A Brief History of the Celts

by Peter Berresford Ellis

  Linen shirts, tunics and shoes of leather were worn, often with cloaks of coarse wool. It later became fashionable in Rome to wear a sagus (later sagum), initially a Celtic warrior’s cloak. The word was used symbolically by Cicero in the phrase saga sumere or ad saga ire – to take up arms or prepare for war – and saga poner, to lay down arms. Another Celtic cloak used by the Romans was the caracallus (hooded cloak). The word cacullus derived from this and eventually gave English the word ‘cowl’ with cognates to be found in many other European languages.

  The Celts also liked wearing ornaments to indicate their status in society, such as gold bracelets or the brooches with which their cloaks were fastened. Kings and chieftains, together with warriors and women of position, wore gold necklets, usually a torc around their necks.

  One particular aspect of several of the battles they fought with the Celts fascinated the Romans. They found that bands of Celtic warriors went into battle naked. These warrior bands were wrongly identified as a tribe which the Romans, using a Celtic word, called the Gaesatae. Polybius describes a contingent at the battle of Telamon. They went into battle with only sword and shield. Camillus had earlier captured some of these naked Celtic warriors and showed them to the Romans saying, according to Appian: ‘These are the creatures who assail you with such terrible cries in battle, bang their swords and spears on their shields to make a din, and shake their long sword and toss their hair.’

  The Greeks also encountered these special groups. Dionysius of Halicarnassus was disparaging:

  Our enemies fight bare-headed, their breasts, sides, thighs, legs are all bare, and they have no protection except from their shields; their weapons of defence are thin spears and long sword. What injury could their long hair, their fierce looks, the clashing of their arms and the brandishing of their weapons do us?

  At Telamon Polybius gives a totally misleading interpretation:

  The Insubres and the Boii wore their trousers and light cloaks but the Gaesatae had been moved by their thirst for glory and their defiant spirit to throw away these garments and so they took up their positions in front of the whole army naked and wearing nothing but their arms. They believed that they would be better equipped for action in this state, as the ground was in places overgrown with brambles and these might catch in their clothes and hamper them in the use of their weapons.

  The Gaesatae were not a tribe at all but a group of élite professional warriors who fought naked for religious purposes as they believed that it enhanced their martial karma, their spiritual vibrations in battle. This contact with Mother Earth added to their spiritual aura, ensuring rebirth in the Otherworld if they perished in this one. The word ‘Gaesatae’ has a cognate in the old Irish gaiscedach, a champion or one who bears arms. Gaisced is a word for weapons, and gaesum is a spear. We have an entire series of words from this root such as gaisemail (warlike or valiant), gaiscemiacht (military prowess and wisdom) and gaisce (wisdom). Was the warrior deemed to be a wise person?

  In spite of Dr Simon James’ claim that the insular Celts, unlike their Continental cousins, were ‘egalitarian farming communities lacking warrior nobles’, we find that such warrior nobles did exist. In fact, insular Celtic mythology and record is full of references to such groups. We have the Fianna of Fionn Mac Cumhail – the word means ‘warriors’, and it appears as an ancient Indo-European term. The cognate in Sanskrit, vanóti, means ‘to win or conquer’. The word survives in Latin as venatio, a hunter, and in English as ‘win’. More interestingly, it appears in the Gaulish Celtic tribal name of the Veneti, who gave their name to Vannes in Brittany, and to the Veneti of the Po valley, who gave their name to Venice. We also have the term feinnid, a word allied to Fianna, for a band of warriors. Tréin-fher, man of strength, described a champion, and óglach a young hero. More ancient than these words is curad, which, according to Windisch and Stokes, is the root of the name for the warrior élite of the kings of Connacht, Gamanrad. Yet in later texts the name is expressed as Gamhanrhide, using rhide or ridire meaning ‘knight’.

  There are other groups of warrior élites such as the Craobh Ruadh (Red Branch) warriors of Ulaidh (Ulster) which Professor O’Rahilly argues was probably a mistranscription of Craobh Rígh (Royal Branch). We also find the Degad, a band of warriors exiled to Munster. The Nasc Niadh were the élite bodyguard serving the kings of Munster. From its beginnings the Niadh Nask (the military order of the golden chain), as it is now called, developed into a dynastic nobiliary honour at the bestowal of the head of the Eóghanacht dynasty. Since the death of Donal IX MacCarthy Mór (1596), last regnant King of Desmond and titular King of the Two Munsters, the order has remained as a valid and legal dynastic honour into modern times. According to the late The Rt Hon. The Lord Borthwick of that Ilk, President of the International Commission for Orders of Chivalry: ‘The Niadh Nask is without doubt one of the most ancient nobiliary honours in the world, if not the most ancient!’

  In several ancient Irish sources there appears another warrior élite called the Ríglach, or royal heroes. In the Metrical Dindshenchas, the Book of Leinster and the Betha Colmáin maic Lúachain, it denotes a royal bodyguard, meriting a capital letter. In later middle Irish texts the meaning of the word has degenerated first to veterans and then simply to old people.

  The Ríglach, as a group of young warriors recruited only from the sons of kings, finds a parallel in the Rajputs of the Hindu culture, who developed into a warrior tribe, their name deriving from raj, king, and putrá, sons. The Rajputs of India boasted they were all the sons of kings, descendants of royal warriors, and formed the principality of Rajputana in north-west India arising as a powerful force in the seventh century AD. They lost power after Indian independence. In the folk memory of the Ríglach, might we be seeing the basis of that Irish cliché, ‘We are all kings’ sons’?

  In the ancient Celtic world we have overwhelming numbers of names incorporating the royal element, both tribal names such as Bituriges, ‘Kings of the World’, and personal names such as Dumnorix, ‘World King’. We know that after the Claudian invasion of Britain, King Cogidubnus of the Regni, whose territory was in West Sussex, was given the title ‘rex (et) legatus Augusti in Britannia’ for his pro-Roman attitudes. His capital Noviomagus, Chichester, was called the ‘New Plain’. Regni was not, as some have suggested, a renamed Celtic tribe because their king had been confirmed in his kingship by the Romans. They still bore their old Celtic name – ‘King’s People’ or perhaps even ‘King’s Sons’!

  The Romans even had lessons to learn from the Celts in terms of battle tactics. Livy mentions that at Sentium the Celtic warriors deployed a testudo (tortoise) – a battle tactic in which the fighting men locked their shields together to form an impregnable wall. Once the Romans had adopted the Celtic shield, for it is clear that such interlocking could not be achieved with the older Roman round shield or buckler, the testudo became regarded as a Roman battle tactic.

  If the Celts were initially able to teach the Romans about warfare, why was it that, with the exception of northern Britain and Ireland, they were eventually defeated and swallowed in the pax Romana? Dr Simon James proposes that the explanation lay in the contrasting nature of the two societies. They thought about war and waged it in different ways.

  To the Celts warfare was a matter of honour which could begin and end in a personal single combat. It was often a matter of individual courage. Generally, the Celts were not interested in central authority and discipline. They thought and acted as individuals and were natural anarchists. In modern times these attributes are seen as laudable. In ancient times, they were the reason for the downfall of the Celtic peoples.

  We find that the excuse for many of the invasions of Celtic territory by foreign forces, who then remained to exploit the Celts, was an invitation from a disgruntled Celtic leader who refused to accept the decision of his fellows. Caesar invaded Britain on the excuse of putting back a prince on his father’s throne. Mandubracius of the Trinovantes, chased out of his
territory, went to Gaul and sought Caesar’s help. Caesar did place him on the throne of his father. But, if Celtic law was being followed, in which primogeniture was not recognised, perhaps Mandubracius had no right to sit there? Mandubracius, ironically, means ‘Black Traitor’.

  The same internal squabbles, in which the electoral system of the Celtic succession laws was challenged or a deposed king did not accept the ruling of the law, can be seen in many examples throughout Celtic history. Diarmuid Mac Murrough of Hy-Kinsella, deposed as King of Leinster, sought Henry II’s aid to put him back on the throne of Leinster with results that still rebound in Ireland until this day. Maol Callum (Malcolm), grandson of Duncan, sought English help to put him on the throne of Scotland, and overthrow the legitimate ruler Macbeth who had ruled for seventeen years. Today it is Macbeth who is the villain and Maol Callum the ‘rightful’ king.

  It was the Celtic custom, as Diodorus Siculus remarked, when gathered for battle, for a warrior to step out of the ranks and challenge the most valiant champion among the enemy to single combat, brandishing his weapons, boasting of his deeds and those of his ancestors in order to break the nerve of his opponent. Depending on the results of the combat the entire battle could be decided.

  The problem was, in battle against the Romans, that cultural differences resulted in different endings. If a Celt was beaten in single combat, often the Celtic army would accept that the matter had been resolved and fade away. If a Celt won the combat then the Roman forces did not go away and merely fell on the Celts in fury to exact revenge.

  In defeat, the Celtic leaders who had led their people into such extremity would either seek death in combat or commit ritual suicide. This was not at all unusual among the ancient Indo-European societies. The Roman generals often did the same. Catuvolcus, an ageing joint king with Ambiorix, of the Eburones, ‘poisoned himself with yew’ when his people’s countryside was laid waste by Caesar. When the Gaulish uprising of AD 21 failed, Julius Florus of the Treverii and Julius Sacrovir of the Aedui both committed suicide, as did Boudicca of the Iceni in Britain following her defeat in AD 61.

  There is no extensive evidence of women generally taking part in warfare, although there is a strong insular Celtic tradition of female warriors and queens leading their people in battle. Women like Boudicca or Cartimandua certainly did command their people in battle during the Roman conquest. We will discuss their role in detail in Chapter 6.

  For the Romans, war was a cold-blooded profession. The legionaries had been trained to fight as units. Unquestioning obedience to the commands of their officers was essential and they relied on their fellows to act with them as a cohesive force. Roman generals wrote and studied military treatises, and planning and method became important. That planning, that ruthlessness, finally gave Rome the military advantage. Indeed, a certain lack of humanity, a devotion to discipline, and a severity of punishment to any who lacked complete commitment to the will of a central power, appear necessary for the growth of an imperial regime. The Roman legionary had to be more frightened of his superiors than he was of the enemy. The same principle has often applied in modern armies.

  However, the Roman claim that the Celts never showed any staying power in warfare was not true. In 57 BC, the Nervii at the battle of the River Sambre, a tributary of the Meuse, fought to the death under their chieftain, Boduognatus. Caesar, hardly ever speaking well of the Celts in battle, was moved to report:

  The enemy, even in their desperate plight, showed such bravery that when their front ranks had fallen those immediately behind stood on their prostrate bodies to fight and when these too fell and the corpses were piled high, the survivors kept hurling javelins as though from the top of a mount, and flung back the spears intercepted by their shields. Such courage accounted for the extraordinary feats they had performed already. Only heroes could have made light of crossing a wide river, clambering up the steep banks, and launching themselves on such a difficult position.

  The Nervii, Caesar reports, were almost annihilated. Only 500 men were left capable of bearing arms out of the 60,000 who had formed their army. Of 600 nobles only three survived.

  When the Celts did fight as an army, they fought as a tribal group and were divided into septs or sub-divisions of the tribe – just as they were at Culloden in 1746. If the model of the Scottish clan army is a model for the ancient Celts, it seems that each sept had an hereditary place in the line of battle.

  The ‘age of choice’, when Celtic males came to manhood, was seventeen years old, so every male over that age, fit enough to carry arms, would be part of the regiment of his clan or tribe. The chieftain was automatic commander. They marched into battle with pipes, drums and voices raised in war songs or battle cries.

  Livy describes how the Celts used such noise and tumult to throw their enemies into confusion and terror. ‘They are given to wild outburst and they fill the air with hideous songs and varied shouts.’ Further, ‘their songs, as they go into battle, their yells and leapings, and the dreadful noise of arms as they beat their shields in some ancestral custom, all this is done with one purpose, to terrify the enemy.’ Diodorus Siculus says the Celts had trumpets (carnyx) that were peculiar to them. Such trumpets may be seen on the panels of the Gundestrup Cauldron, and fragments have been found at various Celtic sites. The mouthpiece of one trumpet in the shape of a boar’s head was found in Banff. Representations of other trumpets are seen on a triumphant Roman arch at Orange in southern France. ‘When they blow upon them, they produce a harsh sound, suitable to the tumult of war.’

  All in all, then, we see that the Celtic warrior was every bit as sophisticated and well armed, though perhaps not as well disciplined, as his Greek and Roman counterparts.

  6

  CELTIC WOMEN

  Celtic women were the subject of much comment from the writers of Greece and Rome, and there continues to be much speculation and argument about them. Compared with their sisters in the classical world, they enjoyed considerable rights and freedom and, indeed, even political power. Plutarch reports how Celtic women ambassadors intervened to prevent a war among the Celts of the Po valley during the fourth century BC. Women ambassadors from the Celtic Volcae were sent to negotiate a treaty with Hannibal. When the Romans arrived in Britain they found Celtic warrior queens ruling in their own right. Were these exceptions to the rule or did Celtic women have a role in Celtic society which made their contemporaries in Greece and Rome appear primitive?

  The evidence from the late Hallstatt and early La Tène graves on the Continent, such as the ‘princess of Vix’ and the female chariot burial from Rheinheim, shows that some women were regarded as worthy enough to be buried in rich graves with the accoutrements usually reserved for warrior kings. Chariot burials of females have been found in what was the Parisii territory of eastern Yorkshire during the third to first centuries BC.

  The classical writers are eager to point out that Celtic women are not as ‘womanly’ as the Greeks and Romans. Ammianus Marcellinus says:

  A whole troop of foreigners would not be able to withstand a single Celt if he called his wife to his assistance. The wife is even more formidable. She is usually very strong, and has blue eyes; in rage her neck veins swell, she gnashes her teeth, and brandishes her snow-white robust arms. She begins to strike blows mingled with kicks, as if they were so many missiles sent from the string of a catapult.

  The voices of these women are formidable and threatening, even when they are not angry but being friendly. But all Celtic women, with equal care, keep neat and clean and in some areas, such as among the Aquitani, no woman can be seen, be she never so poor, in soiled or ragged clothing.

  ‘The women of the Celts,’ Diodorus Siculus comments, ‘are nearly as tall as the men and they rival them also in courage.’

  Our classical sources, however, are not interested in recording any details about Celtic female leaders unless they are exceptional, such as Cartimandua or Boudicca. We know of a ruler called Onomaris, arguably meaning
‘Mountain Ash’, who was chieftainess of the Scordisci. She is recorded as leading her people in battle against the Illyrians of the Balkans. The Scordisci settled by the Danube and founded their capital at Sinigdunum, which is now Belgrade.

  Also from this area emerged ‘Queen Teuta’ in 231 BC. A group of tribes in the region of modern Kotor on the Illyrian coast were ruled by a king called Agron, the masculine form of Agrona, a Celtic war goddess, whose tradition survived in Wales as ‘the Washer of the Ford’. In the autumn of 231 BC Agron died from pleurisy. He was succeeded by a woman called Teuta. This comes from the Celtic teutates (people), cognate to the Irish tuath (tribe) and similar to the Gaulish male name or title Toutiorix (King of the People). Teuta may well mean ‘The People’s Queen’.

  Polybius has little good to say about Teuta, mainly because she decided to extend her kingdom by attacking the neighbouring Greek state of Epiros. Whatever else he was, Polybius was a Greek, a prominent member of the Achaean Confederation. Teuta’s warriors are clearly identified as Celts. The kingdom of Epiros was employing Celtic mercenaries at the time, and Polybius is very sarcastic about this fact. Indeed, the Celtic mercenaries decided to join forces with their compatriots from Teuta’s kingdom. Polybius is scathing about Epiros’ decision to entrust its safety to the hands of such people.

  Rome decided to take a hand in the affairs of Teuta and sent ambassadors to lecture her. If the arrogance of the Fabii ambassadors towards the Celts at Clusium is anything to go by, perhaps it is no wonder that Teuta, as Polybius puts it, ‘gave way to a fit of womanish petulance’. She had the Roman ambassador and his party assassinated. But because the rules of hospitality applied, she waited until the ambassador and his party were already on their ships about to make sail for Rome. It was not a politically wise thing to do. Rome dispatched 200 ships commanded by Gnaeus Fulvius to attack Teuta’s kingdom.