The Celts were a group of fierce and warlike tribes who lived in Central and Western Europe between the 8th and 1st centuries BC They were known for their skill as horsemen, spoke similar languages and shared many religious and artistic customs.
Although the Celts themselves were illiterate and left no written records, much of Celtic history can be pieced together from Roman writers. Thanks to his texts we know that in the fourth century B.C. Celtic settlers and warriors from north of the Alps attacked Italy and the Balkans. The Celts sacked Rome in 390 BC. and in 279 B.C. they reached no less than Delphi, in Greece. In the third century B.C. Celts could be found as far east as the Balkans and Anatolia.
The Roman army fought hard against the invading barbarians and defeated them in the battle of Telemón , in northern Italy, in 225 B.C. Subsequently, the Romans gradually took over the Celtic lands of Italy, Hispania (present-day Iberian Peninsula), and Anatolia.
The Roman commander Julius Caesar began his conquest of Gaul (present-day France) in 50 BC. As the Romans penetrated the Celtic regions, they killed or took prisoners en masse. Out of a population of between six and seven million Celts, one million were killed and another million sold into slavery. By the end of the 1st century AD, the Romans had conquered much of England and Wales; furthermore, all of central Europe south of the Rhine and the Danube was in his hands. The Celts who lived outside these regions had been defeated by the Germanic tribes to the north and the Dacians to the east.
In the 5th century AD. all remnants of the Celts had disappeared from Britain and Gaul , when the Germanic invasions followed the collapse of the Roman Empire. Today, Celtic languages survive exclusively in the extreme western parts of Europe:Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Brittany (France), and Galicia (Spain).
Celtic culture
In the Celtic culture there are two great periods. One is Hallstatt , which extended between the years 800 and 500 BC, and the other is that of La Tène , which lasted between 500 B.C. and 50 AD
The Hallstatt culture gets its name from the Hallstatt cemetery , in Austria, Central Europe. As far as we know, they were skillful ironworkers and good horsemen. Establish a salt mining industry and trading empire. A wealthy elite of chiefs lived in fortified hilltop settlements and was buried with many of their possessions:weapons, jewelry, chariots, and other luxury goods.
After the 5th century B.C. the rich burials ceased and the Hallstatt culture declined rapidly.
The culture of La Tène , which followed it, named after a lakeside town in Switzerland, had centers of power in the area to the north of the Hallstatt region. Celtic warriors who crossed the Alps in the 4th century BC. They came from the La Tène culture. The La Tène region was also where the artistic style known as Celtic originated.
The Celtic Warriors
The Greeks and Romans viewed the Celts as dangerous but vulnerable enemies. The fury of the Celts in war was legendary and their bravery and expert command of horses were much admired. However, they were considered to lack the discipline of Greek and Roman soldiers. Some of the Celtic practices, such as keeping the severed heads of distinguished enemies and presenting them to visitors, were considered hideous by Mediterranean peoples.
The Celtic warrior was completely different from the Roman legionnaire. He had whitewashed hair and wore pants instead of a tunic. He also wore jewelry and a colorful checkered cape. He usually carried a long iron sword, a spear, and a large fur shield. The helmet and chain mail gave him additional protection, although there are many texts that tell us that Celtic warriors went to battle naked, except for the torques (gold or bronze decorated necklace).
War was extremely important to Celtic society. The tribes were ruled by warrior elites for whom their reputation for bravery in battle was an important source of power. Failure, especially in the case of a chief, was not acceptable, and Celtic chiefs sometimes committed suicide so as not to suffer the humiliation of defeat. The power of a Celtic warrior was also determined by the number of his followers, so his ability to distribute the wealth gained through raiding or conquest was of great importance.
The agriculture of the Celtic peoples
Agriculture was the main activity of a Celtic community. Although their practice varied with land type, the Celts generally used mixed farming, with livestock and crops. The countryside was covered in small farms and villages, with fortified hilltop settlements serving as markets, craft centers, and tribal capitals.
Celtic women
In Celtic society, women held a more important position than in Greek or Roman societies. Their prowess as wrestlers is mentioned by several writers and they had a legal right to property upon marriage. The existence of important female leaders, such as Queen Boudicca of the Iceni tribe (the most feared opponents of the Romans in Britain) shows that it was possible for women to hold very important positions.
Celtic commercial life
At the same time that they were conquering their lands in Italy, Iberia, and Anatolia, the Romans were creating commercial ties with the unconquered Celtic peoples of Gaul and central Europe. Rome needed raw materials and slaves. Local Celtic chieftains needed luxury goods to give to their followers, and the chances of obtaining them through plunder had diminished. So a flourishing trade was created, and as the volume of trade increased, the currency became more and more widespread. Many of the Celtic towns and hill forts were transformed into complex trading settlements known as oppida . Only in northwestern Europe did life continue much the same as in previous centuries.
The Celtic Bards
Although the Celts lacked a written literature, they did possess a professional class of poets, storytellers, and musicians:the bards. Bards went through a 12-year training period, memorizing a vast oral tradition of story-poems, they also composed songs to honor or mock people still alive, for which they were treated with great respect by chiefs and warriors. , for whom reputation was everything.
Celtic religion
The Celts used a calendar very similar to the current one and their festivals fell at significant times of the agricultural year. The main one took place on November 1st and marked the end of the current year and the beginning of the new year . Known in Ireland as Samain, it was the time when the spirits of the dead could roam free. Tradition that has been preserved to this day with the feast of All Saints and the Anglo-Saxon Halloween.
The Celts believed in a large number of gods, rather than a single all-powerful deity. Although these gods varied from region to region, three central figures can be identified:the god of the tribe, associated with war; the god of heaven and earth; and the god of crafts. The number three had a special meaning for the Celts; In Celtic art there are many statues with three heads and drawings with three sides.
Some religious ceremonies involved the ritual of throwing valuable objects into wells, rivers, streams, bogs, or lakes. Religious specialists, known as druids They acted as intermediaries between man and the gods. In addition to supervising all sacrifices, the druids acted as judges in criminal cases and had the power to exclude from the religious life of the community all those found guilty. They also had the ability to start rebellions and unify tribes against Rome.
A Celtic village
A possible Iceni population in Great Britain of the Celts is narrated in the following lines.
It sheltered about 100 people and was built near a stream of drinking water. The village was surrounded by a palisade of wooden stakes and a moat; the only entrance was guarded by a watchtower. The drawbridge over the moat was moved by a system of counterweights that were placed in baskets hung from long poles, which allowed them to be hoisted when the enemy approached. Often the severed heads of enemies were placed on top of the watchtower.
Within the village there were various types of houses, all built of wood and roofed with straw. The round house belonged to the chief and his family, and during the winter it was here that the warriors gathered to party and drink. The warriors lived in the big house with their families, a residence that had a section where there was a fire where the women prepared the meals. Cattle may also have been brought into the house during the winter. Surrounding the interior of the palisade were much smaller dwellings, where the old and infirm lived. Other buildings included a cart house, a silo, and a smokehouse, where the inhabitants dried and smoked meat and fish to preserve them until winter. In the center of the village there was a deep well with poisonous snakes at the bottom. It was the pit of snakes, into which enemy prisoners and criminals were thrown, where they were left to die.
The diffusion of iron
Smelting iron ore was much more complicated than making bronze. The method of extracting iron from its ore was discovered by the Hittites in Anatolia around the middle of the second millennium BC. For centuries it was a closely guarded secret, but after the collapse of the Hittite Empire in the 12th century BC. the technique spread, first to the Aegean and then to the rest of Europe. In the 8th century B.C. iron was already widely worked in the region of the Celtic culture of Hallstatt .
Although iron work was more complex and laborious than bronze, the new metal had two main advantages. The first is that it occurred naturally in large quantities and in a wider area than copper and tin, the two elements that made up bronze, so it was cheaper. Second, it was a much stronger metal than bronze and could be sharpened much better. This gave the Celts an advantage in battle and also allowed them to cut down forests and plow the land more efficiently.
Celtic Art
The La Tène civilization of the 5th century BC is famous for the style of its decorative arts, which has come to be known as Celtic art. Specialized and highly skilled, its artisans made mirrors, shields, and sword handles in gold and bronze. Influenced by both Mediterranean and Eastern European art, they developed an original style characterized by scrolling lines and irregular patterns. Some animals and motifs used in Celtic art had religious significance. For example, boars and ravens, often visible on weapons and armor, are thought to represent war gods in animal form. However, much of the hidden meaning of Celtic art has been lost.