FROM the end of the third century onwards, the Belgæ are to be found taking a part in every movement which occurs in the Celtic world. The other Gauls seek their help for special purposes, defend themselves against them, or follow them. While they are trying to carve out an empire for themselves on the Danube and in the East, new bodies descend on Italy and Spain. The political events of the second century bring the Celts into contact with a great organized state, a creator of order in its own fashion, the Roman Republic. The history of these peoples is henceforward the story of their struggle with Rome, in which, from the west of the Mediterranean to the east, they are vanquished, and it is through the ups and downs of that story that we catch glimpses of their internal life.
Yet another danger threatens them. To the north, over an area of the same extent, the Celtic world has at the same time to suffer encroachments and advances on the part of men of inferior civilization, speaking another language and forming another group, who have begun to move in the wake of the Belgæ, a hundred years after them. These are the Germans, whose name has already turned up in the course of this history, in Ireland, then in Italy, and finally in Spain, though in this last country its meaning is uncertain.1
A century after the first invasion, the peace of the Gauls of the Po valley was disturbed by the arrival of a large body of men from over the Alps.2 The Gauls treated with them, and succeeded in diverting their attention to Rome, which was then engaged in the fourth Samnite War.3 The Samnites had as allies the Etruscans, to whom the Gauls offered their assistance and that of the newcomers, who asked for land and a home in return.4 The Gauls descended into Etruria and slaughtered a legion at Clusium, on the usual road taken by invaders. In 295 they found themselves faced by a larger Roman army at Sentinum on the eastern slope of the Apennines, near the source of the Æsis. In spite of their valour and dash, they were crushed.5
Ten years later the Gauls appear again, this time alone. They besieged Arretium6 on the Clusium road. A Roman army came to the relief of the town, and lost many prisoners. Envoys, sent to obtain an exchange of captives, were ill received. In 283 the Romans took the offensive and invaded the country of the Senones,7 whom they utterly defeated. According to a family tradition of the Livii, the Consul M. Livius Drusus found among them the thousand pounds of gold which had been paid in ransom of the Capitol. In any case, he was able to collect enough booty without that. The Etruscans had meanwhile taken up arms again, and while the Senones were getting beaten an army of Boii had come down into Etruria. It passed Clusium and Volsinii and was defeated on the shores of the small lake of Vadimo (Bassano), close to the Tiber between Volsinii and Falerii.8 The Boii made peace, and it lasted for forty-five years, giving the Romans time to finish the Samnite War, to dispose of Pyrrhos, and to conduct the first Punic War without having anything to fear from the Gauls.
They had considered it wise to keep a foothold in the country. The colony of Sena Gallica9 was probably founded in 283. The circumstances which led to the establishment of a colony at Ariminum10 in the north of the Senonian territory in 268 are unknown to us. This was the terminus of the Via Flaminia, which was not finished until 221. Possibly it was already planned. Meanwhile, the Senones did not recover anything like their former power in the district and the Romans were consolidating their positions. It was not until 232 that the Lex Flaminia ordered that this territory should be divided up.11 This was a serious matter. The Gallic settlements might be able to suffer small losses of ground and the foundation of colonies in towns which were hardly Gallic, but the dividing-up of the country meant eviction, and evicted they were.
This incident produced the greatest indignation, if not among all the Gauls, at least among the Boii and the Insubres, who had already, in 238 or 236, begun to call upon the Transalpine peoples12 whom they had received with mixed feelings in 299. An army had at that time entered the country, and had advanced as far as Ariminum. They do not seem to have been received with open arms by the greater part of the population, for there was a rising against the Boian kings Atis and Galatos,13 who came with them. The two kings were slain and the expedition came to nothing. No doubt there was some question of a division of land, and the Gauls were not fond of such methods. But in 232 the alarm occasioned by another division of land was general. Once more appeal was made to the men beyond the Alps.
These latter took their time to prepare for their invasion. But they seem to have managed things well, and it was a large and well-armed force which was sent into the plain of the Po in 225, led by the kings Concolitanus, Aneroestus,14 and Britomarus.15 The report of this new Gallic incursion was not without influence on the negotiations which brought the first Punic War to an end.
One of the Consuls of that year, L. Æmilius Papus, awaited the Gauls at Ariminum.16 The other, C. Attilius Regulus, was engaged in Sardinia. In Etruria there was a small army under the command of a Praetor. The Gauls, with a force of 50,000 foot and 20,000 horse and chariots, having struck right across the Apennines, once again came down the central road of Etruria, again appeared before Clusium, and surprised the small army of the Praetor in a fashion which proves that their leader was not without military skill.17 The return of L. Æmilius caused them to change their route. They turned towards the coast, which they reached at Telamon, north of Orbetello.18 There they were met by all the Roman forces and with them those of the whole of Italy. This time the Gauls were not quite of one mind. The Cenomani had stood apart, and the Romans had obtained from them not only neutrality but an auxiliary corps,19 which marched with a body of Veneti, forming with it a unit of about 20,000 men. This was one of the great encounters between the Gauls and the peoples of Italy. The Gauls were thoroughly worsted ; their army was destroyed. Concolitanus was taken prisoner and Aneroestus killed himself.20 In memory of this battle a magnificent temple was built at Telamon, containing a symbolic arsenal and relics from the battlefield.21 Excavation has yielded a bronze statuette of a fallen Gallic chief and terra-cotta fragments of pediments. One of these latter represented the two leaders of the Transalpine tribes in the guise of Adrastos and Amphiaraos, two of the Seven against Thebes, Adrastos falling into an abyss made by a thunderbolt, and Amphiaraos dragged away on his chariot by a Fury.
Next year the Roman army ravaged the country of the Boii,22 who begged for peace and submitted, as did the Lingones. In 223 the Romans, supported by the Anamari, attempted to cross the Po near the mouth of the Addua, but they were beaten and secured their escape by negotiation. They returned to the attack with the support of the Cenomani, and drove the Insubres as far as Milan. The Insubres raised 50,000 men and brought out of the temple of their goddess certain gold standards, which must have been the symbol of their possession of the place. The Romans were victorious, we are told, but they retired.
The Insubres took advantage of this to bring in, next year, an army of 30,000 Transalpine warriors, led by a chief named Viridomar, who called himself a son of the Rhine. The collision took place on the right bank of the Po, at Clastidium, south-west of Comillomagus. The Consul M. Claudius Marcellus is said to have slain Viridomar with his own hand in single combat. The Gauls, flying with the Romans close at their heels, crossed the Po near the mouth of the Addua, abandoned Acerrae, and retreated to Milan, which was in its turn taken by the Consul. Peace was made, the Insubres surrendering part of their territory and giving hostages.
As they had done among the Senones, the Romans founded two colonies, one at Placentia on the right bank of the Po, among the Boii, and the other at Cremona on the left bank, among the Insubres. Mutina was held by a garrison, which commanded the road from Placentia to Ariminum, later the Via Æmilia.
In spite of the succession of reinforcements from across the Alps which they received during more than a hundred years, the Cisalpine Gauls did not succeed in extending their territory, and still less did they get the better of the Romans. On the contrary, they lost considerable ground to them, and above all lost their independence.23 They were either allies or subjects of Rome. What independence they retained was precarious. They were to make a timid attempt to renew the struggle on the advent of Hannibal, only to fall still lower.
The newcomers who took part in the struggle of the Cisalpine Gauls against the Roman Republic are represented as Gauls of the Alps, the Rhone, or the region between them.24 The contingents of 232 are said to have come from the remotest part of Gaul and from the Rhine district.25 So they must have passed the Rhone and the Alps on their way, and their predecessors may have done so too.
According to the ancient historians, the Cisalpines regarded them as kinsmen of their own, being like them descended from the Gauls who took Rome.26 They are described as a Gaisatai. This was a name which was known to have a meaning. Polybios27 suggests an etymology : “ They are called Gaisatai because they are mercenaries, for that is what the word means.” We have no confirmation or explanation of this etymology. There is another interpretation of the term—that the Gaisatai are Germans armed with a spear or javelin, the gaesum.28 It is perfectly true that the word gaesum is a transcription of a Gallic name, but the Latins used it with a wrong meaning. They confused the new weapon with other javelins, which had long been used by the Etruscans29 and the Roman light infantry.30 But they did not confuse it with the pilum—a mistake of which some modern archaeologists have been guilty.
Other documents, mainly inscriptions, mention Germani and Rheti Gaesati31 These were probably bodies raised in the Alps or in Germany. The population of the Roman Germanies was for the greater part Belgic. The Germani Gaesati were Belgæ. Of this we have proof. Just as they introduced the name of gaesum into Italy, the Belgæ who went warring in Ireland took into that country the weapon which has exactly the same name.32 They arrived with a better armament than that of the natives, and the thought of those terrible weapons (among which there was a special spear or javelin)33 is bound up with the memory of them. So the Gaesati or Gaisatai were Belgæ, or at least there were a great many Belgæ among them.34 Perhaps this is why the ancient writers, who so often confuse the Belgæ with the Germans, describe the Gaesati as Semigermani or Germani.35 Moreover, the Gaesati had other characteristics of the Belgæ. Like them they wore baggy trousers.36 The historians who describe the battle of Telamon describe them as fighting naked, that is to say, naked down to the waist but wearing trousers.37
But these were not the same Belgæ as those who invaded the Danube valley and the East. They were not confused with the Taurisci, who also figured in the army defeated at Telamon. Moreover, they still had the war-chariot, the essedum, which was no longer used by the army of Brennus or the Galatians of Asia. If there is one thing to remember in the battles in which the Gaesati engaged, it is the use of the large, heavy sword, made for cutting-strokes which were parried with the shield, and never bending save in the heat of funeral pyres, but less useful for hand-to-hand fighting than the gladius which the Romans had copied from their predecessors.
At all events, their expeditions in the south of the Celtic world contributed to the unification of Gallic civilization during the second La Tène period.
At the same time new bodies of Celts were entering Spain, which had for two centuries been separated from the rest of the Celtic world by the Iberian invasion of Languedoc and the valley of the Garonne.38
All through this period, the civilization of the Gallic settlements had developed on independent lines.39 In the place of the La Tène I brooches, which are only found exceptionally, there are quantities of very curious types, transitional between Hallstatt and La Tène. The great sword of the first La Tène period is likewise absent. Down to the third century, its place is taken by small swords derived from the dagger with antennae. All these objects can be dated fairly exactly by the Greek vases found with them in the same cemeteries.
This archaic civilization is succeeded immediately by that of La Tène II. The largest group of finds belongs to the Castilian cemeteries of Aguilar de Anguita, Arcobriga, and Luzaga, some of the tombs in which contained brooches, swords, and shield-bosses of this period.40 Some of the brooches and swords belong to earlier types. In Catalonia outside the old limit of Celtic settlements the cemetery of Cabrera de Mataro (Barcelona)41 and in Andalusia that of Torre de Villaricos (Almeria)42 have yielded many Campanian vases of the third century. But swords are still very rare. At that time the Celts used a kind of sabre with a hilt shaped like a horse’s head, which archaeologists call the Almedinilla sword.43 This weapon is found in the graves, bent in the Celtic fashion, as are the small antenna-sword and that of La Tène II. It is shown on the Osuna relief44 in the hands of a warrior who carries a great Celtic shield with a central rib. It has been suggested that this weapon is the Koπίς of the Thracians and Eastern peoples, imported into Spain by the Greeks. But it seems rather to have spread by the Celtic land-routes. The Koπίς is depicted in a caricature of a Galatian warrior on a crater of the third century found at Volterra45 and in the Telamon statuette.46 Sabres have been found in burials of La Tène II in Illyria and Germanic countries.47 The 
is the sister of the cutlass which takes the place of the sword in many Gallic tombs48 ; it is the result of an evolution of Hallstatt weapons parallel to that of the sword, and it came from Central Europe to Thrace, Greece, and Italy. Whether it originated in Celtic countries or was copied by the Celts on their Eastern expeditions, it was from the north that it entered Spain with the Celts of La Tène II.
In the Celtic place-names of Spain we can see a second stratum,49 which appears to date from this second Celtic occupation. These are names of fortified towns ending in -dunum.50 There are only four of these—Caladunum (Calahorra, near Monte Alegro in the Portuguese province of Tras-os-Montes) among the Callaici, who were Iberians ; Estledunum (Estola, near Luque, province of Cordova) in the country of the Turduli, who were not Gauls ; Sebeldunum (in Catalonia, south of Gerona) among the Ausetani ; and Arialdunum, the site of which is uncertain. We may also add Berdum in the province of Huesca and Verdu in that of Lerida, which were originally called Virodunum. The name of Cogos, in the province of Gerona, recalls that of Cucullae. There was a town of the Arevaci called Clunia. Lastly, a Gallic leader slain by the Romans in 179 bore the name of Moenicaptus, “ Slave of the Main.”51
There are names corresponding to this series at the other ends of the Celtic world. Most of those ending in -dunum have been discovered north of the Seine and east of the Cevennes.52 There is a whole string of places called Virodunum from Tarn-et-Garonne to Germany. Kuchl in the province of Salzburg and Cogolo in the Tyrol were once Cucullae.53
These analogies suggest that it is in the north and in the east that we should seek the starting-point of the new body of invaders, and many of them were certainly Belgæ. In Hispania Tarraconensis there were a Belgida,54 site unknown, and a Belgica, which is also written Vellica. A third city, Suessatium,55 recalls the name of the Suessiones, who were a Belgic people.
Lastly, we find in Spain people called Germani,56 and that among the Oretani, who were Celtiberians according to a statement of Pliny the Elder.57 These again are Belgæ, whether they actually bore the name, which is clearly of Celtic origin, or it was given to them by analogy.
We may try to imagine the order of events. Of the portions of Celtic peoples which made for Italy in the fourth century, some stopped or were stopped along the Garonne towards the mouth—Bituriges Vivisci at Bordeaux58 and probably Senones at Cenon, opposite the town on the other side of the river,59 and Lingones at Langon, higher up.60 At the other end of the Pyrenees there were Volcae—Volcae Teetosages south of Narbonne and Volcae Arecomici (or Arecomii) between that town and the Rhone. These last, who took the place of the Iberians and Ligurians in Languedoc, came from the same regions as the first Celtic occupants of Aquitania. They did not enter Spain. But we may suppose that they were followed by Belgæ who managed to make their way to the Pass of Roncesvalles on the one side and into Catalonia on the other. These newcomers cannot have been very numerous.
All this doubtless happened between 350 and 250.61 It may possibly have been some years before the irruption of the Gauls into the Balkan Peninsula and the later Italian expeditions.
In what condition did the arrival of the Belgæ leave the Celtic settlements in Spain ?
The Peninsula had been a Celtic land. Then it had become “ Iberia ”, and seems to have been given this name in Greek geography for the first time about 230 by Eratosthenes.62 The peoples of the interior, roughly from the fourth century onwards, are called Celtiberians,63 and this appellation probably goes back to Timaeos, about 260. It must have had a fairly precise meaning, for the Celtici of the south and west kept it, whereas the Berones are called simply Celts by Strabo.64 What, then, were the Celtiberians ? A mere formation. But of what kind ? What proportion of Celtic elements did it contain ?
The most generally accepted notion, which is based on the sentiment of the ancient writers,65 is that the Celtiberians were not very different from the Celts who were known to be in the Peninsula before the new name came to prevail. They were Celts of Iberia, mixed in various degrees with Iberian elements. This is not the view of Herr Schulten.66 He regards the Celtiberians as Iberians who had settled in the country of the Celts and had then moved towards the Pyrenees from 350 onwards under the pressure of the Ligurians and Celts ; these Iberians tried to extend their ground in Spain, and established themselves on the plateau, going up the valleys.67 The new peoples whose names the historians then give—Oretani, Carpetani, Lusitani, Vettones, Arevaci, Vaccaei, Lusones, Belli, and Titti—are Iberian, not Celtic tribes.68 Polybios, too, describes the Celtiberian Oretani, Carpetani, and Vaccaei as Iberians. The Celts, driven from their settlements on the central plateau, retreated westwards or were reduced to subjection or assimilated by the conquerors.69
But why, then, the name Celtiberians, which cannot in any way be taken as a national designation ? It is a Greek ethnographic term formed like the word “ Libyphoenicians ”, which obviously means Phoenicians settled on Libyan territory.70 In fact, even if these terms are fundamentally ancient, their meaning is vague, and is intended to be so.
One thing at least is certain : the Iberian civilization reached the plateau.71 In their states in the south, where they were in contact with the Greek colonies, the Iberians in the fifth and fourth centuries developed a culture some aspects of which are now well known—towns with stone ramparts and stone houses, large temples inhabited by a host of statues and statuettes, and painted pottery with geometric, animal, and vegetable ornament.72 This culture, which had its birth in the south-eastern corner of the Peninsula, whence it spread in the fifth century along the east coast to the Rhone, makes its appearance in the fourth century in the upper valley of the Ebro, and then, gradually advancing, arrives a hundred years later in Castile, in the country which had once belonged to the Celts. There it spread in the southern part of the territory occupied by the Oretani, and further north in that of the Carpetani. It also made its way into the northern parts of the domain of the Arevaci and into some of the groups established on the plateau. The scarcity of Iberian objects in the country of the Vaccaei, Vettones, and Lusitani seems to indicate that these peoples were less strongly Ibericized. The distinction made by the ancient historians between Celtiberi citeriores (closer to the coast) and Celtiberi ulteriores (further from the coast and wilder) may also have corresponded to a difference of race.73
Altogether, then, there is nothing against the supposition that the racial framework of the country was usually supplied by the Iberians. The Oretani and Carpetani have Iberian names similar to that of the Turdetani, for example, who are outside the Celtic area. The Lusitani are probably a branch of the Lusones which had advanced westwards, and we may by analogy suppose that the Arevaci and Vaccaei were likewise of Iberian origin,74 But all these peoples allowed a considerable number of Celts to stay in the country and absorbed them. This is shown by the names which appear in the inscriptions of Celtiberian towns. Such Celtic names as Acco, Atto, Boutius, and Reburrus are frequent. They prove that Celtic elements lived on in the country and maintained their family organization.
But they did not live in a subordinate position. The leaders, the heroes in the Celtiberian war of independence are Celts—Rhetogenes (Rectugenos) Caraunios, Caros, Ambon (Ammo ?), Leukon, Megaravicus, and Auaros. Orosius75 relates that after the fall of Numantia, Scipio asked a Celtic prince named Thyresius why the city had held out so long. Lastly, even if the Lusitani were Iberians, their chief Viriathus had a Celtic name.76
To explain this state of things, we may suppose that Celtic families which had been previously settled in the country entered the Iberian tribes or survived alongside of them. We may also suppose that the meeting of the Celts and the Belgæ who arrived on the Iberian plateau at the same time, moving in opposite directions, led to agreements by which the smaller body was incorporated in the larger.
The two hypotheses are equally reasonable and account for many features of Celtic civilization,77 which are attested by archæology and by the ancient writers, in the Celtiberian tribes—the survival of cults such as that of Epona and that of the Lugoves, the observation of Celtic funeral rites in the cemeteries of Castile, the survival of Gallic armament, the use of horse and foot together in tactical formation, the use of standards and trumpets, the wearing of the sagum, the drinking of beer.
But while something of Celtic civilization survived, there were no vestiges of Celtic states (if they had ever existed) in the centre of the Peninsula about the middle of the third century. The coming of the Belgæ had neither revived old political units nor created new ones.
At the time when the Punic wars commenced, the races of Spain were arranged as follows : in the centre on the plateau there had grown up a group of peoples of great military excellence which, though mainly Iberian, contained a large number of Celts, who enjoyed a certain standing. The collaboration of these two elements in Celtiberia was not unlike that of the Arabs and the Berbers in Algeria and Morocco before the European conquest.
In the first Punic War Carthage lost her Spanish colonies. After the war, in 237, the first generation of the great generals of the Barca family, Hamilcar and Hasdrubal, set out to reconquer the country,78 with the idea of extending the Carthaginian domain and making it a base for the war which they were preparing. The first operations among the Tar-tessians brought them into conflict with bodies of Celts.79 They next crossed the Sierra Morena and attacked the Celtiberians, whom Hannibal finally conquered in 221.80 From Cartagena to Burgos they had subdued the whole plateau. It would doubtless be more correct to say that they had concluded agreements with the Celtiberian tribes, which supplied them with mercenaries. In 218, the Lusitani are mentioned for the first time as soldiers of Hannibal.81
The second Punic War began. Hannibal resumed or started negotiations with the Volcae, who lived on the northern slope of the Pyrenees. The envoys of the Roman Senate, returning from Carthage, where war had been decided on, landed on the coast of Languedoc, likewise with a view to negotiation. Livy82 describes them addressing the assembly of armed Volcae. There they had to listen to all the complaints of the Gauls of Italy, which were possibly a genuine expression of public discontent but may have spread by the emissaries of Hannibal preaching the cause of Celtic unity. The Volcae remained undecided. They went through the form of opposing the passage of the Carthaginian army at Ruscino, but they came to terms before there was any fighting. Hannibal passed without trouble through the land of the Volcae Teetosages, and then through that of the Areeomici. At the Rhone, the same undecidedness began again. An army of Volcae or Salyes was disposed along the east bank. Hannibal turned it and put it to flight, and then, instead of marching up the Durance and crossing by Mont Genèvre—perhaps in order to avoid observation by the army of Scipio, who had landed a body of cavalry by the mouth of the Rhone—he went up the east bank of the Rhone to the Isère, and passed without fighting through the country of the Allobroges, escorted by a king whose cause he had taken up. He probably took advantage of his march through these peoples to repair and renew the equipment of his force.83 Leaving their territory, he entered the Maurienne, where another Gallic people, the Medulli, received him very ill. At Mont Cenis, yet another tribe, the Centrones, disputed his passage. After that there was Italy.
All this information about Hannibal’s journey through Gaul is of the greatest interest. For the first time, it shows us Gallic peoples in Gaul, and places them. Although sometimes contradictory, it is all of good quality, and goes back to the Greek historians who accompanied the expedition, Silenos and others.84 The Volcae occupied Languedoc85 from the Pyrenees to the Rhone. Between that river and the Durance, Livy86 mentions the Tricastini and the Vocontii. The valley of the Isère belonged to the Allobroges up to the Maurienne.87 North of the Rhone, Polybios88 places the Ardyes, who are probably the Ædui. These positions are permanent, and we must conclude from them that, if there were large shiftings of peoples in Gaul, first before the earliest invasions of Italy and then at the time when the Belgæ made their appearance on the borders of the Celtic world, these movements were for the main part over by 218. Behind the Ædui must have been the Belgæ.
It is possible that the Celts missed their opportunity in Hannibal. He seems to have counted on a general Celtic invasion, but he did not succeed in bringing it about. The Gauls of Gaul were cool or hostile. Those of Italy, one nation of whom, the Boii, had summoned him, were hardly more enthusiastic. They made up their minds when the game was lost.
There was no general rising. All that Hannibal managed to do was to recruit Gallic mercenaries, whom he used skilfully to spare his Spanish troops.89 But the Romans also had Gallic mercenaries.90 They were able to maintain garrisons at Mutina and a small army of observation in Cisalpine Gaul, and to preserve their colonies at Placentia, Cremona, and Ariminum.91 It is true that in 216, after Cannae, the Boii seem to have been tempted to do something. They cut down the little army of the Praetor L. Postumius in the Litana Forest.92 But that victory led to nothing.
Hasdrubal, Hannibal’s younger brother, came very near to succeeding where his elder brother had failed. Being placed in charge of operations in Spain, he managed to recruit troops north of the Pyrenees.93 In 214, at the battle of Jean, two Gallic chiefs named Moenicaptus and Vismarus, who may have been Belgæ, are mentioned among the slain.94 On his defeat in 208 Hasdrubal eluded the Romans who were waiting for him in the gorges of Roussillon by going round the west of the range95 and travelled through Aquitaine and Languedoc, gathering a new army. Then he descended into Italy, where, after being better received than Hannibal, he was defeated with his Gauls on the banks of the Metaurus in 207.96 Two years later, another brother, Mago., renewed the attempt. He landed at Genoa and held the district for two years. Then, being driven back into Savoy, he re-embarked, taking with him part of his European troops. Hannibal took back others, so that at Zama half of his army was composed of Celts and Ligurians.97
In Cisalpine Gaul, the Barcas had left a Carthaginian officer, Hamilcar, who succeeded in rousing the Cenomani, who had so long been allies of the Romans, and in taking Placentia. But he was defeated and killed before Cremona in 200.98
The war went on with hard fighting and much bloodshed, and the Gallic peoples submitted one after another, the Cenomani in 197,99 the Insubres in 196.100 The Romans gave them a foedus on good terms, and they became civitates foederatae. The Boii held out until 191 ; to them surrender brought the total destruction of their political organization. They had to give up half of their territory and three of their cities, Bononia (Bologna), which was made into a colony in 189, and Mutina and Parma in 183. Livy relates that only old men and children were left.101 It is also said that a body of Boii went back over the Alps into their old home.102 Of the Lingones nothing more is heard.
In 186 a new Gallic tribe appears in the north of Venetia. This was the Carni,103 coming from Noricum, who settled in the country and vowed that their intentions were peaceful. A Roman army was sent against them in 183. They were defeated, but they remained. A Roman colony was established at Aquileia in 187.
A story went about that Philip of Macedon intended to bring the Celts down on Italy. In 178 yet another small body of 3,000 Gauls appeared, asking for land.104 They had to go. This was the last Celtic invasion of Italy down to the campaign of the Cimbri. Henceforward the Roman people regarded the Alps as the boundary of the Celtic world, and did not allow the Gauls to cross it.105
It was not long after these events that Polybios106 visited Cisalpine Gaul, of which he has left a very attractive picture : “Words fail,” he says, “to describe the fertility of the country. Corn is so abundant that in our own time a Sicilian medimnus of wheat has more than once been seen to fetch only four obols, a medimnus of barley two obols, and a metretes of wine no more than a measure of barley. Millet and panic produce enormous crops. A single fact may give an idea of the quality of the acorns furnished by the oaks which grow at intervals on the plain107 : many pigs are slaughtered in Italy both for daily life and for the supply of camps, and it is from this district that most of them come.108 Lastly, here is conclusive proof of the cheapness and plenty prevailing there. Travellers stopping at the inns do not make terms over each item separately, but ask what the rate is per head ; as a rule the innkeeper undertakes to give them all they want for a quarter of an obol,109 and this price is seldom exceeded. Need I speak of the enormous population of the country, of the stature and good looks of the people, and of their warlike spirit ? ”
The Gauls had their share in the prosperity of this bountiful land. Everything, down to the system of inns, can be put down to them, for there were inns in Ireland too.110
They had suffered much in the recent wars. In 197 and 196 alone the Insubres are said to have lost 75,000 men. These were great losses. But there were still Gauls left in Italy. The excavations at Ornavasso111 and the neighbourhood of Como show that the Lepontii and Insubres remained distinct, with their civilization, down to Imperial times. This does not mean that they had given up their unruly ways for good.
The misfortunes of the Gauls were not yet quite at an end. But the Gallic wars were over, for one cannot describe the revolt of the slaves, chiefly Gauls, which embarrassed the Romans at the end of the century as a Gallic war.
Not only in Italy did the Celts retire before the Roman Republic, which henceforward was mixed up in everything that happened in the Mediterranean world. In Spain and in the East the Celtiberians and Galatians presently lost their independence.
While Hannibal was carrying the war into Italy, a fleet commanded by Publius Scipio as Consul and his father Cneius was making for Spain. Publius Scipio returned to Italy, to get beaten on the Ticinus, and Cneius continued on his way and landed at Emporion.112 At first he found allies among the Celtiberians. But in 212 they returned to their alliance with Carthage. The two Scipios, who had been in command since 217, were defeated separately and killed within a month of each other. Young Publius Scipio, Africanus that was to be, quickly restored the situation in 211 and, having driven out Hasdrubal, made ready in Spain for the African campaign which brought the war to an end.
The Spanish campaigns of the Scipios form a parallel to that of the Barcas, and what the Barcas had done for Carthage the Scipios did for Rome. But they went further.
In 197 they attacked the Celtiberian positions on the plateau113 and commenced a stubborn war which went on until 133, with a few years of respite between 178 and 154. The fall of Numantia114 brought the war to an end. The whole of Spain, except the Pyrenees and the free or federated cities of the coast, was organized as a Roman province.
From the rapid conquest of Gaul and the long resistance of the Celtiberians some have argued that there is no such thing as a Celtic character. The Gauls have left a name for quickly losing heart. Arguments of this kind, which do not take into account the circumstances on either side, are a fruitful source of error. Moreover, the Celts seem to have always had an idea of civilization which was quite opposed to their concern for their national independence, and led them to see a friend and guide where others saw an enemy. But, for all their wavering, their resistance, even in Italy, lasted over a hundred years.
In the Eastern Mediterranean the Romans found it necessary to intervene in Macedon and Greece. They were constantly finding Gallic colonies on their way. They had to make terms with those in Noricum which were determined to be left in peace, to be wary with the Celts of Illyria, and to hold the balance between the Galatians and the Kings of Pergamon.
One of the first consequences of the Punic War was that the Romans came into contact with the Galatians. After Zama, Hannibal had taken refuge with Antiochos the Great, and finally with Prusias. Antiochos allowed himself to be won over. The Galatians took sides with him and shared his defeat at Magnesia on the Maeander. The Consul Manlius Vulso marched against them.115 The first to be attacked, the Tolistoboii, retired to a fortified position on Mount Olympos, where the Romans blockaded them and took over 40,000 prisoners. The Teetosages and Trocmi were likewise compelled to take up their position in another stronghold on Mount Magaba. It was taken by storm. Manlius’s campaign was memorable for disgraceful pillage,116 but on the whole he dealt fairly generously with the vanquished, who were included in the general peace-treaty and allowed to keep their territory provided they did not come out of it. But the King of Pergamon seems to have now obtained a sort of protectorate, which had rather a disturbed history. The Galatians revolted several times. They were crushed in 166. But now the Romans intervened in their favour, and established their independence as a permanency. In 152 Attalos III of Pergamon bequeathed his kingdom to the Romans. The situation changed, though it is not possible to say exactly how, save that the Galatians were drawn into the wars against Mithradates117 and that they thereby at first lost their independence. In 73 they succeeded in recovering it, and until the death of Mithradates they were faithful allies of Rome. At the end of the war, in 63, Pompey reorganized the Galatians in three principalities, one of which, reaching to the sea and including Trapezus, went to the famous Deiotarus. Deiotarus was not satisfied, and took advantage of the Civil War to intrigue between Pompey and Cæsar. He had to go to Rome to defend his conduct before Cæsar, and was defended by Cicero in 45 so successfully that he returned to Galatia as a king. By the favour of the Romans, the kingdom of his successors, Castor and Amyntas, was still further extended. But in 25 the whole kingdom was declared a Roman province.
The kingdom of Deiotarus had already ceased to be Celtic ; it was a kind of large satrapy, devoid of any racial or national character. The fact was that the Galatians had merged into the population of Anatolia, just as, at the other end of the world, the Celts of Spain had merged into the Iberian peoples. The most conspicuous trace of themselves which they seem to have left in Asia Minor was their blood. Travellers have noted in the country a considerable number of blond types, in which some of the physical characteristics of the Celts doubtless reappear.
In Thrace the little kingdom of Cauaros had disappeared in 193. In 171 the Romans entered Illyria to defend the colony of Aquileia, which was threatened by the Iapodes. An army marched through their country, and probably also that of the Scordisci, to attack Perseus in Macedonia. It seems to have behaved very badly there, for the Consul C. Cassius on his return found an embassy of Istrians and Iapodes who had come to complain to the Senate. From the middle of the second century onwards, the Scordisci were constantly at war with the Romans, and twelve expeditions were sent against them. In 135 they were severely beaten south of Haemos,118 and they remained quiet for a time. In 110, in alliance with the Thracians, they threatened the Temple of Delphi, and they doubtless took part in the looting of 90. They were crushed by L. Scipio in 83 and planted on the other side of the Danube ; nevertheless, we find them again, about 78, in Macedonia, allied with Mithradates and supplying him with most of his Gallic mercenaries, and also plotting with the Dacians.
On the Adriatic the Illyro-Celtic pirates were driven back into the interior in 135. With 129 began a series of small expeditions against the Iapodes, ending in a treaty in 56. They started again in 52, and only ended with the subjection of the country. In A.D. 8 the whole Celtic region on the Danube, including the territory of the Scordisci, was made into a Roman province.
At the end of this stage in history, we have to note that the Belgic contingents had no real success save in the East. In Spain they established themselves, but did not last. In Italy their appearance was transitory. Their advance to the south of the Mediterranean was stopped in the first half of the third century, and after that the settlements founded or reinforced by them declined. Decisive defeats in the first half of the second century set the seal on those of the third. The Celts in Spain began by yielding ground to the Iberians, and those of the East to the Thracians and Pergamenes. All, one after another, were crushed, or wiped out, or subdued by the Romans. Those who suffered least were still the Galatians. But, as we have seen, Galatia was by that time no more than an island, lost to the Celtic world. The kingdom of Deiotarus and his successors was Galatian in name alone. The Celtic states and tribes lost all their dominions, one after another. But everywhere they left traces, stocks of men. Nor does it seem that these lands which they had conquered were in any great danger while they held them.
Moreover, the Gallic conquerors, old and new, do not seem to have declined in quality. During those two hundred years they were defeated often and thoroughly, and won the esteem of their opponents. Also, they fought more often for others than on their own account, like the bodies of mercenaries which they lent on every hand. This is especially true of the Belgæ.
This account would, therefore, not be complete if it did not once more mention the Gallic mercenaries, those roving bands which enormously extended the area covered by the Celts. As early as 307, Agathocles had taken Celts to Africa.119 To the history of the Celts they added that of heroic, picturesque lands and they gained a great sum of individual experiences, which cannot all have been lost, in spite of the great slaughter of men involved.
Polybios120 tells a story of 3,000 Gauls who were enlisted by the Carthaginians in Italy in 263 and transported to Sicily. They were a difficult body to keep in hand ; they looted Agrigentum and finally betrayed their employers. The Romans got rid of them as best they could. We find them later in Epeiros, about 800 in number, in the service of the city of Phoenice against the Illyrians, when they delivered up the city to the brigands. Thus we can follow them for thirty years.
Carthage had larger bodies of Gallic mercenaries in her service during the first Punic War, and it was one of their leaders, named Antarios (who, by the way, spoke Punic excellently, according to Polybios), who was responsible for the great mutiny of the mercenaries in 241–237.121
Mercenary service was a regular Celtic industry, and a well paid one.122 The 10,000 horse and 10,000 foot enlisted by Perseus was commanded by a regulus and had all the appearance of a tribal army. It is, indeed, often very difficult in the Gallic wars to distinguish between large companies of mercenaries and belligerent armies.