Capitoline Venus,
Roman Copy, Rome,
Capitoline Museum
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Gallic Invasions in Italy
In 118 BC, Rome founded its first colonia (veteran's town) in Gaul at Narbo Martius (Narbonne). Its province of Transalpina, later renamed Narbonensis (today's Provence), extended from the Maritime Alps westward to the Pyrenees, and north to Lake Geneva. After the Cimbric Wars, Germano-Celtic uprisings that occurred between 109-101 BC, regular Roman trade and organization became more secure.
Between about 120-60 BC, many of the central Gallic cultural regions bordering Transalpina to the north, including Arverni, Bituriges, Aedui, Sequani, and Helvetii had begun to organize themselves into rudimentary state governments, undoubtedly influenced by their proximity to the Roman province. Each civitas, or individual Gallic polity, elected a chief magistrate whom the Romans monitored to prevent the possibility of a dictatorship. Various Gallic civitates began issuing their own coins to help facilitate trade. Civitates were divided by Gauls into smaller units (pagi), each having at least one trade center at oppida (hillforts), and many urban centers began to prosper from trade with the south. Such administrative zones were later retained under Roman rule. Bibracte, the somewhat remotely located capital of the Aedui (later replaced by Autun), became one such successful Gallic oppidum. Here, trade thrived on the distribution of Roman wine. Quantities of amphora from long-distance trade shows Gaul was becoming integrated into the Roman economic system by the early 1st century BC .
Caesar and the Gallic Wars (58-50 BC): Soon after Caesar became consul of Cisalpine Gaul in 59 BC, he also gained command of Transalpine Gaul, the province comprising the southern coast of France and the lower Rhône Valley. A year later, he began eight successive campaigns in Gaul and Britain known as the Gallic Wars. To the north and west were lands considered barbarian, collectively called Gallia Comata, or "long-haired Gaul," which contained large parts of modern France, Belgium, Switzerland, and Germany. Caesar's opening to his Commentaries on the Gallic Wars that "Gaul is divided into three parts" refers specifically to cultural subdivisions within Gallia Comata. Furthest north were the Belgae, north and west of the Marne and Seine rivers. Next mentioned were the Aquitani, living between the Garonne river and the Pyrenees Mountains. The largest group, the Celtae, inhabited the remainder of Gallia Comata (fig.1). Archaeological investigation has supported Caesar's original cultural separation between the Celtae, Belgae and Aquitani (Cunliffe 1988). A further tripartite regional subdivision, however, can also be made within Caesar's large central area of the Celtae, into Armorican Gaul, eastern Gaul, and central Gaul. Effective native resistance in Gaul ended after 52 BC when the leader Vercingetorix was defeated by Caesar at Alésia. Three years later, during the Roman Civil War, Caesar captured the Greek cities of Massalia and St.-Blaise, and in 46 BC was formally declared triumphant in Gaul.
Augustan Administration of Gaul: Full-scale integration of Gaul into the Roman system began with the census of 27 BC. Over the next fifteen years, Augustus and his legions stabilized frontiers and reorganized Gaul's boundaries by building roads, establishing a system of tax-collection, and founding colonies at strategic locations. Gallia Cisalpina was broken up into three small provinces of Alpes Maritimae, Alpes Cottiae and Alpes Poeniae, plus a section added to Italy.
Extensive information taken from the census allowed the boundaries of the civitates to be more standardized. Throughout Gaul, new cities from Augustodonum Aeduorum (Autun) to Augusta Treverorum (Trier) were founded as local administrative centers. In Narbonensis, new cities that joined Narbo Martius included Forum Julii (Fréjus) in 49 BC, Arelate (Arles) in 46 BC, and Baeterrae (Béziers) in 36 BC. Outside of Narbonensis, Romanization was slower, with only two coloniae besides Lugdunum immediately founded: Noviodunum (Nyon) on Lake Léman; and Raurica (Augst) on the Rhine. In many cases, such as the locally effective pagi units, the Gallic civitas or native state was simply incorporated into the Roman system of government. Roman immigrants soon populated the towns alongside many natives who were given full rights of citizenship. The standard blueprint for a Roman town (fig.2: Narbonne) included a grid plan, based on an axis of two main streets, cardo (north-south) and decumanus (east-west), enclosed by a wall. At the town center was a forum or market, a law court basilica, a curia or meeting hall, often a horreum or grain warehouse, and the Capitolium for official state worship of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva. Sophisticated public amenities included aqueducts and bath complexes, plus the social entertainments of theater and amphitheater. Deep-rooted native elements such as Gallic religious cults, however, persisted in temples which often combined Celtic and Roman gods including Mercury.
The Gauls marched on Greece
The Gauls marched on Greece. The army that gathered was 152,000 infantrymen and 20,400 horsemen. The Greeks began the attack but where surprised by the ferocity of the Gauls. They fought naked and unarmored, except for shields.
Gaul Before the Romans
Julius Caesar, in the first lines of his Commentaries on the Gallic War, sets the stage for all subsequent historic discussion of Gaul in the 1st century BC: "All Gaul is divided into three parts, one of which the Belgae inhabit, the Aquitani another, the third, those who in their own language are called Celts, and in ours, Gauls.All these differ from each other in language, customs and laws. The river Garonne separates the Gauls from the Aquitani; the Marne and the Seine separate them from the Belgae. Of all these people the bravest are the Belgae. They are the furthest away from the culture and civilized ways of the Roman Province, and are least often visited by the merchants who bring luxuries which tend to make people soft; also they are nearest to the Germans across the Rhine and are continually at war with them."
Greek Colonization of Gaul: When Caesar wrote his Commentaries in 52-50 BC, the Graeco-Roman world had already known Gallic peoples for hundreds of years in both warfare and trade. Between 734-580 BC, Ionian Greeks from Phocaea on the northwest Turkish coast established ports in Mediterranean Gaul to acquire metals and other raw materials. Massalia (Marseille), France's oldest city, was founded ca. 600 BC beside marshy lowlands at the Rhône's mouth to conduct trade with Iron Age settlements upriver. By the late 7th century BC, two other Phocaean sites, St.-Blaise and La Couronne, were established near the mouth of the Rhône, with evidence of coins minted at Massalia, and Greek pottery from Rhodes, Ionia, Athens and Corinth as well as Etruscan ware. Other Greek colonies along the Riviera included Tauroention (Le Brusc), Antipolis (Antibes), Nicaea (Nice), and Olbia. The Phocaeans also founded Aléria on the island of Corsica around 560 BC, where refugees from Massalia fled when invaded by Persians in 544 BC.
Iron Age Commerce: Commerce with the Iberian peninsula was largely controlled by the Phoenicians, who in 814 BC had spread westward from the Levant coast (modern Lebanon) to found Carthage. While the Greeks held Sicily, southern Italy, and northern Mediterranean shipping, Phoenicians dominated the south as far as the Straits of Gibraltar, cutting off Greek access to the Atlantic. Thus, to trade with Iberia's east coast, where ports such as Ampurias were then held by Carthage, Greek merchants in Gaul needed overland routes. Between 600 and 450 BC, Western Hallstatt (Early Iron Age) cultures in Gaul traded widely for Greek, Etruscan, and Massalian luxury items, including amphorae, bronze drinking vessels, and small objects of gold, ivory, and amber often found as grave goods. Greek trade also reached inside the native strongholds, with Greek and Etruscan pottery and Massalian coins found at the Celtic hillfort at Ensérune by 550-425 BC.
Greeks attacked the Gauls
At sunrise the Greeks attacked the Gauls from Delphi, the main force came straight at them by the road, but the Phocians, climbed quietly through the snow by the precipices of Parnassus and got behind their backs, shooting and throwing javelins in perfect security
Gaul Map
Gaul was the ancient designation for the land south and west of the Rhine, west of the Alps, and north of the Pyrenees. The name was extended by the Romans to include Italy from Lucca and Rimini northwards, excluding Liguria. This extension of the name is derived from its settlers of the 4th and 3d cent. B.C.—invading Celts, who were called Gauls by the Romans. Their cousins in Gaul proper (modern France) probably had been there since 600 B.C., for the Greeks of Massilia (Marseilles) knew them.
Gauls encounter with Rome.
Gauls first ran into the Romans in 387 B.C. when it is said that they invaded Rome. According to Livy, it was an inhabitant of Clusium named Aruns who went to the Gauls and asked them to help him avenge his betrayal by his wife and adopted son. The Gauls then advanced southward led by a man named Brennus. The first Brennus, as he is called, sacked Rome and as the Romans were paying tribute to him, he noticed they were trying to slight him. It is said that Brennus threw his sword onto the pile saying "Vae Victus" (woe to the vanquished).
The Sack of Delphi
After the death of Alexander, many of the Gaulish mercenaries decided that Macedonia would be an ideal place because of the dissaray left there. The Gauls split into 3 groups, one of which marched in Macedonia under the command of Bolgios, possibly a Belgian, and crushed the army of Ptolemy Keraunos. The king of Macedonia was killed and his head borne aloft on a spear. Bolgios ordered a human sacrifice, but there things rested.
It was then that the second Brennus made his first appearance. According to Pausanias the geographer, Brennus succeeded in crossing his whole army over the river Sperchios. He then laid seige to the town of Heraclea and, having driven out the garrison there, marched on to Thermopylae where he defeated an army raised by a confederation of Greek cities.
Brennus then advanced across Greece, looting everything he could find. Disatisfied with the paltry loot, he decided to go on to Delphi which was reported as the treasure house of Greece. Without waiting for Kicharos, Brennus and his army of 40,000 set off to attack the temple of Apollo, the ultimate goal of his expidition.
Here it is said that Brennus was defeated by earthquakes, thunderbolts which reduced the soldiers to ashes, snow storms, showers of great stones, and "ancient heroes appearing from the heavens". It appears that after a long battle the Gauls were forced to retreat before they could reach the Delphic treasures.
The Defeat of the Gauls
These attacks were not forgotten by the Romans and after a long period of collective memory, the Cisalpine Gauls were defeated in 100 B.C. by Gaius Marius. Although this was only a minor victory, the whole of Gaul wasn't conquered until 58 B.C. by Gaius Julius Caesar.
versingetoriks -2
Later that year, Vercingetorix and his men were trapped in the stronghold of Alesia, near present-day Dijon. Caesar surrounded the oppidum and began to construct siege works. The defenders had food only for a month, and Caesar hoped to starve them into surrender before reinforcements could arrive. The circumvallation extended around the town for ten miles, too large to be occupied by the Romans. It therefore was made more secure by a series of defenses. First, facing the town, a trench twenty-feet wide was dug to protect against surprise attack. Six hundred and fifty yards behind this ditch two more trenches were dug, each fifteen feet wide and the inner one filled with water. Behind these trenches was a palisaded rampart twelve feet high, with a breastwork of earth studded with forked branches. Around the entire circuit of the wall, towers were erected every 130 yards.
Still, there were attacks by the Gauls, and the siege works were strengthened even more. Tree trunks and strong branches were cut and sharpened, and buried securely in rows in front of the trenches. In front of them, diagonal rows of pits also were dug, each three-feet deep with a thick sharpened stake at the bottom and covered with brush to hide the trap. And, in front of these, blocks of wood were buried in the ground with iron barbs (stimuli) fixed in them. Aware that Vercingetorix had sent for reinforcements to break the siege, Caesar had an similar line of defense constructed facing outward to protect against attack from a relief force. By now, the food in the town had been exhausted, and it was determined that all those who could not fight were to be turned out. The inhabitants of Alesia, who had given refuge to Vercingetorix and his men, now were compelled to leave the town, together with their wives and children. Starving, they beseeched the Romans on the surrounding walls to take them in as slaves. But the population was refused any refuge and left to die of hunger between the two armies.
Caesar writes that 250,000 infantry and 8,000 cavalry assembled to relieve the besieged town. But the Gauls had difficulty communicating across the Roman siege works that ringed the oppidum and were not able to coordinate their efforts. Now surrounded, themselves, the Romans were able to repel the first assault. At midnight the next day, the Gauls suddenly attacked again, and Vercingetorix led his men out of the town in support. But it was too dark to see and, when the relief army came nearer the Roman defenses, "they suddenly found themselves pierced by the goads or tumbled into the pits and impaled themselves, while others were killed by heavy siege spears discharged from the rampart and towers." Before he could even reach the trenches, Vercingetorix heard the army retreating and was forced back behind the town walls. Again, the relief force reassembled: "The Gauls knew that unless they broke through the lines they were lost; the Romans, if they could hold their ground, looked forward to the end of all their hardships....on that day, he said, on that very hour, depended the fruits of all their previous battles." There was a desperate struggle. The Gauls filled the trenches with dirt and bundles of sticks, pulled down the breastworks with hooks, and drove the Romans from the towers. But Caesar, his presence marked by a scarlet cloak, attacked with cavalry and additional cohorts. The Gauls broke and fled, the relieving army giving up and returning to their homes.
Vercingetorix was forced to surrender and allowed himself to be given up to the Romans. The Gallic chieftain languished in the Tullianum at Rome for five years before being publicly beheaded as part of Caesar's triumph in 46 BC. Two years later, Caesar, himself, was dead
versingetoriks -1
In 53 BC, when Caesar had left for Italy after the summer campaign season, the Gallic tribes rebelled under the leadership of Vercingetorix, who raised an army against the Roman legions still wintering in Gaul. Hearing of the rebellion, Caesar crossed the mountains in the south, digging through snow drifts six feet deep, to rejoin his troops. "The very vigour and speed of his march in such wintry conditions," says Plutarach, "was a sufficient advertisement to the natives that an unconquered and unconquerable army was bearing down upon them." To deprive the Romans of food and supplies, Vercingetorix had ordered a scorched-earth policy, and all the neighboring villages and farms were burned, "until fires were visible in all directions." But one tribe, already having torched twenty towns in a single day, refused to destroy its capital at Avaricum (Bourges), "almost the finest in Gaul, the chief defense and pride of their state."
Vergingetorix relented and set about to help defend the fortified town, which held a large supply of grain so desperately needed by the Romans. Caesar began a siege that lasted twenty-seven days. It now was early spring 52 BC, and, in spite of incessant rain, two wheeled towers, eighty-feet high, and ramps 330 feet long, over which they could be rolled into place, as well as a high siege terrace, were constructed in less than a month. The Gauls did all they could to counter or destroy the siege works. As the towers increased in height, so the defenders raised their own. They attacked the soldiers at work and tunneled under the terrace to undermine it. As the terrace approached the height of the wall, the defenders became desperate. Caesar writes that "They felt that the fate of Gaul depended entirely on what happened at that moment, and performed before our eyes an exploit so memorable that I felt I must not leave it unrecorded." It was almost midnight when they again had dug under the terrace and set it on fire. Opposite one of the towers, a Gaul was throwing pitch and tallow onto the fire when he was killed by an arrow from a catapult. Another man stepped forward to take his place and he, too, was killed. Another came forward and also was killed. This continued throughout the night until the fire finally was extinguished.
The next day, it began to rain heavily and, as the defenders took shelter, one of the siege towers was moved into position. The Gauls, taken by surprise, were dislodged from the walls and, panicked at the sight of the Romans surrounding them, threw down their weapons and fled. Exasperated at the length and difficulty of the siege, the Romans massacred the inhabitants. No-one was spared, "neither old men nor women nor children. Of the whole population--about forty thousand--a bare eight hundred who rushed out of the town at the first alarm got safely through to Vercingetorix."
The Lands of the Gauls
The Gauls, however, were not the original Europeans. Beginning in an area around Switzerland, the Celts spread westward and eastward displacing native Europeans in the process. These migrations begin around 500 BC. The Gaulish invasion of Italy in 400 was part of this larger emigration. The Romans, however, pushed them back by the third century BC; native Europeans in the north, however, were not so lucky.
Two Celtic tribes, the Cimbri and the Teutones ("Teuton," an ethnic for Germans, is derived from the Celtic root for "people"), emigrated east and settled in territory in Germany. The center of Celtic expansion, however, was Gaul, which lay north of the Alps in the region now within the borders of France and Belgium and part of Spain.
The earliest account of the Gauls comes from Julius Caesar. In his history of his military expedition first into Gaul and then as far north as Britain, Caesar dexcribed the tribal and regional divisions among the Gauls, of which some seem to have been original European populations and not Celtic at all.
The Gaulish tribes or territories frequently built fortifications that served as the military and political center of the region. These fortified centers took their names from the larger tribe—for instance, Paris took its name from the tribe of Parisi and Chartres was originally named after the tribe, the Carnuti, which had built it.
Gaulish society, like all of Celtic society, was rigidly divided into a class system. Similar class systems predominated among the Indians as well with largely the same categories. According to Julius Caesar, the three classes of Gaulish society were the druides, equites, and plebs , all Roman words. The druids were the educated among the Gauls and occupied the highest social position, just as the Brahmin class occupied the highest social position among the Indians. The druids were responsible for cultural and religious knowledge as well as the performance of rituals, just as the Brahmins in India. However obscure these religious functions might be, the druids were regarded as powerful over both society and the world around them. The most powerful tool the druids had was the power of excommunication—when a druid excommunicated a member of a tribe, it was tantamount to kicking that person out of the society.
The Early Gauls
The earliest Celts who were major players in the classical world were the Gauls, who controlled an area extending from France to Switzerland. It was the Gauls who sacked Rome and later invaded Greece; it was also the Gauls that migrated to Asia Minor to found their own, independent culture there, that of the Galatians. Through invasion and migration, they spread into Spain and later crossed the Alps into Italy and permanently settled the area south of the Alps which the Romans then named, Cisalpine Gaul.
The Gauls were a tribal and agricultural society. They were ruled by kings, but individual kings reigned only over small areas. Occasionally a single powerful king could gain the allegiance of several kings as a kind of "over-king," but on the whole the Gauls throughout Europe were largely an ethnic continuity rather than a single nation.
Ethnic identity among the early Gauls was very fluid. Ethnic identity was first and foremost based on small kinship groups, or clans—this fundamental ethnic identity often got collapsed into a larger identity, that of tribes. The main political structures, that of kingship, organized themselves around this tribal ethnic identity. For the most part, the Gauls did not seem to have a larger ethnic identity that united the Gaulish world into a single cultural group—the "Gauls" as an ethnic group was largely invented by the Romans and the Greeks and applied to all the diverse tribes spread across the face of northern Europe. The Gauls did have a sense of territorial ethnicity; the Romans and Greeks tell us that there were sixteen separate territorial nations of Gauls. These territorial groups were divided into a series of pagi, which were military units composed of men who had voluntarily united as fellow soldiers.
Gauls and Romans
At the dawn of history in Europe, the Celts in present-day France were known as Gauls. Their descendants were described by Julius Caesar in his Gallic Wars. There was also an early Celtic presence in northern Italy. Other Celtic tribes invaded Italy, establishing there a city they called Mediolanum (modern Milan) and sacking Rome itself in 390 BC following the Battle of the Allia. A century later the defeat of the combined Samnite, Celtic and Etruscan alliance by the Romans in the Third Samnite War sounded the end of the Celtic domination in Europe, but it was not until 192 BC that the Roman armies conquered the last remaining independent Celtic kingdoms in Italy.
Under Caesar the Romans conquered Celtic Gaul, and from Claudius onward the Roman empire absorbed parts of the Celtic British Isles. Roman local government of these regions closely mirrored pre-Roman 'tribal' boundaries, and archaeological finds suggest native involvement in local government. Latin was the official language of these regions after the conquests.The native peoples under Roman rule became Romanized and keen to adopt Roman ways. Celtic art had already incorporated classical influences, and surviving Gallo-Roman pieces interpret classical subjects or keep faith with old traditions despite a Roman overlay
Roman influence lead directly to the decline of the druidic priests. Prior to Roman conquests, the druids exercised enormous spiritual and political power among the celtic peoples. The druidic religion was seen as a major impediment to the "Romanization" of the newly conquered celts. Thus began a deliberate policy on the part of the Roman conquerors to replace the old celtic political structure with Roman institutions. The elimination of the druidic class was instrumental to cementing Roman authority.
This led the birth of many Romano-celtic deities, as old celtic gods took on new latin names and aspects of Roman divinities, and began to be worshipped alongside the more traditional Jovian pantheon.
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