THE new movements of expansion mentioned in the last chapters of the previous volume, The Rise of the Celts, are the effects in general history of something that had been going on inside Gaul and the Celtic regions of Germany since the time of the first Celtic settlements in Aquitaine and in Spain and first Celtic inroads into Italy, that is, since 550 B.C. These events are marked in archæology by the change from the civilization called after Hallstatt to that called after La Tène.1 All over the region situated west of the Alps and the Central Plateau, the change took place in less than a hundred years. From Provence2 to Thuringia3 the civilization of the first La Tène period is represented. It begins about 500. The spread of the new styles strikes one less by its rapidity than by its universality. Everywhere the Celts fell into line with those who had started the fashion. This is interesting evidence of the unity and continuity of the Celtic world. But the fashion did not change merely in dress, arms, pottery, or art ; funeral rites also changed, and equally universally. Moreover, the area covered by the La Tène civilization almost everywhere extends beyond that of the Hallstatt culture. Inhabited sites are found closer together ; vacant spaces are filled up. The Celtic population is at once more numerous and, in general, denser. Certainly colonization went on inside the Celtic world, and there were shiftings of the population, perhaps conflicts and disorders. But on the whole there was an increase of power which had for consequence the colonizing expeditions into Britain and Italy and, later, into the Danube valley and, lastly, into Spain.
In craftsmanship4 the civilization of La Tène is the direct continuation of that of the last period of Hallstatt. It develops the legacy of Hallstatt ; at least, it implies it as an immediate predecessor. We have seen this already : the La Tène sword is a dagger with antennæ, elongated ; the La Tène brooch is a Certosa brooch, with an upturned foot, the end of which curls back towards the bow ; the bracelets and torques are very much alike ; and the pottery carries on the Hallstatt types with provincial peculiarities. The chief difference comes from the imitation of Greek objects and decoration, due to relations established either on the Marseilles side or by way of the Danube valley. The problem raised by these changes is entirely one of the simple problems connected with the history of the progress of civilizations. It is not so, in my opinion, with the funeral rites. Here the changes come about in quite a peculiar way.
At the end of the Hallstatt period, the practice of cremation was almost universal among the Celts. Moreover, the ashes of the dead were laid in tumuli of the same type as those containing the previous burials. On the other hand, we may say that for a period of over two hundred years, beginning about 500 B.C., the practice of cremation was almost abandoned, and that fairly abruptly, as it would appear. The change was not absolutely instantaneous, nor quite universal. Cremation-tombs of La Tène I have been found in the Haute-Marne and Haute-Saône and, above all, in the valley of the Rhine. But they are exceptional, and we may take it that the exception confirms the rule. It shows that the disappearance of the earlier rite was due to its being dropped by the same people as had formerly practised it, and that, since the new rule did not prevail all at once, it was not adopted as a matter of course.
Furthermore, the use of tumuli was given up in the Celtic world as a whole. The typical tomb of the La Tène period is an oblong grave, in which the body is laid with or without a coffin.5 This change, too, was abrupt in certain parts, but it was not universal.
In the old Hallstatt settlements, the Celts continued to build tumuli in the La Tène period. In Germany6 all the tombs which can be dated between 500 and 400 B.C. are tumuli, and so are some of those dating from 400 to 300. In Switzerland,7 this practice continued for about a hundred years, till about 100. In Alsace,8 Lorraine,9 Haute-Marne,10 Burgundy, and Franche-Comté,11 the vast majority of La Tène tombs were found under tumuli.
But we must make a distinction. For one thing, the Celts of the tumulus countries utilized the old tumuli and dug new tombs in them ; for another, we know a certain number of tumuli which were deliberately erected to cover several burials. So each tumulus might become a little cemetery. But it is none the less true that tumuli were built in the La Tène period in these regions to cover at least one principal tomb. On the whole, tumulus-building lasted in certain parts of the Celtic area until the third period of La Tène, that is, till the first century B.C.
Where Hallstatt tumuli were rare, the La Tène tombs are always flat-graves. This is so in the Department of the Marne, where there are so many La Tène cemeteries.12
But here again there is a point to consider. In the cemeteries of the Marne and Aisne, mounds have been noted, which are tumuli, apparently empty. The cemetery of Nanteuil, in the Aisne, consisted in part of a vast tumulus, like the Burgundian tumuli which contain many graves. Lastly, such place-names as Les Buttes, La Motte, La Motelle, La Tomelle, coinciding with Gallic cemeteries, suggest tumuli which have disappeared. What is more, single tombs (like the chariot-burial at Berru)13 and groups of tombs are surrounded by a circular ditch. Circular enclosure and tumulus are found simultaneously in yet other regions, in England for example, and stand for the same culture. It should be noted that in two places the tumulus won the day—in England14 and in the lower valley of the Rhone,15 where there were new Celtic settlements dating from La Tène. In both cases, we may suppose that the settlement took place before the time when the flat-grave was beginning to gain the upper hand. In England, moreover, the La Tène tumuli are probably just continuations of the round barrows of the previous inhabitants. So there was, at least, a period of varying practice, which continued longer, or even indefinitely, where there were many tumuli.
We have already seen one group of Celts giving up its tumuli for cemeteries of flat-graves. This was the branch which occupied Aquitaine and Spain.16 This is a change similar to that which we have just noted all over the Celtic world, and it may have come about in the same way. I am inclined to think that the flat-graves are tombs reduced to their simplest expression by communities which were denser than those of the Hallstatt age, and, therefore, more anxious to save space and not to spread out their cemeteries. These are considerations which matter in the history of funeral rites.17
But we are still left with some novelties—the oblong grave, the coffin, and, above all, the orientation. In the flat-grave cemeteries, the dead are laid east and west, with the head to the west, and the older the cemetery is the more regular is this rule.
New practices imply new ideas. There can be no question of a cataclysm, with new peoples taking the place of old peoples wholesale. The spread of the new ideas may have been due to propaganda. More than once, one has to resort to this hypothesis to explain some general phenomenon revealing the moral life of prehistoric peoples. But how did the propaganda take place and who conducted it ? It seems to me that we must imagine imitation on the one side and authority or the preponderance of new elements on the other—in any case, new demographic and social conditions.
For every change in the appearance of the prehistoric civilizations there has been a movement of the population, greater or less. So it was at the beginning of the La Tène period. The arrival of new peoples can be seen clearly at certain points.
One of these is the Department of the Marne.18 If we go by archæological finds alone, we find it with very few inhabitants in the Bronze Age and almost completely depopulated in the Hallstatt period. In the La Tène period, on the other hand, it was covered with a very dense population. No less than 191 Gallic cemeteries have been found there. Within about twenty years, over a hundred tombs have been explored. In the cemetery of Les Croncs, at Bergères-les-Vertus, over a thousand have been opened. This large number of cemeteries represents a numerous and entirely new population. For one cannot suppose that all Hallstatt tumuli have succeeded in escaping the eye of the antiquary in this department, where tomb-hunting is almost a sport.
Another region, which was, indeed, inhabited in Hallstatt times, but sparsely, received in the La Tène period a fairly large population, quite differently grouped, and that was Switzerland.19 There the La Tène tombs are distributed in two groups. An eastern group extends from Basle to the lakes of Zurich and the Four Cantons. Near Basle there is a large cemetery, that of Muttenz. The valleys of the Glatt, the Limmatt, and the Reuss contain Celtic cemeteries. A region in which the Aar still receives a few small tributaries divides this group from the western, which extends from the neighbourhood of Berne to the Lake of Geneva. The centre of the first group is Zurich and that of the second is Berne. In the district of Berne alone, in the immediate environs of the city, eighteen cemeteries of the La Tène period are known. The Hallstatt tumuli were in quite small groups, corresponding to a population which changed its abode easily. The cemeteries of La Tène are those of a fixed population. In some of them over two hundred tombs have been opened. Between these two settlements, the old groupings of the Hallstatt population do not seem to have been touched. We shall see later to what extent we must suppose them to have been penetrated by new elements.
We may picture bodies forcing their way across older settlements. In Haute-Saône20 a small Marne cemetery has been found, which probably represents the settlement of a small colony of new-comers. Further south, in Dauphiné and the Alps,21 cemeteries or single tombs of the Marne type stand for recent settlements, the density of which we have no means of estimating. In Provence22 there are no burials of the new type, but objects of the first La Tène period found in the fortified enclosures, particularly brooches, announce the arrival of Celts in a new domain.
In the west, except in Normandy23 and certain places in Brittany24 and Berry,25 the chance which guides archæological discoveries has been very unfavourable to the Gauls. The archæological map of the cemeteries is almost blank.26 The few swords found in the dragging of rivers would not fill it. And yet we must suppose that at this time there were Celts settled everywhere between the Seine and the Garonne. This blank space in the map leaves room for all kinds of conjecture. In any ease, we may suppose that the settlements developed gradually and that those which reached furthest forward do not belong to the early phase of the La Tène civilization.
No normal increase of the old Celtic occupants of Lorraine and Alsace, of Burgundy and Franche-Comté, would have sufficed for the foundation of the new settlements in Champagne, Switzerland, Dauphiné, and Provence, to say nothing of the others. We are therefore compelled to imagine something similar to what I have suggested as an explanation of the Hallstatt occupation, a sort of drift of the Celtic tribes from the Rhine valley and beyond, or possibly definite invasions. It is, moreover, hard to believe that the evolution of the Hallstatt types of object from which the types characteristic of the La Tène culture sprang occurred anywhere but in the German domain of the Celts. Indeed, transitional forms abound in Germany whereas they are rare in France. It is in Germany that the civilization of La Tène makes its first appearance and first becomes really rich. I think, therefore, that on the whole it originated in Germany, and that it was from Germany that, between 500 and 400 B.C., the bodies set out which peopled Switzerland on the one side, Champagne on the other, and all the other districts which we can suppose to have been covered by this colonization. From where exactly did they start ? Probably from more than one point in Celtic Germany.27 The question will arise later.
Lastly, although the funeral rites of the Gauls of this epoch are those of a military people which sends its men into the next world in fighting-gear, or at least in parade-dress, I cannot help noting the peaceful character of the new Celtic settlements.
We must picture the population of Champagne as dispersed in large open villages, which must necessarily have been agricultural villages. Champagne had not attracted the Hallstatt stock-breeders. I am inclined to think that, among the progress made by Celtic civilization in the La Tène period, there was some in agriculture, and that the men who stayed in Champagne knew how to make use of the dry slopes of its hills and, still more, of the richer uplands of the Aisne, with their heavy soil, where we also find them established. It is probable that the plough,28 a good plough, the Gallic name of which survived in Roman Gaul (carruca), with a coulter and probably wheels, was the invention which made it possible to till this ground. I imagine the landscape which they created in Champagne and the Aisne as something like that part of the country which has not been given over to vineyards, with ploughed fields running down the sides of the hills.29 Their settlements in Switzerland were of the same character, and presented the same appearance. They still do ; the contrast between the ploughed hillsides and the upland pasture-ground about Berne and the Lake of Thun is very remarkable and strange. It is a spectacle which implies peoples of different economic habits living side by side. But in my opinion it is a prehistoric spectacle.
I have called attention to the great number of Gallic, names in -magus and in -ialum in Gaul properly so called. They designate settlements in the plains, agricultural markets or centres of activity.30
But there is something more. Except in Germany and Provence, where special circumstances and the presence of unruly neighbours compelled the Gauls to stand on their guard, there are no fortified places belonging to the earlier periods of La Tène. The Hallstatt forts had been abandoned and the Gallic oppida were not yet built. For instance, in Franche-Comté, the occupation of the camp of Château-sur-Salins,31 which was an admirable site for a fortress, seems to have been interrupted in La Tène I.
It is surprising to come upon a peaceful Gaul just before the invasions of Italy and Greece, but we have to accept it. That all went smoothly always, it would be rash to imagine. That there were no shiftings of population, no fluctuations of frontiers, is very unlikely ; that there were no small wars is impossible ; and we should find evidence of them if we examined these very cemeteries of the Marne. But the Gauls of France did not live in a world of constant violence and strife. Therefore their communities developed and multiplied in peace. Their nations and tribes generally lived on terms of international justice and policy which made it possible for social life to become organized. Indeed, that is why they had the surplus man-power and the inter-tribal concord which allowed them to make the great expeditions to which we now come.
The civilization of La Tène spread in France between 500 and 400 B.C. It is just about this latter date that we must place the Celtic invasion of Italy which was the first of the great historical expeditions of the Celts.
All the ancient historians agree in describing the descent of the Celts into Italy as a mass invasion on the part of a people which was a huge army, speedily ending in the extermination of the former occupants of the country and the foundation of a very large colony. At the bottom of all their accounts there is doubtless a version written for the occasion which probably comes from Timagenes.32 But, apart from the fact that Timagenes generally had fairly good information, in the account of the earliest Gallic wars there are probably good traditional elements, for which the Celts themselves were partly responsible. Gallic historians like Cornelius Nepos, who was an Insubrian, and Trogus Pompeius, who was a Vocontian, may have had a part in handing them on. This history, in which both sides have collaborated, is assuredly epic and heroic rather than purely historical.
But after all, the accuracy of the anecdotal details does not matter much. The history of the first Gallic wars appears to have been built up on a fairly sure chronological foundation with materials which are rather fabulous, but nevertheless of very great value, much like all that part of ancient history which has not been written by contemporaries. On the whole, it has survived criticism remarkably well. archæology adds to it without correcting it.
It is of capital interest to us, in that it gives us the earliest information that we have of at all a detailed kind about the making of a Celtic settlement, and this information seems to be trustworthy. There is an artificial confederation of tribes from different districts, some newly formed, others old, among which foreign bodies may find a place. They go forward. Some settle down at once. Others hesitate and take longer to find their resting-place. They go about the country, fighting, treating, employing policy. Others follow them, summoned by them or tempted by their example. At last they are so many that they form a huge mass. Corners and outlines are rubbed away. The Gauls, with their curiosity about civilization, become assimilated to their new surroundings. They prosper in peace, but their political formations disintegrate and finally collapse.
All the historians except Livy33 run events together, placing them between 396 and 386 B.C.34 But Livy’s account is not substantially different from the rest. Of the first invasion he only gives the date, and on the whole he passes it over. A certain number of chronological concordances have been established—the first year of the ninety-eighth Olympiad and the Archonship of Pyrgion in Athens (388–387 B.c.),35 the Archonship of Theodotos, the Peace of Antalcidas, the siege of Rhegion, and the second year of the ninety-eighth Olympiad (387–386 B.C.).36 Cornelius Nepos37 places the entrance of the Gauls into Italy at the same time as the capture of Veii by Camillus, in 396. In Roman chronology, the uncertainty of the particular date is due to the way in which dictators may have upset the reckoning of Consulships.38 At all events, we may agree to place the capture of Rome in the year 387–386.
The most interesting thing which Livy adds to the accounts of his fellow-historians is the idea of a kind of political plan, which he supposes to have lain behind the expedition. The Celticum formed a confederation, at the head of which was the King of the Bituriges, whose name at that time was Ambicatus.39 The population exceeded the normal size of agricultural tribes attached to the land.40 Ambicatus resolved to send out two colonies under the command of his nephews on the distaff side,41 his heirs, Sigovesus and Bellovesus. He made them strong enough to break all resistance.42 Trogus Pompeius compares the Gallic expedition to a ver sacrum,43 that is to one of the religious emigrations practised by the Italic peoples.
Apart from this difference, the facts are set forth by most historians in much the same fashion.44 The Insubres, Boii, and Senones destroy a large Etruscan town, Melpum, perhaps Melzo, west of Milan. They found Milan and a certain number of other towns. Following up their successes against the Etruscans, they attack Clusium (Chiusi). The Romans grow disturbed, negotiate, and send a relief army which is defeated on the Allia. Rome is taken, and then saved by the geese of the Capitol and Camillus.
According to some, the Gauls are wiped out. According to others, they retire fairly quietly to their settlements in Romagna, being recalled by an inroad of Veneti.45 The Gauls are said to have had guides. Some accounts speak of a noble of Clusium named Aruns,46 seeking vengeance on his wife and his Lucumo ward ; others, more significant, refer to Elico, a Helvetian smith working in Rome.47
In every case, it is the riches of Italy, the fruit, the figs, the wine, that draw the barbarians from their less kindly regions. The men who summon them bring them samples of these delights. What all historians have faithfully recorded, is the terror sown among the peoples of Italy by the approach of the Gauls.48 These queer-looking barbarians, coming from so far, were to the Italy of the fourth century before Christ what the Scourge of God was to the Gaul of the fifth century after Christ, an unavoidable, irresistible, God-sent calamity. The army which came down into Italy is rated at 300,000 men, that which triumphed at the Allia at about 30,000. These were terrifying hosts for Etruria and Latium, which were only accustomed to wars between one city and another. The battle of the Allia, Alliensis clades, was a rout, for which the Romans blushed until the end of the Empire. The war-cry of the Gauls, rising on all sides before the troops made contact, seems to have provoked a wild stampede. As for the evacuation of Rome, of which Livy gives us a remarkably objective picture, it was creditable to a few only. In any case, the Gauls were no gentle foes. They were in the first frenzy of their onrush. They came forward ravaging the country and burning the towns.49 No doubt, they had a law covering foreign relations and were accustomed to negotiating ; indeed, we are told that they did negotiate.50 But one can easily believe that these parleys gave rise to hopeless misunderstandings. The Gauls, being strong, and not properly understood, were touchy, and they seem to have been lacking in patience.
The deliverance of Rome did not put an end to their attacks. They returned into the valley of the Tiber and to Rome itself in 367,51 in 361–360,52 and in 350–349.53 They descended into Campania in 360 and in 349. In 367 and in 349 they went as far as Apulia.54 The dates of these expeditions are uncertain, and so is their relative size, but we have one piece of archaeological evidence in the shape of a small cemetery at Canossa di Puglia.55 At the same time they went much further, into Greece, whither Dionysios I of Syracuse sent a body of them which he had taken into his service.56
South of the Apennines, these Gallic expeditions were merely raids, which began to turn into expeditions of mercenaries. They had not the rapid successes of the campaigns in the plain of the Po. The fact is, that north of the Apennines the Gauls had had only Etruscans before them, who really formed nothing but a fairly recent colony there, and fortified places were rare. South of the Apennines, both in Etruria and in Latium and Umbria, the Gauls found themselves in the midst of a quantity of very ancient little cities, all fortified and perched in good situations. But the strength of their walls was only the instrument of their resistance. The cause of that resistance and its success was that they were political bodies, which refused to yield in a war undertaken pro aris et focis, and would not die. The greatest disaster seems to have been that of Rome, and Rome had at once formed again with its army outside its ravaged soil.
Livy, in the chapters of Book V in which he describes the Gallic invasion, makes it plain, with the understanding, lucidity, and descriptive power of a great historian, that the Gauls were not then capable of subduing the determination to live and to conquer embodied in political units which were far superior to their own. Moreover, they did as all conquering armies do in warm and fertile countries. At first they let themselves go, taking what they pleased. Livy shows them to us, gorged with eating and drinking, even rasher and more careless than usual after their too easy victories, and falling into drunken slumber wherever the night happened to overtake them. Then comes the plague, which we may take to have been dysentery. They are encamped among the ruins of Rome, in the dust and ash of the burning city. It is summer, and the weather is hot for these men of the north. Disease spreads among them like cattle-plague, vulgatis velut in pecua morbis. Dead bodies accumulate, and have to be burned in heaps (usually they buried their dead). With the plague comes famine. The Gauls are no better organized for conducting large armies than the Italic peoples, but the latter at least know how to conduct small ones. They have no commissariat, and they have laid the country waste. Lastly, they know nothing about field fortification or intelligence, and they allow themselves to be surprised.
None the less, the effects of the terror died hard. Until 349 the Romans remained on the defensive. From that date onwards, it seems, they took courage, and turned upon their enemies. The Gauls were so surprised at the first encounter, Polybios tells us, that they stopped short and scattered.57 Indeed, peace seems to have been concluded about 335.58
The general outcome was that, while Gallic inroads penetrated as far as the end of Italy, the Gallic conquest stopped at the Apennines. But in what manner did it take place ? Is it true that the Gauls came in like a whirlwind, and where did they make their entry ? That is the first question which we shall discuss. After that, we shall inquire how the Gauls conducted themselves in Italy, what were their general relations with their neighbours, and what became of their civilization in that country.
The Gauls came in, according to Livy,59 in several bands, crossing the Alps in succession or by different routes.
Bellovesus, who, according to the same author, directed the whole venture, had with him only the Insubres.60 They arrived first. When their movement had been accomplished, a force of the Cenomani under a leader named Elitovius61 followed them by the same pass, and Bellovesus assisted them on the way down. Livy then mentions, in vague terms, an advance on the part of the Libui and the Salluvii,62 but it is doubtful whether they arrived so early. The Boii and Lingones came over together by the Pennine Alps, that is by the Simplon or the St. Gothard, and, passing the first two bodies hustled the Etruscans and Umbrians on the other side of the Po. The Senones arrived last and, passing the leading bodies in the same manner, provided the army of about thirty thousand men which crossed the Apennines and took Rome. Livy does not assert this positively ; he says that he believes it.63
To transport over the Alps, without any scientific disposition of supply-posts, a mass of men large enough to form a whole nation, with women and children, flocks and herds, a great number of chariots, and an indefinitely large train of very primitive little waggons and pack-animals, was an extremely difficult undertaking. It required at least some organization if it was, as history relates, a concerted movement. What was done was to divide the host into separate bodies, and it was most natural to form these according to tribes. So Livy’s account seems quite credible. Reconnaissances, too, had to be made, guides to be found, extra provisions to be obtained, and help of all kinds to be secured, and there must have been negotiations or battles with the local natives, all combining to delay and slow down the advance ; and, even if we exclude the suggestion that they made temporary settlements, it must have been necessary to clear and till the land which they occupied for the time being. The passage of the Gallic columns needed a fairly long time, and we must suppose that there were big intervals between one body and the next.
But how big were these intervals ? The largest is that separating the invasion of the fifth and sixth centuries from that of the fourth.
It is very remarkable that the fourth century Gallic cemeteries in the Cisalpine country are all south of the Po, the oldest being round Bologna.64 Those north of the Po, which are in two main groups, one west of the Ticino65 in the province of Novara, and the other about Como, date from the last three centuries before Christ.66 The dead in them were burned, and their tombs are like contemporary tombs in the Alpine valleys, but also resemble those of Golasecca. This looks as if the Gauls of the fourth century had rapidly advanced on Bologna, leaving Lombardy in the possession of their predecessors, who had arrived a century or two earlier and are said to have opened the gates of Italy to them. As a matter of fact, the earlier settlement no longer existed. The first Gallic cemeteries north of the Po were broken up by the construction of towns or by cultivation (grandiaque effossis mirabitur ossa sepulcris). A few isolated objects67 are sufficient evidence that this district was taken by the Gauls at the same time as the Cispadane region, or even before it. The columns of Bellovesus must, therefore, have followed one on another at intervals of a few years or a few months. At the very most we may suppose, if we cannot accept this blank in the archaeological map, that the Insubres and Cenomani arrived after the Boii and Senones with reinforcements which continued to descend from the Celtic interior for a long time yet.
But this, too, is hard to believe, and the order of march of the five Gallic nations (apart from the Libui and Salluvii) is quite as probable. It follows from their position. The first-comers doubtless stopped as soon as they could. The way down into the great valleys which spread out towards the Po is very attractive, and must have been so then. The country had been brought under cultivation by the people of the terremare and the pile-villages, and here the first invaders stopped. Those who followed had to go further. Those who are found at the end of the line are evidently the last-comers. Thus the Insubres, after their first collision with the Etruscans, settled south of the Lake of Como, between the Ticino and the Adda, occupying the provinces of Como and Milan. The Cenomani, coming next, settle between the Adda and the Adige, south of the lakes of Iseo and Garda, around Brescia and as far as Verona. On this side the Celts were stopped by the Veneti, whom they could not oust and had to take into consideration. The Boii occupied the region of Lodi, north of the Po, between the Ticino and the Adda. There they are said to have founded the city which is now Lodi (Laus Pompeia). But, finding themselves cramped, they crossed the Po with the Lingones and filled the plain under the Apennines between Parma and Bologna, while the Lingones occupied the whole of Lower Emilia. The Senones, prolonging the chain of Cisalpine Gauls, occupied the coast of the Romagna from the Utens (Montone) to the Alsis (Esino) on the outskirts of Ancona, according to Livy ; but they advanced a little further, to the valley of the Chienti.68
We must suppose that they did not settle down all at once. The Periplus of Scylax,69 written about 350, which enumerates all the peoples of the coasts of the Mediterranean one by one, does indeed speak of the Gauls on the Adriatic seaboard, or, more exactly, of the remnants of the expedition against Rome 
but only as covering a small area 
They cannot have occupied more than the mouths of the Po, their territory being bounded on the south by that of the Etruscans, which extended to Spina, an old Greek colony on the southern mouth of the Po, and on the north by that of the Veneti, which extended to Adria, another Greek colony a few miles north of the northern mouth. The mouths of the Po seem to have been in the domain of the Lingones. A too literal interpretation of the text would lead us to look for the Senones here, since it seems to have been they who made the expedition against Rome. But according to the author of the Periplus the Adriatic coast between Ancona and Spina still belonged to the Etruscans about 350, not to the Senones. The continuous succession of campaigns between 390 and 350 makes one think that the Senones were not permanently established before 350. One may suppose, too, that they did not occupy the coast but the terraces of the Apennines ; for it is here that Gallic settlements have been found, and not on the coast. In that case the Periplus of Scylax, which is really a “Pilot” for the use of navigators, might have ignored them, if we suppose that Ancona and Spina were still in Etruscan hands.
It is about this same date of 350 that the series of Greek vases found in the Etruscan cemetery of Bologna (La Certosa) comes to an end.70 This means that the Etruscans had maintained themselves in the city, keeping up constant intercourse with the Greek colonies on the mouths of the Po, under the eyes of the Gauls established all round them. In general, the cities in this neighbourhood also seem to have held out. Como, which has been assigned to the Insubres, and Bergamo, which has been assigned to the Cenomani, did not come under their power until later. Mantua continued to be an Etruscan enclave to the end.
So, from Como to Ancona and from Milan to Verona the five great peoples of which we are speaking made themselves one continuous territory. They had found it there, ready made for them, for the greater part of it coincides with the Etruscan territory on the Po. When the Etruscans were defeated, the political organization of their province had broken down. The five nations which succeeded them sooner or later assumed their position. This fact should be borne in mind, for it explains the cohesion of the group which they formed and the co-ordinated, concerted, and, one might say, political character which the historians ascribe to their first operations.
But there were other Gallic peoples south of the Alps—the Libui and Salluvii, mentioned by Livy.71 Polybios72 adds the Libici and Laevi north of the Po and the Ananes, Anares, or Anamari,73 south of it, west of the Boii. These last two are perhaps not Gauls. But the others certainly are.
The Libui and Libici are probably identical and had Vercellae for their centre ; in their territory was a Rigomagus (Trino). From a somewhat obscure passage in Pliny,74 the source of which is the Origines of Cato, it appears that they were a sub-tribe of the Salluvii. The Salluvii, who are also called the Salassi,75 must have spoken a Celtic language, for their capital was Eporedia, the name of which is undoubtedly Gallic. They were probably a section of the Salyes of Provence, whom the ancient ethnographers label Celto-Ligurian. Between the Libici and the Insubres were the Vertamocori of Novara, who are described as Ligurians by Cato and as Gauls by Pliny.76 The latter says that they were a pagus, that is a sub-tribe of the Vocontii of Dauphiné. North of the Vertamocori, the Lepontii, established in the Val d’ Ossola and the Val Leventina, were Gauls.77 At the mouth of each of these two valleys we have a large cemetery, corresponding to their two main settlements, at Ornavasso78 and Giubiasco.79 These are La Tène cemeteries. At Ornavasso a certain number of vases have been found bearing graffiti which seem to be Celtic so far as they can be read at all.
The Lepontii must probably be attached to the people of the Valais. The Vertamocori and Salluvii are related to the Gauls of Dauphiné and Provence. The two sections were linked up by a series of Gallic peoples occupying the Alpine valleys—the Centrones on the upper Isère, the Medulli in the Maurienne, and the Caturiges on the upper Durance. These last had been settled for a short time in Italy.
The Gallic tribes of Piedmont seem to form a distinct group from the five large nations in Lombardy and Emilia, more recent and less solidly welded together. They are the advanced posts in Italy of the Alpine tribes or of those which had come as far as the foot of the Alps in the Rhone valley and had remained there. Immediately after the fall of Rome, Polybios80 mentions frequent raids by men from across the Alps as causing agitation among the Cisalpine Gauls, whose successes had tempted them. The arrival of the Piedmontese tribes may correspond to those expeditions.
The Insubres, Cenomani, Boii, Lingones, and Senones came direct from much further away—from the banks of the Rhine, Appian says, and in any case from the interior of the Celtic world.81
Livy82 gives us a list of the peoples among which Bellovesus raised his army, namely the Bituriges, Arverni, Senones, Ædui, Ambarri, Carnutes, and Aulerci, which appear for the first time in history. Over-critical scholars have attacked this list, but unjustly.83 It is a document of the greatest importance, for it represents a fundamental grouping of the Gallic peoples. It shows what section of them took part in the great movement of expansion which was then taking place towards Britain and to the south-east.
The Insubres are Ædui ; the Cenomani are Aulerci ; the Senones of Italy are doubtless the same as the Senones of Gaul. In the Italian settlement the Bituriges, Arverni, Ambarri, and Carnutes do not appear, but we find the Lingones, who were afterwards neighbours of the Senones and Ædui in Gaul, and the Boii, who were one of the most widely scattered of all the Celtic peoples, but seem to have kept their main body in what I regard as the original home of the Celts, east of the Volcae. So the two lists do not agree absolutely, but there is nothing very disturbing in that.
Later on, we shall inquire where the peoples of the first list can have been at that time. We should note that neither list includes the two nearest neighbours of Italy—the Helvetii and Sequani. They must have had their hands full in their old or new possessions in Switzerland and Franche-Comté. Perhaps they stand in the same relation to the invaders of Italy as the Insubres to the Senones ; settling in the country first, they were passed by those who followed them.
By what road had the invaders come ? There are two views, both based on the text of Livy, which is in such imperfect condition that both sides quote the same sentence as their authority.84 The Gauls are said to have come through the country of the Ligurians of Turin (Taurini) and by the Julian Alps (saltusque Juliae Alpis). There is no doubt about what Livy thinks, for in the preceding sentence he mentions the Gauls as being in contact with the people of Marseilles. It is hardly credible that they crossed the Julian Alps, for the way was blocked by the Veneti, whom the Gauls did not touch. A happy conjecture has replaced the name of the Julian Alps by that of the River Duria.85 But the geographical position of the Gauls solves the problem. The Insubres established south of Lake Maggiore and the Lake of Como had not come over by the Mont Cenis and the Val d Aosta. They had crossed the Alps either by the St. Gothard, coming down on to Lake Maggiore, or by the Maloja, descending on to the Lake of Como. They stopped at the mouths of the Alpine valleys between the Ticino and the Oglio. Those who came after gathered round them there, and went on from there ; those who crossed the Pennine Alps doubtless came by the Simplon, which brought them to the same point by the Val d’Ossola. The Celts might come from Bavaria ; the valley of the Rhine and the Engadine, leading to the St. Gothard and the Maloja respectively, were the natural routes up to the crest of the Alps for a people coming from South Germany. The Boii and Lingones, who crossed the Pennine Alps, came from the same region, working round the Bernese Oberland.
It was only later, as I have suggested, that they passed through the Ligurians who lay between their Lombard settlements and the French Alps. It does not seem that they ever went through the peoples that lay to the north-east of their settlements.
So the Gallic peoples of the Cisalpine country were portions of certain great Gallic tribes settled in various other parts of the Celtic world. The invasion had not been carried out by complete nations or tribes, nor yet by temporary formations of a purely military kind, having no political ties. These fractions of tribes had become tribes. But the various elements in the political organization of the Celts were perfectly homogeneous and only differed in size.86 They had combined to some extent for their venture, but when their object was attained they at once went back to their old freedom of action. Thus it is that we find the Senones operating alone against Etruria and Rome.
How were those bodies made up ? It is an interesting question, but we cannot answer it completely. Were they merely composed of the men that each happened to get together ? Were they sub-tribes or clans ? They were probably groups which already existed. The Insubres and the Cenomani, indeed, were either sub-tribes or fractions of sub-tribes of the Ædui and Aulerci. The Cenomani were in the same group as the contingents of a people which seems to have formed part of their confederacy, the Andecavi ; this must be the explanation of the presence of the village of Andes87 on their territory, close to Mantua.
Another question is the size of the bodies. We can form an approximate idea of it. It may be remembered that the ancient historians reckon the victors of the Allia at 30,000 men. It is quite a credible figure. It was required, and it was sufficient, to produce the effect of irresistible mass of which I have tried to give a notion. We must multiply it by at least seven to allow for the women, children, old men, sick, cripples, and slaves. This would bring the number of the Senones up to about 200,000 in all. The Boii must have been about as many. Pliny, still quoting Cato’s Origins, tells us that they had 112 tribes,88 no doubt at the time when their country came under Roman sway. By this he must mean 112 clans, 112 groups of a social and territorial nature, each of which must have been of some size. Indeed, the object of the statement is to suggest that the Boii were a very considerable people. Populations of this size were capable of occupying the country effectively, and we must take the historians almost literally when they tell us that they drove out the Etruscans and Umbrians. That a few settlers, a large number of slaves, and perhaps a few subject and associated groups survived89 is very probable, but it is even more evident that a Celtic occupation took the place of the Etruscan and Umbrian occupation, that it formed a whole new Gallic colony.
Another very remarkable thing is that the Italian colony of the Celts was on the plains. Nothing could show better that something had changed in the civilization of the Celts since the Hallstatt period. The Hallstatt men made for the hills. The Gauls of the La Tène period made for uplands and plains suited for agriculture. The Senones got the worst share,90 for nothing was left for them but the slopes of the Apennines, though these were far from barren. Perhaps that is what drove them over the crests which barred their way to look for better land. Having failed, they contented themselves with what they had and throve on it. Therefore we cannot picture the Gallic settlers of the Cisalpine country as the nomads and stock-raisers described by Polybios ; these characteristics belong to another branch of the Celts. They remained settled on the soil which they had conquered. They really colonized it, and as agriculturists.91
It is said that they founded cities—Milan, Brescia (Brixia), Bergamo (Bergomum), Como, Vicenza, Modena (Mutina),92 and probably Lodi and Sinigaglia (Sena Gallica). Some of these towns no doubt existed before their coming, as was the case with Como, Brescia, Bergamo, and Bologna. To this last they gave a Gallic name, Bononia. Others kept their old names, which came from the Ligurians.93
If they did not Celticize the country sufficiently to give Gallic names to the towns, it was still more natural for them to keep the old names of the rivers.94 The name of the Reno, however, is Celtic. Some have maintained that Benaeus, the name of the Lake of Garda, is Celtic, meaning the Lake of the Points (Irish benn, “point”),95 but the derivation is doubtful. Lastly, among the place-names of the country there are to this day many ending in -asco and -usco, which are Ligurian. Some of these date from before the Gallic occupation ; others were doubtless given afterwards, but they were still formed on the same principles.96
The Cisalpine Gauls have left behind them funerary inscriptions, graffiti on pottery, and manufacturers’ marks in surprisingly large numbers for a people which had had no knowledge of writing at the time when it arrived.97 By a curious chance, far the greatest number have been found north of the Po and on the fringes of the Gallic country. They seem to be later than the best days of Cisalpine Gaul.
The archæological remains, the known amount of which increases constantly, are distributed equally irregularly. Nothing remains of the towns, which were destroyed when Roman towns were built on their sites. The cemeteries represent wealthy but scattered settlements.98 They confirm history, which fills up the gaps in their evidence.
On the whole, the Gauls formed a compact and lasting settlement in the central part of the Po valley. They took root there firmly enough to change the face of the countryside for ever.
According to historical tradition, the beaten Etruscans retired into the Euganean Hills overlooking Verona, and became the Raetians, so-called after their leader Raetus.99 The Cenomani had advanced on this side. Justin attributes to them the foundation of Trent, and indeed Tridentum is a Gallic name.100 North of Trent, in the Val di Non or Nonsberg, the little village of Cavareno has a Gallic name,101 and the name of the district recalls that of the Anauni, a small people belonging to the group whose centre was Trent ; their name certainly seems to be Gallic.102 Near by, in the valley, a Gallic cemetery has been explored at Mechel-in-Nonsberg.103 But the slopes of the Alps north of Cisalpine Gaul on this side remained in the hands of the Raeti and Euganeans.104 Whoever these last may have been, there were undoubted Ligurians among them. There were, for example, the Trumpilini, who have left their name to the Val Trompia. They naturally recall the Trumpilini of the Maritime Alps, whose existence and defeat are recorded by the monument at La Turbie. There were also the Ligures Stoeni, who have left their name to the village of Stenico, in the upper valley of the Sarca.
The western edge of the Gallic domain in Italy presents a similar spectacle. The ethnography of the region must have been so entangled as to involve the ancient writers in mistakes without end. Cato seems to have made a serious effort in his Origins to establish the identity of the peoples in those parts on the strength of the information at his disposal. The result is that he describes the Vertamocori and the Salluvii, whom we have good reason to call Celtic, as Ligurians.105 The Gallic peoples of the north of Piedmont were evidently not to be compared to the consolidated peoples of Lombardy and Emilia. We must imagine them as mixed up with Ligurians, Gallic villages standing next to Ligurian villages and inter-marriage going on between the two sides. The races of the mountain districts must have been equally intermixed. Switzerland is the proof of it, and, still better, Upper Piedmont, with its history, its dialect, and its French villages on the Italian slopes of the Matterhorn separated from French-speaking Switzerland by a wide belt of German Swiss.
So we can see how it was that people like the Bagicuni in the neighbourhood of Cueno, whom all the historians agree in calling Ligurian, could be regarded as descendants of the Caturiges,106 who were Gauls. Associations of all kinds grew up, for which we can lay down no rules. But on the whole the Ligurian was on top, or rather he was all round. Later on the Gallic peoples of the mountains—Centrones, Medulli, Caturiges—were comprised in the Ligurian kingdom of Cottius.107 But, though politically incorporated by the Ligurians, the Celtic colonies of Piedmont faithfully preserved their language, as is shown by inscriptions,108 of which some at least are not very ancient, and by certain features of their civilization, long after the Romans had destroyed the Gallic organization of the Milanese and Emilia. They even made their neighbours accept them. In short, it does not seem that there was any conquest or attempt at conquest on the part of the Ligurians. There was certainly association, whatever the causes may have been.
North of the Insubres, in the Como district, similar formations were organized, whose sway extended up to the Ligurians of the Euganean country. In this region, cemeteries and single tombs have been excavated at Introbbio, Civiglio, Soldo, Legnano, Esino, and Pianezzo.109 These the archaeologists generally describe as Gallo-Ligurian, perhaps because most of the tombs contain cremations. Funerary stelae have also been found here, at Rondineto, Algate, Civiglio, and Cernusco Asinario, and graffiti containing Celtic names on the bottoms of vases, for instance at Ornavasso and Giubiasco. But as a whole, those so-called Lepontian inscriptions are probably not Celtic ; they belong to a dialect which has a touch of Italic in it, and may be Ligurian, or perhaps stands in the same relation to Italic as Macedonian to Greek.110
South of the Po the Ligurians extended to Etruria. There is nothing after the great invasion like the little colony which left the cippi of the Vara behind it. But the boundary may have been vague. Among the Ananes there was a town named Comillomagus, now Broni.111 This is certainly a Gallic name. But the westernmost of the cemeteries representing Gallic civilization which is yet known was found at Saliceto di San Giuliano, about five miles from Modena.112
In the valley of the Tiber, at Todi, south of Perugia, a funerary inscription has been found, in Latin and Celtic, in honour of one Ategnatos, son of Druteos.113 It is the southernmost of the Celtic inscriptions and it stood well inside Umbria, far north of the Latin territory. The Celtic domain certainly did not reach so far as that.114 It may be a relic of a Celtic expedition like the tombs of Canossa, or it may merely record the fact that a Gallic family came and settled here at an early date, before Rome encroached on the conquests of the Gauls in her work of uniting Italy. But why is the inscription in two languages, and why is one of them Latin ? It gives us a glimpse of the kind of society formed by the invaders together with the aborigines. Each side stood its ground and kept its language, but they did not ignore one another, or keep themselves to themselves. This is not the grim picture of the Gallic wars which Livy gives us. Besides, even in that picture we can see some features of policy and social life which correct it.
The same story is told by the tombs of the Senones115 found at Montefortino, Filottrano, Ripa Bianca, and elsewhere. They are surprisingly wealthy. They are full of gold in two forms—purely Gallic ornaments and Etruscan ornaments. The Gallic ornaments are rings and buffer-torques, recalling those of the Rhine valley. The Etruscan ornaments are crowns of gold foliage, collars with pendants shaped like eggs or amphorae, of a well-known type, and bracelets ending in snakes’ heads. It has been said that, if the Senones took home the thousand pounds of gold which formed the ransom of the Capitol, the wives and daughters of their chieftains must have been richly arrayed. But there are not only articles of adornment to speak of their wealth. There are ivory boxes, bronze vases with richly decorated handles and feet, and painted Attic pottery. The whole points to a taste no less refined than that of the contemporary peoples of Campania and Etruria. Moreover, the Senones copied from the latter the practice of laying in their tombs kitchen utensils, lamps, spits, and lamp-stands, which were unknown to the great majority of Gauls. The men took with them to their graves strigils, which prove that they had adopted the fashion of rubbing themselves with oil. They kept their own swords and spears ; but the helmets were Italic, and, it seems, they were beginning, under the influence of their neighbours, to give up the war-chariot with which they had descended upon Italy. In short, they had fallen, or were falling, into line with the peoples all round them, they had adopted their manners, because they had dealings with them, and in less than fifty years they had ceased to appear, in their new colony, as wild and terrifying savages. The first generation of Gauls born in Italy was doubtless quite as much Italian as Gallic.
The Gallic cemeteries round about Bologna likewise testify to such extensive borrowing from the civilization of the conquered that one may ask whether the Gauls were there as besiegers or as neighbours and allies.116
Besides, they had, in the course of the long succession of wars which we usually have in our minds, long periods of peace. Polybios mentions a period of thirty years between 329 and 299, and one of twelve between 347 and 335.117 The archaeologists of Ancona were led to seek for Gallic tombs by the discovery of open settlements situated on the terraces of the Marche.118
We find the same kind of relations with the Veneti of Este. The Gauls were not far from the town ; no doubt they came into it, but without hostile intent. They took service as mercenaries, they came as visitors, perhaps they worshipped in the temples ; in any case, they were known in the place and attention was paid to them. In the ruins of the temple of the goddess Rehtra, among the votive statuettes, there is one representing a Gallic warrior with a belt and a La Tène sword slung on his right. Another statuette represents a Gaul with a dagger or short sword stuck in his belt on the right. These are votive offerings which may have been dedicated by Gallic visitors. A fragment of a stamped plaque shows a horseman with a La Tène shield. Lastly, in the same area brooches of La Tène 1c have been found.119
There were individuals with Celtic names at Este. One of those names is recognizable in its Venetian transcription Verconzarna.120 If we suppose that the Etruscan z is equivalent to the Gallic d,121 we get Vercondarna, which falls into the class of Celtic names which includes Vercondaridubnus, Tarcondarius, etc. It is composed of the preposition ver-
and an adjective122 related to the Welsh substantive cyndared “rage”, and the adjective cynddeiriawg “enraged”. Vercondarna is a feminine name, for all its warlike meaning. It probably tells us of mixed marriages between Venetian men and Gallic women, and there must also have been marriages between Venetian women and Gallic men, and that just about the date at which we have halted.123
The cultural exchanges to which this intercourse led were chiefly to the advantage of the Gauls, but not entirely so.
In the common vocabulary of the Italic and Celtic languages, there is not only the residue of an old undivided stock ; there are words borrowed by one side or the other. Some of those borrowings are ancient, and seem to date from the time when the Italic peoples, and the Latins in particular, found themselves face to face with the Celts. What is more, it was the Latins who borrowed from the Gauls.
It is generally accepted to-day that the Latin word gladius “sword” is of Celtic origin.124 The Latin grammarians knew that it had once had the form cladius, and accordingly they derived it from clades.125 It comes from a word which must in Gaulish have been *kladios, which is represented by Welsh cleddyf, from which comes Irish claideb. The ancient historians tell us that the Romans subsequently adopted the sword of the Celtiberians, which had the advantage of being equally useful for cutting and thrusting. But it is hard to make the adoption of the word gladius as late as the time when the Roman armies were operating in Spain. Besides, the hypothetical word *kladios does not seem very appropriate for a thrusting weapon. It has the same root as κλáδoς, meaning “stick Old Slavonic kladivo, which means” hammer and perhaps κüλαϕoς, meaning “blow”. The root kela or Ma seems to have meant striking so as to split, and not so as to pierce. The word well fits the weapon into which the La Tène sword was tending to develop. Derived from the dagger, it was becoming a weapon intended for delivering great cutting blows. In spite of the poor opinion which Livy and Polybios had of the weapons of the Gauls,126 it is probable that the Roman troops, though better organized and better led than the Gallic, had not really good arms and readily changed them.127
The Gauls also had a better shield than the Italic troops, and one which covered them better. It is probable that the Latins adopted it, and with it the word scutum128 Attempts have been made to explain this word by obscurus, or by cutis ; it covers and hides, or it is made of skin. Welsh and Irish have the words ysgwyd and sciath respectively, meaning both “shield” and “shoulder”. The semantic derivation of the meaning is quite clear in Celtic, but is absent in Latin. It is to be noted that scutum is specially used for a large tall shield. Livy contrasts the Celtic scutum of the heavy infantry of the Celtiberians with the Iberian caitra, the round target of their light infantry.129 This contrast is repeated. The Celtic origin of the word scutum is therefore probable. The large shield of the Roman infantry is not unlike the La Tène shield. What is more, the innovation is ascribed to Camillus.130
Another borrowed word, of a different kind, is vates.131 This word stands alone in Latin. Its close similarity to Irish faith,132 which has exactly the same meaning, Cæsar’s use of it to designate the men who in Gaul had exactly the position of the faith in Ireland, and Strabo’s transcription 
with the same meaning, all show that the word was borrowed and that it kept its special sense. When we read the story of the Gallic wars in Livy or Justin, we find that the barbarians appeared to the Latins, who themselves were pious folk and much given to divination, as superstitious in the extreme. If we suppose that the Cisalpine Gauls had the two castes or colleges of the Druids and the vates, and that these latter had the same function, social, political, and religious, as they have in the Irish epics, having a finger in every pie, and being always ready to produce a poem to meet the occasion—satire, war-song, or prophecy—or to interpret in inspired verse all the circumstances which were perturbing their audiences, the presence of the inspired bard in the ranks of their adversaries must certainly have appeared a novelty to the Romans. If the name vates really comes from Celtic, it is because there were such bards in Cisalpine Gaul. It is interesting evidence on the history of Druidism, for the word must have been borrowed fairly soon to have passed into common use. It can only have been learned in Italy or Spain, and Italy is the more likely. The Celts have been and still are great versifiers, great lovers of songs and poetry. They certainly were so at that time.
That the Romans benefited by the imagination of the Gallic poets is very possible. The story of the Gallic wars, out of which Livy, a historian of genius gifted with the spirit of divination, has made a very remarkable historical work, is something quite by itself, rather fabulous and very epic. Monsieur Jullian has suggested that the tradition was probably made up of Celtic epics.133 The well-known story of Valerius Corvus,134 who was rescued in single combat with a Gallic chief by a crow which pecked the Celt’s face and hid the Roman from him with its wings, is an example. The episode is unlike anything else in Roman history and literature. But it is like a famous episode in the great Irish epic of Ulster, the Táin Bó Chuailgné,135 in which the goddess Morrigu attacks Cuchulainn, who has scorned her love, in the form of a crow. The crow is not a mere flight of fancy; it is the creature which stands for battle and the gods and goddesses of war. The story of Valerius Corvus came down from the family tradition of the Gens Valeria to Pabius Pictor, from whom Livy got it ; but how did it come in ? Some Valerius must have had dealings with the Gauls, or at any rate a kind of international tradition of those heroic wars must have tended to accumulate.
These separate facts suggest a picture of the little world in which the Gauls of Italy played their part, and give an idea of what they had brought to it and what they had got from it. But the chief novelty which then appeared in the Celtic communities of Italy was of another kind. The small Italian cities of Etruria, Umbria, Samnium, Latium, and Campania were highly developed societies. They had their internal politics, which were party politics, with constitutional problems, of the queerest kind but quite definitely envisaged. The problems were the same as in the Greek cities, but they had been raised and studied, particularly in the Greek colonies of the south of Italy, by Pythagoras and his school. The Italian cities also had a foreign policy with a programme, far-sighted plans, systems of alliance, and even conflicting systems. In all this the Gauls suddenly found themselves involved. When we pass from the story of Ambicatus to the chapter in which Polybios (ii, 19) sums up the events which occurred from 299 onwards, we are in another world. We pass from the world of the tribe to that of the state. In 390 the Gauls attack Etruscans and Latins without distinction. They rush blindly forward and cause their enemies to unite to meet the common danger. A hundred years later most of them have selected their opponent. It is Rome. They enter into alliance with her enemies. They are probably led more then they lead ; but they use diplomatic methods, they have a policy.
In coming into relations with the Italian cities, the Gauls entered the history of the world, and they never fell out of it. We shall see them again once or twice acting in their old character of barbarous hordes rushing to the conquest of fertile lands. But they had learnt to play their game in the manner of the Mediterranean cities, and little by little they all took to it.
The settlement of a large colony of Gauls in Italy had more effect on the Celtic world as a whole than to attract new bands of invaders at intervals. In material civilization there is every evidence that between the beginning of the La Tène period and its last phase new crafts were acquired, such as glass-working, the stock of tools was increased, and habits of life, methods of construction, domestic arrangements, and ideas of comfort were transformed. In all this, imitation of the Italic peoples and the Greeks was certainly the chief factor. The civilization of La Tène was affected by the economic progress of the world in general. But in the present state of our archaeological knowledge we cannot follow the order of these facts in detail.
The Celts expanded in the same period in other directions as well as into Italy. If the Gauls did not enter that country by the Danube valley, it does not follow that they made no advance on that side. They had come there as early as the beginning of the fifth century. When the Romans found it necessary to pay attention to what was going on beyond the Alps, they found Celts in Noricum (Austria) and Pannonia (Western Hungary).136 The Carni, who were in the Alps between the Drave, Istria, the Adriatic, and the Tagliamento, were Celts.137 Behind them, a whole new Celtic world reached as far as the Black Sea. But when did those settlements begin ?
The tradition used by Livy tells of an expedition, the counterpart of that of Bellovesus, led by his cousin Sigovesus into the Hercynian Forest, which had long been occupied by the Celts but was certainly not the limit of their advance. Justin’s summary is more detailed.138 According to him, one part of the Gallic ver sacrum made for Illyria ducibus avibus, guided by birds, “for the Gauls are pre-eminent in the augur’s art.” The adventurers settled in Pannonia, “had various wars with their neighbours which lasted long, and at last reached Greece and Macedonia, overthrowing everything before them.” It is an excellent summary of the facts, except that it mentions no interval between the Ulyrian wars of the Gauls and their descent on Delphi.
But for a long time yet the Raeti on the one hand and the Veneti on the other remained in the Central Alps and the north-eastern corner of Italy, forming a broad, continuous belt between the Cisalpine Celts and those of the valley of the Danube ; on the Italian side the enclave of the Trentino bit into it but did not pierce it. In 350 there is no question yet of the Carni between the Veneti and Istria. The Veneti march with the Istri, and these latter extend to the Danube.139
But about the same time, the Gauls had already come into collision with the Illyrian people of the Ardiaei or Vardaei, which touched the Dalmatian coast opposite the islands of Pharos and Corcyra Nigra (Lesina and Curzola) somewhere near the mouth of the Naron (Narenta). This incident was related by Theopompos, who died in 306.140
More serious and more fruitful in results was their encounter with the Antariatae.141 These seem to have been at that time the predominant people among the Illyrians. At the time of the Periplus of Scylax, the Antariatae reached down to the Dalmatian coast at the mouth of the Narenta.142 They were at constant war with the Vardaei for the possession of the salt-deposits of the upper valley of that river. Inland, they extended to Bulgaria, for they had evicted the Triballi from the valley of the Morava. How far north they went at this date it is hard to say. Their eponymous hero, Antaricos, son of Illyrios, was the father of Pannonios.143 In any case, they were a very large people and seem to have been then at the height of their military power. They had used it against the Macedonians. In 393 the Illyrians, that is to say the Antariatae, had driven Amyntas II, the father of Philip, from the throne and had then made him pay them tribute. In 359, Bardulis, King of the Illyrians, utterly defeated the army of Perdiccas III, Philip’s brother, who lost his life in the battle. Philip, becoming king, made a vigorous effort, drove the Illyrian garrisons out of the towns of Macedonia, and defeated the Antariatae.
It is probable that the Celts came into his political schemes,144 but not without payment ; this would explain the abundance of coins of Philip found among the Celts of the Danube. The defeated Illyrians became disturbed again in 335, after the accession of Alexander the Great. We may suppose that the Celts, whose ambassadors appeared at his court when he was on his Danubian campaign, kept the Antariatae occupied while he tackled the Thracians. The historian of these events, Arrian, who used the “memoirs” of an eye-witness, Ptolemy, son of Lagos, tells us that these Celts lived on the Ionic Gulf.145 Were they the Celts of Italy ? These have left no Macedonian coins. Did they come on to the Adriatic north of the Veneti ? Arrian’s language is vague, and doubtless only testifies to the great place that the Celts of Italy had in the world of that day. Celtic envoys crossed Asia in 324 to pay their court to Alexander in Babylon.146 When the Antariatae caused the Macedonians anxiety, the Celts kept the former quiet, to their own advantage.
Now, all of a sudden, in 310, the Antariatae were seized with panic and began to flee in masses.147 The event appeared so extraordinary that historians had recourse to absurd prodigies to explain it. What had happened was an invasion of large numbers of Celts, led by a chief named Molistomos. The flying Antariatae ran into the Macedonians. Cassander planted some 20,000 on his frontier as military settlers.148 Others established themselves among the Veneti and among the other peoples of the Dalmatian coast.
This fact suggests that the Celtic attack on the Antariatae at a certain moment assumed the character of a sudden cataclysm, and that the original positions of the two peoples had not been perceptibly altered before then. The Italian settlement of the Celts had for a long time lain very much in front of the Celtic frontiers, being flanked right and left by Ligurians and Illyrians. North of the Illyrians, other Celts had advanced by the Danube, filtering in among the Illyrian inhabitants. But they do not appear in large and irresistible numbers until the end of the fourth century. That, if one is to trust the historians, is the position in the south-eastern part of the Celtic world during the fourth century.
Examination of the archaeological finds does not contradict this view.
It is impossible that the Celts should have arrived in the middle valley of the Danube in the Hallstatt period.149 The Negau helmets are isolated, or rather, apart from the inscription, they only appear in association with objects which are not Celtic.150 Celtic civilization, and the Celts with it, gained ground in the first period of La Tène, but more probably at the end of that phase than at the beginning.151
La Tène finds in Upper and Lower Austria are unfortunately scanty, and do not furnish the answer to our question.152 On the other hand, the cemetery of Hallstatt itself has yielded an object which, though only one, is of very great importance. It is a La Tène sword with a scabbard of engraved bronze.153 The chape is of the type of La Tène I in appearance but without open-work, and the manner in which the decorated surface is divided into compartments recalls the transverse bars with which the scabbards of La Tène II are strengthened. On the central part of the scabbard154 three foot-soldiers are engraved, carrying a spear on the shoulder, wearing no helmet, and holding a large oval shield with a central ridge of the Gallic type. Behind the foot-soldiers are four horsemen, advancing with spear couched, wearing a cap to protect the head and, apparently, body-armour. The second seems to have struck with his spear a foot-soldier, who is lying on his back. On each side of these figures is the same scene, of two persons clad in a long-skirted coat and tight striped hose, holding a wheel in their hands. On the chape is a partially serpentine creature struggling with a fallen man. This object is unique, and the art which it represents is very different from the art of La Tène. The costumes are without parallel. On the other hand, the procession of warriors recalls those on the Italic and Venetian buckets. The wheel, doubtless solar, with its two supporters, recalls a motive familiar to the art of Villanova. In fact, this sword from Hallstatt stands not so much for a replacement of Ulyrian civilization by Celtic civilization as for the mixed culture which may have been the result of the contact of the two peoples.
There are a certain number of cemeteries in Carinthia and the valley of the Isonzo containing Celtic objects,155 at Watsch, at Sankt-Michael near Adelsberg, at Nassenfus, at Vital near Prozoz in Croatia, at Idria near Baôa in the province of Gorizia. The Celtic objects are isolated, as at Watsch, or late, belonging to La Tène II, as at Sankt-Michael. They are found mixed with Certosa brooches and even with Villanovan brooches which have survived so long.
The cemetery of Idria might have been the successor to the neighbouring cemetery of Santa Lucia.156 The latter suddenly ceases to be used when the former becomes important. The native town to which the cemetery of Santa Lucia belonged was doubtless destroyed. The population fled. Strangers came and took up their abode elsewhere. But were these Celts ? Inscriptions have been found in the cemetery of Idria, and they are not Celtic. We cannot argue from these facts that the Celts began to advance in Friuli at the time when they were making that concentration in the north of Bosnia which caused the Antariatae to leave their homes.
There was the same activity at that time all round the skirts of the Celtic world. The Celtic colonization of Britain was approaching completion. Fresh tribes of Gauls were making their way to the Garonne, where the Iberians held them. Later we shall examine, as a whole, for a longer period, what was going on on the Germanic side.