Michael Peverett: Three Celtic horses

Wednesday, February 07, 2024

Three Celtic horses

Silver coin, E. Danubian Celts (Carpathian mountain region), 2nd century BCE.

In Britain in 55 BCE (Julius Caesar reported) the Celts used ring money. But on the European mainland they had long adopted coinage, initially from Greek models.

These three coins are all to some extent imitations of Macedonian silver tetradrachmas (Philip II). But the horses (with their riders scarcely visible) have quite a different spirit.

Coin made of billon (low grade silver). E. Danubian Celts, Carpathian mountain region, 2nd century BCE.

This stylized design is known as a Schnabelpferd ("beak-horse").

Etymological trivia that caught my eye while reading about the Celts:

The Boii were a major Celtic tribe of central Europe and their name is still embedded in "Bohemia" and "Bologna".

"Hus" is one of just three recorded words from the Galatian language. It means Kermes Oak (Quercus coccifera, the scrubby Mediterranean oak, host plant of the Kermes insects that were used to make the luxurious dye called crimson). However this oak bush occurs only round the edge of Asia Minor, not in the central area where Galatia was located. Unlike the other two Galatian survivals, "hus" is apparently not of Celtic origin, so perhaps it was borrowed from some neighbour language.

Lusitanian, an extinct language from central Portugal and Extremadura, contained numerous Celtic-looking words but its basic forms suggest it was actually a relic language from a more ancient stratum of Indo-European, subsequently borrowing or assimilating vocabulary from surrounding Celtic languages such as Gallaecian.

It's unclear if "Celt" was itself a Celtic term, or a label originally pinned on them by others (Greeks?). Anyway, some 500 years later Julius Caesar says that the Gauls used the term to describe themselves. But that was then. Later, the word disappeared for at least a thousand years; the modern speakers of Celtic languages were simply "Irish", "Breton", etc. It only began to be used again in the 18th century, by scholars such as Edward Lhuyd.

Caesar, of course, called them "Galli". Like "Galatia", it seems to derive from a Celtic term, perhaps meaning warrior band.

On the other hand the English word "Gaul" comes via French and Frankish from a proto-Germanic word that originally meant "foreigner" e.g. a Roman or Celt. (It also gave rise to "Wales" and "Welsh").

"Galicia" (the Iberian one) has yet a different origin, from the Gallaecians, a name (more properly Callaeci) applied by the Romans to the peoples near Portus Calle (modern Porto). (The name Portugal has the same origin.)

[The other Galicia -- a historic region of SE Poland/NW Ukraine -- takes its name from the medieval city of Halych, now a small town in W. Ukraine.]

Silver coin, E. Danubian Celts, c. 280-200 BCE.

Before the Gallic war, Julius Caesar and his veteran legions had already campaigned against the Lusitanians, he being governor of Hispania Ulterior.

Caesar said that the two classes with power in Celtic society were the druids and the equites (knights, literally horsemen) (Commentarii de Bello Gallico, VI.13). Everything about the druids is disputed, down to their very existence: some people point out that druids are never mentioned in Caesar's own transactions with the Celts, only in this socio-mythic excursus. All the same, what he says is intriguing, and ancient Celtic art certainly suggests a remarkably imaginative culture.

14.
The Druids do not go to war, nor pay tribute together with the rest; they have an exemption from military service and a dispensation in all matters. Induced by such great advantages, many embrace this profession of their own accord, and [many] are sent to it by their parents and relations. They are said there to learn by heart a great number of verses; accordingly some remain in the course of training twenty years. Nor do they regard it lawful to commit these to writing, though in almost all other matters, in their public and private transactions, they use Greek characters. That practice they seem to me to have adopted for two reasons; because they neither desire their doctrines to be divulged among the mass of the people, nor those who learn, to devote themselves the less to the efforts of memory, relying on writing; since it generally occurs to most men, that, in their dependence on writing, they relax their diligence in learning thoroughly, and their employment of the memory. They wish to inculcate this as one of their leading tenets, that souls do not become extinct, but pass after death from one body to another, and they think that men by this tenet are in a great degree excited to valor, the fear of death being disregarded. They likewise discuss and impart to the youth many things respecting the stars and their motion, respecting the extent of the world and of our earth, respecting the nature of things, respecting the power and the majesty of the immortal gods.

[Source: https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0001%3Abook%3D6%3Achapter%3D14 .]

Caesar portrayed the Celts as proud warriors but also barbarous and shifty, justifying his own pre-emptive aggression and the behaviour of his legions. Slaughter of "the enemy" was normal. Often women and children were not spared.

He also said that they were civilised in comparison with the Germanic people. They traded and farmed and understood civilised ideas. But civilisation had also rendered them effete, "accustomed to defeat" as he says at one point. The Celts, in other words, were conquerable and worth conquering, but the Germans were neither.

Caesar's conquest didn't only affect Gaul. It apparently meant the collapse of Celtic economic systems across the continent. Major sites such as Manching in Bavaria had already declined and been abandoned before the Romans arrived there (in 15 BCE). One sign of that decline, at Manching, was metal recycling!