THE EARLY IRON AGE
[Sidenote: Iron probably introduced into Britain by Gallic invaders.]
Iron-working was of course familiar to the people of the Mediterranean
and even to the continental Celts long before it was introduced into
Britain;[966] but, it need scarcely be said, everywhere until the
Middle Ages, the metal was not cast, but only wrought. Not far from
Hallstatt, the only place in Europe where the gradual transition from
the use of bronze to that of iron can be traced, were the iron mines
of Noreia, which were certainly worked at a very early period, and
from which, some archaeologists still insist, the use of iron spread
to all European lands.[967] Since iron tools and weapons of the later
Hallstatt type, ranging from about the beginning of the sixth to the
end of the fifth century before the Christian era, are almost entirely
wanting in Britain, the earliest products of our Iron Age can hardly be
older than the later of these dates. Were they introduced by immigrants
or in the ordinary course of trade? Among the round barrows on the
Yorkshire Wolds are two, situated in the parish of Cowlam, each of
which contained the skeleton of a woman. The appearance of these mounds
was not different from that of many others, most of which belonged
to the Bronze Age and a few perhaps to that of stone: the skeletons
were interred in the contracted position which had been common for
many centuries; and the pottery exactly resembled the domestic pottery
which is associated with bronze. The practised explorer who opened the
barrows confessed that but for the presence of a brooch and certain
ornaments of the Iron Age he would unhesitatingly have assigned them
to the older period; and he accordingly concluded that no new people
had come in with iron.[968] But the conclusion is not warranted except
perhaps for the particular district to which these graves belong.
The use of iron might have spread by barter to Yorkshire after it
had been introduced by new-comers into lands nearer Gaul; and the
prevalent opinion is that it was introduced about the beginning of the
fourth century before Christ by Gallic invaders who spoke a Brythonic
dialect.[969]
[Sidenote: The Belgae preceded by other Brythons, who began to arrive
about 400 B.C.]
Caesar knew nothing of any Gallic invaders of Britain except the
Belgae, who, as he gathered, inhabited the maritime districts,
evidently of the south-east and south: the people of the interior,
according to his informants, were aborigines. This statement, however,
made no distinction between the real aborigines and the round-headed
immigrants who found them in possession. It is impossible to say
certainly which of the tribes in Caesar’s time were Belgic, except the
Belgae, the Catuvellauni, and the Atrebates, none of whom possessed
territory north of the basin of the Thames;[970] but the names of
tribes and of places mentioned by Ptolemy and other late writers show
that the greater part of England and Wales and at least a considerable
part of Southern Scotland were in the first century of the Roman
occupation inhabited by Brythons; and it is morally certain that they
did not arrive after Caesar’s departure. Evidently, therefore, the
Belgae had been preceded by other Brythons. But when did the first
Belgic invaders appear? Those who are not content to take on trust
the widely different dates which have been assigned by archaeologists
will find that it is impossible to achieve any definite result. Dr.
Arthur Evans has at different times conjectured that the invasion
began about two hundred,[971] about one hundred and fifty,[972] and
about three hundred years before the birth of Christ.[973] It would
appear, however, from the time that must have been required for the
gradual evolution of the successive types of British coins which will
be noticed hereafter, that the prototype was introduced not less than
a century and a half, possibly two centuries, before the Christian
era; but it is impossible to prove, though it is generally assumed,
that money was coined by the first Belgic invaders. The date of the
commencement of the earlier Brythonic invasion is equally uncertain. It
is now provisionally fixed about 400 B.C.[974]
[Sidenote: Ethnology of the invaders.]
Classical writers are practically unanimous in describing Celts as a
tall stalwart people with fair or red hair; and physical anthropology
confirms the general accuracy of their statements. But this science
shows that the Celts, Goidelic and Brythonic, who successively invaded
Gaul were mixed themselves, and that the population whom they found
there were composed of two intermingled elements--a small dark people
who resembled the older neolithic inhabitants of our own islands,
and a short sturdy people, also dark but round-skulled, who began to
enter Gaul in the Neolithic Age. Doubtless the Belgae as well as the
earlier Brythonic invaders of Britain were an amalgam of all these
elements, the tall red Celts whose ancestors had introduced the Celtic
language into Gaul being the most conspicuous. But it is remarkable
that although Strabo emphasizes the great stature of the Britons, such
sepulchral evidence as we possess does not bear out his description.
The skeletons of the Early Iron Age that have been exhumed in Britain
are mainly those of small or middle-sized men, who to an untrained
eye seem hardly distinguishable from the neolithic race, but whose
skulls, although they too are long and narrow, generally differ from
theirs in the sight of an expert. Even the skeletons that have been
found interred with war-chariots are unlike those of the cemeteries of
North-Eastern Gaul. Unfortunately the chariot-burials of Britain are
very few: many of the later British interments of the Early Iron Age
were made by cremation; and it can only be concluded that the evidence
which might have enabled us to recognize the Celtic conquerors of the
classical type has perished or has not yet come to light.[975]
[Sidenote: The order in which the various tribes arrived unknown.]
Attempts, based upon the geographical positions of the various
Brythonic tribes, as they were defined by Caesar, Ptolemy, and other
ancient writers, have been made to determine the order in which they
arrived. Thus it has been supposed that the Britanni, coming from the
country near the mouth of the Somme, crossed the Straits and took
possession of Kent; that the Atrebates sailed up Southampton Water and
pushed inland till they reached those parts of Hampshire and Berkshire
in which they were afterwards found; that the Trinovantes, who in
Caesar’s time occupied Essex, steered for the mouth of the Thames;
that the Catuvellauni, arriving a little later, were obliged to move
higher up the valley and content themselves with parts of Middlesex,
Hertfordshire, and Oxfordshire; that the Eceni, whose settlements
were in East Anglia, came later still; and after them the Coritani,
who dwelled beyond the Wash, the Parisi, who seized the region of the
Humber, and the Brigantes, who held the greater part of Yorkshire and
Durham. The Cornavii of Cheshire and Derbyshire, whose name seems to
mean the inhabitants of the horn or peninsula, are accordingly assumed
to have landed between the Mersey and the Dee. Last of all, we are
told, came the Votadini, who took to themselves the tract between the
Tyne and the Firth of Forth.[976]
It would be surprising if these conjectures did not attain some measure
of truth; but those who will not accept guesses even from the highest
authority without testing them will perceive that they bristle with
difficulties. It is not certain that the obscure Britanni, who are
known to history only as a Gaulish tribe and are not even mentioned by
Caesar, ever invaded Britain at all: the same writer who tells us that
they were the first comers tells us also that they were Belgic, and
that the Belgae were preceded by other Brythons;[977] and the Belgae,
although they were last in the field, were not forced to seek distant
abodes, but conquered the best parts of the country which were nearest
to the Continent. We know nothing and can learn nothing of the history
of the Belgic or the earlier Brythonic settlements.
[Sidenote: ‘Late Celtic’ art.]
The Brythonic invaders introduced the first beginnings of the so-called
Late Celtic art, which, remotely connected with that of Central and
Southern Europe, attained its highest development in the British Isles.
It was partly an outgrowth of the culture which on the Continent is
called after the Helvetian settlement of La Tène, a village built on
piles in a bay of the lake of Neuchâtel. This culture, which owed much
to that of Hallstatt, has also been traced to classical and even to
Oriental sources; but in the century which preceded the Roman conquest
of Britain, while the Continent was dominated by the influence of Rome,
its offspring asserted its own individuality.[978] The Belgic conquest,
which brought Britain into closer connexion with the Continent, gave
a powerful impetus to the spread of Late Celtic art. The study of
its details and of the evolution of its various types belongs to
archaeology; but a general knowledge of its main features is essential
to the understanding of British history.
Late Celtic works of art are in general as easily recognized as
those of the Bronze Age, although only an expert could assign a
given specimen to its proper period; but they are far more difficult
to describe. While the chevron is the characteristic feature of
the older culture, that of the younger is the curve. Rectilinear
patterns, inherited from the Bronze Age, appear on many Late
Celtic objects, but generally combined with those of curvilinear
form.[979] Anthropomorphic and zoomorphic designs occasionally
occur; and although the examples which best illustrate this
tendency--two bronze-mounted buckets found at Marlborough[980] and
Aylesford[981]--were imported from Gaul, a bronze shield, dredged up
from the river Witham, which is decorated with the figure of a boar,
was undoubtedly of British workmanship.[982] Geometrical designs are
associated with representations of natural forms; and in certain cases
one may see the latter becoming so conventionalized that they are
tending to pass into the former. The scroll-like curves which hang from
the mouths of the pair of confronted animals on the Marlborough bucket
represent twigs on which they are supposed to have been browsing:
certain scabbards are embellished with undulating curves, of which the
original motive was an attempt to depict foliage; and everywhere the
effect of successive copying was to transmute forms suggested by nature
into sinuous lines, the origin of which is veiled by their very beauty.
The ultimate result was a system of decoration which has been likened
to the _flamboyant_,--the flame-like tracery of decadent French Gothic
architecture.[983]
[Sidenote: Coral and enamel.]
The Late Celtic artist was not content with merely devising graceful
lines on metal, wood, or earthenware: he often adorned his creations
with coral and enamel. Coral, which was imported from the islands
of Hyères, was no longer used in Gaul after the middle of the third
century before our era; but in this country it remained in vogue
until a much later period.[984] The art of enamelling, which had been
practised long before in the Caucasus, was already known in Gaul before
coral fell into disuse. The centre of the industry was the Aeduan
town of Bibracte, on Mont Beuvray near Autun, where the crucibles,
moulds, and polishing-stones of the workers have been discovered; but
the enamellers of Britain elaborated the art to a far higher pitch of
perfection. Enamels of many colours were produced at a late stage,
but in pre-Roman times only red.[985] Originally, as on a bronze
helmet found in the Thames by Waterloo Bridge, the enamel was let into
parallel or crossed grooves scored on the surface of the metal;[986]
but afterwards, by the _champlevé_ process, a bed was scooped out for
the reception of the fused material, and thus, by the covering of
larger surfaces, the brilliancy of the effect was enhanced. The earlier
British enamels, which show no vestiges of Roman influence, are found
principally upon bridle-bits and harness-rings.[987]
[Sidenote: Swords and scabbards.]
But Late Celtic art may be studied on many other objects besides
those which have been already mentioned. Though British swords of
the Early Iron Age are rare, and belong for the most part to dates
subsequent to the Belgic invasion, a beautiful specimen of La Tène
type was found in its bronze sheath in the village-stronghold of
Hunsbury near Northampton;[988] and several have been recovered from
the Thames, the scabbard of one being ornamented with a basket-pattern
and open-work and an S-shaped scroll, another with transverse bars like
examples from La Tène and Somme Bionne.[989] Late Celtic swords, which
invariably had bronze handles,[990] were not, like those of the Bronze
Age, leaf-shaped: their edges were nearly straight, and only tapered
slightly near the point. Some late specimens, more than three feet
long and with blunt points, intended not for thrusting but cutting,
correspond to the description of Tacitus;[991] but others are much
shorter. A dagger-sheath, found in Oxfordshire, is noticeable for its
unusual decoration,--minute punched ornament between two pairs of ribs,
which follow the outline of the edge, and not a single curve;[992]
while a scabbard from the Thames at Wandsworth is adorned with mock
spirals and lozenges enclosed between parallel ribs.[993]
[Illustration: FIG. 37. ½]
[Sidenote: Mirrors.]
The reader who has been taught to regard his British forefathers as
savages would not expect to find that they used mirrors; but although
some of those whose pre-Roman age is certain are quite plain, a
beautiful specimen which was found at Trelan Bahow in Cornwall, where
to the last Roman influence was hardly felt, is probably representative
of many which were made in the century before the Roman conquest, even
though its own date may be later than the time of Claudius. Unlike the
primitive mirrors, which were of iron mounted with bronze, it is made
entirely of the brighter metal, and ornamented on the back with three
circles, which enclose patterns of engraved scroll-work, filled with
cross-hatching.[994]
[Illustration: FIG. 38. ½]
[Sidenote: Brooches and pins.]
The _fibula_ or brooch--the prototype of the modern safety-pin--which
had come into use on the Continent in the earliest period of the
Hallstatt culture, was not known in our island before the Iron
Age. Brooches of the successive La Tène types, in all of which the
pin was straight and the body curved like a bow, have been found
in considerable numbers; one of the earliest, from Water Eaton in
Oxfordshire, being engraved with scrolls and the familiar ring-and-dot
pattern, while another, from Avebury, was set with coral.[995] Some
brooches discovered in the stronghold of Hod Hill, near Blandford, had
been modelled upon an Italian pattern of much earlier date.[996] Pins,
however, were still used for fastening the dress. Plain ones, which
may be as old as the fourth century before Christ, have been found at
Hagbourne Hill in Berkshire, and on the site of a pile-dwelling at
Hammersmith, and others, which are hardly distinguishable in shape from
a modern scarf-pin and belong to the period immediately preceding the
coming of the Romans, in various parts of Scotland;[997] but one which
lay among the relics in a grave near Driffield was far more elaborately
designed, its head being a miniature chariot-wheel with four spokes,
curiously inlaid with shell.[998]
[Sidenote: Ornaments.]
Of our Late Celtic ornaments many are undatable; and while the torques
and richly decorated collars which are familiar to all antiquarians
are common in early Gaulish graves, those of this country which are
most characteristic of Late Celtic art appear to belong to the Roman
period:[999] but bronze bracelets set with paste were worn even in
Yorkshire; and a penannular bracelet with small tooth-like projections,
which closely resembles far earlier specimens from Hallstatt, belongs
to the same district.[1000] Of less costly trinkets lathe-turned
bangles of Kimmeridge shale,[1001] glass armlets,[1002] and glass
beads[1003] can hardly perhaps be classified as works of art; but it is
noteworthy that the beads, yellow, green, and blue, with their zigzag
patterns and wavy white lines, which have been found at Glastonbury and
in Yorkshire barrows, are utterly different from those of the Bronze
Age, and belong mainly to a late period of the La Tène culture, though
some had analogues in the cemetery of Hallstatt. As Glastonbury has
also yielded pieces of glass slag and of crucibles, the beads were
probably manufactured on the spot.[1004] For some reason which has not
been explained gold ornaments were apparently far rarer both in this
country and in Gaul than in the preceding period.[1005]
[Sidenote: Woodwork.]
Among the finest examples of woodwork are bronze-mounted tankards which
have been found in Suffolk[1006] and Merionethshire,[1007] the former
being ornamented with circles enclosed between bronze bands, and each
containing the mystic three-limbed figure, called the _triskele_, which
seems to have been akin to the swastika; while the handle of the latter
is notable for its flamboyant tracery. Specimens of a different kind
include a beautiful bowl from Glastonbury, the sweeping curves incised
on its surface expanding into circles and trumpet-like projections
which enclose diagonal cross-hatching, and a rectangular object from
the same site, which has no curves but is engraved with a step-like
pattern shaded with cross-hatching of double diagonals.[1008]
[Illustration: FIG. 39. ⅓]
[Sidenote: Pottery.]
[Illustration: FIG. 40. ⅛]
Not less interesting is the Late Celtic pottery, which is generally
very different from that of the Bronze Age, and the distinctive forms
of which were first classified a few years ago by the explorer of
the cemetery at Aylesford. Since then numerous examples of the same
types have been found in other parts of Kent and in Essex; but the
influence was felt as far north as Northamptonshire, and as far west
as Dorsetshire. These vessels were turned upon the wheel and were much
finer in quality than those of the Bronze Age. The most characteristic
of the cinerary urns, which in outline may be likened to a truncated
pear, stand upon narrow pedestals and are generally divided into zones
by ridges and corresponding grooves; while a few are incised on the
bottom with concentric circles. They closely resemble urns found in
Belgic cemeteries near St. Valéry-sur-Somme and in the lower valley of
the Seine, which are nearly contemporary with them, belonging to the
latest period of Gallic independence; but vases of the same form had
been deposited three centuries earlier in the cemetery of Somme-Bionne,
where the bodies had all been simply interred, whereas the urns of
Aylesford were filled with cremated bones. The type, however, was
not indigenous in Gaul. Its descent has been traced to vessels of
earthenware found in North Italian graves of the fifth and fourth
centuries before Christ, which were in their turn derived from bronze
vases common on both shores of the Northern Adriatic. The cordons on
the bronze vessels were simply survivals of wooden rings that compacted
a frame of staves to which metal plates had been riveted.[1009]
[Illustration: FIG. 41.]
Pedestalled vases were not the only pottery found at Aylesford and
the analogous sites. There were others, bowl-shaped or with low
globular bodies, some of which were also cordoned, while a few had the
triangular decoration characteristic of the Bronze Age.
Domestic vessels of wholly different forms have also been recovered,
some with handles on either side, and perforated bases, which were
perhaps used for draining honey-combs, and others which are more easily
recognized as Late Celtic by their flamboyant decoration. A fragment
of this ware was taken from the same cavern near Torquay which had
been used as a dwelling-place in palaeolithic times. Household pottery
was still commonly made by hand; and while some specimens were without
any ornament, others had rectilinear patterns of such a kind that, but
for the associations in which they were found, they would have been
referred unhesitatingly to the Age of Bronze.[1010]
[Sidenote: The noblest creation of Late Celtic art.]
If archaeologists were invited to name the noblest creation of Late
Celtic art, I think that with one consent they would point to the
bronze shield which was lost in the Thames, and found after it had
lain there some nineteen hundred years. Oblong with rounded ends and
gently contracted in the middle, the outline forming an endless curve,
it is adorned with three successive circles of _repoussé_ work, a
large central one and two smaller, connected by sinuous lines, within
which lesser circles are contained. The central piece of each greater
circle is a boss enclosing enamelled swastika designs and surrounded
by curves, S-shaped and C-shaped, which begin and end with the same
mysterious device. Yet, though the beauty of form remains, the glory
of colouring is gone; and one can only now imagine how, when the
shield hung upon the forgotten warrior’s arm, gleaming bronze and
raised curves and red enamel combined to produce their due effect.
Like Stonehenge this was the work of a master: not one detail could be
altered, or removed, or added without impairing its perfection.[1011]
[Illustration: FIG. 42. ⅕]
[Sidenote: Imported objects of art.]
Among the products of Late Celtic art that have been found in Britain
are some of foreign manufacture, which testify to the increased
commercial activity that followed the Belgic invasion. Besides the
bronze-mounted bucket, already mentioned, the Aylesford cemetery
yielded a bronze flagon, which had been made in Northern Italy:[1012]
an elegant Graeco-Italian two-handled cup of black glazed earthenware
with white foliated ornament encircling its inner margin was discovered
in the rick-yard of the Manor Farm at Dorchester in Oxfordshire;[1013]
while the Marlborough bucket is adorned with figures of sea-horses
which are common on Gallic coins of the neighbourhood of Rennes, and
which warrant the conjecture that it was imported from North-Western
Gaul,[1014] perhaps in one of the vessels that plied between the Loire
and Ictis. What else besides tin the Britons in the days of their
independence exported in return for such articles we do not know; but
in a later chapter we shall see that a long list of their exports and
imports was compiled by Strabo.[1015] The carrying-trade was for the
most part in the hands of Gallic ship-owners; but some cargoes were
perhaps loaded in British bottoms. The British envoys who presented
themselves in Caesar’s camp in 55 B.C. may indeed have crossed the
Channel in a Gallic merchantman, and so may the hostages who were
sent to him after his first invasion of Britain; but it is unlikely
that the maritime Belgic tribes, who must have set out from Gaul in
ships of their own, built none after they had settled in Britain, or
that the numerous British adventurers who reinforced Caesar’s Gallic
enemies depended for their transport upon the latter. The only British
vessels, however, which are expressly mentioned by our authorities were
light coracles of lath covered with hides, which Caesar observed when
he was in Kent and afterwards copied when he was fighting in Spain
against Pompey’s lieutenants,[1016] and which are still used by Irish
fishermen off the coast of Connaught.[1017] These boats were doubtless
employed in coastal navigation and on inland waterways; but much of
the intertribal traffic must have been carried on along trackways,
[Sidenote: Trackways.] which are still traceable, and the prehistoric
antiquity of which is proved by their association with hill-forts. Most
of them, like the Pilgrim’s Way, which is known to all who have tramped
the high grounds of Surrey and Kent, ran along ridges or the slopes of
downs which were generally unencumbered by forest or morass. If their
origin could be traced, we should find that they were formed by the
earliest settlers who felt the need of communication, along the lines
of least resistance which nomadic hunters had followed when they passed
from one temporary settlement to another;[1018] and doubtless attempts
were made to render them more suitable for wheeled traction when the
Cornish miners began to convey their tin in wagons to the coast, and
the invaders of the Iron Age brought their chariots from Gaul. Even
then, however, wheel-less vehicles, like those which Sir Arthur
Mitchell noticed a few years ago in Strathglass and Kintail, must have
been used for carting timber down steep hills or over heaths where no
wheeled carriage could have moved.[1019]
[Sidenote: Coinage.]
Foreign commerce as well as domestic trade were greatly stimulated by
the introduction of coinage and by the development of a ruder form of
currency. Towards the end of the fourth century before the Christian
era the Greeks of Massilia had introduced into Gaul gold coins of
Philip of Macedon, which bore on the obverse a representation of the
head of Apollo wreathed in laurel, and on the reverse a charioteer
driving a pair of horses with the name _Philippos_ stamped underneath.
On these coins the Gallic coinage was modelled, and the British coinage
was derived mainly from that of Gaul or through Gaul from a Macedonian
stater; for certain peculiarities are noticeable on our earliest
coins which distinguish them from those of Gaul.[1020] Evidently a
considerable time must have elapsed before the new art travelled from
Southern to Northern Gaul, and again before it crossed the Channel;
and it is only natural to find that the oldest and heaviest British
coins weigh no more than a hundred and twenty grains, or thirteen
grains lighter than the Philippus, although, on the other hand, they
are heavier than Gallic coins which belong to the latter half of the
second century before Christ.[1021] Until about a quarter of a century
after Caesar’s invasion the British coins were uninscribed: indeed
uninscribed coins were still current during the earlier years of
the Roman occupation.[1022] Their weight gradually diminished; and
gradually, owing to successive copying, the head of Apollo and his
wreath, the charioteer, the chariot, and the horses became more and
more conventionalized and degraded, the head in certain cases passing
ultimately into a cruciform pattern or even into a four-leaved flower,
the charioteer being evolved into pellets, and the pair of horses
becoming first one, then more and more grotesque until it lost all
resemblance to a quadruped. Die-sinkers (who were doubtless few) would
use the same dies or follow the same general type during their working
career; and new types appeared when their successors came to engrave
new dies. By estimating the time which would have been required for
these successive alterations, it has been calculated that the earliest
British coins must have been struck about a hundred and fifty or
perhaps two hundred years before the birth of Christ.[1023]
For many years the only coins of Britain were gold of two values, the
smaller being a quarter of the weight of the larger;[1024] and it may
be gathered from the testimony of Strabo[1025] and Tacitus[1026] that
they were made, at all events in part, from metal extracted from the
alluvial deposits of the Cornish peninsula. Coins of silver, bronze,
and even tin were afterwards circulated, but probably not before the
era of redoubled commercial activity which began when the British
islands became more closely connected with the Continent in consequence
of Caesar’s invasion: indeed many of the silver coins are little
earlier than the time of Claudius.[1027] Specimens of all these metals
are much scarcer than those of gold. Only two British tin coins are
known to exist; and in the western counties no bronze coin has ever
been found.[1028]
Specimens of the prototype of British gold coins have been found more
frequently in Kent than in any other county; and it may be inferred
that, as might have been expected, they were first struck in the more
civilized district which was nearest to the Continent.[1029] For a
long period indeed the gold currency was confined to the southern and
eastern districts: before Caesar’s time there is no evidence that any
tribes coined money except those whose territories lay south of a
line drawn from the Wash to the Bristol Channel; and even from these
the peoples of Gloucestershire, Northern Somersetshire, and Northern
Wiltshire must probably be excluded.[1030] Uninscribed coins have
indeed occurred as far north as Yorkshire,[1031] and as far west
as Cornwall;[1032] but they had found their way thither from other
tribes.[1033]
Many coins of British origin which have been discovered in France,
especially in the Belgic territory,[1034] and many Gallic coins in
South-Eastern Britain, bear further witness to the development of
international trade.[1035]
[Sidenote: Iron currency bars.]
But coins were not the only medium of exchange. Caesar, in his
description of the manners and customs of the Britons, remarked that
some of them made use of iron bars of specified weights as a substitute
for coins.[1036] Until a very recent period antiquaries were waiting
for some lucky find which might corroborate the accuracy of Caesar’s
statement, not knowing that the evidence was before their eyes and
only needed interpretation. Within the last eighty years a large
number of iron bars have been unearthed in Berkshire, Northamptonshire,
Worcestershire, Gloucestershire, Somersetshire, Dorsetshire, Hampshire,
and the Isle of Wight. Many of them were found on well-known sites of
the Early Iron Age, such as the lake-village of Glastonbury, and the
forts of Hod Hill and Spettisbury; and some of the hoards comprised
very numerous specimens--amounting in two cases to about one hundred
and fifty, and in a third to three hundred and ninety-four--which had
been buried deep in the ground. A tiro might take them for swords;
but to the experts who compare them with the known swords of the Late
Celtic Period it is evident that they contain too much metal; and,
moreover, they may be arranged, according to their weight, in three
groups, the heaviest being twice as valuable as the intermediate, and
four times as valuable as the lightest. Not a single specimen has come
to light in the eastern and south-eastern counties, in which coins are
most abundant.[1037]
[Sidenote: Mining.]
The British iron-mines of which Caesar speaks were situated in the
Wealden Forest; and although they were not finally abandoned before the
nineteenth century, it is probable that some of the pits which mark
the site of the works were excavated by British miners.[1038] But the
iron from which some of the currency-bars were wrought was obtained, in
the opinion of an eminent metallurgist, from the Forest of Dean,[1039]
and, as we shall presently see,[1040] those which were found in
Northamptonshire may have been manufactured on the spot. Mining indeed
was one of the principal industries of Britain. Tin was still exported,
if not in [Sidenote: About 100 B.C.] Caesar’s time, at least as late as
that of Posidonius;[1041] copper was still needed for bronze ornaments,
horse-trappings, sword-sheaths, and other objects, and indeed in
certain districts for cutting-tools;[1042] and although the numerous
‘pigs’ of lead which have been found in Staffordshire and Cheshire
belong to the time of the Empire, the discovery of leaden celts and
sword-pommels of the Bronze Age[1043] raises the presumption that the
mines of those districts, of the Mendip Hills, Flintshire, and the
neighbourhood of Matlock may have been worked even by the Britons.[1044]
Looking at all these tokens of industrial enterprise, one is
prepared to find evidences of increased comfort and more [Sidenote:
Agriculture.] settled conditions of life. Since the Bronze Age
agriculture had undoubtedly made a notable advance. It is impossible to
tell whether the Britons, like the Gauls, recognized private property
in land;[1045] but archaeology has furnished abundant evidence, which
confirms Caesar’s statement, that at all events in the south-eastern
districts corn was grown in plenty. When he made his first expedition
to Britain, his army, numbering at least twelve thousand men, reaped
enough wheat in the near neighbourhood of Walmer to supply its wants
for a fortnight or more; while in the following year he requisitioned
from the people of Essex grain for four legions with their auxiliaries
and seventeen hundred cavalry, which was delivered within a few
days.[1046] An iron sickle and a ploughshare found in Bigbury camp
near Canterbury;[1047] traces of terrace cultivation on the Sussex
downs;[1048] grain of several kinds stored in Worlebury Fort, in the
Glastonbury lake-village, and in Hunsbury, where also were found
fragments of stone querns in such profusion that every family may
well have possessed its own, bear witness to the industry of the
British farmers.[1049] So also perhaps do the famous dene-holes of
Kent, Essex, and Norfolk, whose purpose has been a theme of voluminous
controversy, but of which the most satisfactory explanation seems to
be that they were for the most part subterranean granaries, which
may have been used as refuges in time of danger, and that the chalk
extracted in the process of excavation was used, as Pliny says, for
manuring fields.[1050] Under the necessity of cultivating fresh land
considerable progress must have been made in clearing the forests; and
axes, saws, and bill-hooks, with which the woodmen worked, are still
to be seen.[1051] It is true that even in the more civilized south
the great Wealden Forest, in which swine, guarded by fierce dogs, fed
secure among wolves and foxes, badgers, and deer, still extended beyond
the chalk downs from the neighbourhood of West Hythe to the eastern
border of Hampshire, reached northward as far as Sevenoaks, and skirted
the Surrey Hills; while great parts of Essex were overgrown with wood;
another forest overshadowed the valley of the Kennet from Hungerford
to Windsor; and the Isle of Ely was surrounded by broad meres, swelled
by the heavier rains which fell in those days.[1052] But even in Essex
much timber must have been removed to make room for the cornfields from
which the Trinovantes supplied Caesar’s legions, and in Kent to form
the denes in which cattle grazed; while of those myriad homesteads
which Caesar passed on his devastating march not a few must have been
built upon reclaimed land.
[Sidenote: Dwellings of the rich.]
The researches of the eminent scholar who has so greatly enlarged
our knowledge of Roman Britain have led him to suggest that among
these homesteads there may have been, besides the round Celtic huts,
dwellings, belonging to the rich, which might almost be described
as country houses. Under Roman administration the rural parts of
Britain, as of Northern Gaul, were parcelled into estates, the owners
of which let out the greater part to cultivators who were in a state
of semi-serfdom, while their demesne lands were tilled by slaves.
The houses belong to two types, known as the Corridor type and the
Courtyard type, neither of which exists anywhere save in Britain and
the north of Gaul. The corridor house consisted of a row of rooms
with a passage running along them: the other of three such rows,
which formed three sides of a quadrangle. Since there is little
resemblance between either of these types and those of Italy, it may be
assumed that the extant examples of both, although they had been made
luxurious by Roman mosaics and hypocausts and baths, were but modified
representatives of the chieftains’ houses which Caesar saw.[1053]
[Sidenote: Towns.]
Nor were petty hamlets and isolated cottages the only places of abode.
Town-life was beginning to emerge. The Britons, like the Gauls,
had large fortified villages, which afterwards gave place to the
flourishing Romano-British towns whose secrets are being revealed by
pick and shovel. Camulodunum, or Colchester, the chief town of the
Trinovantes, and Verulamium, hard by St. Albans, the chief town of the
Catuvellauni, each of which had its mint before the Roman conquest,
were doubtless tribal centres before Caesar came.[1054] So too,
probably, was Corinium, the capital of the Dobuni, which stood upon the
site of Cirencester;[1055] and Calleva, now Silchester, the excavation
of which has been pursued for many years with illuminating results,
was surrounded by a rampart which had evidently defended the capital
of the Atrebates in pre-Roman times.[1056] London, which, if we may
trust Ptolemy,[1057] was in the territory of the Cantii, was probably
not less ancient; for _Augusta_, the name which Roman officialism
endeavoured to impose upon it, was unable to resist the vitality of
the Celtic appellation.[1058] Imaginative historians have pictured
British London in the midst of a vast lagoon;[1059] but although the
site of Westminster Abbey was an island surrounded by a marsh, and
the Walbrook, where it flowed into the Thames, was little less than
a hundred yards in width, it was proved during the construction of a
sewer in London Wall that the land on the north side of the city had in
Roman times been as dry as it is to-day.[1060]
[Sidenote: Hill-forts.]
The tribal capitals were of course fortified; but the old hill
strongholds of the Neolithic Age and the Bronze Age had not been
abandoned; and new ones were doubtless constructed as occasion
required. Among those that have yielded remains of the Late Celtic
Period the most famous are Worlebury, which crowns a headland just
north of Weston-super-mare; Hod Hill, which rises sheer above the
valley of the Stour, four miles north-west of Blandford; Bigbury
Camp, through which runs the Pilgrim’s Way; and Winkelbury Camp in
South Wiltshire, Mount Caburn, overhanging Lewes, and Cissbury Camp,
already mentioned for its neolithic factory, which have been excavated
by General Pitt-Rivers. Worlebury is the most remarkable of the few
stone forts in the west of England. Unlike the great earthworks it
has no ditch, because it needed none; and on its northern side a
limestone precipice rendered fortification superfluous. The rampart
is a vast wall, compacted with rubble and faced on either side with
dry masonry; and, to prevent an enemy from demolishing it, the outer
face was buttressed by heaps of loose stones. Many of the modern walls
in the neighbourhood of the fortress are indistinguishable from it in
structure.[1061] At Winkelbury large openings were left in that part
of the rampart which is contiguous to the plain, probably to enable
cattle to be driven in rapidly when marauders were near; while another
rampart, which bisects the camp, may have been designed to separate
the cattle-pound from the quarters of the garrison.[1062] Cissbury,
the principal fort on the Sussex Downs, was one of the few British
strongholds which appear to have had access to a permanent supply of
water: about a mile and a half off, at a place called Broadwater,
is a spring, abundant enough for an army, which is connected by a
trackway with the southern entrance.[1063] The most characteristic
feature of Mount Caburn is the number of pits which, as at Worlebury,
are contained within its area. In both camps these pits are so small
that they could not have been ordinarily inhabited, although, during
a siege, they might have afforded shelter: probably they were used
as store-rooms, for some of them contained corn.[1064] Dwellings,
however, were connected with them; for the remains of a clay wall were
discovered on Mount Caburn, impressed with marks of wattle-work; and
it may be inferred that many such huts, which have left no trace,
once existed within the ramparts.[1065] Bigbury was probably one of
the entrenchments of which Caesar was thinking when he said that ‘the
Britons apply the term fortress to woods difficult of access and
fortified with rampart and trench in which they are in the habit of
taking refuge from a hostile raid’.[1066] The familiar sentence was a
stumbling-block to Pitt-Rivers; for, as we have seen, the British forts
were as a rule constructed upon treeless heights, and the presence of
trees upon the slopes would have been incompatible with the designs of
the engineers: but Caesar’s observations must of course be accepted;
and we can only suppose that the entrenchments which he described
were exceptional even in the region which was the theatre of his
campaign.[1067] May we conjecture that they had been erected in the
Iron Age by Celtic immigrants, and that their lack of finish was due to
the lazy shrinking from the hard labour of fortification which Caesar
regarded as characteristic of the Gauls?[1068]
The fort of Pen-y-Gaer, which overlooks the valley of the Conway,
is remarkable as an almost unique specimen of ancient military
engineering. A storming-party which had succeeded in passing the two
outer ditches would have fallen, in attempting the next, under the
missiles that showered from the rampart, on to _chevaux de frise_ of
pointed stones.[1069]
[Sidenote: Some permanently inhabited.]
The relics that have been collected from the hill-forts of the Iron
Age prove that the forts themselves, like those of Gaul, were not
merely places of refuge but permanent abodes. Those that were situated
on heights extremely difficult of access or remote from water were
of course very sparsely inhabited in time of peace; but others were
analogous to the Gallic fortresses which Caesar called _oppida_, and
which were evidently distinct from the refuges, such as Aduatuca,
which he designated as _castella_.[1070] Pottery, it is true, would
have been indispensable even during a few days’ siege; and the stone
lamp, resembling that of Grimes’s Graves,[1071] and blackened by
use, which was recovered from Castle Law in Perthshire,[1072] might
well have been needed at such a time. But when we find bill-hooks,
ploughshares, bridle-bits, and fragments of querns among the objects
that had been left in the forts which have been mentioned, it is clear
that they were occupied by an industrial population: iron slag, which
lay among the deposits on Hod Hill, was evidence of metallurgy; while
the loom-weights which were collected on the same spot, the bone
weaving-combs of Cissbury and Mount Caburn, and the spindle-whorls
which abounded not only in these comparatively civilized settlements
but also in a stone fortress on far St. David’s Head show that among
the inhabitants were women who pursued their ordinary domestic
avocations.[1073] This Welsh stronghold was almost identical in
construction with Carn Brea,[1074] and the hut-circles which the two
contain are exactly alike; yet the time which had elapsed since the
Cornish ramparts were thrown up was as long as that which separates us
from Alfred the Great.[1075]
Although many of the Scottish forts can be referred to the Early Iron
Age, it would perhaps be impossible to prove that the relics found in
any of them were earlier than the time of Caesar’s invasion;[1076]
but two have an interest of their own as being the only examples that
have yet been observed in Britain of fortifications constructed, like
the Gallic walls which he described,[1077] conjointly of timber and
stone. In one of them, situated at Burghead near Elgin, wooden logs
were actually discovered in the stone walls;[1078] while at Castle Law,
which stands upon a hill commanding a view over the Tay, as it winds
through the carse on the west and loses itself in its eastern estuary,
the outer face of the wall contained rectangular openings, which had
manifestly been designed for the reception of beams.[1079]
[Sidenote: Hunsbury.]
While the hill-forts were probably only inhabited permanently by
comparatively small numbers, and, like Gergovia, the mountain-city
of Auvergne, where Vercingetorix defeated Caesar, may have sheltered
thousands of fugitives in time of need, one stronghold at least of the
other group was a town in the strictest sense of the word. Hunsbury,
the most celebrated representative of this class, which stands upon
high ground about two miles south-west of Northampton, might never have
surrendered its precious relics if the iron ore which was known to
underlie the site had not attracted the prospector. About thirty years
ago a company was formed to win the iron; and navvies accidentally
did the work which would have been better performed under scientific
direction. Hunsbury is so small that it could hardly have been a tribal
centre: the entrenchment encloses only four acres,--less than the
twelfth part of the area of Hod Hill. Not the faintest trace of Roman
influence could be detected among the remains, which are now arranged
in the Northampton Museum; and the experts who examined them concluded
that they belonged to the time of Caesar’s invasion. They were found
in pits, resembling those of Mount Caburn, about three hundred of
which had been dug inside the rampart; and here too there was evidence
that the dwellings had been huts of wattle-work. The townspeople were
well armed: they kept horses and chariots, wove their own cloth, sawed
their own timber, made their own earthenware, and grew their own corn;
and heaps of slag showed that they had smelted the ore, which lay
thenceforward undisturbed for nineteen hundred years.[1080] One of
several skulls which were found just outside the town was perforated
with three holes, which suggest that the British Celts, like the Gauls
and their neolithic predecessors, made amulets out of the remains of
their own dead.[1081]
[Sidenote: Inhabited caves; pit-dwellings; ‘Picts’ houses’; beehive
houses; and brochs.]
But perhaps not many British settlements were of this comparatively
advanced type. In the Late Celtic Period, and indeed long after its
close, caves were still inhabited, as throughout the prehistoric
ages, in some cases by outlaws, who made a precarious livelihood by
robbing wealthy travellers.[1082] Pit-dwellings in small groups,
which apparently differed little from those of the Neolithic Age,
have been found stored with Late Celtic relics;[1083] and doubtless
it was from habitations of this class that the thatched huts of mud
and wattle-work which Strabo[1084] describes, and the remains of which
have been already noticed, were evolved. Such cottages, as Caesar[1085]
testifies, were much the same in Gaul and Britain. Posidonius was made
welcome in them when he travelled in Gaul. He tells us how his hosts,
seated on straw round low tables, took their meat in their fingers and
tore it like lions or chopped it in pieces with their pocket-knives,
and washed it down with draughts of beer from earthenware or silver
beakers; how the meal was sometimes interrupted by a quarrel, when the
disputants sprang to their feet and fought till one was slain.[1086]
In the far north and in the Cornish peninsula men lived in underground
dwellings, commonly called ‘Picts’ houses’, which generally consisted
of a paved trench lined with dry masonry, roofed over with slabs,
and terminating in a round chamber; while in some Scottish examples
rooms were grouped on both sides of the gallery.[1087] Related to
these structures are the Scottish mound-dwellings or bee-hive houses,
specimens of which in the island of Lewis were still inhabited in
the nineteenth century. They may be looked for in places such as
the Hebrides, where branches large enough to form roofs like those
of pit-dwellings were not to be had. In some a central chamber was
connected with others which opened out of it: a hole, which could be
closed at will, was left in the roof for the escape of smoke; the
chinks between the stones were stuffed with grass or moss; and the
roof was covered with turf, which adhered to the interstices and made
the structure compact. It is impossible to assign a precise date to
these huts. Some of them contained querns and were certainly occupied
in the time of the Romans; but probably many had been built before,
while others are comparatively modern.[1088] The most elaborate
buildings of this type were the brochs, whose range extends from the
Orkney and Shetland Isles, which contain nearly a hundred and fifty,
to Berwickshire, but which do not exist outside the Scottish area.
These buildings, which were really small forts, represent the art of
dry-walling at its zenith. They were round towers about sixty feet high
and fifty feet in diameter. If an enemy succeeded in forcing a way
in, he found himself in an inner court open to the sky and enclosed
by a commanding wall, pierced by numerous apertures, which formed the
windows of encircling galleries, from behind which the defenders were
prepared to shoot.[1089] The relics which have been found in them
belong for the most part to the close of the Roman occupation and
even later; but some which have been excavated in Caithness contained
painted pebbles like those of the late palaeolithic cavern of Mas
d’Azil; and it is possible that they may have existed in pre-Roman
times.[1090]
[Sidenote: The Glastonbury marsh-village.]
The most interesting, however, of all the Late Celtic settlements
is the far-famed marsh-village of Glastonbury. Besides those of
Holderness, which have been already mentioned, there are several
lake-dwellings in Great Britain which belonged to the Early Iron Age;
but almost all seem to have been built after the commencement of
the Christian era.[1091] Glastonbury, on the other hand, was first
inhabited more than two centuries before the Roman conquest. The
peat-moor on which it stands was then surrounded by a shallow mere, and
is now covered by low circular mounds which mark the positions of the
former huts. Timber and brushwood, surmounted by layers of clay and
stones, were laid upon the peat to serve as foundations, and retained
in place by piles fixed round their margins. The huts were then built
of wood, filled in with wattle and daub; and the entire village was
protected by a palisade. The foundations were, however, so unstable
that they gradually sank; and in order to keep the floors dry, fresh
timber and clay were periodically added. When this was done, the old
hearth-stones were left undisturbed; and their presence attests the
construction of the successive floors. Among the numerous relics which
excavation has revealed, and which prove that skilled agriculturists,
potters, weavers, wood-carvers, and coopers lived in the village, there
is hardly a single weapon: the sling-bullets evidently served only for
killing game. Dozens of coloured pebbles, similar to others which have
been found on Hod Hill, were perhaps used in some indoor game;[1092]
and the spur of a cock may suggest to those who remember that the
Britons thought it impious to eat poultry that the pastime for which,
as Caesar says, the birds were reared was cockfighting.[1093] It is
hardly necessary to mention the weaving-combs, the spindle-whorls, the
querns, the harness-buckles, and the other objects which are common in
Late Celtic settlements, though it is curious that the bridle-bits were
made of deer-horn; but the explorers were astonished to find a bronze
mirror, tweezers, rouge, and other exotic objects, which showed that
continental luxury had invaded this remote region.[1094]
[Sidenote: Dress.]
The arts of the toilet had indeed been elaborated not only in the more
civilized south but even in places which, like the Yorkshire Wolds,
had no direct communication with foreign lands.[1095] The tunics,
the cloaks which men and women alike wore, fastened on the right
shoulder with a brooch, the breeches which were common to Brythonic
Celts in Britain and Gaul, and the use of which seems to have been
borrowed by the Continental Celts from the Scythians,[1096] the kilts
which, as we may perhaps infer from stone monuments,[1097] were the
national garb of the Goidels, were made, like the modern tartan, of
many-coloured cloths; while the men whom Caesar encountered, although,
like the Gauls, they wore their hair long, and cultivated moustaches,
carefully shaved the rest of their faces and even their bodies.[1098]
The chieftain driving his chariot, his brilliant cloak clasped by a
coral-studded brooch, his sword clanking in its decorated scabbard, his
bronze shield gleaming like gold and adorned with enamel, his horses’
bridle-bits showing enamelled cheek-pieces, and their harness jingling
with open-work bronze ornaments,[1099] was perhaps only a splendid
barbarian; but his weapons and his trappings were not mere products of
a factory:--they were true works of art.
[Illustration: FIG. 43. ½]
[Sidenote: Reading and writing.]
Nor indeed are indications wanting that Britons of the upper class--not
Druids only--had some tincture of letters. The Druids of Gaul, and
presumably also of Britain, used Greek characters in official documents
and private correspondence.[1100] Diodorus[1101] affirms that it was
common among the Gauls to throw letters, addressed to the dead, on to
the funeral pile. The Romans, after they had defeated the Helvetii,
found in their encampment a schedule, on which were recorded in Greek
characters the numbers of the armed men, the women, and the children
who had migrated into Gaul.[1102] A few years later, when Caesar was
marching through the territory of a Belgic tribe to relieve a besieged
camp commanded by Quintus Cicero, he wrote him a letter in Greek
characters--possibly in Greek[1103]--which he entrusted to a Gallic
trooper. Unless he made his interpreter write the letter in Celtic, he
evidently had reason to fear that, if it were intercepted, some of the
Belgae would be able to read the Latin; in any case that some of them
knew how to read. Is it not reasonable to infer that a British Belgian
here and there was as good a scholar as his kinsmen over the water? At
all events the British inscribed coins, the earlier of which at least
must have been the work of native die-sinkers, are evidence that before
the birth of Christ there were Britons who had mastered the art of
writing, and had even acquired some slight knowledge of Latin.[1104]
But the origins of Celtic literature, sacred and profane, were of
course purely oral. Bards, who were apparently Druids of an inferior
grade, sat at the tables of the great; accompanied them with their
harps to festivals; sang their praises and satirized their enemies;
and recited poems in honour of valiant warriors who had fallen in
battle.[1105]
[Sidenote: Inequalities in culture.]
It must not, however, be supposed that the same level of culture had
been attained in every part of the island. The Scottish specimens of
Late Celtic workmanship are for the most part later than the Claudian
conquest;[1106] and it is probable that in outlying districts even of
England and Wales iron tools in pre-Roman times were rare or unknown.
No objects of the Early Iron Age which are regarded as purely British
have been found in Lancashire;[1107] and even on Cranborne Chase,
where one might have expected that continental improvements would
have been adopted at least as early as in the far western settlement
at Glastonbury, the searching exploration of Pitt-Rivers could detect
no signs of any interval between the Bronze Age and the period of
the Roman occupation.[1108] Indeed the association of late bronze
implements and weapons with iron harness-rings and bridle-bits at
Hagbourne Hill[1109] suggests that some of the deposits which are
assigned to the Bronze Age may have belonged either to a period of
transition or even to the time when, in South-Eastern Britain, the use
of iron was universal.[1110] Readers of the _Commentaries_ would see
nothing surprising in this. Caesar was told that the people of the
interior for the most part did not grow corn, but lived on milk and
flesh-meat and clothed themselves in skins.[1111] This information
was somewhat misleading; for remains of four different kinds of corn
were counted at Hunsbury; and since cloth and linen were worn in
Yorkshire by the well-to-do even in the Bronze Age,[1112] it is not to
be supposed that their successors had lost the arts of spinning and
weaving. Still, Caesar’s statement points to an ascertained truth.
It has been well observed that the western and northern uplands held
out far longer against the Roman conquest than the central, eastern,
and southern lowlands, and that they were never really Romanized at
all.[1113] From the earliest times their inhabitants had been less
open to continental and civilizing influences; and one of the gifts
which Nature had bestowed upon Britain was that the regions more
accessible from over sea were also more fitted to sustain an industrial
population.[1114] Later on, however, we shall find reason, in the
juxtaposition of old and new sepulchral rites, to believe that even
in Kent such influences had not prevented the survival of the earlier
culture.[1115]
[Sidenote: Intertribal war and political development.]
Moreover, notwithstanding the progress in material civilization,
intertribal fighting was of course still frequent even in the south,
and even after the Belgic tribes had settled down in the territories
which their swords had won, and established themselves as the dominant
people of Britain. Both Caesar[1116] and Tacitus[1117] spoke of these
wars; but if they had been silent, the numerous strongholds which were
still occupied, permanently, or as occasion required, the weapons
that have been found in them, the beach-rolled pebbles, the round
chipped flints, and the bullets of baked clay which lie heaped in and
near them would tell the same tale;[1118] nor indeed is it necessary
to insist upon a fact which is universal in the stage of culture in
which the Britons then were. What is worthy of remark is that war was
probably entered upon from motives other than those which had caused
the struggles of earlier ages. Raids were no doubt still undertaken,
especially in the poorer and less settled districts, by mere plunderers
and cattle-lifters. But clans were tending to become welded, not only
by the voluntary combination which was necessary for defence, but
also perhaps by the sword of the ambitious captain, into the larger
communities which Caesar called _civitates_[1119]; and successful
chiefs were assuming the state of petty kings. As trade increased, and
with it wealth, the king of a tribe which was fortunately situated
would seize opportunities of acquiring dominion or overlordship over
others. Though forest or mountain or fen might enable even small tribes
to hold their own, and though the success of a strong king might not
endure, it is possible, as we shall see, to discern in Caesar’s memoirs
signs that attempts were already being made to achieve such sovereignty
as might eventually lead towards political union, and we may suppose
that in Britain also there were astute princes who, like the Aeduan
Dumnorix, saw that they could strengthen their position by diplomacy or
marriage.[1120]
[Sidenote: Instances of female sovereignty: the condition of women.]
We all learned in childhood that the Britons admitted the sovereignty
of women. In the middle of the first century Cartismandua was queen of
the Brigantes;[1121] and a few years later, when the Iceni revolted
against Rome, their general was Boudicca, who is better known by the
barbarous misnomer of Boadicea.[1122] The Gauls may have had the same
institution; and perhaps it would hardly be worth noticing if it
were not apparently inconsistent with what Caesar tells us about the
status of Gallic wives. They were indeed permitted to own property.
The bride brought a dowry to her husband; but he was obliged to add
an equivalent from his own estate and to administer the whole as a
joint possession, which, with its accumulated increments, went to the
survivor.[1123] On the other hand, the husband had the power of life
and death over his wife[1124] as well as his children; and when a man
of rank died his relations, if they had any suspicion of foul play,
examined his wife, like a slave, by torture, and, if they found her
guilty, condemned her to perish in the flames of the funeral pyre.[1125]
[Sidenote: Political and social conditions of Britain and Gaul
compared.]
When we try to form an idea of the political and the social conditions
of Britain in the later days of its independence, we naturally turn to
Caesar’s account of Gaul in the hope of supplementing the scanty and
scattered scraps of information which he has left about the country
which was less known to him. We must, however, bear in mind that
Britain had not yet come under the two currents of influence, German
and Roman, which had profoundly affected Gaul, and in some measure
prepared it to accept Roman dominion; and also that even the south-east
was in a more rudimentary stage than the neighbouring country, though
perhaps not more than the backward parts of Belgic Gaul.
When Caesar came to Gaul, revolutionary forces were at work to which
there are analogies in the earlier history of Greece and Rome. Many
of the states had expelled their kings, whose authority had passed in
some cases into the hands of annually elected magistrates, while in
others perhaps the council of elders kept the government to itself.
But these oligarchies were never long secure. The magistrates were
fettered by rules, jealously framed, which weakened their executive
power. Like the Tarquins, the banished kings or their descendants
looked out for opportunities, which Caesar’s policy offered to them, of
regaining their position; while eloquent nobles who had contrived to
amass wealth summoned their retainers, hired mercenaries, surrounded
themselves with desperadoes or with the discontented poor, whose
grievances they promised to redress, and occasionally succeeded, like
Pisistratus of Athens, in making themselves tyrants. Celtillus, the
father of the great Vercingetorix, had acquired a kind of supremacy
over the whole of Celtican Gaul; but he was dogged by the jealousy of
his brother nobles, who put him to death on the charge of plotting to
revive the kingship. Monarchy and oligarchy had each their partisans:
everywhere there were adventurers who hoped to make their way to
fortune by Roman aid, while others, eager to oust their rivals, were
ready to welcome German invaders; and thus every state, every clan,
every hamlet, nay, every household was riven by faction.[1126] But
in Britain there is no sign that either oligarchy or tyranny had yet
anywhere supplanted monarchy. Still, there were doubtless many points
of resemblance. We may suppose that in Britain, as in Gaul, the tribal
king was assisted by a council of elders; that the British, like the
Gallic nobles, had their devoted retainers and perhaps also dependents
who had fallen into their debt;[1127] that only those who became their
dependents could expect protection, and that only those lords who were
strong enough to protect could count upon obedience. In Britain too we
may be sure that the masses were in the state of semi-serfdom which
Caesar regarded as the condition of the Gallic populace; and that
political power was monopolized by the nobles and the Druids.
[Sidenote: Religion.]
But, besides improved communication, developed commerce, and constant
intercourse with their Continental kinsmen, there were other forces
making slowly and feebly for unity,--common religious ideas and, to
some extent, common ecclesiastical organization. On the other hand we
may suppose that the religious union which existed together with much
diversity was an effect as well as a cause of political association:
when clans found it expedient to combine, the similar deities of
each, which the others had before regarded with hatred and jealousy,
would tend to become fused, while those which were peculiar would
be worshipped still.[1128] Old superstitions of course continued to
flourish side by side with those which the Celtic invaders had brought
with them. The spirits of springs, of lakes, of rivers, of mountains,
and of woods--of every weird and awesome dell, or cavern, or rock--were
worshipped in the Iron Age as they had been for centuries before, and
as they continued to be after what was called Christianity had become
the official creed.[1129] The _Dea Arduinna_ who hovered over the
forest of the Ardennes and Abnoba, the goddess of the Black Forest,
had their counterparts in Britain. These deities, however, may have
been comparatively recent; for the conception of a god whose realm
was a forest was of course later than that of the spirit of a single
tree.[1130] Even the terror that impelled the pristine savage to
propitiate demons was not yet dead: near Newcastle-on-Tyne was erected
by some Roman or Romanized Briton an inscription _Lamiis tribus_--‘to
the Witches three’--who, it has been truly said, ‘were doubtless as
British as the witches in _Macbeth_’.[1131] But the cult of wood and
water and the dread of devils are common to all primitive peoples and
to the ignorant among many who are called civilized;[1132] and such
survivals in Celtic Britain may well have been common to the pre-Celtic
population and to the Celts who conquered them. Moreover, it is likely
enough that the greater gods whom the Celts worshipped and who,
variously imagined and with various names, were the common heritage of
the Aryan-speaking peoples, were in part descended from deities who
were not Aryan, and were adored in Britain in a somewhat different
spirit before the first Celt landed on the Kentish shore.[1133]
What do we know about those gods? The Celts were the first inhabitants
of Britain about whose religious views definite information has been
handed down to us, as distinct from what we may infer from sepulchral
discoveries and from ethnography; but it is hardly an exaggeration to
say that of the spirit of their religion we know little more than of
that of the people who built the chambered tombs. Some five-and-twenty
writers, from Timaeus, who wrote three centuries before the birth of
Christ, to Ammianus Marcellinus, who was contemporary with Julian and
Valens, have contributed to our knowledge; but most of them have left
only a few sentences derived from hearsay or from nameless authorities
of whose credibility we know nothing. They wrote of Celts who lived in
widely distant countries, among various populations, and at different
epochs; and very few of them referred to the Celts of Britain.[1134]
Supposing that official Christianity were to become extinct, what
could the historian of the fifth millennium learn of the manifold
doctrines preached by English clergymen if he were obliged to extract
his materials from passages referring to mediaeval Catholicism,
Calvinism, Methodism, or the orthodox faith which thinly disguises the
Shamanism of Russia, and scattered in the works of writers who began
with à Kempis and ended with Spurgeon? Coins, Gallic and British, in
so far as they are not merely imitative, appear to be fraught with
religious symbolism; but the ingenuity which has spent itself in the
effort to explain the symbols has yielded little certain result.[1135]
Geographical names testify to the cult of various gods without telling
us anything of their attributes; and sometimes we may fancy that we
can detect the presence of divinity when we have only to do with
the name of a Roman _gens_.[1136] Inscriptions and altars supply
names of deities which are names and nothing more, or bewilder us
by coupling as surnames with the name of a Roman god a multiplicity
of Celtic gods. Anonymous statues are attributed to divers deities
by divers archaeologists, though some of them may not be deities at
all. Inscriptions, altars, and statues alike belong to the period of
the Roman Empire, when the introduction of Roman gods and goddesses
had thrown the Celtic pantheon into wellnigh inextricable confusion;
and the monuments of Britain, for the most part, were apparently the
outcome of the devotion either of Romans or of Gallic, Batavian,
Dacian, and other officers of auxiliaries. Nor can we tell how far
British religious ideas had become estranged from those of Gaul by
contact with aboriginal cults, or how far the religion of the British
Goidels (if indeed they existed) differed from that of the Brythons. If
we turn to the _Mabinogion_, to the _Triads_, or to Irish mythology, we
are checked by the reflection, which our foremost Celticist was forced
to make even while he was fascinated by the quest, that ‘the gulf of
ages’ separates ‘the literature of the Celtic nations of the present
day from the narrative of the writers of antiquity and the testimony of
the stones’.[1137]
Cannot then Caesar help us? His evidence is of course valuable; but he
did not write for the modern student of religion. Disregarding minor
and local deities, perhaps ignorant of their existence, he recorded
the names and summarized the attributes of the five principal Gallic
gods; but,--the names are Roman. Mercury--the inventor of all arts,
the pioneer of communication, the patron of commerce--was the most
reverenced of all:[1138] then follow the names of Apollo, Mars,
Jupiter, and Minerva.[1139]
Now we do not know from whom Caesar derived his information; but
assume that it came from the best authority, his friend and political
agent, the Aeduan Druid, Diviciacus, who was also an honoured guest of
Cicero.[1140] Then Caesar was in the position not of Lafcadio Hearn,
who made his home in Japan, gave his life to the study of all things
Japanese, and at last confessed that the more he tried to learn the
more he realized his ignorance; not of Sir Alfred Lyall, who, prepared
by discriminative reading, devoted all the time that he could command
to the observation of Oriental creeds; but of some Anglo-Indian
administrator who, in his scanty leisure, should jot down the heads of
a conversation with a Brahmin, and offer them as an outline of Hindu
religion. Only the Anglo-Indian could speak Hindustani; and Caesar was
obliged to employ an interpreter. One of the most learned and sane of
modern Celtic scholars has related that when the musician, Félicien
David, was invited at Cairo by the viceroy to instruct his wives,
etiquette compelled him to give the lessons to a eunuch, who passed
them on as best he could.[1141] Caesar, he remarks, was in the position
of the eunuch. And if we could certainly identify the five great Roman
gods with their Gallic counterparts, how much more of Celtic religion
should we know?
But let us learn what we can. Celtic religion, in so far as it
was descended from the religion of the undivided Aryan stock, was
fundamentally one with the religions of Italy and Greece; and we
might expect that it would resemble most closely the religion of
the Italians, to whose tongue Celtic was most nearly akin. But our
imperfect knowledge of the classical religions hardly helps us more
to understand the religion of the Celts than the remark of Caesar,
that about their deities ‘they have much the same notions as the rest
of mankind’.[1142] For the religion of Rome had been deeply tinged by
contact with the Etruscans and the Greeks, just as the religion of the
Celts had been affected by their fusion with the aboriginal peoples
of Central Europe, Gaul, Spain, and Britain; and the Celts were in a
less advanced state of civilization than the Romans. What is certain
is that, like every other polytheistic religion, that of the Celts,
except perhaps in so far as it was moulded by Druidical doctrine,
had no definite theology, but was an ever-expanding, ever-shifting,
formless chaos,--the same in its main developments in Britain, Gaul,
and Spain, yet differing in every tribe and household, and in every
age;[1143] that, on its practical side, it was a performance of
traditional rites; that its aim was not the salvation of souls, but
the safety of the state; and that it concerned the individual most as
a member of a family, a community, or a tribe.[1144] Like all other
polytheists too the Celts were ready to believe in gods who were not
theirs: in the reign of Tiberius the boatmen of Paris set up an altar
on which, side by side with their own Esus and Tarvos Trigaranus, were
figured Jupiter and Vulcan.[1145] The theory, which has been defended
with vast if somewhat uncritical erudition, that the king was regarded
as an incarnation of the sky-god, may possibly be true both of the
Celts and of other Indo-European peoples.[1146] Perhaps the Celts,
like the Romans, gave more thought to the ritual by which their gods
might be persuaded to grant them their hearts’ desire than to the
persons of the gods themselves.[1147] Doubtless to the Celt, as to
the Roman, however little his religion may have fostered nobility of
life or contrition for sin, dread of the mysterious was a salutary
discipline.[1148] But what we want to apprehend is this,--wherein the
spirit of Celtic religion differed from that of the religion of ancient
Latium, of Greece, of the Semitic tribes; and if the effort is not
wholly vain, we may only hope to attain a distant and hazy view. He who
desires to understand the subject will work at it for himself. All that
I can hope to do is to put him on the road and to set up a sign-post
here and there. The reader who has absorbed what is valuable in the
teaching of Tylor, Boissier, Lyall, Frazer, Robertson Smith, Reinach,
and Camille Jullian will be best able to discern what is suggested by
the texts and monuments that preserve a few fragments of Celtic faith.
Why was the god whom Caesar equated with Mercury honoured above all
others by the Continental Celts? Did the Britons share their devotion?
And is Caesar’s statement confirmed? Some centuries earlier, when
the Celts were a host of warriors, the war-god had been the most
conspicuous figure in their Olympus; and his subsequent inferiority
to Mercury is regarded, perhaps justly, as an indication of the
progress which they had made meantime in the arts of peace.[1149]
Possibly Lug, the Irish representative of the Gaulish Lugos, whose
name appears in Lugudunum, or Lyons, in Luguvallum, or Carlisle, and
in Lugotorix, a Kentish chieftain,[1150] and who in an Irish legend
figures as a carpenter, a smith, a harpist, a poet, and a musician,
may have been the British Mercury;[1151] but we cannot tell whether he
ranked higher than Mars. Assuming that votive stones in some measure
reflect the faith of the native Celts, Mars was deeply reverenced
in Britain. He appears with various epithets, the names of Celtic
deities, one of which, _Camulus_, meaning ‘the god of heaven’,[1152]
was commemorated in Camulodunum, and perhaps bears witness to his
former greatness. It is remarkable, in view of Caesar’s statement, that
in British inscriptions the name of Mercury is far less common than
that of Mars;[1153] but if the discrepancy is at all connected with
the comparative backwardness of British civilization, it must also
be remembered that the organization of Britain under Roman rule was
military.[1154] One religious custom indeed, of which Caesar himself
witnessed examples, proves that Mars, however inferior he may have
been to Mercury, had still many fervent worshippers in Gaul. When the
warriors of a Gallic tribe had made a successful raid, they used to
sacrifice to Mars a portion of the cattle which they had captured;
the rest of their booty they erected in piles on consecrated ground.
It rarely happened that any one dared to keep back part of the spoil;
and the wretch who defrauded the god was punished, like Achan, by a
terrible death.[1155] Another British epithet of Mars, Toutates,[1156]
appears with Esus and Taranis in a famous passage of Lucan,[1157] where
they stand out as representative deities, in whose honour dreadful
rites were performed. None of the three, save Esus,[1158] is mentioned
in Gallic inscriptions, whereas Epona, the goddess of equitation, a
minor deity, whose statues, representing a woman riding upon a mare, or
seated between foals, have been found both in France and Britain,[1159]
appears ten times; and accordingly a distinguished French archaeologist
concludes that they were insignificant objects of local worship.[1160]
But it is not credible that the devotee who composed his inscription
to Toutates should have unwittingly ascribed to a mere local god the
qualities of Mars. Again, if Taranis was not one of the greater gods,
it is surprising to find in Britain an inscription in honour of Jupiter
Tanarus,[1161]--Jove the Thunderer. Nor is it likely that Lucan should
have learned the names of the trinity whom he made famous unless their
worship had been national.[1162] But it does not follow that Tanarus
was the Jupiter of the independent Celts. Tanarus, being the Thunderer,
was assimilated to the Roman Jupiter; and perhaps the Jupiter Tanarus
whose inscription was found at Chester may have been an outcome of the
Roman Jupiter and of a Gallic divinity who is known as the god of the
wheel.[1163] Statues have been discovered in France, representing a
god with a wheel on his shoulder, in his hand, or at his feet; and
this god was assimilated in imperial times to Jupiter. Altars on which
wheels are represented have also been found in the north of England;
and miniature wheels of gold, silver, bronze, and lead--alone, or
forming parts of ornaments or helmets, or stamped on coins--have been
met with in scores both in France and England. Probably they had a
religious meaning; and it has been supposed that they are symbolical
of sun-worship, and that the god with the wheel was the god of the
sun.[1164] Traces of sun-worship are still discernible in the May and
midsummer festivals which are kept up in our own island and in many
European lands.[1165]
Of the other great deities Minerva appears in Irish legend under the
name of Brigit[1166], possibly the same goddess as Brigantia, in whose
honour several inscriptions were erected in Britain,[1167] although in
Gaul, unless perhaps in the name of the town Brigantium, there is no
trace of her worship;[1168] while Apollo was assimilated by Roman or
Romano-British devotees sometimes to Maponus, whose name survives in
the familiar Welsh Mabon[1169], sometimes to Grannos, in whose honour
an inscription was set up near Edinburgh.[1170] There are also vestiges
of the cult of a god who resembled Neptune. At Lydney, on the western
bank of the Severn, in the country of the Silures, a temple was built
in Roman times to Nodons, whose name reappears in Welsh legend as
_Lludd_ and again in our Ludgate Hill. The marine scenes which are
depicted in mosaic on the floor seem to show that he was a god of the
sea;[1171] while the structure of his temple may justify the conjecture
that he was likewise a Jupiter, even as the Italian Jupiter was god
of sea as well as of storm and sky.[1172] In Gaul he was unknown; and
an eminent Celticist has assumed that he was peculiar to the Goidelic
Celts.[1173] On the other hand, Toutates, Taranis, Epona, and Belisama
were apparently unknown on Goidelic soil.[1174] But it profits little
to dispute about names. It does not follow that the Goidels did not
recognize somewhat similar deities akin to these; and Belisama was
simply the goddess who in Roman Gaul was identified with Minerva.[1175]
Caesar, in a familiar passage,[1176] tells us that the Gauls regarded
themselves as descendants of Dis Pater, who was conspicuous in the old
Latin pantheon as the god of the dead, although in Caesar’s time he had
been dethroned by the Pluto who was imported from Greece.[1177] Several
Gallo-Roman images, the best known of which is on an altar discovered
at Sarrebourg,[1178] represent a god with a hammer: a bronze statue
of the same deity has been found in England;[1179] and eminent French
archaeologists believe that this was no other than Dis Pater.[1180]
But we must not imagine that these gods had always been distinct,
or even that in Caesar’s time their physiognomies were sharply
outlined. When we see that the Germans whom he encountered worshipped
Sun, Moon, and Fire,[1181] and that those whom Tacitus described
had their Mars and Mercury,[1182] we may be inclined to suspect
that Celtic ideas, under classical influence, had undergone a like
transformation.[1183] In polytheism divers attributes of deity tend
to become separate deities.[1184] Jupiter, Mars, and Quirinus were,
it would seem, only specialized forms of the same god;[1185] and
some of the Celtic epithets which are attached to Minerva, Mars, and
the rest may mean that they were assimilated by this or that tribe
to topical divinities.[1186] Dis Pater was certainly near of kin to
Saturn,--that old Italian chthonian divinity;[1187] and Dis Pater
and Toutates, ‘the god of the people,’ who was perhaps primarily
conceived as a kind of Saturn,[1188] may once have been one; indeed
there seem to be indications that from one point of view Dis Pater was
Jupiter,--a Jupiter of the nether world.[1189] Again, if Toutates in
Britain remained Mars, while in Gaul the Romanized Celts seem to have
hesitated whether to identify him with Mars or Mercury, one is tempted
to conjecture that he may have been the common ancestor of both.[1190]
No deities were nearer to the hearts of Celtic peasants than those who
were known as _deae matres_,--the mother goddesses. Once they were
thought to belong to Germans and Celts alone;[1191] but their statues
have been found in numbers at Capua; and, slightly modified, they
survived into the Middle Age. Generally figured in groups of three--a
mystic number[1192]--their aspect was that of gentle serious motherly
women, holding new-born infants in their hands, or bearing fruits and
flowers in their laps; and many offerings were made to them by country
folk in gratitude for their care of farm and flock and home.[1193]
Besides the gods whose cult was common to all the Celtic peoples
or to one or the other of the two great stocks were local deities
innumerable. We know that the Gallic cities, Bibracte[1194] and
Lugudunum,[1195] had their divine patrons; and it is probable that
every British town had its eponymous hero.[1196] The deities, however,
from whom towns derived their names were doubtless often worshipped
near the site long before the first foundations were laid: the
goddess Bibracte was originally the spirit of a spring reverenced by
the peasants of the mountain upon which the famous Aeduan town was
built.[1197] Perhaps we shall not err if we also suppose that the heads
of his slain enemies, which the Celtic brave religiously treasured and
fastened upon the walls of his cottage, were offered to his household
gods or to the spirits of his ancestors.[1198]
The worship of animals, to those who have not felt the fascination of
anthropology, appears merely unintelligible and absurd. Animals were
worshipped because they were formidable or wonderful; because men
fancied that they were incarnations of deity; because they might be
tenanted by the souls of heroic forefathers;[1199] and animal-worship,
or a relic of animal-worship, which may perhaps, in some cases, have
been a survival of totemism, has left vestiges in Celtic art. The boar
was especially sacred. Bronze figures of boars have been found alone
and on the crests of helmets: the Witham shield, as we have seen, was
decorated with the figure of a boar; and so are numerous coins, both
Gallic and British.[1200] Like the Romans, the Gauls and doubtless
also the Britons had military standards: like the Romans also, they
carried not a flag but the figure of an animal, and with them this
animal was always the boar.[1201] A reminiscence of animal-worship is
probably also discernible in the horned head of Cernunnos, a god who
is figured on one of the well-known altars of Paris, and in Tarvos
Trigaranus--‘the bull with the three cranes’--which fills the back of
another.[1202]
But votive altars, statues, and temples, although they embodied older
beliefs, belong, as we have seen, to the period when the Celts had
fallen under the dominion of Rome. The Cisalpine Gauls, if Livy[1203]
and Polybius[1204] are to be believed, worshipped in temples: but
the holy places of the Western Celts were groves,[1205] and perhaps
stone circles which they inherited from the people of the Bronze
Age. Such simplicity was of course not peculiar to the Celts and the
Germans.[1206] The Pelasgian Zeus had no temple: the oldest sanctuary
of Jupiter on the Alban Mount was a grove of oaks.[1207] Not a single
statue of pre-Roman date has ever been found in Britain; not one in
Gaul later than the close of the Palaeolithic Age. Caesar indeed says
that the Gallic Mercury was represented by numerous _simulacra_; but
if these were statues, it is inexplicable that none of them has ever
come to light; and perhaps we may accept the suggestion that Caesar
was thinking of menhirs, which had been erected long before the first
Celt set foot in Gaul,[1208] but which, like the formless stones that
the Greeks venerated as figures of Hermes,[1209] were, he supposed,
regarded as possessed by the spirit of the great national deity. On
the menhir of Kernuz in Finistère a rude Mercury was sculptured in
Roman times.[1210] The conjecture may be well founded that the Druids,
like the priests of Israel, were opposed to anthropomorphism;[1211]
but it is not needed to explain the lack of native statues of Celtic
gods.[1212] The Romans, according to Varro, had for many years no
sacred images:[1213] like the Celts, like the Germans, who also, even
in the time of Tacitus,[1214] deemed it derogatory to the majesty of
the gods to ascribe to them human form, they were content to recognize
manifestations of divine will; and even when their temples were being
crowded with the works of Greek art, their ancient Vesta remained
shrouded in awful mystery.[1215] But, while the Druids may have been as
hostile as Israel to Gentile abominations, the Celts in general were as
receptive as the Romans, and readily accepted the services of foreign
sculptors.
[Sidenote: Sepulchral usages.]
The evidence of interments, from which we tried to glean some
information as to the religion of the Bronze Age, remains much the
same during the later period; and the noticeable changes do not seem
to have much significance. British customs differed somewhat from
those of Gaul. Inhumation, which had almost entirely ceased in that
country in the second century before Christ, continued everywhere
in Britain except in the territory of the Belgae; and even there
cremation was not universal.[1216] In the more southern districts
nearly all the interments which have been explored were unmarked
by any tumulus; while in the cemetery of Aylesford the urns which
contained the cremated remains were placed in small cylindrical pits
set in what has been described as a family circle.[1217] When barrows
were erected their form was still circular: but they were generally
much smaller than those of the Bronze Age: they were grouped in much
greater numbers;[1218] and they were never more than structureless
heaps of earth or stone.[1219] Although the contracted position was
still common, skeletons have been found extended in this country,
as generally in Gaul;[1220] and, as in Wiltshire in the Bronze Age,
the head generally pointed towards the north.[1221] On the other
hand, ornaments and weapons were placed in graves more frequently
than before:[1222] animals were still occasionally interred;[1223]
and flint chips and stones were still sometimes deposited in or along
with urns.[1224] But rites which in the Bronze Age could only be
inferred are attested in the Iron Age by eye-witnesses. We learn from
Caesar[1225] that it was a custom of the Gauls to immolate the dead
man’s cherished possessions, even his favourite animals, on the funeral
pyre; and that not long before the time of his oldest contemporaries
slaves and retainers had been sacrificed.
[Illustration: FIG. 44.]
The most remarkable perhaps of the sepulchral discoveries that
illustrate this period appears to show that old persisted along with
new. Hard by the family circles of the Aylesford cemetery, Dr. Arthur
Evans opened three cists, each containing a contracted skeleton, the
upper slab of one being pierced with a hole which may perhaps have been
intended to let the ghost escape;[1226] while almost side by side with
elegant Late Celtic vases he picked up fragments of the old-fashioned
finger-dented ware, including a drinking-cup and a cinerary urn.[1227]
[Sidenote: The Druids.]
It would be interesting to learn whether any Celtic prophet, like the
great preachers of India and Palestine, taught that mercy is better
than sacrifice. If we may trust Diogenes Laertius,[1228] the Druids
bade their disciples not only to fear the gods, but to do no wrong and
to quit themselves like men. At all events the study of Celtic religion
is inseparable from that of Druidism.
Where did Druidism originate? Caesar, in a well-known passage,
remarks that it was believed to have arisen in Britain and to have
been imported thence into Gaul;[1229] and some scholars accept
this tradition as literally true. The earliest extant mention of
Druids[1230] was made about the commencement of the second century
before Christ,--not long after the Belgic conquest of Britain began;
and it has been supposed that the conquerors found Druidism flourishing
there, and made it known in the land from which they had set out. But
the Belgae were not the first Celtic conquerors of Britain; and it is
reasonable to suppose that if Druidism was of British origin, it would
have been imported into Gaul long before. The common view is that on
both sides of the Channel it originated among the neolithic population;
and Caesar’s words are sometimes explained in the sense that in his
time it was more vigorous in Britain than in Gaul, and that Gallic
Druids therefore travelled to Britain in order to be initiated into its
mysteries. At all events it is not unreasonable to believe that the
Celts learned it from some non-Aryan people; for there is nothing to
show that the Gauls whom the Romans first encountered had ever heard of
it. The Germans, with whom the Celts were long in contact in Central
Europe and to whom they were ethnically akin, had no Druids;[1231]
and although it may be true that the intense devotion to religious
observances which Caesar remarked among the mixed population of
Gaul[1232] did not exceed that of other barbarians,[1233] it appeared
to him to contrast sharply with the temper of the peoples beyond the
Rhine.[1234] This spirit led them to connect religion with every act of
life: in the chase,[1235] in all the operations of war, after victory
or defeat, before undertaking an expedition, in selecting the site of a
town, the gods were regularly invoked:[1236] there was no distinction
between the sacred and the profane; or rather, nothing was profane. The
contrast which Caesar observed supports the theory of the non-Aryan
origin of Druidism.
But was Druidism in Britain universal? The leading Celtic scholar
of this country insists that there is no evidence that Druidism was
ever the religion of any Brythonic people;[1237] and since he assigns
almost the whole of Britain south of the firths of Forth and Clyde to
the Brythons, he appears to restrict the area of Druidism to a narrow
western fringe. This hardly accords with Caesar’s statement that
Britain was the stronghold of Druidism. Moreover, when Caesar tells us
that the Druids were the religious aristocracy of the Gauls, he plainly
gives us to understand that Druidism was common to all the peoples who
lived between the Seine and the Garonne; and it is certain that among
many if not most of these peoples the Gallo-Brythonic element was
predominant. Indeed, although it is commonly assumed that the Belgae
had no Druids, there is absolutely no ground for the assumption. Caesar
often used the word _Galli_ in a wider sense, including the Belgae;
and it is not improbable that when he was describing the manners and
customs of the Gauls and Druidism, which was their most remarkable
institution, he intended his description to apply to the Belgae as
well.[1238] Moreover, the very writer who denies that the Brythons
had Druids tells us that Druidism was the religion of the British
aborigines and was borrowed from them by the British Goidels; and it is
certain that both the aborigines and the Goidels (if they had already
reached Britain) survived in considerable numbers in the territory
which the Brythons conquered.[1239] It is clear therefore that Druidism
persisted within the Brythonic area; and that the Brythons held aloof
from it is a groundless guess.[1240]
But concerning Druidism as it existed in Britain we have no special
information, except the passage in which Tacitus[1241] speaks of the
cruel rites practised by the Druids of Anglesey. Caesar described
Druidism once for all;[1242] and since he says that British Druidism
was the model and the standard of the Gallic Druids, we can only infer
that his description applied in many respects to Britain as well as
to Gaul. There the Druids formed a corporation, admission to which
was eagerly sought: they jealously guarded the secrecy of their lore;
and full membership was only obtainable after a long novitiate. They
were ruled by a pope, who held office for life; and sometimes the
succession to this dignity was disputed by force of arms. They were
exempt from taxation and from service in war. They had, as the priests
of a rude society always have, a monopoly of learning. The ignorance
and superstition of the populace, their own organization and submission
to one head, gave them a tremendous power. The doctrine which they
most strenuously inculcated (if Caesar was not misinformed) was the
transmigration of souls. ‘This doctrine,’ he said, ‘they regard as the
most potent incentive to valour, because it inspires a contempt for
death.’[1243] They claimed the right of deciding questions of peace
and war. Among the Aedui, if not among other peoples, at all events
in certain circumstances, they exercised the right of appointing the
chief magistrate.[1244] They laid hands on criminals and, in their
default, even on the innocent, imprisoned them in monstrous idols of
wickerwork, and burned them alive as an offering to the gods. They
immolated captives in order to discover the divine will in the flow
of their blood or their palpitating entrails;[1245] they lent their
ministrations to men prostrated by sickness or going forth to battle,
who trusted that heaven would spare their lives if human victims were
offered in their stead; and one form of human sacrifice which they
appear to have countenanced--the slaughter of a child at the foundation
of a monument, a fortress, or a bridge--has left many traces in
European folk-lore and been practised in Africa, Asia, and Polynesia
in modern times.[1246] They practically monopolized both the civil
and the criminal jurisdiction;[1247] and if this jurisdiction was
irregular, if they had no legal power of enforcing their judgements,
they were none the less obeyed. Primitive states did not originally
take cognizance of offences committed against individuals, which were
avenged by their kin; and when they began to intervene they did so at
the request of the injured party or his surviving relatives. What was
peculiar to the Celts was that this intervention was exercised by the
priests;[1248] and doubtless the outlaws who, as Caesar says,[1249]
abounded in Gaul were criminals whom they had banished. Every year they
met to dispense civil justice in the great plain above which now soar
the spires of Chartres cathedral.[1250] Those who disregarded their
decrees were excommunicated; and excommunication meant exclusion from
the civil community as well as from communion in religious rites.
Did the Druids owe their conception of immortality, as Diodorus
Siculus[1251] and Timagenes[1252] imply, to the influence of
Pythagoras? The testimony of these writers has been contemptuously
rejected:[1253] but it seems not improbable that Druidism may have
absorbed tenets of Pythagorean origin through the medium of the
Greeks of Massilia;[1254] and this conjecture gains some support
from numismatic evidence. A British uninscribed gold coin, found
at Reculver, bears on its reverse side the figure, formed by five
interlacing lines, which is known as the pentagram and was a
well-known Pythagorean symbol.[1255] It would seem, however, that if
metempsychosis was really a Druidical doctrine, it had no firm hold
upon the Celts in general; and their sepulchral customs were not
consistent with it. Their notion of a future life, like that of the
Bronze Age, was a form of the ‘Continuance Theory’, which has had so
many adherents both in primitive and modern tribes.[1256] They believed
that there was an Elysium somewhere in the west, where they were to
live again, feasting, carousing, and duelling, a life like that which
they had lived before, but free from care.[1257] If the Druids, as
Caesar said, taught that souls passed ‘from one person to another’,
they meant perhaps that after death the soul entered a new body,--the
ethereal counterpart of that which it had left behind. The immortality
of the soul was an idea, more or less vague, common to many peoples:
for the Celts the Druids made it an article of faith. Nor indeed are
we precluded from supposing that some of them may have conceived or
borrowed from a classic source the doctrine of future retribution. But
what that theory was which, as Caesar says[1258], the Druids inculcated
in regard to the origin of the universe and the nature and motion of
the heavenly bodies, it is useless to inquire[1259]. We only know
that, as they traced the descent of the Gauls back to Dis Pater, they
regarded night as older than day, and reckoned time by nights; and
that, in common with all the peoples of antiquity, they computed their
years by the revolutions of the moon[1260]. The statements of Caesar
and Pliny are supplemented by a calendar, engraved on bronze, which
was discovered towards the end of the last century at Coligny in the
department of the Ain[1261]. It has its lucky and unlucky days; certain
days would be regarded as suitable for sacrifices as well as for other
functions[1262]; and the regulation of these important matters would
certainly have been retained by the Druids. It has been said, perhaps
in reliance upon a mistranslation of the word _dryas_ or _druias_,
that Druidesses taught side by side with Druids[1263]: at all events
Boadicea sought to divine the issue of her campaign by observing the
movements of a hare, besought the gods to bless her enterprise, and
after her success offered female captives to Andate, the goddess of
victory;[1264] and her joint exercise of royal and priestly functions
seems to give colour to the suggestion that in primitive times Celtic
kings may also have been priests.[1265] Cicero[1266] indeed relates
that the Galatian King, Deiotarus, was the most skilful augur of his
country. But the facts of historical import which stand out as certain
are these. Like the Brahmans, who, so long as their authority is
acknowledged, recognize, but regulate, the Protean manifestations of
Hindu religious fancy,[1267] the Druids kept control over the manifold
forms of aboriginal and Celtic worship. Being a sacerdotal caste, not,
like the priests of Rome, popularly elected, but self-constituted and
self-contained, they were naturally opposed to all innovation. It has
been said that ancient writers regarded as peculiar to the Druids
beliefs and practices which were common to them and other priests of
antiquity. Certainly human sacrifice was not peculiar to the Celts:
the ceremony of cutting the mysterious mistletoe was German as well
as Druidical;[1268] and as the Druid sacrificed white bulls before he
ascended the sacred oak,[1269] so did the Latin priest in the grove
which was the holy place of Jupiter.[1270] But while every ancient
people had its priests, the Druids alone were a veritable clergy.[1271]
Celtic religion, in so far as it had the same ancestry as that of Rome,
would easily harmonize with it; but Druidism, with its more definite
theology, might be expected to counteract this tendency, and would
therefore be a danger to Roman dominion.[1272] And it was British
Druidism that supported and renovated the Druidism of Gaul, and formed
one of the bonds of union between the two Celtic lands.[1273]
[Sidenote: Ties between Britons and Gauls.]
For, if their material culture was somewhat less advanced, the Britons,
at least those of the south-eastern districts, naturally remained
connected by the closest ties with the Gauls, and particularly with
the Belgae. The Britons of Kent were little less civilized than the
Gauls;[1274] and Belgic kings, like William the Conqueror and his
descendants, ruled on both sides of the Channel.[1275] Not many
years before the period of the Gallic wars, Diviciacus, king of the
Suessiones, who governed directly the country round Soissons, had
established supremacy not only over a large part of the surrounding
Belgic territory but also over Britain;[1276] and during a period which
may have coincided with his reign gold coins of certain types were
used indifferently in the Belgic districts of Britain and of Gaul, and
were doubtless struck for rulers who had possessions in both.[1277]
But the power of Diviciacus had ended with him;[1278] and when Caesar
came to Gaul, the tribes of South-Eastern Britain were divided into
antagonistic groups, headed respectively by the Catuvellauni and the
Trinovantes. Cassivellaunus, the king of the Catuvellauni, was the
ablest and most aggressive of the British princes of his time; but his
opponents were supported, it would seem, by the influence of Commius, a
chieftain of the Belgic Atrebates, whose territory comprised adjacent
districts of the departments of Pas-de-Calais and Nord, and who were
connected with the British tribe of the same name.
[Sidenote: How the Britons were affected by Caesar’s campaigns in Gaul.]
But, if anything could induce the Britons to forget their differences,
it was the news which reached them of Caesar’s movements in Gaul. The
events of the first year of his proconsulship--the overthrow of the
Helvetii, who had migrated into Gaul from Switzerland, and the defeat
of the German invader, Ariovistus--might not affect their interests:
but in the following year, when the Belgae banded together against
the Roman conqueror, it was time for them to be on the alert. British
adventurers crossed the Straits to assist their kinsmen; and when
Caesar shattered the forces of the coalition, the leaders of at least
one Belgic tribe fled over sea to escape his vengeance. Late in the
autumn of that year or early in the following spring rumours reached
the ports of the Channel that Caesar purposed to invade Britain.