A Brief History of the Celts (28 page)

EARLY CELTIC HISTORY

T
he Celts first emerged into recorded history in the sixth century
BC
. We learn of early trading contacts between the
Phoenicians, the Greeks and the Etruscans. The earliest known point of contact seems to be the landing of Greek explorers and traders at the mouth of the Tartessus in the southern Iberian peninsula
and the trading agreement reached between the merchant-traders from Phocis in Greece and the local Celtic king, Arganthonios. Herodotus says that he died in 564
BC
, having
lived for a long time.

Certainly during the sixth century
BC
, if not before, there was a lively trade established between the Phoenicians, the Greeks and the Etruscans and the Celts of the
western Mediterranean. We know from tradition and from archaeological evidence, as well as from Greek accounts of the areas in which they were in contact with the Celts, that there had been a
Celtic expansion from their original homelands for some centuries.

Massilia (Marseilles) had been established about 600
BC
in the land of the Segobrigai – which seems to indicate ‘exalted’
(
brigia
) for ‘daring of strength’ (
sego
). Celtic tribes had already crossed into the Po valley and begun to settle but until the fifth century
BC
they were in conflict with the Etruscan empire for dominance in the area.

The Celtic tribes defeated the Etruscan armies near the River Ticino, a tributary of the Po, about 475
BC
. Pliny, assumed to be quoting the Cisalpine Celt, Cornelius
Nepos (
c
. 100–
c
. 25
BC
), believed that the war against the Etruscan empire was conducted by a confederation of the Boii, Insubres and Senones,
although it is arguable that the Senones were late-comers to the Italian peninsula. But certainly by the beginning of the fourth century
BC
most of the Etruscan territories
north of the Apennines were in Celtic hands. Around 396
BC
the Celts had inflicted a second major defeat – that is, the second worthy of record in Roman annals –
on the Etruscan empire at the city of Melpum, which is thought to be Melzo, west of Milan.

In 390
BC
the tribe called the Senones, led by Brennus, appeared outside the Etruscan city of Clusium, south of the Apennines. The Senones, an entire nation on the march,
claimed that they wanted nothing more than to settle on Etruscan lands in peace for there was no other land to settle north of the mountains. The Etruscans, newly conquered by Rome, sent to Rome
for ambassadors to help conduct the negotiations. The Roman ambassadors, patricians of the Fabii clan, proved partisan, ignored international law, and joined the Etruscans in doing battle with the
Celts.

Brennus and his Senones were appalled at this breach of international law and sent a delegation to Rome demanding reparation. Rome showed her disdain for the Celts who then, ignoring the
Etruscans, marched directly on Rome. On 18 July 390
BC
, they fought a battle at the Allia, 20 kilometres north of Rome, against Rome’s best legions and generals. The
Romans were routed. By that evening the Celts were outside the city of Rome but did not enter until the next day. A rump
of senators and military leaders shut themselves in
the Capitol, the only part of the city never taken.

It was seven months before the Celts decided to withdraw from the city and only then after a payment of ransom by the Senate. Rome paid dearly for the arrogance of the Fabii. The price of the
Celtic withdrawal was a fabulous 100 pounds’ weight of gold. When the gold was being weighed, Sulpicius Lagus, the senior surviving Roman officer, objected to the fact that the Celts were
using their own weights. Brennus then flung his sword on the scales and uttered the cry that became famous: ‘
Vae victis
!’ (Woe to the vanquished!) In other words, the conqueror
dictates the terms.

Rome’s defeat at the hands of the Senones always rankled with her historians and they frequently tried to rewrite history so as to extricate themselves from the shame of that defeat. From
then on, Roman writers would paint the Celts as drunken, childlike barbarians, only one step removed from animals, and the Celtic peoples would suffer from the Roman prejudice as group by group
they fell victim to the Roman empire.

But it took a while. In fact, it took two centuries for the Romans to conquer the Celts on the Italian peninsula. The Celtic victory over Rome caused the Celts to be welcome among the Latin city
states, who still had not given up their freedom to Rome, and the Greek city states of southern Italy. Dionysius I of Syracuse recruited many Celtic warriors as mercenaries in his army. We learn
that Celtic armies remained in the vicinity of Rome during the next fifty years.

Plutarch says a battle was fought at the River Anio in 377 or 374
BC
, adding that the Romans ‘mightily feared these barbarians who had conquered them in the first
instance’. So great was the terror that there was a law stating that priests were exempt from military service ‘except in the case of a Celtic war’. In 367
BC
we hear of the Romans battling once more against a besieging Celtic army at the very gates of Rome.

It is at this time that we see the evidence of a Celtic alliance with the Greek city states of southern Italy. Dionysius of Syracuse had not only employed Celtic
mercenaries in his army but had arranged for a contingent of 2000 Celtic mercenaries to serve his allies Sparta in their war against Thebes. The Celtic cavalry played a decisive role in the battle
of Maninea in this war. This is the first time we find the Celts in Greece itself but, by this time, the Celtic tribes in their eastward movement along the Danube had begun to reach the
Carpathians. At the same time, Pytheas of Massilia, the Greek explorer, had made contact with the insular Celts in Britain and Ireland. It was not until
c
. 300
BC
that Eratosthenes of Cyrene correctly placed Ireland on the map of the world.

The Senones, who appear to be the only Celts who were enemies of Rome at this time, had settled in Picenum on the eastern seaboard of the Italian peninsula, from an area south of Ancona up to
Rimini. Their main city seems to have been Senigallia, the place of the Senones Gauls. Again this may be seen as confirmation of their alliance with the Greeks for Ancona was a major trading colony
of Syracuse.

During 361–360
BC
a Celtic army was again in the vicinity of Rome and the Romans were still not able to defend themselves adequately. It would seem that the Celtic
predilection for settling matters by means of single combat between champions or leaders was taking a toll on the Romans for in 340
BC
the consul, Titus Manlius Imperiosus
Torquatus, is said to have forbidden Roman commanders to engage in single-handed combat with the Celts. It was not until 349
BC
that the first Roman victory over the Celts
was achieved. In 344
BC
the Romans finally concluded a treaty with the Celtic Senones. The Roman fear of Celtic invasion, however, remained intense for many years and
rumours of Celtic attacks often caused armies to be formed and sent out. The real fear was replaced by a neurotic fear which was doubtless the basis of the Romans’ subsequent racial antipathy
to the Celts.

At this time the accounts show that whenever a Celtic army approached Rome, they would eventually withdraw to the south into Apulia, and not to the north. This supports
the theory that they were in league with the Greek city states of southern Italy against the territorial ambitions of Rome. Even in 307
BC
Agathocles of Syracuse was using
Celtic mercenaries in his army against the imperial expansion of Carthage.

The Celtic eastward expansion along the Danube valley was now reaching towards the Black Sea. Celtic settlements were even found beyond the eastern shore around the Sea of Asov near the Crimea.
Other settlements have been found in southern Poland, Russia and the Ukraine. In 335–334
BC
Alexander of Macedonia met a number of Celtic chiefs on the banks of the
Danube and apparently made an agreement with them so that they would not attack the northern frontiers of his empire while he set off to conquer the east.

It was not until after his death that the Celtic expansion began again and we hear that a Celtic leader named Molistomos caused a massive displacement of the Antariate, the largest group of the
Illyrian (Bulgarian/Albanian) peoples, who were forced to flee before his advance. By 300
BC
the Celts had settled in what is now Moravia and a few years later had conquered
Thrace where they established a dynasty of Celtic kings, with Celtic names. The first of these was Cambaules.

In Italy, Rome’s expansions now caused the Celts and Etruscans to form an alliance against Rome. A major war began and the Samnites also joined the alliance. There was a Celtic-Samnite
victory over Rome at Camerium (Cameria), 140 kilometres north-east of Rome, in 298
BC
. Lucius Scipio’s defeat by the Senones was as shocking to the Romans as Allia. An
entire legion was destroyed and the rest of the army fled. However, three years later the Romans turned the tables and won a victory over the Celts and Samnites at Sentium. The war continued and in
284
BC
the Celts won another major
victory when they defeated the praetor Lucius Caecilius at Arretium (Arezzo); the Roman commander was among the
dead.

The following year, the Romans decided to concentrate all their forces against the Celtic Senones and entered their territory in Picenum. The Senones were defeated and the Roman commander Curius
Dentatus burnt and pillaged his way through the countryside. Now the other Celtic tribes of the Po valley emerged by name into history and we find them as allies of the Etruscans against Rome. The
Boii are identified as marching as far south as the Vadimo Lake, now Lago di Bassano, near the Tiber, 65 kilometres north of Rome. But here the Romans, under Publicius Cornelius Dolabella,
annihilated the Etruscan half of the army before turning on the Celts as they were marching to the aid of their allies. The Celts were checked and withdrew but the next year they were at war again
and this time were able to conclude a peace treaty with Rome.

Whatever their agreement with the Boii, Rome now took over all the Senones’ territory up to Ariminum (Rimini) and began to clear the countryside of the Celtic inhabitants. To the Celts of
northern Italy, the Roman ‘ethnic cleansing’ of the Senones and the building of Roman fortresses and colonies in the former independent countries of the Etruscans and Samnites was a
warning. Rome might soon be marching across the Apennines and into Celtic territory.

When the Greek king, Pyrrhus of Epiros, landed in southern Italy, at the request of the Greek city states to protect them against Rome’s imperial adventures, the Celts of the Po valley
threw in their lot with him. The Celts knew Pyrrhus and he had employed Celts in his army in Greece. He had a high respect for their fighting qualities. Large contingents of Po valley Celts were in
his armies when he defeated the Romans at Heraclea in 280
BC
and at Asculum in 279
BC
. They were still fighting for him when Rome secured a victory
over him at
Beneventum, and ended his campaign. Pyrrhus returned to Greece taking a large number of Celtic warriors with him; Celts remained in the armies of Epiros and,
indeed, of other Greek city states for many years afterwards.

Other tribes of the Celtic peoples were not so anxious to form alliances with the Greeks. These were the tribes of the eastward expansion. In 279
BC
, a vast Celtic army,
grouped into three divisions, had gathered on the northern borders of Macedonia. One division, under Bolgios, defeated the Macedonian army which had shortly before carved out Alexander’s
empire, and Ptolemy Ceraunos, the king of Macedonia, was slain. He had been one of Alexander’s foremost generals. A second Celtic army, jointly commanded by Brennus and Acichorios, entered
Greece, marched through Macedonia into Thessaly, and met and defeated an Athenian army commanded by Callippus, son of Moerocles, at the major battle of Thermopylae. The Celts swept through the
mountain passes to Delphi and sacked the sanctuary. Greece was devastated by these Celtic victories and the Panathenaea (annual games) had to be cancelled for 278
BC
.

Rumour has it that Brennus committed suicide, aghast at his sacrilege in sacking Delphi. It seems unlikely. We find that his army withdrew with the treasures of Delphi without suffering any
military defeat from the southern Greeks.

The third Celtic army, commanded by Cerethrios, had occupied eastern Macedonia and there they were eventually defeated by the new king of Macedonia, Antigonatus Gonatas. While large sections of
the Celtic invasion force withdrew back to the northern areas in what is now modern Bulgaria, Albania and Rumania, many others simply stayed in Macedonia posing a threat to the new king.
Antigonatus Gonatas arranged that these Celts could be hired as mercenaries by the Greek kings. He himself recruited Celtic divisions into his own army. In 277/276
BC
, a
further 4000 of them went to Egypt to serve the pharaoh Ptolemy II. More importantly
to the development of a Celtic state in Asia Minor, 20,000 Celts with their families,
from the tribes of the Tolistoboii, Tectosages and Trocmi, led by their kings Leonnarios and Litarios, crossed into Asia Minor at the invitation of Nicomedes of Bithynia to serve him against
Antiochus of Syria.

As for the Celts who went to Egypt, we find Celtic involvement in the affairs of Ptolemaic Egypt lasted until almost the beginning of the Christian era. In 217
BC
14,000
Celts constituted the major part of the army of the pharaoh Ptolemy IV at the battle of Raphia against Antiochus II of Syria. It was an Egyptian victory, thanks, so the account shows, to the Celtic
cavalry. A Celtic cemetery has been found at Hadra, south-east of Alexandria. Not only tombstones but pottery bearing Celtic names have been found there. Famous Celtic graffiti have been found in
the chapel of Horus, in the tomb of Seti I, at the great temple of Karnak. Egyptian coins with Celtic motifs on them were struck.