By the Rev. A. C. Smith. 



103 



Cimmerians, the Gauls, and the Celts, were all tribes of the same 

 nation ; Nomadic tribes to a great extent, which will account for 

 their readiness to migrate : oftentimes at war with one another, 

 but none the less on that account sprung from the same origin ; 

 and all issuing at various periods from that prolific hive, the shores 

 of the Caspian 1 which afterwards sent forth the no less encroaching 

 hordes of Scythians, and in still later times precipitated upon 

 Europe the ravaging Goths and the Huns. These same Cimmerians 

 or Celts were also sometimes called " Gomerians," 3 as sprung from 

 Japhet's son, Gomer, mentioned in the book of Genesis: 3 and 

 indeed we find the prophet Ezekiel, 4 writing at about the period of 

 their last migrations, speaking of Gomer as a nation. 



Now Herodotus 5 tells us that the Cimmerians dwelt on the 

 north of the Danube and the Euxine, and that they were driven 

 out from their ancient settlements by the Scythians, who invaded 

 and then occupied their country : we learn that while some fled 



Rawlinson speaks of a Scythic population spread over the whole of Western. 

 Asia, using the same type of language ; and points out Armenia as the spot 

 •whence three several lines of Indo-European migration appear to have issued : 

 one stream advancing to the N.W., another to the S.W., another to the E. 

 [Herod: vol. i. , pp. 644 — 647. See also his whole Essay (xi.) on the Ethnic 

 affinities of the nations of Western Asia, pp. 642 — 679, and vol. ii., p. 489.] 



The first mention of Cimmerians in the Assyrian Inscriptions refers to the 

 reign of Esar-haddon, who is stated to have received the submission of Tiuspa 

 "the Cimmerian" about B.C. 675. Herodotus places the great Cimmerian in- 

 vasion of Asia in the reign of Ardys the Lydian, which (according to him) was 

 from B.C. 686 to B.C. 637. [Rawlinson's Ancient Monarchies, vol. ii., p. 468, 

 487.] Prichard's Celtic Nations, p. 142. 



1 The Celts were a colony who escaped the effects of the deluge, on the borders 

 of the Caspian. [The Celtic Druids, by Godfrey Higgins, p. xcvi., 62, 70.] 



Cartes' History of England, p. 7. 



Sharon Turner's History of England, vol. i., p. 23. 



The Ancient British Triads contain a traditionary account of the first discovery 

 of Britain, then an uncultivated desert, by a certain people, natives of a country 

 lying near Constantinople. 



2 Camden's Brittania, p. 10. 

 Tyrrell's History of England, p. 4. 

 Higgin's Celtic Druids, p. 53. 



3 Genesis x., 2, 3. 4 Ezekiel xxxviii, 6. 

 5 Herodotus i., 16, iv., 11. 

 Sharon Turner's History of England, vol. i., p. 27. 

 Rawlinson's Herodotus, vol. i., p. 371. 



