. All its inhabitants in general were named Galli by him, but we also find that he uses the name Galli in a more precise sense as proper to the people of those parts which were not occupied by the Belgae. He also calls this people Celtae, Celts. Therefore in Cæsar's mind the Belgae were less Gallic and less Celtic than their neighbours to the west. His evidence on this subject however is much more precise.

The Rhine was for Cæsar the main boundary line between Gaul and Germany, between the Belgae and the Germans. The Belgae, he states, differ from the Celtae, as these from the Aquitani, in language, culture, and institutions. The difference between the Celtae proper and the Aquitani has already been accounted for. The Aquitani, bordering on Spain, were the same Celtiberian mixture as the people of Spain; they were Celtic, or mainly so, in language, but otherwise mainly Iberian. I am proceeding to show that the difference between the Celtae and the Belgae is to be explained in a similar way. The Belgae were likewise Celtic in language, at all events mainly so, but otherwise they were mainly Germanic. When Cæsar says that the three divisions of Gaul differed from each other in language, we must understand that he refers to broad distinctions of dialect, for the names of persons and places in Belgic Gaul at that time appear to the reader to be quite as Celtic as those in Gallia Celtica or western Gaul. Cæsar tells us that the Belgae are ruder, less civilised and more warlike than the Celtae or Galli more properly so called, and his explanation for this is that they have less commerce and less intercourse with outsiders, and so are less softened by refinement and luxury. This is interesting, because it implies that Gallia Celtica had a sufficient degree of commerce, intercourse, refinement and luxury to considerably soften down the character of its inhabitants.

The westward and southward pressure of the Germans, then a very powerful and numerous people, was in full force in Cæsar's time, so much so that it seems certain that Cæsar's conquest of Gaul came just in time to stay and delay that tide of Germanic invasion which overran Gaul some centuries later. His first operations in Gaul were against the Helvetii, whose country corresponded to the modern Switzerland. He tells us that the Belgae are at continual war with the Germans along the Rhine, and also that the Helvetii in their own country fight almost daily battles with the Germans. In the first year of Cæsar's Gallic command, the Helvetii came to a decision to migrate from their country westward, and Cæsar's first campaign was conducted with the purpose of forcing them to return to their own country. He ordered them to return thither, he states, lest the Germans should take possession of the territory and thus become neighbours to the old Roman province in southern Gaul.

Cæsar states plainly that the Belgae for the most part are of German origin; that in former times they had crossed the Rhine and dispossessed the Galli (here he used the name Galli as proper to the other inhabitants of Gaul in distinction from the Belgae). He indicates that, after this migration, they had offered a successful resistance to the invasion of the Cimbri and Teutones (between 113 and 102 B.C.).

Modern Frenchmen, though their national name is in origin the name of a Germanic people, show a tendency, easily understood, to minimise the Germanic element in their composition, and M. D'Arbois de Jubainville, dealing with Cæsar's statement that the Belgae were mainly of Germanic origin, seeks to explain that this was true geographically not ethnographically, that they came from German lands but did not come of German ancestry. Against the plain statement of a contemporary observer, such explanations are always to be received with caution. In this instance, there is corroborative evidence which indicates that Cæsar's words are to be taken at their face value. Cæsar also tells us that the Condrusi, Eburones, Cærosi and Paemani "uno nomine Germani vocantur"--are called by the common name of Germans. Again he says that the Segni and Condrusi are "ex gente et numero Germanorum"--of the German nation and so accounted. Strabo, writing within a century of Cæsar, says that "the Nervii are a Germanic people." According to Cæsar, the Nervii had no commerce, avoided wine and other luxuries, and were fierce men of great valour. They led the rest of the Belgae in opposing him. Tacitus is a hardly less valid authority, for his father-in-law Agricola had been engaged in long campaigns against the Germans in the Rhine country. "The Treveri and the Nervii," he says, "are especially forward in asserting their German origin, as though by this boast of race to be distinguished from the pacific character of the Gauls." It was surely not a geographical origin that was claimed in such a way. The Treveri dwelt on the west side of the Rhine. They were a Celtic-speaking people, and unlike most of the inhabitants of Gaul they seem to have retained their Celtic language throughout the period of Roman domination, for St. Jerome, writing in the late part of the fourth century, says that "the Galatians (of Asia Minor), apart from the Greek language, which all the East speaks, have a language of their own almost the same as the Treveri." In one respect the Treveri, Cæsar tells us, resembled the Germans of his time--they excelled in cavalry; and his continuator, Hirtius, writes that "in fierceness and in manner of life they differed little from the Germans." The Advatuci, he writes, "were descendants of the Cimbri and Teutoni." All these peoples dwelt in Belgic Gaul and came under the common appellation of Belgae. In addition to Cæsar's statement that the Belgae as he learned, not supposed, were, for the most part of German origin, we have detailed evidence that, of about eighteen States composing Belgic Gaul, no fewer than eight, in Cæsar's time and long after it, were still accounted to be German.

On the other hand, then and afterwards, a number of peoples reckoned to be Celtic continued to inhabit countries to the east of the Rhine. The Tencteri and the Usipetae, on the German side of the Rhine, were Celts, according to Dio Cassius. Tacitus, speaking of the Helvetii and the Boii, says that "both are Gallic nations," yet in another passage he speaks of "the Boii, a nation of the Germans." Still further east dwelt the Cotini and the Osi, of whom he writes: "The Cotini by their use of the Gallic language and the Osi by their use of the Pannonic language are proved not to be Germans": from which it appears that language was the criterion by which the Romans were accustomed to distinguish Germans from Celts. Again Tacitus writes: "The Triboci, Vangiones and Nemetes are certainly Germans," but modern German authorities recognise that the Triboci and Nemetes are Celtic in these very names. Of the Aestyi, dwelling apparently on the northern seaboard of Germany, Tacitus says that their language resembles that of Britain.

Further evidence of Celtic occupation of regions considered German in Cæsar's time and ever since then is afforded by a number of ancient place-names. For example, there were two towns or stations named Carrodunon, _i.e._ "wagon-fortress," one on the river Oder, the other in the upper valley of the Vistula. Other Celtic place-names, like Lugidunum, Eburodunum, Meliodunum, are found in central Germany.

Tacitus confirms the evidence of Cæsar to the effect that the Belgae were a Germano-Celtic people who came westward over the Rhine and conquered part of the country already occupied by the Celts. "Those," he says, "who first crossed the Rhine and expelled the Gauls were then named Germans but now Tungri." The Tungri inhabited a part of Belgic Gaul between the Nervii and the Treveri.

It seems to me, then, to be certain that the Belgae not only came into Gaul from Germany, but were themselves a mixed population of Celts and Germans speaking a Celtic dialect. Holder assigns their migration into Gaul to the third century B.C. It is, however, undesirable to attempt to fix anything but a somewhat extended period for migratory movements of the kind. The instance of the Helvetii proves that down to Cæsar's time the Celts in contact with the Germans were still in a very mobile condition.

Before using the facts hitherto stated and the conclusions derived from them to throw whatever light they can on the Celtic colonisation of Ireland, it may be well to state in a general way what can be said as to the stage of civilisation reached by the continental Celts before their subjugation by the Romans.

Some modern writers, but not very recently, have written about a Celtic Empire in ancient Europe. The nearest approach to authority for the existence of such an empire is a statement by Livy, who says: "While the elder Tarquin reigned in Rome, the supremacy among the Celts belonged to the Bituriges. They gave a king to the Celtic land. Ambigatus was his name, a very mighty man in valour and in his private and public resources, under whose rule Gaul was so abounding in men and in the fruits of the earth that it seemed impossible to govern so great a population."

The most that can be made of this passage, supposing that Livy had it on better authority than some other parts of his history, is that at one time the Bituriges held what the Greeks called hegemony, a political primacy among the Gauls, and this, too, only in the time of a single king. It may reflect a genuine Celtic tradition, going back to the time when the Celts were still a compact nation inhabiting a relatively small territory.

When we come to contemporary evidence of the political condition of the Celts, we find that everywhere on the continent and in Asia Minor, their form of government resembles that of the Roman Republic. There are no kings, and the power of the state is vested in a senate with certain high executive officers. The Celtic form of government in historical time was that of a patrician republic. The Celtic people was divided into a large number of small states without any organised superior power. From time to time, however, one or other of these states might acquire a degree of political pre-eminence over a group of neighbouring states, forming a loose federation in which it took chief direction of the common affairs. We find the same tendency among the states of ancient Greece. In Asia Minor, the three states of the Galatae formed themselves into a strict federation, with a fixed constitution, a common council of state and a common executive both civil and military.

So far as I have been able to trace, wherever the Greeks and Romans came in contact with Celts so as to acquire a closer knowledge of Celtic affairs, they found this kind of patrician republican government. Cæsar found no kings in Transalpine Gaul, and the governing authority, when he mentions it, belongs to senates and magistrates, _i.e._, chief officers of state. It was apparently so in Spain a century earlier; and in distant Lusitania, corresponding to the modern Portugal, the most western Celtic region on the continent, in resisting the Roman conquest the chief command is held by Viriatus, who is not called a king by the Roman and Greek historians, nor is any king mentioned in his time. Nor do we read of kings in Cisalpine Gaul. Thus from farthest east to farthest west, the patrician republican form of government seems to have prevailed in all Celtic communities with the probable exception of Ireland; and this was probably their political condition as far back as 300 B.C., or earlier, before the Galatians passed into Asia Minor.

At some earlier period, the Celts were undoubtedly governed by kings. The word for king, represented by the Irish word _ri_, is widely exemplified in ancient Celtic names. From it, as I have already remarked, the Germanic languages took their word for kingdom or realm. Sometimes it is found in the names of peoples, _e.g._, the Bituriges, Caturiges, etc.; sometimes in the names of men, _e.g._, Dumnorix, Ambiorix, Vercingetorix. We find evidence, too, of a strong anti-monarchical sentiment, as among the Romans. The law of the Helvetii made it a capital offence, under penalty of being burned alive, to aim at autocratic power.

Not only the Celts, but the Germans of that time, were governed without kings, as Tacitus records. He adds, however, that they appointed kings to command them when they went to war. Here we have a parallel to the Roman dictatorship, the vesting of the power of the republic in the hands of a single ruler during a time of critical warfare.

I have already mentioned the proficiency of the Celts in the construction of wheeled vehicles, and the consequent deduction that they were practised in the making of roads. The passage already quoted from Livy shows that, with all their military ardour, they were known to be active in agriculture; and this is corroborated by other ancient authorities. The countries occupied by the Celts excelled in ordinary agriculture not only during what we may call Celtic times but in subsequent ages, and it is these countries that have furnished the most excellent breeds of domestic animals--cattle, sheep, poultry, dogs.

Originally an inland people, the Celts who occupied the seaboard soon became proficient in navigation. Cæsar bears witness to their skill in ship building, and he seems to have found no great difficulty in collecting from the Belgic coast a sufficient fleet of ships to transport his army and supplies to Britain.

From the Greek settlement at Massilia (Marseille) two arts especially appear to have spread among the Celts of Transalpine Gaul: sculpture and the use of letters. The remains of Celtic sculpture in Gaul show evident signs of Greek origin. Cæsar makes the remarkable statement that the Gauls in his time use Greek writing in almost all their business, both public and private. The Romans of Cæsar's time had not long emerged, under Greek influence, from a state of comparative illiteracy, as every student of Latin literature must recognise. Among the spoils of the Helvetii captured by Cæsar, he found a complete census of the people written in Greek characters. Inscriptions in the Celtic language before the Roman conquest are in Greek characters, except in Cisalpine Gaul, where the characters are Etruscan.

On the subject of ancient Celtic art on the continent, reference may be made to the book by Romilly Allen, from which also a good idea of the skill and taste of the Celts in metal work may be obtained.

In general, it is clear that the Celts were a highly progressive people with a strong civilising tendency. Under the Druids, the western Celts developed a system of education and some kind of philosophy. With regard to their religion and to the part played by the Druids in Celtic life, I have summarised my own studies in a brochure entitled "Celtic Religion," which is published by the Catholic Truth Society of England.

II. THE CELTIC COLONISATION OF IRELAND AND BRITAIN