Quote:
Society, Culture & Lifestyle
The Celts actively traded with the Mediterranean world, exchanging notably their iron tools and weapons for wine and pottery. They also imported amber from the Baltic to resell to the Romans and Greeks.
The Celts preempted the Romans in their construction of a road network across the European continent.
The Celtic world was very decentralised compared to the Roman one, but at least a dozen Celtic towns possessed high stone walls rivalling those of Rome at the time. The longest were 5km long.
Recent studies have shown that the Celts were more advanced than the Romans in some scientific and economic aspects. Pre-Roman Celtic calendars were much more accurate than the Roman one. In fact, they were possibly more accurate than the Gregorian calendar in use nowadays.
Each Galatian tribe was organised in four septs (clans), each ruled by a tetrach (chief), assisted by a judge, a general and two deputy generals. Each sept sent 25 senators to a central shrine called Drunemeton.
The Celts were immensely rich. We now know that Julius Caesar's main reason to conquer Gaul was to lay hands on Celtic gold. Over 400 Celtic gold mines were found in France alone. The Romans had little gold on their home territory, so the conquest of Gaul was a tremendous boost to their power.
The Celtic nobility were also known to be clean shaven with well trimmed hair following the fashion of the time. Tweezers were also found on archeological sites.
Ancient Celtic society gave much more freedom and power to women than the Greeks and Romans did. Greco-Roman housewives were prohibited to do business and mostly sequestrated in their home under the supervision of male family members. Celtic women could sometimes become powerful tribe leaders, and were also known to go to war.
Celtic Warfare & Technology
The Celts invented the chainmail (around 300 BCE) and the helmets later used by Roman legionaries. Celtic swords and shields were at least as good as the Roman's.
The decoration of the Celtic weapons, chariots and artifacts was in many ways superior to those of many Mediterranean cultures.
Gauls at the time of Julius Caesar were described as wearing shiny, gold-like armours and swords.
The Celts' early development of prime iron weapons and armoury gave them a military advantage over the neighbours. It permitted them to conquer and subdue most of Europe for many centuries.
The Celts had a reputation of fearsome barbarians among the Greeks and Romans. Around 400 BCE, they seized the territory that lay between the Appeninne mountains and the Alps (i.e. northern Italy), then went on to plunder Rome in 390 BCE. Even Alexander the Great made sure of avoiding war with the Celts, eagerly signing a peace treaty with them in 335 BCE, before embarking on his conquest of Persia. After his death, the Celts became a threat for the Greeks again. Lured by the wealth accumulated in Greek temples by Alexander, the Galatian Celts invaded Macedonia in 281 BCE and sacked Delphi in 279 BCE.
Their defeat against the Romans was mainly due to the fact that they were disunited against the Roman enemy, and victims of internal tribal struggles.
It is estimated that Julius Caesar massacred 1 out of 10 million of Celts in Gaul, and put another million into slavery. In modern terms, this would be called a genocide.
Religion & Beliefs
Like the Greeks, Romans, Germans and Hindus, the Celts were polytheists, and divinities varied from region to region, with a few major gods (like Lugh) recognised everywhere. Like the Romans, the Celts did not hesitate to venerate foreign gods as well.
Druids were not only priests, diviners and astronomers, they were also judges, mediators, and political advisers who played an important role in declarations of war or peace.
It took about 20 years of formation to become a Druid. Like the Christian clergy in the Middle Ages, Druids were usually from noble extraction, and trained from boyhood.
Druidism might have originated in Britain. Nevertheless, Druids held their great annual assembly in the territory of the Carnutes, in central Gaul.
Oaks were of primordial importance in Celtic religion. Druids ritually cut mistletoe off oak trees. The word "Druid" is related to the Celtic term for oak, and the gathering place for Galatian druids was called Drunemeton, literally "oak sanctuary".
The Celts practised ritual human sacrifice to the gods, typically near water (lake, river, spring) and/or in forest groves. Victims were most often war prisoners or criminals. Druids being both judges and priests, it was a way of combining judicial or military executions with the honouring of the gods.
The Celts didn't believe in heaven or hell, but believed in automatic reincarnation on Earth, regardless of one's deeds in life.
Greek writers recall that, when meeting Alexander the Great, the Celts boasted that they feared nothing unless it were that Heavens might fall on them.
Celtic warriors decapitated the defeated after a battle, took the heads back home as trophies, and exposed the headless bodies hanging on wooden frames.
Sometimes, they replaced humans by huge amphoras of wine, and simulated the decapitation by cutting off the top of the amphora with a sword. The spilling wine would represent the blood.
One of the most prominent Celtic deity in Gaul and Britain was Lug(us) (or Lugh in Irish mythology), whose great shrine was at Lugdunum (modern Lyon). Patron of trade and commerce, protector of travellers, and the inventor of all the arts, Lug's attributes identify him as the equivalent of the Roman god Mercury or the Greek god Hermes. Lug's feast was celebrated on 1st August. His symbol is the crow.
The Celts compared to the Greeks and Romans
Greco-Roman writers typically tell horrified accounts of the barbarous Celtic practice of human and animal sacrifice. Nevertheless, both Greeks and Romans sacrificed animals to the gods, and sometimes even humans (as did king Agamemnon with his own daughter). The Romans also famously organised games in which human beings fought each others in arenas to death for the pleasure of spectators. Furthermore, the Romans crucified political opponents and had prisoners killed or eaten alive by wild beasts in arenas. Overall, Celtic religious sacrifices were certainly less cruel and barbaric than what the Romans did.
The Celts didn't put water into their wine, which was seen as a barbaric practice by the Greeks and the Romans. The Celtic way is the one that prevailed in modern times though, so it may not be that barbaric after all.
