. It is tempting to compare this form with the name Œstrymnis, which Avienus34 in the sixth century uses of the western promontories of Europe and the islands lying off them.IN the last years of life which were left to it, the Celtic world shows the most complete picture of itself within the frontiers of Gaul. Its curiously shifting peoples are condemned, at least in the great mass, to an almost definitely fixed abode. It is now time to inquire into the positions held by the chief peoples and the date at which their frontiers were permanently fixed.
Positive information about the settlement of the peoples of Gaul is almost entirely lacking. The evidence of archæology is also too uncertain. The exploration of what was once Gaul is deplorably incomplete, and we are still very far from having recovered the traces of every Gallic settlement. Their history is almost always impossible to follow. Moreover, the civilization of the Celtic countries in the Hallstatt and La Tène periods is in the main highly homogeneous, so that it is difficult to study local variations. Only at a few points are the finds continuous down to the time of Cæsar ; we may conclude that these areas of uninterrupted occupation correspond to settled peoples. Elsewhere finds are discontinuous, and it is very likely that the population itself changed greatly. archæology by itself cannot furnish a picture of Gaul at the time of the conquest, and it is to the names of places and men and to the map of Roman Gaul that we must turn for the information which we need in order to study the population.
In a document presented to the Roman Senate after the death of Augustus, 305 Gallic peoples are mentioned.1 But the historians do not tell us the date of their settlement in the country except in the case of a few—the Aduatuci about 105, but they were Germans ; part of the Helvetii about 103 ; the Menapii in 54. At the time of Hannibal’s expedition, about 218, the Voleae Teetosages and Areeomici were already in the country in which they remained. Hasdrubal passed through the territory of the Arverni. We must come down to about 125 before we know for certain that the Ædui are in their place. At the time of the Cimbric invasion, the Sequani and Nitiobriges appear. The rest of the political map of Gaul is a large blank.
The 305 Gallic peoples officially recorded at the death of Augustus were very different in size and rank. Many were or had been subdivisions of larger groups. In reality, there were about sixty peoples in Gaul, some small and others large, which could call themselves independent. In the centre and in south-eastern Belgica there were large nations whose territory corresponded to that of several modern French departments ; the political map was divided into smaller districts on the shores of the Channel and in the Pyrenees and Alps.
The relationship of the sub-group to the group, either at the time of which we are speaking or at the beginning, is in some useful cases marked by a double name. The Teetosages and Areeomici are Volcae, but they are inserted among the Volcae as independent bodies. The Eburovices, Cenomani, Andecavi, Diablintes, and Brannovices are Aulerci. The first four still compose the people of the Aulerci, while the last have broken away. We find Bituriges Cubi and Bituriges Vivisci. These sub-groups are fractions broken off from their parent-group recently or long ago. Sometimes they have become independent, like the Areeomici and Teetosages, the Cubi and Vivisci, and the Cenomani of Cisalpine Gaul ; or they have become attached to other groups, as the Brannovices to the Ædui. But normally the Gallic people is divided into sub-groups.
In the geographical terminology of Roman Gaul, the sub-group is called a pagus, whereas the whole people, unless it is the principal people, is called a civitas. The group may have been originally formed by conquest, vassalage, the voluntary union of citizens,2 or kinship. Independent but neighbouring peoples, such as the Ambarri and Ædui3 or the Remi and Suessiones,4 are related by blood. Have we in these various cases peoples which have gone on organizing their internal divisions to a point at which they have split up, or which have amalgamated ? We find the Gallic nations arranged in composite groups which are perpetually in process of formation and dissolution. However, as within other Celtic societies, we may reasonably suppose that political association at first took the form of kinship.
An examination of the names of peoples shows that Celtic colonization was the work of a fairly few nations which split up and sent out swarms. Some of these names are unintelligible, but the meaning of the rest is plain enough. Some come from the geography of the country occupied—Taurisci from Tauern ; Scordisci from the Shar-Dagh ; Ambiani, people of the river Amb ; Nantuates, people of the valley. The unintelligible names are obviously ancient ; the others are new, adopted names. With this second class is allied a whole series of geographical names which no longer correspond to the last habitat of their bearers (Raurici, people of the Ruhr ; Sequani, people of the Seine), names referring to numbers (Remi, the First5 ; Vocontii, the Twenty Clans),6 and nicknames or warnames (Ruteni, the Fair-haired7 ; Leuci, the Lightners ; Medulli, the Mead-drinkers).
It is obvious that there are several strata of names of different dates. Some are assuredly very old, such as Bituriges, Kings of the World, Ædui, Burning,8 and Medio-matrici, the people between the Matrona and the Matra. The antiquity of some others is proved by their corruption, such as that of the Osismii of Finistère, which is explained by the name Uxisama, the Furthest Island.9 A good number are not perfectly clear, but this very fact is certain proof of their great age. Of these there is a small series grouped in a most interesting way—the names of the Boii, Volcae, Helvetii, and perhaps Turoni, the peoples which remained longest in the original cradle of the Celts. Among the Belgæ we have the names of the Nervii, Suessiones, and perhaps Remi ; in the west, the Veneti, Aulerci, Unelli, Pictones, and Cen-trones ; in the south, the Cadurci, Gabali, and Vellavi. This is only a provisional list, which may be extended or cut down. Of these ancient peoples, some remained first-class nations, while others attached themselves now to one neighbour and now to another, such as the Parisii, oscillating between the Suessiones and the Senones.10
Having sorted out these few, we need not attempt to form hypotheses to make the sixty civitates of the Gauls come as full-blown nations from the Celtic cradle or the west bank of the Rhine. The Volcae, Boii, Helvetii, Lemovices, Menapii, Turoni, and perhaps Aulerci and Pictones stayed there and came from there. The other peoples were formed on the western and southern edge of the old Celtic domain, and perhaps sprang from these parent peoples.
So the great nations of the beginning dispersed themselves over the Celtic world, where many portions of them are to be found disguised under new names. They seem to have preserved a definite memory of their origins, since in some cases they kept their name. The peoples which formed later proceeded in the same manner. If we bring together all these names and certain names of towns and of sections of the population showing fairly close resemblances, we can complete our picture of that dispersion. We find Boii in Bohemia, in the basin of Arcachon, in Italy, and in Galatia ; Teetosages at Toulouse and in Galatia ; Brigantes in Britain and at Bregenz ; Parisii and Atrebates in England. From the Aulerci there broke off the Brannovices11 between the Loire and Rhone, the Cenomani in Italy, other Cenomani12 among the Volcae Areeomici, and Andes in Italy. The Senones, who moved about much, founded little settlements here and there in Gaul—Cenon near Bordeaux, Senon in Vienne, Sénonnes in Mayenne. They passed some time in Belgica. In the Pas-de-Calais, Sainz-lez-Hautecloque was once Senonis, and Senon in the Meuse has the same origin.
The Caturiges,13 who must originally have been one single people, were scattered in the valleys of the Ornain and Nère and in Italy, in the form of tribes of peoples which had formed more compact groups.
The Medulli14 of Médoc and Basse-Maurienne may be of the same extraction, and so may the Centrones of the Nervian country. The Carnutes had sent off a colony to Brittany15 ; the Helvetii had colonies on the west bank of the Rhine, where we find three places called Helvetum in Alsace. It is also quite possible that the Helvii of Ardeche were an off-shoot of them.
In Noricum there dwelt a tribe of Alauni16 who had goddesses called Alounæ. On the west coast of Brittany are a town named Alauna and a river Alaunus, and in south-eastern Gaul there is an Alaunium. These names doubtless survive in the modern Alleaume and Allonnes.
This wide distribution makes it reasonable to associate, as one is tempted to do, names having only slight differences, such as those of the Picts and Pictones. We may suppose that the names and the peoples are the same.
In Calvados we find the Esuvii. Like their neighbours, the Atesuii of the Orne, they worshipped the god Esus and were descended from him. They were portions of the same people, and their proximity corroborates the likeness of name. A whole series of names of peoples and places contains the word eburos, the yew, the most sacred of all trees, and all must be connected. There were Eburones between the Main and Rhine, Eburovices at Évreux, an Eburobriga in Yonne (Aurolles), an Eburomagus in Aude (Bram), an Eburodunum in Switzerland (Yverdon), and another in the Hautes-Alpes (Embrun). The Eburovices were Aulerci or Belgæ associated with them, or else Brythons who had remained in the midst of the Belgæ.
Inscriptions from the neighbourhood of Mainz, two of them from the marches of the Belgæ and Brythons, mention the Dii Casses. There are a few peoples whose names contain this element—the Tricasses at Troyes, the Veliocasses in Vexin, the Viducasses on the Orne and in Calvados, and the Baiocasses somewhat lower down.
All these facts call for two remarks. The first is that the names are spread in the direction of the advance of the Celtic tribes, and fanwise. They show that the settlements to which they correspond were the result of more than one expedition, carried out in different directions. The second observation is that in the midst of the territories occupied by the great Celtic peoples there were dozens and perhaps hundreds of little colonies of various origin dotted about. The great swarms founded settlements of their own, while the small ones attached themselves as sub-groups to their larger neighbours. So the unity of the latter comprised heterogeneous elements, of which history had preserved the memory. The various regions of the Celtic world were peopled by groups arriving at different dates and mixing. Their amalgamation contributed to the formation of the great peoples.
The map of Gaul in the Roman period almost exactly represents the political condition of the country at the time of the conquest. That condition was largely a result of the manner in which the population had come into the country.
The political units of Gaul were not destroyed ; only two peoples, the Aduatuci and Eburones, were not Celts. These two, or what remained of them, were placed together under the name and in the administrative district of the Tungri, probably forming a sub-group. This exception confirms the rule. The political divisions of Roman Gaul were those of independent Gaul. So, too, the relationships of the various units with one another were almost always maintained. South of the Garonne, where the population was distributed rather differently from elsewhere, some autonomous groups were founded and the number of civitates reduced to five, to be raised later to nine. In the Rhine Valley, the settlements of the Triboci, Nemetes, Vangiones, and Batavians were made into civitates. In the rest of Gaul, a certain number of clientelœ were abolished ; the Morini were detached from the Atrebates, the Silvanectes and Meldi from the Suessiones, the Abrincatui from the Unelli, the Viducasses from the Lexovii, the Tricasses from the Lingones, the Segusiavi from the Ædui, and the Vellavi and Gabali from the Arverni. This dismembering process was developed throughout the Imperial period.
Conquered Gaul was at first an extension of the Roman Province,18 but in 49 B.C. it was separated from it. Under Augustus, Gallia Comata became the Très Galliae, and this distinction, which was maintained after various experiments and with occasional subdivision as long as the Empire lasted, certainly existed before the Roman Government made use of it. This is plain from Cæsar’s words,19 Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, save that Cæsar’s Aquitania was bounded by the Garonne, whereas that of Augustus reached to the Loire, but the eleven peoples of the greater Aquitania, living between the Garonne and Loire, the Pictones, Santones, Bituriges Cubi, Lemovices, Cadurci, Petrucorii, Nitiobriges, Arverni, Vellavi, Gabali, and Ruteni, formed in certain respects a group distinct from the Province as a whole.20 Evidence of this is provided by the method of recruiting troops, for under the Empire these peoples had a special dilectator.21 The five or nine peoples north of the Garonne formed another unit, and their territories in the third century were a separate district from the Gallic provinces.22 In these two cases, as in that of the Belgæ, we have pre-existing relationships between the natives taken into consideration by the Roman Government and finally compelling its attention when they had been neglected. They were like those which made Belgica and Aquitania south of the Garonne separate regions from the rest of Gaul ; they were associations which were political in some cases and racial at bottom, and therein different from true political associations created simply by the alliance of two nations or the subordination of one to another. The same considerations may explain why certain neighbouring civitates are placed together in small groups, for example for the collection of taxes, and also the subdivisions of the provinces introduced under Diocletian.
In short, the political map of Roman Gaul shows the structure of the Gallic colonization, and inversely the history of that colonization should explain it.
Some historians23 have gone further, and have held that the whole political life of the peoples of Gaul was governed by racial traditions. According to their view, at the time when Cæsar commenced operations there were two groups of allies, two factions, namely that of the Ædui and that of the Arverni and Sequani, and while the former represented the true Gauls, the latter represented the “Celticans”, that is to say, men who were originally Goidels. This is a mistake. It would be equally erroneous to suppose that the Gallic peoples were disposed on the map in the order of their coming. The Belgæ, who were the last to take part in the great Gallic expansion, had main settlements, in relation to the old Celtic domain in Germany, behind the Brythonic Gauls. The Gallic peoples of Italy settled, each in front of that which preceded it, and that is what happened in many other cases. The Celtic peoples, advancing one after another, did not necessarily push their predecessors in front of them ; more often they passed over their heads.
In our inquiry, all these dates are interdependent, for the position of one people affects that of a certain number of others, and all depend on the time when the Belgæ settled in the north of Gaul. We may, therefore, suppose two chronological systems, according as we say that they arrived about 300, coming from the east bank of the Rhine and driving the Gauls before them, or that they settled in Belgica, in their own country, about 500.
The latter supposition seems to be confirmed by the facts. In the Marne, Aisne, and Seine-Inférieure24 we find areas of population belonging to the beginning of the La Tène period and corresponding to the settlements of the Remi, Suessiones, and Caleti and their sub-groups, Catuvellauni, Meldi, Veliocasses of Vexin. It is the same in Lorraine and the valley of the Rhine,25 where districts inhabited since the Hallstatt period can be attributed to the Treviri and the Mediomatrici.26 One naturally asks, too, where all the mass of Gallic peoples which from the third century onwards poured into the Danube valley and the East, into Italy and France, could have found room in Germany between the Lippe, Rhine, Main, and Upper Weser.
It appears to me that the Belgæ were from the very beginning astride of the Rhine, and occupied from Neolithic times the whole schistous Rhenish massif. On the French side, they had a wide frontier zone extending over the Ardennes, the plains of Belgium, and the northern rim of the Paris basin.27 It was because they had plenty of elbow-room here that they were the last to expend their energies on distant expeditions.
The Treviri28 and Leuci29 had been in the same place since the Bronze Age. The Remi and Suessiones, breaking off from the main Belgic body, formed independent settlements in Marne and Aisne at the beginning of the La Tène period, absorbing or driving away the scanty Hallstatt population of the country. At the same time the Caleti probably took shape as a people, having received contingents from Hessen.30 The Bellovaci must have come later, for their district is a blank on the archaeological map of this period. The Morini, Ambiani, and Atrebates form a compact group which may have been undivided. Under the Empire, they compose a small province for fiscal purposes.31 They, too, arrived comparatively late. The Eburones, Nervii, and other peoples of the Meuse and northern Ardennes existed as peoples and were settled before the invasion of the Cimbri.
If Strabo32 is correct in saying that the Armorici were Belgæ, the dispersion of the latter must have been still earlier. Pytheas,33 who knew the Osismii, called them . It is tempting to compare this form with the name Œstrymnis, which Avienus34 in the sixth century uses of the western promontories of Europe and the islands lying off them.
Three points may be urged in support of this opinion, though they have no great force. The first is the relations which we find during the Brittany campaign subsisting between the Armorici, Menapii, and Morini.35 They have the same relations with the inhabitants of the valleys of the Orne and Touques, who are certainly not described as Belgæ. The second is the discovery of objects in a Belgic district, the valleys of the Rhine and Moselle—columns with giants and horsemen, and drums and bases of columns bearing representations of gods, the seasons, etc.36—and of similar objects in Brittany.37 The third point is a passage in Ausonius, in which the Belgian Viridomar, defeated and slain by Marcellus, has the epithet Armoricus.38
The Armorici form a compact group, quite distinct from the other peoples of Celtic Gaul. The Hallstatt culture in Brittany presents rather a peculiar appearance.39 One thing is certain : Brittany contributed from the end of the Hallstatt period to the peopling of Britain.40 If the Belgæ held the coasts of the Channel in the second Iron Age, the Brythons can have entered the island only from the coast west of the mouth of the Seine.
From the occupation of Belgica by the Belgæ at the beginning of La Tène, one must conclude that the Brythonic Gauls were established, then and much earlier, in the districts which they still held in Cæsar’s time. In the region north of the Seine, which was a kind of “ Debatable Land ” of the Belgæ, the Hallstatt population, which was probably sparse, received but little of the industries and fashions of the districts south of that river. The new culture of La Tène was brought in here, not by great movements of tribes, but rather by small groups which went about in this vague belt between the Belgæ and the Celts, passing through peoples already settled, which sometimes counted as Belgæ and sometimes as Gauls or Britons.41 There were conflicts, and above all, conflicts of influence. At the time when this history ends, the influence of the Belgæ is on the decline.
There were, however, peoples which were driven back from the frontier zone or forced to emigrate. In the first La Tène period one big people, the Sequani, changed its abode in the north of Gaul, and another, the Helvetii, started off on wanderings which were not to end for a long time.
In Franche-Comté, which had been thickly populated at the end of Hallstatt, we have already followed the imperceptible change from the civilization of the first Iron Age to that of the second.42 For some time there was no change in settlements or funeral rites. The La Tène graves were dug in the tumuli. One notes, however, that the latest are really charnel-houses, and that means a radical change of race. Moreover, all these tombs are earlier than 375, and later cemeteries are almost unknown. What had happened was that the population had moved. The old settlements on the plateau were abandoned, given back to the forest, and the people descended into the valley-bottoms and the plains of northern Bresse, which they cultivated. These newcomers hailed from the country on the banks of the Seine between the domains of the Lingones and Senones, and they were Sequani. This was doubtless not the first time that such a thing had happened in Franche-Comté since there had been Celts there. The invaders of the end of the Hallstatt period formed two groups, which were distinguished by their fashions and also by their way of building tumuli43 ; both advanced beyond the line of the Saône.44 The valleys of the Doubs and the longitudinal corridors of the Jura were the way into central and southern Gaul for wandering tribes from beyond the Gap of Belfort.45
We see a similar change in Switzerland, but the problem is different. A sparse, comparatively nomadic Hallstatt population is succeeded by a fairly dense, concentrated, settled population.46 Opinions differ about the origin of the newcomers, and many will not call them Helvetii before the third La Tène period.47 But this is a mistake.48 Strabo,49 in other words Poseidonios, mentions three tribes among the Helvetii, and Cæsar50 four, excluding the Raurici and other peoples already named. Now, whenever the Helvetii of the east bank of the Rhine are mentioned, we only hear of the Tigurini and Tugeni. So before the invasion of the Cimbri there was at least one Helvetian tribe, that which Cæsar51 calls the pagus Verbigenus, and perhaps there was another. The Tigurini must have had one foot on the left bank of the Rhine north of Zurich, and that explains their return to Switzerland after their adventures in company with the Cimbri.52 The Raurici must have been in their place near Basle by La Tène II.53 We must accept this as fairly certain if we regard the station of La Tène itself as a toll-post.54 A line of similar posts, or at any rate military posts, at Port-sur-la-Thiele near the lake of Bienne, at Tiefenau on the Aar, and at Wipfingen on the Limmatt marks a frontier, in all probability that of the Raurici.55 It is hard to believe that that people, which barred the important crossing of the Rhine and the way along the Aar, was settled there before the Helvetii.
Nor do the finds of the second Iron Age give any grounds for making a distinction between the populations of the two Helvetic areas. At the very most, we see in the northern part some influence of their northerly neighbours.
It should be remembered that the Helvetii did not occupy the whole of Switzerland, but only the plateau north of the Bernese Oberland. In the upper valley of the Rhine there were other Celtic peoples, the Nantuates round Saint-Maurice, the Veragri round Martigny, the Seduni round Sion, the Uberi in Haut-Valais.56 Throughout the Iron Age, the civilization of this valley was quite different from that of the plateau. We have, therefore, very distinct peoples, but we cannot say that any of them were the Gaesati. There is nothing specifically Belgic about the crafts of the Alpine valleys. They developed among peoples in which the native element was doubtless still considerable and the Celtic admixture was reduced to small isolated groups, whose civilizing influence, however, continually increased.
Can we conclude from these movements that there were similar migrations on the part of the Ædui, Senones, Carnutes, and Aulerci ?57 The fact that the Sequani and Helvetii seem to have formed a separate body among the other Celtic peoples is against this view. None of the reasons given58 is sufficient to make one regard them as Belgæ, among whom Cæsar did not include them. The settlement of the Sequani and Helvetii coincided with very large movements of population on the fringes of the Celtic world. It happened at the time of the great invasion of Italy. But their predecessors did not appear among those who took part in that expedition.59 The invaders of Italy buried their dead in cemeteries similar to those of the Marne, whereas the inhabitants of the Sequanian and Helvetian regions at the beginning of La Tène buried them in tumuli. It is on the other side of the Rhine, perhaps among the Allobroges, that we should look for their remnants, if they can still be identified.
There does not seem to have been ariy great movement among the peoples which had occupied Aquitania north of the Garonne. For one thing, this group comprised the Pictones, whose very name and position on the coast are sufficient evidence that their settlement was very old, being contemporaneous with the Pictish migrations.60 Secondly, archaeological exploration has brought to light certain nuclei of Hallstatt population which did not disappear. The groups of tumuli in Indre and Cher correspond to the main mass of the Bituriges Cubi,61 a third belongs to the Cadurci, and in Cantal a fourth is evidence of the settlement of the Arverni. Tumuli have also been found among the Gabali and in the north of the country of the Ruteni (Lozère and Aveyron).62 These are good evidence of population, which, unfortunately, is lacking for the greater part of the country of the Arverni and for that of the Lemovices63 and Santones.64 Nor do we know more about the cemeteries of the people who occupied these districts in the La Tène period. It was, then, in the two first Hallstatt periods that this part of Aquitania must have received the bulk of its population.
Some of the elements which had taken part in the descent of the northern peoples on the Pyrenean region and Spain at the end of the first Iron Age65 likewise contributed to the making of the population of Aquitania. A very large group on the plateaus south of Albi and another about Agen correspond to the Ruteni and Nitiobriges. Later on, some Senones and Lingones took up their abode on the Garonne, not to mention the Bituriges Vivisci. So the occupation of the country was finally made complete by bodies which passed through it at the end of the Hallstatt period and during La Tène, entering the existing political formations or setting up new ones.
Between the Loire and Seine the country was held by the Ædui and their kinsfolk, Ambarri of Lugdunensis and Sequani of Forez, Lingones, Senones, Aulerci, and the peoples of Normandy ; to these we must add the Carnutes and Turoni, whose position astride of the Loire well shows that the constitution given by the Roman Government was not made by geographers, with their eye on natural frontiers, but was inspired by the wish to conform to a pre-existing grouping of the peoples.66
Some of these were among the oldest in the Celtic world. But it is very difficult to establish their original position, for too often archæology tells us nothing about them. Even here, however, we And some centres of Hallstatt habitation. The bronze swords discovered in the bed of the Seine bear witness to the passage of armed men67—the Parisii ? In the Côte-d’Or the great iron sword remained in use far longer68 than in Franche-Comté and, what is more, when the sword with antennae was adopted its length was immediately increased. We have, therefore, a very different population, and one which remained in its place in the La Tène period, using the same tumuli. These may then be regarded as the tombs of a portion of the Ædui. Unfortunately neither Nièvre nor SaÔne-et-Loire furnishes any equivalent.
In the north, in Yonne, Aube, and Haute-Marne, there appears at the end of the second Iron Age a fashion which barely touched the Æduan country. The women wore hollow, gadrooned, turban-shaped anklets or thigh-rings of thin bronze. It was not a local fashion. Such objects have been found in Germany, in Vendée (introduced by traders or roving bands among the Caturiges, who, however, passed by the Meuse and Haute-Marne), in the environs of Paris, and on the borders of the country of the Senones.69 The great number of these finds perhaps indicates that there were already groups, distinct from the Ædui, on the territory of the Lingones and Sequani.
Apart from the Boii, it was in this group of peoples that the bands were levied which invaded Italy—Insubres (that is, Ædui), Cenomani and Andes, Lingones and Senones. With the Bituriges and Arverni, they formed the kingdom of Ambicatus, King of Bourges.
The route which Livy70 describes the Insubres as taking on their march into Italy, though it may have been the shortest way for a people massed between Dijon and Nevers, does not correspond to the position of the Gallic settlements at the exit from the mountains. Their position indicates that their founders had entered the plain of Lombardy by the eastern shore of Lake Maggiore.
We must not credit the Gauls of the fourth century with too great powers of organization. It would be more reasonable to explain such a concentration of forces from Anjou to Bohemia by a deep-seated intimacy between the Boii and their allies the Lingones, Senones, and Ædui, which had survived all separations. Grouped at the foot of the Gap of Belfort, these last could easily have reached the valley of the Reuss. We can also, if necessary, suppose that the Insubres, who organized the expedition and were the first to march, had remained detached from the body of the Ædui in Germany, like the Cenomani and Andes. The main body of the Aulerci in its move to the west left a few fragments in Germany, which joined in the expeditions of the Volcae and Boii.
In brief, between the Loire and the Saône the Celtic peoples were less ancient than between the Loire and the Garonne. They date at earliest from the second Hallstatt period. They were reinforced during the third period, and at the beginning of the second Iron Age, just when the Suessiones and Remi were settling in Aisne and Marne, they received a large new admixture, in which there may have been some Belgæ.71
When the colonies composed of these various peoples were established east of the Ticino, other Gauls descended into Italy over the French Alps, working up the tributaries of the Rhine to their sources. On the other side of the Alps the corresponding valleys were presently occupied by tribes with Gallic names, which, although they mixed with the Ligurians of Piedmont, kept some trace of their old selves.
At the beginning of the Hallstatt period Gauls had begun to travel down the Rhone. Between Valence and Avignon, on both banks, tumuli have yielded large bronze swords72 or somewhat later Hallstatt objects, which are dated by Greek objects.73 These tombs represent a fairly large Celtic population in the country of the Vocontii and Cavares, who perhaps already existed as peoples.74 The area over which these weapons are discovered is a continuation of Franche-Comté and Dombes, and so enables us to connect the Celtic settlements of the Rhone with the old Hallstatt groups between the Saône and the Jura.
The furniture of the tumuli of the Alpine valleys75 in Late Hallstatt contains, side by side with objects peculiar to the region, types copied from Franche-Comté and beyond. The Celtic infiltration, which was complete in the fourth century, made itself felt among the Ligurians even at this early date. It is the same with the contemporary tumuli of Chablis and Faucigny, which are probably Gallic.
The retreat of the Iberians in Languedoc in the fifth century shows that a new military power was predominant there. It can only have been the Volcae. A hundred years later everything was Gallic or Celticized, except on the coast east of Marseilles.
Of these Gauls, some came from very far or fairly far, like the Volcae, their allies the Cenomani, the Caturiges, the Medulli, and the Centrones. Others had come down from the Cevennes, such as the Sigovellauni of Valentinois, who were a sub-group of the Cavares, or else from the west bank of the Rhone, such as the Allobroges. But the Allobroges, Vocontii, Tricastini, Tritolli, Tricorii, and Cavares are groups of peoples whose names give no indication as to their origin. We may suspect that there were Belgic contingents among them, for the Cavares seem to have taken part in the expeditions of the third century.
The peoples of the Alps were a body apart. Under the Empire they formed three small provinces, the Maritime, Cottian, and Pennine Alps, the last comprising Tarentaise and Valais. The Cottian Alps corresponded in part to the kingdom of Cottiris, the last ruler of the country, Susa being the capital. The peoples of the mountains seem never to have shared the fortunes of those of the plains and the wider valleys, but remained independent between Cisalpine Gaul and the Province. Celtic civilization reached them, changing somewhat as it did so, and it is possible that the Gallic tribes which entered the higher valleys were absorbed by them. The racial mixture here cannot have been quite like that of Dauphiné or Provence. Political relations, types of culture, and racial character lie at the bottom of this distinction of the Alpine provinces.
The political face of Gaul, which was still undergoing variations in Cæsar’s time, had been almost fixed since 400 ; it had taken ten centuries to make it. Of the first Celtic settlements of the Bronze Age, hardly anything survived. The Picts were probably the sole representatives of those heroic days. The Hallstatt period had left definite traces, and some of the settlements created at that time still existed. During the first period of La Tène Gaul received a considerable number of new colonists, who established themselves in the deserted or little-populated border zones, squeezed their way into spaces between older settlements, and sometimes even took the land of the earlier Gallic occupants. The successive waves—whole peoples or sub-groups associated with groups already settled—went all over Gaul in search of a home, intermingling, but to different degrees. Later, with a few exceptions, all the room was taken up.
It has been supposed that the Celts formed a kind of military aristocracy, small in numbers compared with the rest of the population. This view rests on a serious sociological error about the nature of the Celtic family.
Down to the fifth century the Gallic occupation looks like a fairly loose network. Gaul had been occupied by Ligurians and invaded in the south by the Iberians, who remained where they were in the extreme south-east and south-west, mingled with the Celts to various extents. The place-names which can be connected with these two peoples with certainty are extremely few.76 The great majority of place-names which are not Latin or Germanic in origin are Gaulish. The names of peoples are Gaulish, and they have endured. That means that between the Garonne, the Durance, and the Rhine not only the mass of the population was Celtic but the whole social structure was Celtic. The Celts were the creators of the immense majority of markets, meeting-places, villages, and towns. They took possession of the country, but they altered it. It is very possible that many Ligurians remained among them, but, with a few exceptions, they formed no distinct organized groups. As slaves, isolated farmers, coloni, they adopted Celtic customs and speech wholesale. Only in Provence and in the Alps could native tribes find a place within Celtic groups, like the Salyes of Marseilles. Certainly there were foreigners in the Celtic communities. The blood in these was not very pure, and the ancient writers have no illusions on the point. They noted the racial differences between the Gauls of the Continent and those of Britain.77 But in Gaul itself only the blood was mixed ; society was purely Gallic.
Attempts have been made to reckon the size of the Gallic population,78 based chiefly on the figures of effectives given by Cæsar for the levy of 52.79 Since this was not a levy en masse, some historians have placed the total number of the population too low. But we have other data. Thus, the Bellovaci were able to put 100,000 men into the line, so that the total population must have been at least 400,000 souls, that is, the present population of their country.
To get a correct idea of the population of Gaul, it is to modern statistics that we must turn, taking into account the number of units of all sizes and multiplying the average ones. According to Poseidonios,80 the biggest nations of Gaul could raise 200,000 men and the smallest 50,000. That gives an average of 100,000 inhabitants to a people, or thirty million altogether. This figure is still too low, for it seems to allow for too large a proportion of combatants. If we start from the strength of the pagi, we must count about 500 of them, and we get the same population. It certainly seems that Gaul must have had, including slaves, at least as many inhabitants as France under Louis XIV. At a time when Greece and Italy were suffering from depopulation, we can well understand that it gave the ancients an impression of inexhaustible fruitfulness and seemed like a brimming reservoir of men who poured out to terrorize the whole world.
Thus constituted, Gaul turned towards poles of attraction outside the country. For some little time Germany, in which new powers were arising, educated by Gaul, attracted chiefly the Belgæ, Sequani, and Helvetii, who were in immediate touch with it. For centuries Greece had exercised its civilizing influence on Gaul and the Gauls had looked to Greece by preference. As early as the fourth century they had been regarded as phil-Hellenes, but this reputation had occasionally been clouded. In the third century they were considered very wild, and perhaps they were better known. But the phil-Hellenism was real enough. While continuing to be themselves, the Gauls who settled in Greek lands borrowed much from their teachers, and the others were influenced by Hellenism in inverse ratio to their distance from its centre. Their coins, copied from Greek types, and their decorative art both show this, and there are still remnants of the Greek articles which were in demand among the Gauls—vessels of bronze and earthenware for holding oil and wine.
Greek influence was followed by that of Rome. Negotiations, intrigues, and wars all contributed to it, but it was particularly the prestige of a higher organization and culture that appealed to these peoples who were so eager for everything that was not Celtic. This trait of the racial character explains their sudden metamorphosis and the continuity of their rôle as civilizers in Europe.
The stranger from the Mediterranean always had a special charm for them.81 The civilization of La Tène III, which was contemporaneous with the conquest, reveals the growing influence of the arts and industries of the south. Bronze statuettes appear, enamel-working is developed, the technique of pottery is changed, Celtic characteristics disappear from the decoration of vases and jewel-work. New ways of life come in. At Mont Beuvray square houses of the Roman type with a heating-system arise in the midst of the Gallic huts. City life begins and develops under the influence of Rome and Greece. The forts reoccupied or built during the Cimbric War gradually turn into towns. These, it should be noted, grow less frequent as one leaves the coasts of the Mediterranean. They are dense in the valley of the Rhone. There were some among the Ædui and the Remi, but the Bellovaci had no longer anything but temporary refuges. These towns, such as Bibracte or Gergovia, perched on stony plateaus, with rough, narrow little lanes running up and down, cramped, badly built, full of mud and dung, were certainly not marvels of town-planning.82 But the Gauls were proud of them, or of some of them, such as Avaricum, the finest city in Gaul,83 the jewel of the Bituriges. We already find that municipal patriotism was one of the most deep-seated characteristics of Roman Gaul.
But as time went on, Gaul modelled itself on its patterns more and more diligently. The magnificence of Luernius and Bituitus is still mere barbaric splendour. Cæsar shows us nothing of that kind in the Druid Diviciacus, who lived a long time in Rome and talked philosophy with Cicero, or in Orgetorix the Helvetian, or in Ambiorix the Eburonian, the wildest and most picturesque of guerrilla leaders, or in Vercingetorix. These men are very different from those whom Diodoros and Poseidonios met about 100 B.C., uneducated, bragging, noisy, and quarrelsome.84 The great nobles of whom Cæsar has left many very lively portraits display the fine, gracious manners which the Welsh chieftains may have had later. They were men of taste, too, fond of beautiful things, which they ordered from great distances and even kept in their baggage when at war.85 That is how the leaders of the war of independence are portrayed by their conqueror.