IN the middle valley of the Danube the development of the Celtic settlements had been checked by the Getae and Dacians. The Boii advanced to the Theiss, but their sway extended no further. Beyond that there were doubtless Gauls in Transylvania, just as there were Saxons later. Celtic culture spread in this region, and the Dacians became Celticized.
On the Black Sea, an inscription from Olbia1 records the appearance of the Sciri, who were probably Germans, in the company of the Galatians. But they were soon absorbed, In the same parts, at the same date, we find a much more important people, though of uncertain origin, the Bastarnae.2 They are mentioned for the first time at the beginning of the second century, as newcomers on the Lower Danube. All these barbarians were employed as auxiliaries down to the time of the collision. In 182 Philip of Macedon sent them against the Dardanians.3 In 179 there was a great drive of the Bastarnae, with which the Macedonians had great difficulty in dealing.
Some ancient writers, particularly Polybios,4 who lived at the time of these events, regard the Bastarnae as Galatians.5 Ptolemy,6 on the other hand, makes them Germans, and in this he is justified by the names found among them.7 It is possible that the Bastarnae were a confederation of Celtic and Gerananic bands, like the army of the Cimbri and Teutones later.8 However it may have been, whether they were associated with the Celts or not, the Germans broke through the Gallic barrier and joined them at the furthest limit of their expansion. Even more clearly than the example of the Sciri, the arrival of the Bastarnae tells of the vast Germanic drive which was beginning to bear down on the Celtic world. While the Celts were moving to the south of Europe, important things were about to happen on their north-eastern borders.
However far back we go, the original habitat of the Celts in Western Germany does not reach to the Elbe. On the west, the frontier, always fluctuating, takes in an increasing part of the future Gaul ; south and north, the boundary is marked by Switzerland and the North Sea.9 The emigration of the Goidels10 left the northern part of this region empty, but down to the first centuries of the La Tène period the Brythonic Celts kept their part of it. The expedition of Sigovesus,11 forming a pendant to the great Celtic invasion of Italy, must represent an advance from the old positions in Bohemia to more northern or eastern ground and inroads from Thuringia into other parts of Germany, all somewhat different from the descents into Italy, Spain, and the East in character and in results.12
It is certain that in Bohemia the area of Celtic occupation increased from the first La Tène period onwards. This is attested in the centre and north of those regions by large cemeteries of that date. Further north, in Thuringia—where the crests of the Thüringerwald had in the Iron Age formed a frontier between two civilizations which must have been the racial frontier between Celts and Germans—the peoples of the southern slope moved forward at the end of the Hallstatt period.13 At the beginning of La Tène, the Celts still extended beyond the Thuringian mountains eastwards in the upper valley of the Saale, in the Kreise of Saalfeld and Ziegenrück. Brooches of La Tène I are found in the Elbe valley, where it leaves Bohemia, and up to the river and beyond it at the level of the confluence of the Saale. They have been picked up, less frequently, all the way down to the mouth of the Elbe and in Mecklenburg, close to the Baltic coast.14 But these do not come from recognizably Celtic tombs or cemeteries, and we must therefore conclude that outside the limits which we have already drawn there is no trace of a settlement of the Celts, permanent or otherwise.
But it is beyond doubt that the Celts had a very great political and military influence on the Germans at this date. This is shown by the words borrowed by Germanic from Celtic15—words connected with politics, law, warfare, and civilization in general. On the whole, the Celts seem to have been for hundreds of years, and in every matter, the educators of the Germanic peoples. But their influence was not due to their mere neighbourhood, and we may take it that it was enforced. There were in Germanic countries Celtic kings, or kings after the Celtic fashion, and where there was no king or kingdom we find Celtic officials or ambassadors. Celts and Germans strike treaties, exchange oaths and hostages, do business, and make contracts of marriage or friendship. In some instances the two races formed what may be regarded as a single society ; they combined in political associations and their tribes formed a confederation or confederations in which the Celts were the larger and predominant element. These relations did not always develop in peace, for we must suppose that they engaged in wars, sometimes against each other and sometimes on the same side.
Another proof of the intimacy of the Celts and Germans at this time is afforded by certain names of Germanic peoples which are Celtic in form or are like Celtic names Germanized. The name of the Hessi, for instance, seems to be the same as that of the Cassi. The Burgondiones correspond to the Brigantes. The Nemetes, the Triboci, and the Marcomanni, who lived next door to the Gauls, had Gallic names.16 Yet there is no doubt that these are Germanic peoples.
One should note that the borrowed words are found in the eastern dialects of Germanic no less than in those of the west and north. This diffusion enables us to judge how far Celtic influence reached. It even went beyond German regions and affected the Slavs and Finns.
To estimate how deep it went, we must turn to the ancient authors. The association of the Celts and Germans and its effects lasted long enough for these writers to bear witness to it. If there was a difference between the languages there was not much between the men. Cæsar17 was the first to make a great distinction between them. Poseidonios,18 before him, who was perhaps the first man to speak expressly of the Germans, laid weight on their points of resemblance. Strabo, who came after Cæsar, regarded the Germans as Gauls in their original pure state (γνησíoυς Γαλάτας) and suggests that this was what their name meant (“germane”).19 Their speech was different, but their institutions, manners, costume, and arms were the same, and the Greek geographer drew his picture of the early Celts from the Germans of his own day.
But the Celtic domination of the Germans was a thing of the past in Cæsar’s time. The Germans now stood along the Rhine from the Lake of Constance downwards, and about sixty years before, the catastrophe of the expedition of the Cimbri and Teutones had taken place. Can one determine the stages of the retreat of the Celts and the date at which it began ?
That retreat was long in coming, and was sudden when it came. It was in the second La Tène period that Celtic influence extended furthest. It is perfectly true that the Germans followed close on the heels of the Celts. They occupied every piece of country as it was left vacant, and for every Celtic retreat there was a Germanic advance.
These movements began very early. About 400, and probably long before, the Germans had reached the Rhine,20 but only on its lower course.21 Moreover, the character of the Celtic sites in Western Germany suggests that the country between Thuringia and the Rhine was contested every foot of the way. The Thüringerwald was a first frontier, with its line of forts. The Rhön was a second, likewise with its fortresses, the redoubt being the Steinsburg near Römhild.22 Further west, the Vogelsberg and beyond it the Westerwald and Taunus had their strongholds.23 There were yet others south of the Main and in the valley of the Neckar.24
The great number of these forts is surprising, contrasted with the peaceful aspect which Gaul must have presented at that time. The Celts do not seem to have been fond of shutting themselves up in citadels. The fortified sites of Germany point to hard necessity.
One would like to be able to picture the resistance of the Celts on their different lines of defence. Unfortunately, their forts do not run in chronological order from Thuringia to the Rhine. Also, they are found on heights and in woods, like the Hallstatt defensive settlements in Gaul. Habitats changed with the population. Nor do the finds enable us to follow the steps of the Celtic retreat. At the beginning of the La Tène period we can define the limit of their settlements and those of the Germans in Thuringia and Saxony, and at the end of the period we can recognize the Germanic forts and villages of the Rhine valley, but we cannot trace the shifting frontiers intermediate between these two positions and dates.
Some have described the distant colonizing expeditions of the Celts as having been made at the expense of the peoples established in Germany. Instead of supposing an extension of their frontiers on this side as on the other borders of their domain, they have depicted the reservoir of men as emptying on this side and leaving vacancies, which were soon filled up by neighbouring folk of an equally adventurous spirit and equally greedy for land whereon to spread themselves.
But that is not what happened. Among the Celtic peoples of Germany there were two whose habitats are perfectly well known, the Volcae and the Boii.25 They furnished contingents to every Celtic expedition, no doubt to the very earliest. Yet not only did they not vacate their old home, but the Boii even advanced their frontier eastwards and maintained it for a very long time. We may take it as certain that, so long as the Celtic peoples did not emigrate en masse, they kept their positions in Germany. It was the surplus population, the marching forces, that emigrated ; the central portion stayed where it was and spread out. The Turoni, a section of whom (perhaps the majority) had settled on the Loire, are mentioned in Ptolemy’s time in the upper valley of the Main, south of the Chatti.26 They had become Germanized, like the Volcae later.
Two prejudices, one archaeological and one historical, keep alive the very widespread opinion that the Celts abandoned a large part of Germany in the second La Tène period, their decline beginning about 250.27 The truth is that, even if they had at that date lost ground in Italy, they were still fighting there with considerable success, while they were holding their own in the Celtiberian tribes in Spain and were establishing themselves in Asia Minor. The supporters of this view are obviously not thinking of the general halt and retirement of the Celts which occurred soon after, but of a decline in civilization which they see in the second La Tène period, a decline which appears in a weaker resistance to outside influences, and especially in Germany.
It is true that the archæological finds of this period are not so brilliant as those of the first. The grave-goods are not so rich. In Germany and in Gaul the beautiful Greek objects, the earthenware vases and the bronze vessels, have gone. From this, it has been concluded that communications between the Mediterranean world and the Celtic interior were interrupted. This view is incorrect. The culture of La Tène III was indebted to the civilizations of the South for many things—technical devices, domestic usages, methods of construction. These benefits were diffused in the course of the second period or as a result of relations commenced at that time. It was, too, at this date that coinage began to spread in the Celtic world,28 and it cannot be said that the adoption of coinage and of copies of coins corresponds to a falling-off of relations with the peoples which supplied the models.
It is, moreover, very hazardous to try to show a decay in skill and taste in the Celtic craftsmen of this period. The fine swords with engraved scabbards, the most beautiful belts, and the richest bracelets date from La Tène II.
Besides, one would have to be very sure of being able to tell all the objects belonging to each of these two periods before speaking of a weakening of the Celtic societies and of depopulation. Archæology is often a deceptive mirror of the past, and usually it is a broken one.
Lastly, there is no constant relation between the civilization of a people and the extent of its political power. When the Celts finally bowed before Rome and her culture, they were by no means decadent. They were a strong, healthy social body, which benefited the Roman Empire by its healthiness and lived on in that Empire.
The second prejudice is that the Belgæ were Germans or semi-Germans. If so, the Germans encroached on the domain of the Celts a hundred or two hundred years before the date at which they appear in history under their own name.
In Cæsar’s time29 the Belgæ were all settled between the Seine and the Rhine. We have several lists of the peoples composing this nation, but they agree in the main.30 They were : the Treviri, Mediomatrici, and Leuci in the east ; the Remi and Suessiones in the west, with the Catuvellauni, Meldi, Parisii, and Silvanectes ; and in the west again and north, the Veliocasses, Bellovaci, Caleti, Ambiani, Atrebates, and Morini, and after them the Aduatuci, Eburones, Nervii, and Menapii. Strabo included the Armorici and, although he is alone in doing so, his opinion is not to be despised. They formed a mass something like that of the Brythons of Gaul. The large scale of their movements suggests that their number was great. Like the Goidels and Bry thons, the Belgæ were a family of kindred or associated peoples ; they were a group in which natural relationships were cemented by political ties. They were distinguished from other peoples by the affinities which they found between themselves and the strangers across the Rhine.
For part of the Belgic peoples, including some of the most important of them, called themselves Germans or were so called by the ethnographers.31 First, there were the Aduatuci or Tungri.32 But these had been left behind by the expedition of the Cimbri. Along the Meuse and the Sambre, the Eburones of Limburg, the Condrusi of Condroz, and the Paemani of the valley of the Lesse are classed together as Germans.33 To them we must add the Segni34 of the upper valley of the Ourthe. These peoples, which were grouped round the Treviri, called themselves their clients. Now, the Treviri and the Nervii, who surrounded them on the north, claimed to be of Germanic origin and were proud of it.35 Lastly, the Menapii on the North Sea shore are placed by Cæsar with the Nervii under the description, “Germans from this side of the Rhine,” Cisrhenani.36 It is a term which is used by Cæsar several times, and always to designate the peoples of the Belgic group, and not the remnants of the expedition of Ariovistus.37
A good half of the Belgæ then, if we are to accept concordant evidence based on the traditions of the tribes themselves, should be regarded as Germans. Should one go further and do the same with the Remi, Suessiones, Bellovaci, and other Belgæ ? Or should one not go so far, but try to interpret the evidence? Usually it is accepted literally.38 It is agreed that there were among the Belgæ at least a great many Germans, and that in any case they all came from Germania, from beyond the Rhine, from the region bounded on the south by the Main. If we are to believe Pomponius Mela,39 they came from still further, from the Cimbric Peninsula and the shores of the Baltic ; they were a branch of the Scythians or Celto-Scythians mentioned by Pytheas in that region, and their shores were opposite Thule, that is, Scandinavia. But Pomponius Mela may perhaps be confusing them with the Cimbri and Teutones, whom Pytheas had certainly met in Jutland.40
We may ask when these Belgic peoples, which we find on the edge of the Celtic world in the second La Tène period, crossed from the east to the west of the Rhine. Their preponderance explains the new development which appears at this time in the civilization of the Western barbarians. They are supposed to have acted during this period in the same way as the Brythonic Gauls at the beginning of La Tène, their settlements in Gaul, like that of the Celts of the Danube, being founded by their rear-guard. But at the same time there reappears in the Celtic world a practice which, during the first La Tène period, seems on the whole to have been confined within the probable frontier of the Germans—burning of the dead. Here is another reason for calling the Belgians Germanic. Cæsar,41 too, says that their culture was different from that of Gaul and more like that of the peoples beyond the Rhine—municipal life less highly developed than in Gaul, merchants fewer and trade more rudimentary, a character wilder and more warlike.
As a matter of fact, the evidence of the historians is not so definite or so clear as it seems, for the name of Germani which they give to the Belgæ may not have the meaning which it is usually given. It is a late word,42 perhaps a Belgic word like Gaesati,43 used to designate different groups or elements of tribes, which, being applied by the Latins to the new family of strangers, took on a new meaning and was used again by the historians to define the Belgæ.
While the Belgians claimed kinship with the peoples beyond the Rhine, they also had public ties with the Celtic peoples which were outside their confederation. The Remi were the patrons of the Carnutes,44 and the Bellovaci had from time immemorial been friends of the Ædui.45 Although the peoples in question are only the Remi and Bellovaci, and not the Treviri or Nervii, these facts are of no less account, for the whole of Belgica or its various tribal bodies several times combined with the rest of Gaul.
Besides, even if the Eburones, Nervii, and Treviri were Germans, their chiefs had Gallic names. Doubtless this was true of more than one Germanic king, but we should note that there is never any word of the language of these supposedly Germanic tribes of Belgica. This silence means that they spoke Gaulish,46 as might be inferred from the names of places and men which they have left.47
A passage in Ausonius48 enables us, to some extent, to determine the place held by the Belgæ among the other Gallic peoples. When he says that the Volcae Teetosages called themselves Belcae Tectosagi, the poet seems to suggest that the two names were closely related.49 It is of no consequence whether the word is spelt Belcas or Belgas.50 Their identity is undeniable, and recalls that of 
and 
.51 From that identity, we may reasonably suppose that this is one of those generic terms by which the Celts designated themselves. A difference in pronunciation aggravated by a false etymology would lead to the name of Belgæ being given to the folk north of the Main.
So, though the Belgæ called themselves Germans, they were not Germans at all ; they were Gauls, who had come from the district north of the Main and other places as well.
The archæological evidence also tends to prove that no great movement of population can have occurred in Central Germany and Gaul during the second La Tène period.52 In those Hallstatt sites in Western Germany which can, by the different types of the pottery,53 be assigned to various tribes or groups of tribes, one finds a definite continuity of population. Two of these groups, the Helvetii in the south and the Treviri in the north, did not move in the La Tène period. In Cæsar’s time, the Treviri were still in their old country on the west bank of the Rhine.54
There is yet another place where the settlements of the Belgæ were already fixed in the second La Tène period. In Champagne and Soissonnais there is no sign of the population changing at that time. The same cemeteries contain tombs of La Tène I and II, and in general the centres of population remained the same. Although few cremations of the third period happen to have been discovered, we may conclude that the Romans there found the Gauls in the places where they had settled in 400.55 It would, moreover, be very hard to find a place on the map for the peoples which the Belgæ would have driven out of Champagne and Soissonnais about 300. Nor should we forget that in the time of Pytheas the Armorici, who may have been Belgæ, were already established in the west of Gaul.56
From their original home in the middle valley of the Rhine and on the right bank north of the Main, the Belgæ probably spread at the very beginning of this history over Belgium and Northern France, just as the Brythons or Volcae of the south of Germany spread over central and southern Gaul. It is true that they were not all established by 400,57 but, since they were beginning to appear in Illyria, Italy, Spain, and probably Britain somewhere about 300, it is hard to believe that they were not permanently settled in the Gallic domain until some 150 years later. Since the point from which they started at the end of the fourth century was no longer the east bank of the Rhine, but the whole region between the Seine and the Harz, one must suppose that they had spread into the western part of that vast area while the earliest Gauls were wandering into Italy and the valley of the Danube. The settlements which they then founded must have been about a century later than the cemeteries of the first Gauls. Setting forth later, they expanded in the same manner all round their domain, including what is now Germany.
The distribution of the brooches of La Tène II, which have been found right up to the Oder and lower Vistula, the Magdeburg district, and the shores of the North Sea and Baltic,58 points to the age when Celtic civilization in Germany spread widest and sank deepest, and the reciprocal penetration of Celts and Germans was most complete. It was also at this time that the German workers started to alter the types of objects, especially arms, furnished to them by their Gallic brother-craftsmen. The Germanic swords and spears are derived from those of La Tène II and III, not La Tène I.
The most important object in Celtic archæology, the silver vessel found at Gundestrup in Jutland, outside the true domain of the Celts, in the country of the Cimbri, comes from just about the end of the La Tène period. It is generally agreed that it was made about the beginning of the first century B.C.59 among the Danubian Celts, in the country of the Scordisci, who were rich in silver.60 It must have been used for religious purposes by the people who had charge of. it among the Cimbri, for they left it in the brush, in a place which was probably forbidden ground, where no one set foot until the cauldron was completely covered over and the heath had become bog. It is of some importance that a sacred vessel, made by Celts and covered with Celtic mythological subjects, should have been used for religious ceremonies by a Cimbric tribe about a hundred years before Christ.
So the civilizing and political influence of the Celts in Germany was in full swing during the third and second centuries.
But if we examine the facts more closely, looking not so much for signs of events as for evidence of the conditions which must have led to events which occurred later, we find two contrary processes taking place : a process of assimilation of the German world on the one hand, but on the other, as a result of that very assimilation, a process of penetration by the Germans into the Celtic world. Then there happened what would happen again to the Roman Empire. The Celts had auxiliaries, some of whom settled down among them, and, being the more occupied on the outer edge of their domains, they squandered the reserves of men which had fed their expeditions. The result was that one fine day a body of Germanic peoples grew restless, as the Belgæ had done, and led the Celtic tribes of the east bank of the Rhine off to new adventures which were to take them beyond the Celtic world. Then, and not till then, the Celts abandoned the east bank of the Rhine to the Germans. But the charm was not broken, for fifty years later, when Ariovistus appears in Gaul, it is not as a foreigner. He speaks Gaulish like a man who knows it and is used to speaking it.61
Comparative calm had been restored for over a century in the region from which the chief expeditions of the Belgæ had started, when another mass of peoples began to move. These were the Cimbri and Teutones. They were probably Germans, but the story of their exodus is none the less linked with that of the Celtic migrations.
The expedition which Augustus afterwards sent along the coasts of Germany62 came upon Cimbri, but these were only the tiny remnant of a great nation. They were then in Jutland, the Cimbric Peninsula.63 We may suppose that these had stayed at home when the rest went in search of adventure.
Pytheas had encountered the Teutones.64 They held the trade in amber, which they got from the people of the island of Abalum (Œsel),65 off the east coast of the Baltic, and sold to the merchants of the west. They doubtless lived on the Danish islands in what the ancient geographers called the Sinus Codanus.66 It is very likely that they were neighbours of the Cimbri, since they combined with them, and it is certain that both extended to the seaboard between the Elbe and the Oder.67
Contemporaries regarded them as Celts.68 But it was only after the Cimbric invasion, and probably as a result of the many prisoners left in the hands of the Romans, that the Romans and Greeks learned to distinguish between Celts and Germans. Their names do not help us to place them. That of the Teutones is Celtic in form. Germanic, Celtic, and Italic all have the root ; it is an old word meaning “tribe”, “town”, “people”.69 The name of the Cimbri led Poseidonios to connect them with the Cimmerians,70 and has led modern writers to connect them with the Cymry. The ancients had an etymology for the word which was Celtic, Cimber meaning “brigand”.71
The names of Teuton and Cimbric leaders given by the historians are Celtic or of Celtic form.72 A Teuton chief is called Teutoboduus, and a Cimbrian Claodicus. Both of these names may have been Celticized ; but there are also a Boiorix, “King of the Boii,” a Caesorix or Gaesorix, probably “King of the Gaesati,” and a Lugius, whose name, if it has been correctly recorded, contains that of one of the great Celtic deities, Lugh. All these names are Celtic, and they cannot be anything else ; but that alone is not enough.
Most of the historians of the Empire speak of these peoples as Germans,73 and Tacitus,74 who was an authority on the subject, places them in the group of the Ingaevones, one of the three great groups of Germanic tribes. So, too, the archaeology of Hanover, Holstein, and Schleswig75 in the Hallstatt and La Tène periods is utterly different from that of regions where Celtic names are frequent. Cremation of the dead was the usual practice, whereas further south burial continued to prevail for a long time. The characteristic objects of the southern culture, brooches and pottery, are found there only sporadically.
So it was down to about 300. After that, the doors were opened and Celtic influence and fashions gained ground northwards, predominating more and more until the time when Gallic industry became Roman industry. It was about now that the Cimbri ordered from the Scordisci or perhaps in Gaul the sacred vessels, of which the Gundestrup cauldron, found in their country, may be regarded as the chief specimen.76 The Cimbri were Germans, Celticized by the trade or policy of the Celts in the third and second centuries. Just as the Galatians took Greek names, and the Scots and Welsh later took Anglo-Saxon names, they took Celtic names, and spoke Celtic, at least in their dealings with other peoples. Marius’s intelligence service, run by Sertorius, took the trouble to learn Celtic, and found that language sufficient.77 Needless to say, these peoples were armed in the Celtic manner, and indeed the throwing-axe of the Celts, the cateia, was called the teutonus.78
It is possible that there were Celtic elements among the Cimbri and Teutones. Names like Boiorix and Gaesorix, which have a racial meaning, were perhaps not bestowed lightly. Certainly they were followed by peoples, some of which were doubtless not Germans, while others were undoubtedly Celts.
The historians mention the Ambrones as being79 a crack corps of the Teuton army. The origin of the name may perhaps be geographical.80 Festus81 calls them a gens Gallica. The Ligurians of the Genoese coast had the same name, and formed an auxiliary corps in the army of Marius.82
If there is any doubt about them, there is none about the Helvetii, who followed the Cimbri or were carried along by them. Tribes of this nation, the Tigurini and the Tugeni,83 took part in these campaigns.
The history of the invasion of the Cimbri and Teutones84 gives a fuller and more correct idea than does that of the expeditions of the fourth and third centuries of the great hordes which from time to time fell on the good lands of Europe—sometimes timid, sometimes furious, encumbered with baggage and spoil, inclined to straggle but also capable of a rapid, orderly march, sometimes led by extraordinarily clear-headed chiefs and sometimes apparently drifting under the guidance of chance and instinct alone.
In 113 the Cimbri started to move, possibly driven from their country by a tidal wave, like the Celts, and advanced to the south, where they came up against the Boii and were thrown back by them on to the Volcae. The Volcae drove them on to the Taurisci of Noricum. They went on into Pannonia, to the country of the Scordisci, but there they were compelled to turn in their tracks, and re-entered Noricum by the Save or Drave, till they reached Noreia (Neumarkt), the capital. The Romans were already interested in Noricum.85 The Cimbri found in front of them the army of the Consul Cn. Papirius Carbo, which, after an attempt at negotiation, they routed. Nevertheless, they continued their retreat into Germany, where, in the region of the Main, they were joined by the Teutones.
There they remained from 113 to 109. They had wandered about for a whole year without stopping, living on the country—that is ravaging it. We must now picture them on the Main, founding colonies, sowing crops, and reaping them. In these four obscure years they probably achieved more than in their whole career. They occupied a country which had been Celtic and now ceased to be so. It was at this time, too, that they pushed forward the Helvetii, whose departure made a desert of the Gallic country south of the Main.
When the Cimbri and Teutones set off again in 109, they probably left rear-guards or colonies behind them.86 Their name still survived in the Roman period in that region of the Limes which they occupied, and the memory of the great exodus, which had made a strong impression, had supplied a legend to the great fortified enclosures of the Taunus and Westerwald.87
In the same year the Teutones and Helvetii crossed the Rhine, and met the Consul Silanus and his army somewhere in Gaul. They must have remained facing each other for several weeks, for the Cimbri had time to send an embassy to Rome. They asked for lands, as they had already asked them of Carbo, but Rome had no land to give them. The conversations were broken off, and Silanus was defeated. But the barbarians did not advance. They changed their route, and for two years we lose track of them. In 107 the Tigurini, operating on their own account, descended into Provence and in the Roman province joined up with the Volcae Teetosages of Toulouse, who had revolted and were besieging the garrison. One of the Consuls of the year, L. Cassius Longinus, pursued them, but they escaped down the Garonne. Cassius made contact with them in the country of the Nitiobriges near Agen. He was defeated and killed, and his army had to capitulate. In this affair the Tigurini were commanded by a capable man named Divico, whom Cæsar knew. The other Consul, Servilius Caepio, succeeded not only in saving the garrison of Toulouse, but in obtaining the surrender of the treasure of the Teetosages, estimated at 200,000 pounds of gold. It was sent to Marseilles but never arrived there, and the Consul was accused, not unreasonably, of being himself responsible for the theft. It was said that the gold of Toulouse was the gold of Delphi. It brought bad luck to Cæpio.
It seems very likely that the treasure of coins, ingots, and a torque found at Taillac-Libourne88 in 1893 had something to do with this campaign of the Tigurini in southwestern Gaul. It may have been their war-chest. The coins can be divided into a few fairly large groups, which can be distributed on the map along the route taken by the Cimbri and Teutones. Sixty-five are gold staters of the Bellovaci, a hundred and ninety-five others belong to the Ambarri or the Arverni, and seventy-five are Regenbogen-schüsselchen. These coins would, then, be shares or remains of tribute collected by the Tigurini on the road. After the battle of Agen the Tigurini would have reached the Atlantic coast, leaving a post to guard the treasure, which was buried in some emergency.89
In 105 Cimbri, Teutones, Ambrones, and Helvetii were reunited, and went down the Rhone. At Orange they came on the two Roman armies of Cæpio, now Proconsul, and Cn. Mallius Maximus, a Consul, and crushed them. Then once again Cimbri, Teutones, and allies went their different ways. The first reached Spain, where all trace of them is lost. The second went through Gaul from south to north, ravaging like wild beasts, and Cæsar more than once gives a picture of the terrible distress which they created. Only the Belgæ were able to stop them. Still, they left 6,000 men in Belgium, on the Sambre at Namur, to guard the baggage and protect their lines of communication. From this band was formed, fifty years later, the important, more than half Celtic tribe of the Aduatuci.
Two years later, in 103, the Cimbri, sorely tried by the resistance of the Celtiberians, reappeared north of the Pyrenees, and were joined by the Teutones somewhere in Gaul. Their leaders agreed on an ambitious and well thought out plan, which was in part very well executed.
They had not found what they wanted in Gaul. They had not been allowed to settle down, or were incapable of doing so. The country was too full or too completely assigned to existing proprietors, except perhaps in the district of the Belgse, who do not seem to have been inconvenienced by the colony of the Aduatuci. For ten years they had been hovering round Italy and beating Roman armies, but after each victory they had stopped. At last they decided to make a serious effort to force their way into the country ; they would attack it from two sides. The Teutones were to cross the Western Alps by the southern passes, following the Durance ; the Cimbri should move eastwards along the north of the Alps and then over the Brenner ; the Tigurini, on the left wing, should go yet further east, into Noricum, either as a reserve or to bring reinforcements from the direction of the Julian Alps.
Marius defeated the Teutones at Aquae Sextiae (Aix). The Cimbri crushed his colleague Catulus on the Adige, but once again they hesitated or dispersed in Venetia and Lombardy, and in the end lost time, which Marius gained. The two Consuls joined forces, and at Vercellae in Piedmont they put an end to the Cimbric danger. The Tigurini had remained in Noricum. Sulla was sent there and seems to have had no great difficulty in getting them to join the other Helvetii in Switzerland.
The battles of Aquae Sextiae and Vercellae were frightful slaughters. The dead and prisoners ran to thousands. Whole armies were wiped out, and with them all their following of women, children, old men, and the non-fighting people. After Aquae Sextiae, a small body of horse managed to escape and to reach the land of the Sequani, who gave them up. At Vercellae no one escaped.
What remained of the great hosts brought by the Cimbri and Teutones was in reality transplanted. The sequel to this destruction of peoples was that strange Servile War which broke out thirty years later. It was a class-war, no doubt, but it was also a national war, conducted by Gallic, German, and Thracian leaders, and for the Rome of Sulla it was as terrible a danger as the invasion of the Cimbri in the days of Marius.
The Servile War is interesting as guaranteeing the likelihood of the number of prisoners, and also of the generally different figures given by the historians. We hear of 300.000 Teutones at Aquae Sextiae and as many Cimbri. This is the fighting strength, not the whole people including women, children, and a great many other non-combatants. They were tribes, whole social units and probably groups of units or large political units. The expedition of the Cimbri and Teutones involved the peoples concerned almost in their entirety. The Cimbri left at home only the small remnant which was afterwards found there by the expedition of Augustus.90 They sent an embassy to the Emperor, and presented him with a cauldron ; one thinks of that of Gundestrup. Shortly afterwards they disappeared.
Of the Teutones, there is no more question in their old home.91 The Ambrones disappeared likewise. As for the Helvetii, the country which they had occupied is called “the Desert of the Helvetii” ; they left it empty and for a time nobody came to occupy it.
There are many interesting things about this half-Celtic half-Germanic adventure—the uncertain advance, the way in which peoples crossed each other’s paths, without always fighting, the heterogeneous mass which followed it, and the anxiety for a permanent home which appears to have ruled these barbarians, although they seem to have had a notion that their settlement would send other peoples wandering off. But it left no settlement, save that of the Aduatuci and perhaps that of the Teutones of the Taunus. Gaul must have been populated to saturation point, and Rome was growing steadily. The depopulation and weakness of the Empire of five centuries later were needed before similar expeditions could lead to conquest and the creation of new states. The adventure of the Cimbri and Teutones was doubtless a perfect replica of the great earlier invasions, except in that it failed. But we can judge of the alarm and the destruction which it created. The memory of it lasted long, for, although the Ambrones had vanished, the Latin grammarians of the Late Empire say that their name survived as a word of abuse.
The expedition of the Cimbri and Teutones had a great effect on the Celtic world and, indeed, turned it upside down. In 103 it was no longer what it had been in 113.
For nearly four hundred years the Gauls had lived as agriculturists, scattered in farms and open villages,92 deserting the citadels in which the Hallstatt men and those of the Bronze and Neolithic Ages had shut themselves up, at least for long periods.93 From the end of the second century onwards, Gaul bristled with fortresses, large and small,94 and its people returned to the abandoned oppida, for example to Fort-Harrouard.95 Except on the east bank of the Rhine and the Celto-Ligurian marches in the south of France, objects of La Tène III come directly after those of Hallstatt in the prehistoric forts.
Behind those ramparts the Gauls endured long and severe sieges, to which eloquent allusion is made in the speech which Cæsar places in the mouth of the Arvernian Cintognatus during the blockade of Alesia.96 A process then took place in Gaul which was repeated four centuries later in the first Germanic invasions. The Gallo-Roman towns, sprawling wide over the plains, were in a very few years surrounded by walls hastily built with the materials of the demolished suburbs. In each case, a long period of peace and prosperity followed times of insecurity and distress. But Gaul had more vitality in the first century before Christ than in the third of our era.
To the same circumstances as these oppida, which are fortresses, not fortified cities, we may attribute the underground refuges which are usually some distance away from a group of dwellings and have two or more entrances, stairs, and passages barred by doors.97 They were used in several epochs, and are not all contemporary. But the Gauls certainly had them—witness the story of the Lingonian Sabinus, who lived in one with his wife Eponina after the failure of the revolt of A.D. 70.98
Another consequence of the Cimbro-Teutonic invasion was that the Celts retreated to the Rhine. In the middle valley of that river, north of the Main, the villages of La Tène III are Germanic settlements, whose culture, though reminding one that the Celts were near, is only an imitation of theirs.99 The Helvetii had cleared out completely, and it was to Switzerland that Divico returned to live. It was no doubt the same with the Celts north of the Main. The Germans advanced in their track between the Rhine and Bohemia. A fairly large Celtic population remained in and round Bohemia for some time yet, but it spread in the direction of the Danube and did not retreat to Gaul. The eastern frontier of the rest of the Celts, which had so long been fixed in Thuringia, was suddenly withdrawn to the Rhine.
It seems to have happened strangely easily, and in any case very quickly, between 113 and 109. The whole system of forts appears to have been abandoned without a blow. It was the result of causes which had long lain in the very nature of Celtic societies. This was the region from which all the thousands had set forth to settle or fight in Gaul, Spain, Italy, the Danube valley, and the East. However prolific these nations of the original Celtic country may have been, they were clearly much reduced in numbers. In that quarter, especially north of the Main and in Thuringia, there were now only the phantoms of peoples which had vanished, scattered, retired before the effective force of nations hitherto kept back by their prestige. These Gauls who lived north of the Main must have been very insignificant to have left no trace of themselves either among the Celts of the west bank who may have taken them in or among the Cimbri who may have absorbed them. There must have been some movements of peoples inside Gaul, and it has been suggested that one took place in the valley of the Garonne as a result of the expedition of the Tigurini. The name of Vevey in the canton of Vaud (Viviscus), may possibly indicate that a body of Bituriges Vivisci, whom we find established at the mouth of the Garonne, had followed the Helvetii in their wanderings. This is mere hypothesis, for the name may equally well record an earlier settlement of the same people. There is no archaeological evidence to help us.
Still more important is the succession of great movements which were set going for over a century by the descent of the Cimbri and Teutones on Western Europe. When those peoples started, they must have gone up the valley of the Elbe, which the Boii blocked. The country was populous, and they probably did not create a void before them. They went through the tribes and came out on the other side.
These peoples of Central Germany, the Lombards, Hermunduri, and Semnones, whom the ancient authors100 place in the group of the Herminones, were then united in a confederation whose members called themselves by the common name of Suevi.101 To this adhered, but as a separate body, the Marcomanni,102 the Marchmen, from the frontier strip which the Germans regarded as a kind of desert.103 But the Marcomanni were not an old existing people ; they were probably a combination of the scattered bodies of Cimbri and Teutones which had remained in or returned to the old territory of the Helvetii. The Black Forest, which formed a backbone to their country, was called Abnoba in Celtic ; under the Empire, it was given the Germanic name of Silva Marciana, when the only inhabitants of the country were new settlers.
The Suevi were settled, since they remained. But perhaps they were not settled quite in the same way as the Celts.104 The passage of the Cimbri and Teutones may have introduced some disturbance into their social life. Indeed, they started moving in their turn, and forty years after the defeat of the Cimbri we find them on the Rhine and in Gaul.
They then formed a mass like that of the preceding invasion,105 but, unlike their predecessors, they had a method. Their king, Ariovistus,106 does not seem to have had any trouble at home. He co-ordinated all the unconnected operations of his people, and all the acts of the Suevi appear to be the result of a deliberate political purpose. They formed a state which methodically extended its frontiers and made settlements which lasted. Their leader, too, seems to have been an exceptional man. Cæsar, who defeated Ariovistus, gives him his due in ascribing to him acts and speeches, which look as if they were genuine, displaying clear-sightedness and great qualities as a leader of men. He was neither a barbarian nor a particularly simple soul.107 He has rather the air of a statesman, and of one with large conceptions. His success tempted him to dreams of an overlordship of the whole of Gaul which, had it not been for Cæsar, might have become a Germanic state now instead of waiting till the sixth century.
If we suppose that the Suevi followed the lead of Ariovistus we must imagine them crossing from the valley of the Elbe to that of the Main about 75 B.C., and descending the Main unopposed to the great meeting of ways at Mainz.108 On coming into contact with Gaul, they were induced, between 72 and 62, to take sides in one of those squabbles for hegemony in which the Sequani and Ædui engaged. The Sequani, being the weaker, looked for auxiliaries in Germany, and brought in Ariovistus with 15,000 Suevi.109 But when their combined forces had won the day, Ariovistus began to talk as a master, demanding one-third of the territory of the Sequani, and taking it. We find, indeed, that from this date Alsace ceases to be part of Sequania, and further north the Triboci, who are settled on the territory of the Mediomatrici, are probably some of Ariovistus’s Suevi.110 Further north still, the villages of the Nemetes round Spire and those of the Vangiones round Worms made with those mentioned a continuous chain of Germanic possessions on both banks of the Rhine from Mainz to above Strasburg.111
Ariovistus’ demands united the Gauls against him. He defeated their great army at Admagetobriga and made them give him hostages and pay tribute.
About the same time another people, the Dacians,112 repeated the Cimbric attack against another front of the Celts, on the Danube. They were not Germans, but Getae and perhaps Thracians too. Their origin and the extent of their possessions are unknown. In the first century they were in Hungary, east of the Theiss. Gradually they began to assert themselves. Then, about 82, they, like the Suevi, got a chief of wide vision in Boerebistas, who was a moral as well as a political leader.113 Their history is obscure. They probably conquered the Bastarnae, for they took Olbia about 63. With the Scordisci they had previously had friendly relations,114 and that people does not appear to have resisted them. But further north they came into conflict with the Boii and the people of Noricum.
The Boii had advanced their frontiers to the Theiss115 and now formed a kind of large composite state, governed by a king named Critasirus. They went to war with the Dacians over the question of the Theiss frontier. Critasirus was defeated and the Boii were pursued to the south bank of the Danube. They then vanished from the neighbourhood of Bohemia, as the Helvetii had vanished from Wurtemberg, leaving behind them the “Desert of the Boii”.116
According to Jordanes,117 the Dacians carried the war still further, to the country afterwards occupied by the Franks. In any case, they did not join forces with the Suevi.118
The encroachments of the Suevi and Dacians on the frontiers, old or new, of the Celts, by creating a pressure in the border districts, caused the last migration of the Continental Celts, that of the Helvetii and Boii.
The Helvetii suffered from the inroads and forays of the Suevi quite as directly as the Sequani had done and the Ædui were now doing.119 Moreover, some of their tribes had not yet taken root in Switzerland, and one can easily imagine that they were not satisfied with their new country. In Germany they had occupied a fertile region, hilly, certainly, but with rich belts of loess surrounding the hills, and their villages had been bound to the earth which fed them. Switzerland was less kindly.
Cæsar’s account120 presents a very vivid picture, and certainly gives an idea of the typical way in which great migrations were planned and carried out—the problems, the aims, the collective phantoms which arose, the powwows in which the programme was fixed and the exodus organized. A clan chieftain, Orgetorix, took the lead. He was a powerful man, who could bring 10,000 clients to the assembly of the Ædui. But the matter was not altogether simple. Orgetorix embarked on political intrigues for a condominium of three peoples, the Sequani, Ædui, and Helvetii, over the whole of Gaul, and aimed at the kingship for himself. He broke himself over these schemes, and finally committed suicide. The Helvetii returned to the original plan of simply emigrating.
They had laid it down as their object to reach the country of the Santones ; perhaps they knew it already.121 They first entered into negotiations with their neighbours for reinforcements, and succeeded in winning over the Raurici of Basle, the Tulingi, and the Latovici or Latobrigi.122 A large part of the Boii of Noricum, doubtless those driven out by the Dacians, also joined them. They treated with the Ædui and Sequani for the passage through their country and, after burning their own villages and what corn they did not take with them, all the different bodies united on the 24th March, 58, to the number of 368,000 souls, of whom 263,000 were Helvetii, 36,000 Tulingi, 14,000 Latobrigi, 23,000 Raurici, and 32,000 Boii, or 92,000 combatants in all.123 These figures are interesting, for they give one an idea of the relative forces of the various members of the combination. In the case of the Helvetii, however, they probably do not give a true idea of the size of the people.
There was no room in Gaul, where the various tribes, already crowded, had had to close in yet more to admit the Belgæ. Those most immediately exposed to attack grew disturbed and prepared to resist.
An unexpected event, the intervention of a foreign force to maintain the existing order and stability, wrecked the enterprise of the Helvetii. Cæsar marched against them. They were defeated in the country of the Ædui and driven home, being reduced to 110,000 in number.124 The Ædui intervened on behalf of the Boii, with whom they were always on friendly terms.125 They were allowed to settle on the triangle at the junction of the Allier and the Loire as a free part of the Æduan people.126
Cæsar, having decided to remain in Gaul, turned against Ariovistus, who had in 59 obtained from the Senate the recognition of his kingship and the title of Friend of the Roman people.127 He summoned an assembly of Gaul at Bibracte, that it might ask him to intervene.128 After some marching and counter-marching in the north of Sequania, he defeated Ariovistus in Upper Alsace and drove him with his forces across the Rhine, where they looked for a settlement, except the Triboci, Nemetes, and Vangiones, who remained on the west of the river.
North of Mainz some Germanic tribes, hard pressed by the Suevi, tried to cross the Rhine during the years in which Cæsar was campaigning in Gaul. At the level of Cologne the Ubii, who had long had relations with Gaul, were attacked by the Suevi, but they made terms and paid tribute. Further south the Usipetes and Tencteri were compelled to give up their country, and wandered away looking for land,129 first in Germany and then on the Rhine, which they crossed. They were wiped out in 55.
So Cæsar introduced the Romans to the Rhine in that character of policemen which they maintained for 500 years. He was the first to make this line the provisional frontier of the Celts.
East of the river, the Boii still occupied Bohemia, but not for long. They were in the centre of a group of peoples which remained distinct until the times of Tacitus and Ptolemy. There were Cotini in Silesia or Galicia,130 who spoke a Celtic dialect but were subordinate to the Quadi and Sarmatians. To the south, along the Danube, the Carpi and Rhacatae131 were perhaps Celtic peoples,132 remnants, with the Tulingi and Latobrigi, of the Volcae, who are mentioned by Cæsar for the last time,133 and perhaps also of the Vindelici of the Bavarian plateau. The Danube had stopped the Germans and, as on the Rhine, the frontier was permanently laid down by the Romans in the upper valley of the river.
All these expeditions and migrations have added little to our picture of the Celtic world but losses. Apart from the small settlement of the Boii on the Bec d’Allier and the Germano-Celtic foundations of the Aduatuci, Triboci, Nemetes, and Vangiones, these great movements of peoples left no colonies. They failed, and these later movements were on a far smaller scale than the earlier. Rome, too, was making ready to conquer Gaul, and Britain shortly after.
The migrations of the end of the second century and the beginning of the first take a great place in history because they are fairly well known, having been described by contemporaries. But they have a special interest for us, in that they give a picture of what the earlier great invasions were probably like.134
Except for the last move of the Boii, the migration of the Atrebates from Gaul to Britain, the inroads and conquests of the Goidels in these islands, and the settlement of the people of Cornwall in Brittany, most of the Celtic peoples were now in the last stage of their wanderings. The Celtic world now assumed the face under which it was last known to antiquity, and it was a face of death. What was to revive later would be quite different, and much smaller. At this moment of time, suddenly, just when it was about to be completely conquered and absorbed, its features, hitherto obscure, appear in broad daylight, and that thanks to its conqueror. We are told the names of its peoples and the places where they lived.
However far we go back in the history of the Celts, we find them distributed in great racial units or confederations of neighbouring peoples, bound by alliance, kinship, and every tie which makes for the stabilization and permanence of a group of tribes. Goidels, Picts, Brythons, and Belgæ all had their age of growth. Each race in succession spread out from its original home. Each movement gave rise to a series of expeditions, roughly contemporaneous and sometimes ensuing one from another.
These migrations have been explained by sudden catastrophes,135 by attacks.136 The most likely reason is an excess of power, resulting from the growth of the population and a stronger political organization of its forces.137
When the great movements took place, the nations which led them seem to have divided up and sent out swarms in quite an organized fashion. The ancients compared this regular dispersion to the ver sacrum of the Samnites,138 the great invasions of Italy. The Sacred Spring was an Italic institution, but we may legitimately suppose that it existed also among the Celts, some of whose prehistoric customs may have had the same effects.139
Moreover, the Celtic migrations and their causes varied greatly. From the trek of a whole people to the emigration, often temporary, of a single band of mercenaries, the wandering of the Celts took many forms ; the emigrants might be a social unit or part of one, a people making an exodus en masse like the Cimbri and Teutones, or a composite host made up from various groups of tribes.140
Those units which were not broken up on the way appear at their journey’s end as homogeneous groups, whatever they may have been when they started ; in a word, they were colonies. Those which were broken up re-formed in new units. So each new wave altered not only the racial structure of the widening Celtic world, but its political geography ; frontiers shifted and new dominions were acquired. Each wave left a separate deposit. In Ireland, where the various elements were most mixed of all, the tribes of Goidels, Picts, Gauls, and Belgæ kept their own status well into the Middle Ages. As for the masses, properly so called, they fell into large political and racial divisions, the most conspicuous of which were Belgica, Lugdunensis, and Aquitania, each corresponding to a new migration of the Celts. So the map of the Celtic world presents areas which reflect the original divisions of the Celts.