The Historical Celts
For many people, the pre-Roman history of Britain is all about ‘Celts’. The Celtic label will not be used to describe the Britons in this account, and this chapter will try to explain why.
There is no doubt that a people named the Celts (Celtae/Keltoi) existed as an historically attested people. But who were they and where did they live?
The earliest references to them are all recorded by Greeks, and start in the 6th century BC. There are no historical records at all of Celts before this time.
The first specific mention of them comes from the geographer Hecataeus of Miletus, in about 500 BC, who describes them as neighbours of the Ligurians, living inland from Massalia (modern day Marseilles).
Then, in about 450 BC, Herodotus, the ‘Father of History’ mentions them again. Here is a translation of his account of where they were located:
‘The Nile flows out of Libya, cutting through the middle of that country. And as I reason, calculating unknown things from known, it begins at the same distance as the Ister (the Danube). For the Ister, beginning in the land of the Celts and the city of Pyrene, flows through the middle of Europe. The Celts live beyond the Pillars of Hercules (straits of Gibraltar) and border on the Cynetes, who are the westernmost inhabitants of Europe. The Ister then flows through all of Europe and empties into the Euxine Sea (Black Sea) at Istria, which Milesian colonists inhabit’.
(Translation taken from: Koch, J.T. (ed), 1995, The Celtic Heroic Age: Literary Sources for Ancient Celtic Europe and Early Ireland and Wales, Malden, Massachusetts, Celtic Studies Publications).
Some commentators, keen on the idea of a huge Celtic empire, would have us believe that this extract shows that the Celts were present in both Iberia and at the correct source of the Danube in southern Germany, but they are trying to have their cake and eat it. Herodotus is not particularly interested in the Celts as such, but is trying to compare the length of the Danube with that of the Nile, a task made much easier if he thinks, quite incorrectly, that the Danube has its source in the extreme west of Europe.
Ephorus, in the 4th century BC states that Celtica is so large that it includes most of Iberia as far as Cadiz.
All of these early sources locate the Celts in Iberia and southern Gaul. Many people today speak of Gaul as if it were just an old name for France, but this is not the case. Historical Gaul included all of mainland France, all of modern day Belgium and Luxembourg, the Netherlands south of the Rhine and Germany and Switzerland west of the Rhine.
During the 4th century BC, the inhabitants of Gaul were expansive and came into contact with the Romans. There are inconsistencies, though, with the Romans’ use of the term Galli to describe just the Celts on the one hand, and any geographical inhabitant of Gaul on the other.
For example, Diodorus Siculus, in the first century BC, informs us that:
‘It is useful now to point out a distinction unknown by most. Those tribes that live inland from Massalia (Marseilles) as well as those around the Alps and on the eastern side of the Pyrenees are called Celts. But those tribes in the northern area near the ocean, those near the Hercynian mountain (probably in today’s Czech republic) and those beyond as far as Scythia are called Galatae. The Romans, however, group all these tribes together as Galatae’.
(Translation taken from: Koch, J.T. (ed), 1995, The Celtic Heroic Age: Literary Sources for Ancient Celtic Europe and Early Ireland and Wales, Malden, Massachusetts, Celtic Studies Publications).
One of the most famous references comes from Julius Caesar at the very beginning of his description of the Gallic Wars De Bello Gallico written in the middle of the first century BC:
‘Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, quarum unam incolunt Belgae, aliam Aquitani, tertiam qui ipsorum lingua Celtae, nostra Galli appellantur’. ‘Gaul is a whole divided into three parts, one of which is inhabited by the Belgae, another by the Aquitani, and a third by a people called in their own tongue Celtae, in the Latin Galli’.
He then goes on to add:
‘Hi omnes lingua, institutis, legibus inter se differunt. Gallos ab Aquitanis Garumna flumen, a Belgis Matrona et Sequana dividit’. ‘All of these are different one from another in language, institutions, and laws. The Galli are separated from the Aquitani by the river Garonne, from the Belgae by the Marne and the Seine’.
(Both the above translations are taken from: Edwards, H.J. 1986, Caesar: The Gallic War, An English Translation, London, Heinemann).
Caesar’s Gaul
The Greek geographer Strabo, writing slightly later in the first century BC has the Belgae living all along the ocean between the Rhine and the Loire, in a similar location to the Galatae of Diodorus Siculus.
The Aquitani, given their location, are likely to be Basques. However, the important point is that the rest of Gaul is occupied by two large groups, one in the south and the other in the north, both containing numerous tribes. The Celts occupy only the south and speak a different language to their northern neighbours.
It’s worth noting, incidentally, that as far as Britain and Ireland are concerned, no historical source ever called the inhabitants of either island Celts.
How is it then, that some people in these islands ever came to be called Celts at all?
We need to look to the linguistic world for the answer to that.