Ill] AND HISTORIC TIMES 317 



was brought to its full strength on the field of battle. This 

 organization they called trimarcisia ('three-horse' system) in 

 their own tongue ; for you must know that the Celtic for 

 a horse is marca 1 ." 



This valuable passage gives us a picture of a society and 

 a military organization closely resembling the feudal system 

 that sprang up in all the countries conquered by the Teutonic 

 tribes after the downfall of the Roman Empire. We have 

 here the medieval knight attended by his squires, though in 

 the present case the latter are not freemen, but belong to the 

 conquered people, and have to follow their lord to war. But 

 the institution here set forth did not belong merely to the 

 Gauls of the Danube, for it would appear that wherever the 

 Celto-Teu tonic tribes from Central Europe pushed their con- 

 quests, they established a like system. The squires, here 

 termed serfs (douloi*) or bondsmen, are identical with the am- 

 bacti 3 of Gaul in Caesar's time, where there was a ruling class 

 of knights (equites) who had passed over the Rhine and con- 

 quered the old melanochrous population of France, the latter 

 becoming the vassals and dependents of their Celtic conquerors. 

 These Celtic lords spent all their time in war, and the greater 

 each was in birth and power, the more ambacti or clientes had 

 he around him. That the institution of ambacti was no new 

 feature among the Celto-Teutonic tribes is shown by the fact 

 that Ennius 4 , the father of Roman epic poetry (239 169 B.C.), 

 knew of it as a Gallic term. 



I have elsewhere 5 shown that the fair-haired Acheans of 

 Homeric Greece had come down from Central Europe into 

 Greece, and conquered the old dark Pelasgic inhabitants, 

 making them into their vassals and dependents, and compelling 

 them to follow them to war. We have seen, on an earlier 



1 Paus. x. 19. 4 sqq. (Timaeus, of Locri, was probably Pausanias' authority). 



2 For this use of SoOXos (and dovXela) for a serf or vassal population cf. 

 Aristotle, Pol. n. 5. 22; Thuc. v. 23. 



3 Caesar, B. G. vi. 15: plurimos circum se ambactos clientesque habent. 

 With ambactus cf. Gothic andbahti = service, andbahts = servant. 



4 Paul, ex Fest. p. 4 (Muller) : ambactus apud Ennium lingua Gallica 

 servus appellatur. 



5 Kidgeway, Early Age of Greece, Vol. i. pp. 337 sqq. 



