the Germanic Races into Europe. 45 



their rear, began, for the first time, to take their part in the 

 great drama of the nations, Then it was that the Gallic 

 population, pressed on from the north-east and confined on 

 the west by the Atlantic, passed over into Britain ; not, in- 

 deed, occupying it for the first time with a Keltic population, 

 but intruding upon the older Keltic occupants, the Gallic 

 Cantii, Belgae, and others of those newer southern tribes, 

 whose sympathy with their continental brethren first exposed 

 their country to the aggressive arms of Rome. Few questions 

 in ancient ethnology have been more keenly disputed than 

 the Germanic or Keltic character of the Belgse of Picardy ; 

 but nearly all ethnologists now agree in assuming that the 

 Belgse of Britain came from Belgic Gaul, and in the opinion 

 that the continental Belgae were Kelts. These points being- 

 assumed, all that we learn of the Belgse from Caesar—their 

 warlike hardihood in maintaining the passes of the Rhine, 

 the diversity of their dialect from the older Gauls, and the 

 union and consanguinity recognised among themselves (Cses. 

 Bell. Gall., XL, 4) — confirm the idea of their recent migration 

 from the eastern shores of the Rhine, and the consequent re- 

 centness of the Germanic intrusion of which this was a product. 

 The same great Germanic migration from the north into the 

 centre of Europe, pressing southward, drove a part of the 

 intercepted Keltae to seek an outlet down the valley of the 

 Danube, encountering in that fertile region Illyrian and 

 Thracian occupants, and mingling with or displacing them in 

 that rich country, the fertility and many natural advantages 

 of which have so often contributed to make it the theatre of 

 contending claimants. This may account for the two names, 

 Danube and Iser : the former the Keltic name, afterwards 

 adopted by the Romans, while the latter was accepted by the 

 Greeks. When Alexander the Great, in 335 B.C., moved 

 against the Thracians, he found the Kelts already settled to 

 the east of the Adriatic, and received offers of alliance from 

 them, not as a recent band of strange intruders, but as the 

 proud and ambitious aggressors, who, at a later period, under 

 Brennus, invaded Macedonia and JEtolia, and even attacked 

 the holy Delphic shrine. The Keltic tribes, thus cut off from 

 the great stock, and compelled to retrace their course, not only 



