The Celts
The Gallic tribes
By the 2nd century BC, Celtic tribes were putting down roots and building permanent settlements.
Puy de Corent
Some 300 miles south of Ribemont, in the French Auvergne, is Puy de Corent, once the tribal home of the Averni, a powerful Gallic tribe. Excavations here are beginning to reveal evidence of a highly sophisticated society and the link between religion and politics among the Celts.
Puy de Corent was a meeting place between Gallic tribes, where diplomatic gifts and favours would be given to friends and neighbours. Proof of this hospitality is scattered everywhere – the remains of thousands of amphorae, each of which would once have held about 4.4 gallons (20 litres) of wine. Ancient texts say that one amphora of wine would have cost one slave.
The Celts, unlike the Romans and Greeks, drank wine undiluted, which horrified Greek and Roman traders. To them, it showed that the Celts were really barbarians.
To the Celts, wine was sacred because it symbolised a blood sacrifice. The amphorae would be ‘decapitated’ with swords and the wine would spurt out like blood. Following special feasts, the sanctuary at Puy de Corent would have been filled with decapitated amphora around sunken pits full of wine.
As serious drinkers, the Celts brought hospitality to new levels of endurance. But Puy de Corent wasn’t just a place for parties. It had a serous function as a place of assembly and politics. Here they even minted their own currency.
Bibracte and Alesia
North of Puy de Corent, in central France, is Bibracte, surrounded by formidable ramparts. In the 1st century BC, it was the capital of the Aedui, one of the most powerful tribes in Gaul. According to archaeologist Vincent Guichard, the city’s huge wall – 3.1 miles (5 kilometres) long with 15 gates – was as much a reflection of inter-tribal instability as of any threat from Rome. The fact that it was built at all shows a high level of organisation – there must have been an authority with enough power to force hundreds of thousands of people to erect it.
Celtic tribes were fiercely proud of their independence and the Aedui were no different. They minted their own currency, and even had a silver coin aligned with the Roman currency.
The Aedui and other Gallic tribes were developing rapidly into fledgling states. Who knows what might have been the future of Europe had Roman imperial expansion and the personal ambition of Julius Caesar not destroyed the Celtic dream? The tribes chose to unite to oppose the Roman invasion. From their tribal royalty came the Celtic world’s most tragic warrior leader – Vercingetorix the Gaul – whose name in Gaulish means ‘king of the marching men’.
The Aedui had long been friends of Rome, but relations soured when Vercingetorix was elected chief of the Gallic tribes. After six years of running battles, Caesar finally confronted the loose confederation in 52 BC at Alesia (near modern-day Dijon), an impregnable Celtic hill fort surrounded on three sides by deep ravines with rivers running through them. Caesar knew it would be impossible to take the fortress by assault. Instead, he decided on a siege.
Vercingetorix and his troops were trapped within the Romans’ fortifications, which extended all around the hill. The Celtic leader appealed for Gallic re-enforcements, but Caesar built a second ring of defence to protect himself against any Celtic attack. In all, the Romans created some 15 miles of ditches and 23 forts, and tens of thousands of Roman soldiers watched as Vercingetorix and his troops tried to endure the siege.
Reinforcements came to the Celts’ aid, but they were repelled. The Gauls were simply starved to submission in the hill fort. When they ran out of food and water, they surrendered and gave Vercingetorix to the Romans.
If the Celts had won, the Romans would never have invaded Britain, and who knows what a Celtic Europe might have looked like? Yet 2,000 years later, the romantic myth of what might have been had Vercingetorix won still has a powerful hold in on people’s imaginations. And the first person to articulate this idea about the Gallic leader was the very man who defeated him. Julius Caesar would later write that ‘A united Gaul forming a single nation animated by the same spirit can defy the universe.’
