GAUL. 



375 



nies from many tribes took their course westwards 

 over tlie Alps into Italy, and eastwards along the 

 Danube. This passage of the Celtic Gauls over the 

 Alps (commonly placed 200 years earlier), first brings 

 that nation into the region of history. We find it 

 divided into many tribes, one of them (at that time 

 the Bituriges) with a superiority almost amounting to 

 a supremacy. The abuse of this superiority caused 

 dissensions, and individuals joined some other tribes. 

 In this manner the superiority passed into different 

 hands ; but the general system remained the same. 

 The system of dependence went through the whole 

 nation. The only free men were, in fact, the nobles 

 (who, by way of distinction, were called warriors) 

 and the priests (Druids'). The common people 

 lived in a state of subjection, defended against wrongs 

 and injuries, not by the laws, but by the protection 

 of the powerful. Among the nobility, the numerous 

 princely families held the first rank. In important 

 expeditions, they seem to have chosen a general 

 chief. (See Brennus.) The male and female Druids 

 (q. v.) were in possession of certain knowledge, 

 which they secretly taught in the depths of shady 

 groves and dark caves. They were not ignorant of 

 astronomy, the natural sciences, and poetry; but 

 their religion was replete with abominable priest- 

 craft, and horrid superstitions (frequent sacri- 

 fices of human beings). Duels and drunkenness 

 were common among them; cities few, villages 

 numerous ; their household utensils few and poor. 

 Few of them tilled the ground ; the greater part sub- 

 sisted on the produce of their herds and flocks. Their 

 beverage was a kind of beer or mead ; the cultiva- 

 tion of the vine was unknown to them. The sand of 

 the rivers and some mines furnished gold to the 

 higher ranks. Persons of distinction went into battle 

 with a cloak around their shoulders, made of a party- 

 coloured, checkered, and shining stuff (like that 

 which is still worn by the Highlanders). They wore 

 no other garment : their neck and arms, however, 

 were decorated with thick gold chains. Their high 

 stature, savage features, and matted yellow hair, 

 rendered their aspect terrible ; their impetuous and 

 blind courage, their immense numbers, the stunning 

 noise which proceeded from their numerous horns 

 and trumpets, their terrible devastations whenever 

 they passed through a country (captives were often 

 sacrificed ; the skulls of the slain served as trophies, 

 often also as goblets), rendered them the terror of 

 the western world. But they were destitute of union, 

 perseverance, and good arms ; for their shields were 

 light and badly contrived, and their enormous swords 

 of copper were bent at every blow upon iron, so that 

 it was frequently necessary to straighten them. For 

 this reason their first onset only was to be feared. 

 This nation whether the love of wine, or the invita- 

 tion of an Etruscan, whose wife had been seduced by 

 one of the princes of the country, and who thirsted 

 for revenge, had allured them into Italy this nation 

 fell upon the Etrusci, who, in comparison with them, 

 were effeminate, and who were at the same time 

 assailed by the Romans. On the very same day (396) 

 on which Camillus conquered Veji, the Gauls are 

 said to have taken by assault Melpum, a considerable 

 city of Upper Italy, belonging to the Etrusci. But 

 the tempest of this migration was soon directed 

 against the city of Rome itself, which, foreseeing its 

 own fate in the Etruscan cities that lay around it, 

 endeavoured to stop the victorious course of the 

 G auls by entering into negotiations with them. On 

 this occasion, the Roman ambassadors violated the 

 law of nations ; the incensed Gauls, being denied 

 satisfaction, advanced towards Rome, destroyed the 

 flower of the Roman youth in an engagement on 

 Uii- small river Allia, 389 B. C., sacked and burnt 



the city, and laid siege to the capital, which was on 

 the point of purchasing its deliverance with gold, 

 when Camillus appeared to rescue it. 



Our accounts of the course of the eastern Gauls 

 along the banks of the Danube, are very imperfect ; 

 this, however, is evident, that their movements occa- 

 sioned the migrations of whole nations. It appears 

 that a part of a German race, the Cimri, or Cimbri, 

 were already mixed with the Celtse. 109 years after 

 the burning of Rome, the eastern Gauls, from 280 

 278 B. C., made three destructive irruptions into 

 Macedonia and Greece, which had already been de- 

 populated by former wars. Ptolemy Ceraunus, king 

 of Macedonia, and Sosthenes, the commander of the 

 army, fell in battle, and Greece trembled. But in an 

 attack on the temple of Apollo at Delphi (which con- 

 tained immense treasures, but was protected by its 

 situation), the terrors of religion and the assaults of 

 the elements (tempests and hail-storms) came over 

 them ; they were defeated, and hunger, cold, and 

 the sword of the Greeks completed their destruction. 

 Several tribes pursued their course into Asia Minor, 

 where, under the name of Galatians, they long re- 

 tained their national peculiarities, and preserved their 

 language even to the latest period of the empire. 

 The reaction of these migrations upon Gaul itself ap- 

 pears to have been considerable. The Gauls along 

 the banks of the Danube, and in the south of Ger- 

 many, disappear from that time. Tribes of German 

 origin occupy the whole country as far as the Rhine, 

 and even beyond that river. The Cimbri, a mingled 

 race of Gauls and Germans, whom the Gauls called 

 Belgae, occupied the whole northern part of Gaul, 

 from the Seine and Marne to the British channel and 

 the Rhine, from whence they passed over into Bri- 

 tain, where they drove back those Gauls who had 

 made themselves masters of the country at an earlier 

 period, to North Britain (Scotland), where the latter 

 appear afterwards in history under the name of Cale- 

 donians (Highland Gaels), and still later, under those 

 of Picts and Scots. These Belgae or Cimbri are in 

 fact the ancient Britons. The Celtae in Gaul, though 

 retaining the chief features of those peculiar manners 

 and customs which we have above described, attained 

 a higher degree of cultivation ; to which probably 

 their intercourse with the Greeks in Massilia (Mar- 

 seilles), whose letters they used in writing their own 

 language, and with the Carthaginians, in whose 

 armies they frequently served as mercenaries, contri- 

 buted in a great measure. But they were then 

 hardly able to resist the Germans who lived on the 

 other bank of the Rhine. Their kindred tribes, the 

 Belgae and Cimbri, and the Britons, who painted 

 their bodies, fought from chariots, and practised 

 polygamy, were more fierce than the Celts. 



Meanwhile the Cisalpine Gauls, as the Romans 

 called them, after having driven one part of the 

 Etrusci south, into the present territory of Tuscany, 

 and another north, into the Rhaetian Alps, had 

 taken up their residence in the fertile plains of 

 Upper Italy. Here they continued formidable to the 

 Romans for a long time ; sometimes in wars which 

 they undertook on their own account, and at others 

 as mercenaries in the service of other nations. But 

 after the first Punic war had been successfully 

 brought to a close, 172 years after the burning of 

 Rome, the hour of revenge was come. The Gauls in 

 vain called some warlike tribes of their brethren over 

 the Alps to their aid. After a destructive war of six 

 years, the nation was compelled to submit to the 

 Romans (220 B. C.). When Hannibal carried the 

 terror of his arms to the gates of Rome, they at- 

 tempted to shake off the yoke ; but the Romans , 

 victorious over the Carthaginians, reduced them again 

 to submission. Thirty one years later (189 B. C.) 



