The things to remember about Herodotus’ The Histories is that he never set foot in Celtic lands and probably plagiarized an earlier historian Hecataeus of Miletus, whose work has not survived. What Herodotus added was the “barbarian’ parts, in which the Celts were vilified as uncivilized. On the other hand, Aristotle, uses them as examples of bravery in his writings. We know them from Polibius who wrote of their relentless advance on Greece, Italy and Asia Minor. The Romans knew them and feared them for their sacking of Rome in the fourth century bce. Julius Caesar wrote of them in his Gallic Wars of first hand encounters in Gaul (France). Pliny the Elder wrote of Druid and Celtic medicine. My personal favorite account of Celtic barbarism is from the Greek geographer Strabo who wrote that the Celts would cage their prisoners in huge wicker straw men which they would then set afire. Again, the historical writings must be taken with more than a grain of salt. The Celts may or may not have had human sacrifices of prisoners. It was common practice of all ancient cultures. Again, no one knows for sure. Taken together with the archeological evidence and surviving writings we begin to see a picture of the Celts as a people. We know from their artifacts that they were skilled in metallurgy, accomplished sculptures in bronze and copper, silver and gold. Besides being the first to write, they perfected and brought into wide use the spoked wheel, they were great miners, and craftsmen, whose creations survive to this day and can be seen in museums throughout the U.K. and Europe. We know that the Celts were fiercely independent. There was no central government, such as Imperial Rome. There was no mass communications between clans, no dictates from the emperor to the provinces. Each clan or tribe acted independently, united only by a common ideology and basic language. We know that they did not generally seek war, as did the Romans. Though they were fierce fighters they would often choose to move on instead of defend a territory. The history of the Celts is one of migration, which we will not go into here. This makes their history extremely difficult to follow as they intermingled with the peoples of a new territory rather than subjecting them to the yoke. (For further study of Celtic history see bibliography) Luna))O((
Posted on: Wed, 09 Jul 2014 05:30:00 +0000
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