THOUGH one hears little about them today, they have left indelible traces on the Western world. They came on the scene over 2,500 years ago. They have influenced European history, art, and religious customs. And strange as it may seem, they have also affected our daily lives. They were of Indo-European origin, and at the height of their glory, they dominated a great stretch of the ancient world from the Atlantic to Asia Minor, from northern Europe to the Mediterranean Coast. Who were they? The Celts.

Without realizing it, we see traces of the Celts every day. It was they, for example, who spread the use of trousers in the Western world; they were also the ones who invented barrels. There are other more visible evidences of their passage through history. In areas of Europe, you can still see hundreds of fortified hills, or hill forts, and burial mounds, or barrows, covering ancient tombs--all left by the Celts. Many cities or regions today have names of Celtic origin, for example, Lyons and Bohemia. If your community has the custom of memorializing the dead at the end of October or the beginning of November, you may be sure that centuries ago the Celts did the same thing. Also, if you know the stories of England's King Arthur or well-known fables like Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella, then you are acquainted with more or less direct legacies of that Celtic civilization.

Like many other peoples, the Celts, in time, came to be viewed in different ways depending on who described them. Plato (Greek, fourth century�B.C.E.) described them as a drink-loving, warmongering people. In the eyes of Aristotle (Greek, fourth century�B.C.E.), they were a people who scorned danger. According to the Greek-Egyptian geographer Ptolemy (second century�C.E.), the Celts feared only one thing--that the sky would fall on their heads! Their enemies generally presented them as cruel, uncivilized barbarians. Today, thanks to progress made in Celtic studies, we can paint a very different picture of the Celts from what we could have done only twenty years ago,says Venceslas Kruta, one of the most authoritative scholars in this field.

Their Rise and Fall

The Celts were actually a collection of tribes held together by a common language and style of craftsmanship, military structure, and religious beliefs that were sufficiently unitarian to be recognizable.(I Celti, La Stampa supplement, March 23, 1991) It is therefore more accurate to speak of Celtic culture than of an ethnic group. Gauls, Iberian Celts, Senones, Cenomani, Insubres, and Boii were the names of some of the tribes who inhabited what we now know as France, Spain, Austria, and northern Italy. Others, in the course of time, colonized the British Isles.

It seems that the original Celtic nucleus spread from central Europe. There is no mention of them in historical writings before the sixth century�B.C.E. Greek historian Herodotus was among the first to mention them, describing them as the farthermost inhabitants of western Europe.Ancient historians recall more than all else their military exploits. Various Celtic tribes marched against the Etruscans in northern Italy and then against Rome at the beginning of the fourth century�B.C.E., conquering it. According to Latin chroniclers, such as Livy, the Celts left only after a suitable ransom had been paid and after Brennus, the Celts' leader, had pronounced the words vae victis, woe to the vanquished.Even in modern times, the Celts are remembered by those who read the adventures of the fictional Gaulish warriors Asterix and Obelix, featured in comic books in many languages.

Greece's turn to know the Celts came about 280�B.C.E., when another Celtic Brennus reached the doors of the famous Delphi sanctuary without, however, succeeding in capturing it. In that same period, some Celtic tribes, referred to by the Greeks as Galatai, crossed the Bosporus and settled in northern Asia Minor, in the region that subsequently came to be called Galatia. In 50-52�C.E., some early Christians lived in that area.--

The Celts were known in ancient times as bold warriors, endowed with great physical strength. Not only did they have an imposing physique but, to strike terror in their enemies, they would wet their hair with a chalk and water mixture that, when dry, gave them a particularly ferocious appearance. And that is exactly how they were represented in ancient statues, with plaster-cast hair.Their physique, their ardor in fighting, their weapons, the way they wore their hair, and their typical long mustaches all helped to forge that image of Gallic fury so feared by their adversaries and epitomized in the Asterix sagas. This was probably why many armies back then, including the one led by the Carthaginian commander Hannibal, enlisted Celtic mercenaries.

Toward the end of the first century�B.C.E., however, the power of the Celts began inexorably to be subdued. The Gaul campaign of the Romans, led by Julius Caesar and other commanders, brought the Celtic military apparatus to its knees.

Author: Flor Ayag

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