CELTIC ROAD BUILDERS
In discussing classical commentaries on the Celtic use of heavy wagons and chariots, Dr Anne Ross observed: ‘That some provision for all this activity and coming and going must have been made in the way of roads is clear; and it is an aspect of Celtic life which cannot simply be ignored.’ Prior to 1970 the evidence for roads was scanty although Dr Ross, myself and several others argued that an efficient network of roads must have existed throughout the ancient Celtic world and that the Romans only improved on it.
The evidence in classical works was there for the discerning reader. Diodorus Siculus talked about merchants using heavy goods wagons in the Celtic lands. Strabo actually mentions the roads in Narbonensis. Then we have the heavy wagons found among the grave goods of the Celtic princes of the Hallstatt period. It is also significant that many of the words connected with roads and transport in Latin are Celtic loan words. The late Professor Stuart Piggott estimated that there were no fewer than nineteen Celtic words connected with roads and transport adopted into pre-empire Latin. In his study, The Earliest Wheeled Transport, Professor Piggott points to ‘the rich vocabulary of Celtic loan words’ and says:
The Celtic vehicle words in Latin seemed roughly divisible into two groups, the majority being those absorbed in the language at a relatively early date and then used for a variety of Roman wagons, carriages and two-wheelers; a plausible origin would be among the Cisalpine Gauls.
When the Celts first swept down the Italian peninsula and won their early victories over the Roman armies, moving vast distances with their war chariots, wagons and other vehicles, they were clearly used to such transport and the road systems required to move it. According to Roman sources, however, the Romans did not begin to build their own road systems until nearly eighty years after the Celts arrived at the gates of Rome. This road building was initiated in 312 BC by Appius Claudius whose first major construction was named after him – the Appian Way.
The wheel had appeared in prehistory and reached all parts of Europe long before the emergence of the Celts. Through the Bronze Age it had developed from a single cast piece to a hub, usually with eight spokes, set into a wooden curved section in the circumference of the wheel, a felly, made up of two strips bent into the circle with overlapping ends secured in place.
For the Celts the wheel became a solar symbol. Indeed, from 1500 BC the spoked wheel had become a religious symbol in most northern European societies, particularly as representative of the sun. The Celts often buried models of bronze wheels with their dead, perhaps as a means of lighting their journey to the Otherworld. Wheel models have also been found at Celtic shrines, and the symbol appeared on Celtic warrior amulets, helmets and coins.
The Celtic wheelwrights created a new and highly sophisticated concept in wheel-making during the seventh century BC. They gave the felly a double thickness. The inner felly was made of a single piece of wood bent into a circle. The outer felly consisted of several separate sections bent into an arc following the curvature of the inner felly. They were then joined with iron clamps. In addition to this, and to make the wheel rigid, the ends of the spokes penetrated the inner and the outer felly and the whole was bound with an iron tyre attached with large-headed nails; the nail heads formed the running surface of the wheel, giving that extra purchase.
What was particularly intriguing was that this iron tyre was made too small for the wheel but it was then heated. The Celtic smithies knew that iron expanded with heat. Once expanded, it was forced over the wheel and burnt itself into position. On cooling, the iron contracted and bound the wheel tightly.
The Celts were now able to produce wheels that could carry a range of weapons and chariots far superior to those of their neighbours. Julius Caesar’s preoccupation with the movement of British Celtic heavy war chariots, which initially appeared to his soldiers as the first tanks must have appeared to German infantry in the 1914–18 war, certainly implies the existence of a good road system in Britain. Caesar shows that even his cavalry had difficulty facing the British chariots:
The cavalry, also, found it very dangerous work fighting the charioteers; for the Britons would generally give ground on purpose and after drawing them some distance from the legions would jump down from their chariots and fight on foot, with the odds in their favour.
Caesar points out that after his legions had crossed the Thames into the territory of Cassivellaunus, the British king,
disbanding the great part of his troops, . . . retained only some four thousand charioteers, with whom he watched our line of march. He would retire a short way from the route and hide in dense thickets, driving the inhabitants and cattle from the open country into the woods wherever he knew we intended to pass. If ever our cavalry incautiously ventured too far away in plundering and devastating the country, he would send all his charioteers out of the woods by well-known lanes and pathways [my emphasis] and deliver very formidable attacks, hoping by this means to keep them afraid to go far afield.
The remains of such chariots have been found in the Parisii graves in Yorkshire. But heavy, iron-tyred chariots could not have been used in the manner that Caesar described without good roads, and evidence for the sophistication of Celtic roads was discovered in the mid-1980s.
The Corlea bog, near the village of Kenagh, Co. Longford, was at the southern extremity of a raised bog covering an extensive area of central Ireland. While the bogland was being explored by Bord na Móna (the Irish Turf Board) in the early 1980s, traces of a roadway were discovered. It was wooden-based but preserved by the anaerobic conditions. Archaeologists began excavations in 1985 and the timbers from the roadway were sent off for dendrochronological analysis. All the samples pointed to a tree-felling date of 148 BC.
This was not the first discovery of a Celtic roadway, but it was the first to attract publicity and impinge on the minds of scholars. In fact, in 1957, in Derraghan More, over a kilometre away, a similar roadway had been discovered and a tree-ring date of 156 BC plus or minus nine years was given. It was obvious that both roadways were part of the same major highway, which proved what had been argued for some years – that the ancient Celts were sophisticated road builders but that, because they used the materials which came naturally to hand, the great forests of northern Europe, only in bogland conditions was any evidence of them preserved. Most of the roads had been overlaid by Roman engineers, working with more enduring stone. Everyone had assumed that it was the Romans who had initially constructed these roadways, whereas in fact they were merely strengthening an existing road system laid out by the Celts.
The Corlea roadway of 148 BC shows that highly sophisticated planning and organisation were needed, together with a massive quantity of timber and a large labour force. Oak and birch were the principal woods used in the construction together with alder, elm, hazel and a few yew trees. Birch formed the substructure, supporting the weight of the upper timbers. Oak planks were put on the birch runners. The roadway was consistently 3–4 metres wide and the oak planks were often carefully adzed to ensure a smooth, flat surface.
To build a roadway crossing a bogland, strong enough to take wagon transport, was a difficult feat in the second century BC. The Celtic engineers showed a brilliance of ingenuity. Professor Barry Raftery, the leading Irish archaeologist, has said:
The road at Corlea was no ordinary road . . . The construction of the Corlea road was a gigantic undertaking comparable to the effort involved in the erection of the linear earthworks or in the building of the great royal centres.
Corlea is the largest stretch of early Celtic roadway which has survived. But it is not unique. Similar roads have been found in other parts of the Celtic world such as in Dümmer, south of Oldenburg, in Lower Saxony, where the road, in former peatland, shows remarkable similarities of construction. This survival also seems to date from the second century BC. The oldest Celtic roadways have been found in Gwent, in southern Wales; these are also of wooden construction and are laid across the mudflats adjacent to the Severn. The first of these to be found, called the Upton track, has been radiocarbon-dated to around 410 BC.
Evidence for early Irish roads, bridges and causeways abounds in early Irish literature. The five main roads leading to Tara are mentioned in the oldest manuscripts and these were called slige, significantly from sligim, I hew. Cormac’s Glossary says that such roads were built so that two chariots could pass each other comfortably on the road. These five great roads were often referred to in the annals as well as other literature. The Slige Asail ran north-westerly; the Slige Mudluachra went northwards from Tara in one direction and southwards in the other. The Slige Cualan ran south-east through Dublin across the Liffey by the hurdle bridge which still gives the Irish name to Dublin – Baile Atha Cliath, Town of the Hurdle Ford. The Slige Dála ran south-west from Tara to Ossory, Co. Kilkenny. The fifth road, the Slige Mór, ran south-west from Tara to join the Eiscir Riada, a natural ridge running across the whole country from Dublin to Galway. Significantly the name means ‘Sandhill of Chariot Driving’.
There is an abundance of terms for a road in old Irish, each name apparently denoting the size and the quality of the road, rather like modern M, A and B categories in England. The ancient Irish were more particular and used no fewer than seven categories ranging from the slige to a lámrota, a term for a small byway literally meaning a hand-road, from lámh, hand, and rót, a small road which is defined as being made for a single-horsed chariot.
The Brehon Laws state that the king or chief of the territory through which the road ran was responsible for its upkeep. If a traveller was injured on the road, compensation had to be paid. If the traveller himself did damage to the road, he had to pay damages to the king or chief. All roads had to have three major renovations, during the winter, at the time of the fairs or horse racing, and during a time of war.
There was also a system of bridges and the Senchus Mór lays down precise rules on the construction of these bridges. The ancient word in Irish was droichet. As well as bridges, causeways or tóchar were built. Caesar refers to bridges in Gaul during his conquest of the country.
Long before Caesar’s time, the Latin language had adopted many Celtic words connected with transport and forms of transport, even the measure of distance – a league, entering Latin as leuca or leaga.
One of the earliest and most popular Celtic words for a chariot entered Latin as carpentum. It came from the Celtic root carbanto, describing a two-wheeled carriage, and was later used by the Romans specifically for a baggage wagon. From this evolved such words as carpenter, car and cart in a number of European languages. The original Celtic word may be seen in such place-names as Carbantorate, Carpentorate and Carbantoritum. Florus uses the word to describe the silver-mounted vehicle in which the Arverni king Bituitus was paraded after his defeat in 121 BC. By Caesar’s day it was in general use in Latin for a civil vehicle built especially for women.
There was the carruca, a four-wheeled carriage, and the carrus, a four-wheeled goods wagon. The essedum was a war chariot and the warrior who fought from it was an essedarius, from the Celtic ensedo, implying something for sitting in. The essedum became a Roman pleasure vehicle and during the time of Seneca they were all too common in Rome. Professor Piggott points out that ‘we are in a world where foreign names are in use for wholly Roman vehicles, like nineteenth-century London when gentlemen might discuss the relative comfort of the beline or landau as against brougham and tilbury.’
The reda or rheda was a four-wheeled carriage used for long distance journeys, driven by a redarius, and the petorritum was an open four-wheeled Celtic wagon. It was Martial, himself an Iberian Celt, who introduced another Celtic loan word – covinus, a war chariot, which eventually became a Roman covinarius or travelling cart. The word is from the Celtic covignos, implying a shared transport.
Another Celtic term for a wagon, plaustrum or ploxenum, was applied to a vehicle used among the Cisalpine Gauls. Catullus, Cato, Varro and Virgil all describe it as a heavy duty wagon drawn by oxen, asses or mules, with disc wheels and iron tyres. Ovid, curiously, says that plaustrum was the Celtic name for the constellation Ursus Major (the Great Bear).
Celtic words pertaining to horses were also borrowed, including caballus itself – originally a pack horse but eventually evolving into similar words in many languages, for example (in English) cavalier, cavalry and cavalcade. One of the towns of the Aedui was called Cabillonum, now Châlonsur-Saône.
This high preponderance of Celtic words in Latin at so early a stage is indicative of Celtic pre-eminence in the field of roadways and transport in their early contacts with Rome.
Obviously the Celtic world was open to land trade and the movement of goods in heavy wagons. Additionally, however, the Celts built river-going craft and traders moved easily along the great Celtic river routes, along the Danube, the Rhine, the Rhône, the Seine, the Loire and the Po. The question that springs to mind is whether the ancient Celts were also a sea-going people.
At least one area of the Celtic world was, otherwise we would have great difficulty explaining the presence of Celts in the north-western islands of Ireland and Britain. The traditions of migrations from the Iberian peninsula and the later migrations of the Belgae would have been impossible if the Celts were unable to master the turbulent seas off Europe’s north-west coastline. But to what extent were the ancient Celts ship builders?
Apart from insular records, we have to rely for our most detailed account on Julius Caesar. He says:
The Veneti are much the most powerful tribe on this coast [western Gaul]. They have the largest fleet of ships, in which they traffic with Britain; they excel the other tribes in knowledge and experience of navigation; and as the coast lies exposed to the violence of the open sea and has but few harbours, which the Veneti control, they compel nearly all who sail those waters to pay toll.
Caesar is telling us that the Celts of this coast all have fleets but that the Veneti have the largest and are very skilled in navigating the western seas. Caesar goes on:
The Gauls’ own ships were built and rigged in a different manner from ours. They were made with much flatter bottoms, to help them to ride shallow water caused by shoals or ebb-tides. Exceptionally high bows and sterns fitted them for use in heavy seas and violent gales, and the hulls were made entirely of oak, to enable them to stand any amount of shocks and rough usage. The cross-timbers, which consisted of beams a foot wide, were fastened with iron bolts as thick as a man’s thumb. The anchors were secured with iron chains instead of ropes. They used sails made of raw hides or thin leather, either because they had no flax and were ignorant of its use, or more probably because they thought that ordinary sails would not stand the violent storms and squalls of the Atlantic and were not suitable for such heavy vessels.
We know that the use of flax and linen was well established, so Caesar’s second explanation appears the more likely. Caesar says the Celtic sea-going vessels were solidly built and weathered the storms easily. They could not be damaged by ramming with the Roman vessels. Caesar’s description of the Veneti ships is endorsed by Strabo.
Unfortunately, archaeologists have not discovered any surviving examples of these sea-going vessels though they have come across remains of river craft, a typical example being a large dug-out type from Hasholme, in East Yorkshire, dated to the third century BC. However, a vessel remarkably like the one described by Caesar, with high prow and stern, appears on a Pictish cross slab from Cossans, Angus, known as St Orland’s stone.
Certainly, the insular Celts and their Gaulish sea coast neighbours were advanced in this area. In the early centuries of the Christian period the Picts were famed for their fleet, just as the Veneti had been. The Annals of Tighernach allude to the might of the Pictish navy. There are descriptions of a warship from the Dàl Riada kingdom in Argyll – a small compact vessel which, when not under sail, was propelled by twenty-eight oarsmen seated on seven benches with seven oars on each side.
Caesar himself makes it clear that there was much intercourse between Gaul and Britain during his time. He met several Britons in Gaul who probably gave him false information about the poverty of Britain in order to dissuade him from invading, for not everything he wrote could be put down to sheer propaganda.
There was trade with the Celts of Britain and Ireland long before Julius Caesar and the Romans made their first military voyages. As has been mentioned, during the century before Rome’s major conquest of Britain, the period in which southern Britain seemed to be under the high kingship of Cunobelinus, Britain’s trade with the Mediterranean world was much valued. Wheat, cattle, gold, silver, iron, leather goods, hides and hunting dogs were the main exports. Indeed, Strabo (60–24 BC) argued that trade with Britain produced more revenue for Rome than would accrue if the island were to become a Roman province and the Roman treasury had to pay for a standing army and civil service to run the country.
Ireland, too, had sea-going vessels and it was obvious that there was much contact between Ireland and Britain and Ireland and Europe. Tacitus tells how an Irish king visited Britain and was taken hostage by Agricola, the Roman governor, and, incidentally, Tacitus’ father-in-law, who planned to invade Ireland. A war in northern Britain forestalled him.
The Brehon Laws list three types of ship: the ler-longa or sea-going vessels, the barca, or small coastal vessels, also called serrcinn, and lastly the river vessels or curragh. The longa is not a loan word from Latin longus or Saxon long, but merely a cognate, as is barc. The Irish word is used in the earliest manuscripts. Certainly in the early Christian period the Irish were making many expeditions to Britain, travelling to Cornwall and establishing larger colonies, such as the kingdom of Dyfed, in what is now Wales, and the kingdom of Dál Riada, in what is now Scotland. Irish traders and missionaries were also making their presence felt in Europe.
The discovery of early wine amphorae from the Continent in south-western Ireland indicates the extent of the trade. Certainly we know that Phoenician and Greek traders were visiting Ireland several centuries BC and there is no reason not to suppose that Irish traders were making reciprocal visits. As the early Irish texts speak of their ancestors arriving from the Iberian peninsula, and as the Iberian peninsula was settled by the Celts by the start of the first millennium BC, the use of sea-going ships must have been well established among the Celts.
In the early Christian period we know that groups of Irish missionaries and settlers had reached Iceland before the Norse and were on the Faroes by the time Diciul was writing in the eighth century. In 1976 explorer Tom Severin and his team reconstructed a sixth-century Irish ship using ethnographic, literary and archaeological sources. They built a leather-covered boat some 11 metres long with a beam of 2.5 metres and fitted with sails and oars. Using the Irish classic Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis, which is said to be a factual account of a voyage made by St Brendan of Clonfert (c. AD 486–578), and the earliest manuscript copies of which survive from the tenth century, Severin traced the voyage from Galway, sailing on 17 May 1976, travelling by way of the Hebrides, Faroes, Iceland and Greenland, and making landfall in Newfoundland on 26 June 1977. He thus proved that the Irish of this period would have been capable of crossing the Atlantic as the Navigatio had apparently recorded.
The ability of the ancient Celts to travel great distances has been underestimated, in spite of the knowledge of their movements through Europe. Henri Hubert has demonstrated that the various Celtic societies in the ancient world not only shared a sense of common origin but were in communication. He cites two instances from the Second Punic War. When the Romans found that Hannibal proposed to march from the southern Iberian peninsula, through southern Gaul, across the Alps and into Cisalpine Gaul, they sent ambassadors to prevent the Celtic tribes supporting Carthage, but found that all these tribes shared a sense of unity against Rome. Shortly afterwards, the Greek Senate of Massilia (Marseilles) asked their Celtic neighbours to contact the Celts dwelling in Galatia (the central plain of Turkey) and ask them not to act with hostility towards Lampsacos. Hubert argued:
This solidarity of the Celtic peoples, even when distant from one another, is sufficiently explained by the sense of kinship, of common origin acting in a fairly restricted world, all the parts of which were in communication.
For that ancient world to be in communication to the extent which these references imply, it would have been essential that the Celts had an efficient transport system, via roads and shipping.