Sources and interpretations. The oldest information about the Celts that has come down to us is fragmentary and completely accidental. Herodotus in the middle of the 5th century BC. e. mentions this people, speaking of the location of the source of the Danube, and Hecataeus, who became famous a little earlier (c. 540-475 BC), but whose work is known only from quotations given by other authors, describes the Greek colony of Massalia (Marseilles) , located, according to him, on the land of the Ligurians next to the possessions of the Celts. In another passage, Hecataeus names the Celtic city of Nirax - this place, in all likelihood, corresponds to Noria in the territory of ancient Noricum, which can be roughly correlated with the modern Austrian province of Styria.

In his great work "History" Herodotus pays little attention to both the source of the Danube and the Celts. This is unfortunate, since archaeological research has proved the full value and accuracy of his judgments about other tribes, especially about the Scythians, about whom he received first-hand information. However, it seems important that both Herodotus and, apparently, Hecataeus did not consider it necessary to tell the Greeks in detail about the manners and customs of the Celts.

Herodotus complains that his knowledge of the far west of Europe is meager, but the historian's references to the Celts are of some interest. He repeats twice that the Danube flows through their lands and that the Celts are the westernmost people in Europe, apart from the Cynetes, who supposedly inhabited southern Portugal. In the first case, Herodotus places the source of the Danube near the Pyrenees - this name could be correlated with the Pyrenees, but it is known that this was the name of the Greek trading settlement on the northeastern coast of Spain. Further, the historian says that the Celts lived at some distance from the Pillars of Hercules, that is, from the Strait of Gibraltar - he could hardly have made such an absurd mistake by placing the Pyrenees in the same area. Thus, the reports of Herodotus about the Celts of the Iberian Peninsula indicate that these tribes inhabited vast territories, including the areas adjacent to Massalia, and, very likely, ancient Noric.

It should be noted that the name Celtici survived in Southwestern Spain until Roman times - this is the only example that the name of a large Celtic people was immortalized by geography.

No matter how erroneous were Herodotus' ideas about the location of the upper Danube, his conviction that this river flows in the possessions of the Celts is based not only on the correlation of the source with the Pyrenees. Herodotus was much more aware of the Lower Danube: he knew that it was possible to swim far upstream on a ship and that the river carried water along inhabited lands throughout its entire length. It is reasonable to assume that it was this way that information about the Celts from the northern limits reached Greece. Archaeological studies with a greater degree of certainty prove that the banks of the Upper Danube were the ancestral home of the Celts, from where some tribes moved to Spain, and a little later to Italy and the Balkans. Thus, two sources of information point to the same point on the map.

Before turning to a generalization of the rest of the early historical evidence about the Celts, it is necessary to say a few words about why the name of this people was so widespread in that era. What is it connected with?

It seems obvious that in the time of Herodotus, the Greeks considered the Celts the largest barbarian people living in the west and north of the Western Mediterranean, as well as in the Alps. Ephor, who worked in the 4th century BC. e., names the Celts among the four greatest barbarian peoples of the known world (the other three are Scythians, Persians and Libyans), and the geographer Eratosthenes in the next century mentions that the Celts inhabit Western and transalpine Europe. This is probably due to the fact that the Greeks did not distinguish between individual Celtic tribes. There is no doubt that Herodotus, talking about other barbarians, such as the Scythians or Getae, saw in them both independent peoples and commonwealths of tribes. He was interested in their political institutions, manners and customs; as for languages, the Greeks did not bother with linguistic research, and Herodotus did not take into account the linguistic differences between the barbarian tribes. It is reasonable to assume that even if he never communicated with representatives of the Celts, he knew them from descriptions and could distinguish them from other barbarians. Therefore, the term "Celts" has a purely ethnological meaning and does not necessarily have to mean "Celtic speakers", contrary to the modern academic concept based on the works of the pioneer of linguistic studies George Buchanan (1506-1582) and Edward Lluyd (1660-1709).

So, for four centuries, from the time of Herodotus to the era of Julius Caesar, the lifestyle, political structure and appearance of the Celts were well known to their enlightened southern neighbors. All this information is rather vague, superficial and subject to many interpretations, however, on their basis, certain conclusions can be drawn about the differences between population groups.

As for the word "Celts" itself, the Greeks spelled it by ear as Keltoi, and, except for its use in a narrow tribal context in Spain, as already mentioned above, in other cases it was widely used to refer to a collection of tribes with different names - this conclusion based on later sources than the writings of Herodotus. In relation to the population of Britain and Ireland, ancient authors, as far as is known, never used the term "Celts", and there is no evidence that the inhabitants of the islands called themselves that way (however, this does not mean at all that the islanders were not Celts). In the modern, popularized meaning of the word “Celt” and “Celtic”, the era of the heyday of romanticism in the middle of the 18th century introduced into use, then they went beyond the linguistic context in which they were used by Buchanan and Lluyd, and began to be applied unreasonably in a wide variety of areas: in physical anthropology, in relation to island Christian art and folklore life in all its manifestations.

Further, one more question should be clarified: is the speech of the Celts of antiquity really related to the living languages, which in philology are usually called Celtic? The most convincing evidence of this is the works of ancient authors, where the names of leaders, names of tribes and individual words belonging to the Celts. This layer of linguistic material is in full accordance with the Celtic branch of the Indo-European family of languages, and there are many examples of what is recorded in ancient times words have been preserved in the medieval and modern languages ​​​​of the Celtic group.

The study of the language of the ancient Celts relies on three sources. First of all, these are numerous inscriptions that have survived to this day, mainly in Latin, less often in Greek, fixing Celtic words and names (photos 69, 70, 74). They were found on altars and other architectural monuments of the Celtic lands that were part of the Roman Empire. The territory of their distribution is vast: the lands from Hadrian's Wall to Asia Minor, Portugal, Hungary, etc. The second source - numismatics - is akin to the first, but less dispersed in space (photo 47, 75). In historical and archaeological terms, the inscriptions on the coins are especially important, since they indicate that they were minted by Celtic leaders or individual clans. The third group of evidence is related to geographical names. These include the names of rivers, mountains and hills, as well as settlements and fortresses. Their direct connection with modern languages ​​can also be established primarily on the materials of ancient authors who mention the Celts in their works; the localization of such names, "surviving" in Western and Central Europe, is closely connected with areas where the Celtic influence was especially strong and persisted for a long time. Comparative analysis of the Celtic, Teutonic, Slavic names, including those transformed as a result of borrowing by some peoples from others, provides the richest material for a variety of interpretations, but this should be done by a special area of ​​philology, and a reliable map of the Celtic names of Europe is still waiting for its compiler. In the meantime, it can be said with certainty that outside the British Isles, Celtic names have survived in in large numbers in France, Spain, northern Italy, less often they are found between the Danube and the Alps and further east to Belgrade, and in Northwestern Germany the Celts left a mark on the banks of the Rhine, reached the Weser and, possibly, even the Elbe itself. Of course, this picture does not give a complete picture of the territory of dispersion of Celtic names in the past, and, in addition, one can find many various reasons the fact that some of them have survived to this day, and some have been consigned to oblivion.

George Buchanan, who introduced the term "Celtic" into linguistics, was the first to prove, based on ancient sources, that contemporary Gaelic and Welsh languages ​​grew out of ancient Celtic speech. Thus, the philological meaning of this term is derived on the basis of the ethnic research of Herodotus and later historians and geographers who echoed him.

The large extent of the lands that were once inhabited by the Celts makes it possible to attract archaeological data to study their civilization.

Strictly speaking, archeology is the science that studies material evidence of human activity in the past. Its object can be the material culture of entire peoples and historical eras, or periods and geographical spaces that existed before the advent of developed civilizations that owned writing. In the latter case, archeology turns into a "silent" science - it loses the language in which it is possible to describe the various manifestations of human life, reflected in the random and scattered remains of an anonymous material culture. The goal of modern archaeological research is to look as deep as possible into the past, to understand and recreate the life of an ancient society, and not just to compile an accurate inventory of objects and monuments; however, archeology is often subjected to excessive demands, which, in its essence, it is not able to satisfy. Thus, in relation to the Celts, archaeological research must first of all be directed within the narrow framework of several centuries - from Herodotus to Julius Caesar, whose activity marks the initial and final limits. historical era who left written evidence of these tribes. And the data of archeology really confirm that during the indicated centuries in the already mentioned territories there was an extensive cultural province. The found remains of a barbarian civilization are associated with known to science Celtic tribes and date from the 4th century BC. e. in Northern Italy, from the II century BC. e. in southern France and from the 1st century BC. e. almost the entire length of the Roman Empire.

Celts in ancient history. Let's temporarily leave aside material sources and prerequisites - ancient historians should again come to the fore, whose works allow us to assess the degree of intervention of the Celts in the life of the enlightened world of the ancient Mediterranean. Here we will try to draw up only a chronological outline of events, more detailed information directly about the Celts will be analyzed in the following chapters.

About a quarter of a century after the death of Herodotus, barbarians invaded Northern Italy, who came along the Alpine passes. Descriptions of their appearance and names indicate that they were Celts, but the Romans called them galli (hence Gallia Cis- and Transalpina - Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul). More than two centuries later, Polybius refers to the invaders under the name galatae, a word used by many ancient Greek authors. On the other hand, Diodorus Siculus, Caesar, Strabo and Pausanias say that galli and galatae were identical designations for keltoi / celtae, and Caesar testifies that galli of his day called themselves celtae. Diodorus uses all these names indiscriminately, but notes that the variant keltoi is more correct, and Strabo reports that this word was known to the Greeks firsthand, since the keltoi lived in the vicinity of Massalia. Pausanias also prefers the name "Celts" in relation to Gauls and Galatians. Now it is impossible to establish what such terminological uncertainty is connected with, however, it can be concluded with certainty that the Celts called themselves keltoi for a long time, although during the 5th and 4th centuries BC. e. other names may have appeared.

Gauls. The Galli, or Gauls, first settled in the upper Po valley and on the banks of the tributaries. They began to push and expel the Etruscans, whose civilization at that time was already declining. Perhaps it was the inability of the Etruscans to resist the invaders and, as a result, expanse for robbery, rich booty and inhabited lands that inspired the transalpine inhabitants to overcome the mountain passes. The fact that they knew the Etruscans and even long time traded with them, archaeological excavations confirm.

Late Roman historians believed that the Celtic invaders came from the northwest, from Gallia Transalpina, which was called so from the 2nd century BC. e. Archaeological evidence suggests that they made their way along the central alpine passes and that their homeland was in what is now Switzerland and southern Germany. Ancient historians have preserved for us the names of the main tribes. The Insubres were the first to cross the Alps and eventually founded their main settlement, calling it Mediolan (modern Milan). The Insubres were followed by at least four tribes who settled in Lombardy; the Boii and Lingons were forced to pass through their possessions and settle in Emilia, and the last migrants, the Senons, got the less rich lands of the Adriatic coast - they found shelter in Umbria.

The Celts traveled not only as settlers - in search of new lands, with families and household goods. Easy-to-lift detachments of warriors raided distant southern territories devastating Apulia and Sicily. About 390 B.C. e. they successfully sacked Rome, their number one target until 225 BC. e., when a large Gallic army, reinforced by fresh forces from the northern Alpine regions, was surrounded by two Roman armies and defeated. The end of the independence of Cisalpine Gaul was put in 192 BC. e., when the Romans defeated the battles and destroyed their fortress, which was located on the territory of modern Bologna.

According to historical sources, the Celts first appeared in the east in 369-368 BC. e. - then some of their detachments served as mercenaries in the Peloponnese. This fact suggests that the number of Celtic migrations to the Balkans even before this date was quite large. In 335 BC. e. Alexander the Great, who fought in Bulgaria, received delegations from all the peoples living in the territories of the Lower Danube; among them was an embassy of the Celts, who are known to have come from the Adriatic.

Galatians. Two generations changed, and hordes of Galatians flooded Macedonia in the middle of winter - only great troubles could force them to set off on a journey at this time of the year, especially since they had families and wagons with property with them. The Galatians began to rob the locals and move forward in search of land suitable for settlement. However, the invaders met with serious resistance - the further development of events is described in detail by ancient Greek historians. The names of Bolg and Brenn are known - the leaders of the Celtic migrations, but it is possible that these were the nicknames of the patron gods, and not the mortal leaders. One way or another, people led by Brenn attacked Delphi, but were defeated. The Greeks, recognized experts in national differences, added Celtic shields to the Persian ones already hung as trophies in the Delphic temple of Apollo - this, no doubt, can be called one of the first expositions on the topic of comparative ethnology.

The Celts were quite capable of holding out in the Balkans for a long time to come, but two tribes that separated from those that had captured Macedonia undertook the most curious journey recorded by ancient Greek scholars in the history of Celtic migrations. They moved southeast, towards the Dardanelles. Constant strife with the locals eventually forced them to cross over to Asia Minor, where they again opened up wide opportunities for robbery and conquest of lands. Soon a third joined the two tribes - the Tektosags, who chose to leave Greece after the failure at Delphi. For some time, all three tribes indulged with impunity in all sorts of atrocities and robberies, but in the end they calmed down and settled in Northern Phrygia, which since then has become known as Galatia. These tribes had a common capital, bearing the Celtic name Drunemeton, and the Tektosags settled in the region of modern Ankara.

The Galatians managed to maintain their individuality for many centuries. Cut off from European roots, they remained isolated, and over time gave their name to Christian communities, to which the famous epistle of the Apostle Paul was addressed. Later, in the 4th century A.D. e., the Galatians became the subject of very curious notes of St. Jerome, who, in particular, reports that, in addition to Greek, they spoke their own language, akin to the dialect of the Trevers. St. Jerome, who traveled through Roman Gaul, was undoubtedly acquainted with the Trevers who lived in the Trier region on the Moselle River. Perhaps he heard from their lips the Celtic speech, preserved in a purer form, different from the language of the inhabitants of the strongly Latinized west of Gaul, and thus, in his notes one must see a purely scientific comparative analysis, otherwise it is difficult to interpret such a special attitude towards this tribe. As for the language preserved by the Galatians, history knows similar examples: the language of the Goths, who invaded the Crimean peninsula in the 3rd century AD. e., was gradually supplanted by the Slavic languages, but finally disappeared only after many centuries - its last speakers died in the 17th century.

So far, we have been talking about the earliest evidence of ancient historians about the Celts, it was concluded that by the beginning of the 3rd century BC. e. these tribes occupied vast territories from Spain to Asia Minor and that their ancestral home, presumably, was the devoid of civilization areas of Europe north of the Alps, where the enlightened inhabitants of the Mediterranean rarely looked. Historical sources relating to the 2nd and 1st centuries BC. e., only mention the expansion of the possessions of the Celts; it becomes clear that they occupied the entire territory of Gaul (modern France) and that at least some of them came from the regions beyond the Rhine.

In the 1st century BC e. Gaul became part of the Roman Empire and thus came to the attention of historians, receiving closer attention. Caesar describes Gaul as ethnographically divided between the Aquitani in the southwest, the Belgae in the northeast, and inhabited throughout by the Celts. This message can be considered in the light of archeology, but at the moment the Belgae, who were the most warlike and staunch opponents of the Roman general, are of particular interest to us.

Belgi. This tribe occupied the northeastern reaches of Gaul and, according to Caesar, were proud of their "Germanic" roots, which, apparently, meant only their trans-Rhenish origin, since they spoke a language very similar to that of the rest of the Celts who lived in Gaul, and their leaders bore Celtic names. The question of the original meaning of the word "germani" is extremely important, but we will leave it aside for the moment in order to trace further the historical line outlined by Caesar, which will lead Britain into the borders of the Celtic world. Caesar reports that long before his own era, the Belgae established settlements in the southeast of Britain. This is the first and only direct historical evidence of Celtic - or partly Celtic - migrations to Britain. There is plenty of other - archaeological - evidence that earlier Celtic settlements existed on this island, the same conclusion can be drawn from written sources. So what is the value of early references to Britain and Ireland in ancient literature?

Britain and Ireland. In the VI century BC. e., more precisely, no later than 530, the inhabitants of Massalia undertook a journey past the eastern coast of Spain, through the Pillars of Hercules and along the Atlantic coast to the city of Tartessa (map 1). Obviously, this was not the first such voyage from Massalia, but it is significant that one of the sailors who returned by ship compiled a report in which he gave information not only about the coast of Spain, but also about the lands lying further north along the Atlantic sea routes of Europe. The description of this voyage is known as the Massaliot periplus and is preserved in passages cited in the 4th century CE. e. Rufus Festus Avien in the poem "Ora Maritima". Some features of this periplus indicate that it was composed before the conquest of Tartessos by the Carthaginians, which led to the cessation of trade in the Atlantic for colonial Greece.

Map 1. Massalia and Western Seaways

The inhabitants of Tartessus, which was probably near the mouth of the Guadalquivir, had friendly trade relations with the Greeks since the voyage of Kolei from Samos through the Pillars of Hercules around 638 BC. e. The Massaliot Periplus reports that Tartessian merchants visited such northern regions as the Estrimnides, which meant the Brittany peninsula and the neighboring islands, and that the population of these lands traded with the inhabitants of two large islands - Ierne (Ierne) and Albion (Albion). This is the earliest mention of Ireland and Britain in history, and the names are Greek versions of words that have been preserved by speakers of the Irish branch of the Celtic language. Old Irish Eriu and modern Eire are descended from more ancient form the word that the Greeks pronounced as "Ierna", and the name Albu the Irish used in relation to Britain until the 10th century AD. e. The question is whether these words have Celtic roots or are borrowings from an older language. Most likely, they belong to the Celts, but there is not enough evidence to draw a final conclusion.

Avien, of course, could distort the ancient source, but still retained for history the very valuable information contained in the Massaliot Periplus.

In any case, the names Ierna and Albion entered the terminology of Greek geographers, including Eratosthenes, by the middle of the 3rd century BC. e. It must be said, however, that although Avien refers to the Carthaginian Himilcon, an explorer of the 6th century BC. BC, the latter, apparently, never visited the British Isles, contrary to popular belief.

Travel of Pytheas Massaliot, which took place approximately in 325-323 BC. e., became the second ancient source information about Britain and Ireland. The Pythean periplus is also known only second hand, but unlike the Massaliot Periplus, it is quoted - often with distrust - by many authors, including Polybius, Strabo, and Avienus. Britain and Ireland are named Pretan Islands by Pytheas. The derivative word for the inhabitants of these islands must probably be pretani or preteni, and it is probably derived from a Celtic root that has survived in the Welsh language: Prydain means Britain, Britain. The Latins, due to the peculiarities of pronunciation, transformed it into Britannia and britani - it is in this form that Caesar uses these words. Consequently, Ierna and Albion were meant by the Pretan Islands, which confirms the description of the voyage given by Pytheas, and one of the later Greek geographers claims this as a fact.

It is curious that Pytheas did not mention the ancient names of Ierna and Albion when he spoke of the Pretan Islands. This may mean that the inhabitants of Massalia, who laid land trade routes to the northwest, they were familiar and did not require explanation. However, if we take into account the assumption that Pytheas visited only Britain, and was not in Ireland, this may also indicate that he did not doubt the homogeneity of the population of the two islands. Further, although there is an equivalent in Irish literature to the name preteni, this word can refer, firstly, to certain inhabitants of Britain and, secondly, to British settlers in Ireland. The conclusion suggests itself that the name of the Pretan Islands, which came into use by the Greeks by the 4th century BC. e., testifies to the emergence of a new, dominant population in Britain (on Albion), which was not there at the time when the Massaliot Periplus was created.

All of the above brings us to other issues, primarily related to the Celtic languages. These issues will be elucidated after a review of the archaeological data.

European prehistoric background. In this chapter on the origins of the Celts, Herodotus and Caesar have already been mentioned as individuals whose activities mark two historical milestones, - Herodotus, since he is considered the father of history and anthropology, Caesar, since his military campaigns ended the independence of the Celts. The works of ancient authors who lived after Caesar certainly contain more useful information about the Celts, but they are not able to change the overall picture. The next task is to consider the problem in the light of archeology.

In response to a question about the cultural background associated with historical information about the Celts in the period from Herodotus to Caesar, most archaeologists - primarily representatives of continental schools - will not hesitate to name two widespread material cultures of the Iron Age, known as "Hallstatt" and "La Tene" and confirming written evidence in geographical and chronological terms ( cards 4, 6). However, instead of immediately proceeding to their detailed analysis, it seems worthwhile to start from a more distant starting point and turn to other centuries and regions also illuminated by written history.

The gradual improvement of climatic conditions by the end of the ice age opened up new territories of transalpine Europe for mankind. By the 9th millennium BC. e. even such a northern zone, stretching from the Pennines to present-day Denmark and the Baltic lands, was inhabited primitive hunters and fishermen. Over time, climatic trends led to the emergence of a temperate zone in Europe, and for a whole millennium in this territory in their ecological niches there were primitive communities. In terms of physical type, they were probably no less heterogeneous than their Late Paleolithic predecessors. The influx of new blood brought from the Eurasian steppes on the one hand, and from Spain or even North Africa- on the other hand, ruled out the possibility of the appearance of pure races in Europe. The remnants of material culture, found throughout the temperate climate zone of Europe, reflect examples of mutual influence and exchange in different areas at different times. The bearers of this culture can be regarded as the most ancient population of this zone; it was their heirs - to one degree or another - that later population groups became.

Neolithic settlers. The people of the Mesolithic era were not disturbed until the 4th millennium BC. e., when from the peripheral areas of urban civilizations ancient East primitive tribes of farmers and pastoralists began to expand to the north. In the temperate zone of Europe, the first and historically most important Neolithic settlers came from the southeast and seized rich and easy-to-cultivate loess lands in the Middle Danube basin, and then penetrated further - to the Rhine and its main tributaries, to the confluence of the Saale and Elbe, to the upper reaches of the Oder.

Later, the Neolithic economy, brought by immigrants, spread from the Western Mediterranean along the Atlantic coast of Europe to the British Isles, although the very first Neolithic settlers most likely reached Britain from the Gulf of Lion through East France. The carriers of this economic structure led a relatively settled way of life, which gave them the opportunity to accumulate personal property and the necessary supplies. Settlers everywhere had a significant impact on the populations of the Mesolithic way of life - barter stimulated the development of the economy and material culture of the indigenous inhabitants, and over time, when, as a result of the spread of the Danube and Western Neolithic cultures, people began to cultivate the land throughout the temperate zone of Europe, the Mesolithic way of life was preserved only in the eastern and northern regions. By the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. e. the continuum of interconnected material cultures that spread throughout Europe demonstrates the diversity in the origins and abilities of their bearers, as well as in the level of their communication with the incomparably more civilized world of the Eastern Mediterranean.

The emergence of animal husbandry. Around the same time, two trends in the development of the Neolithic economy are outlined: on the banks of the rivers, people continue to cultivate the land and grow crops, while in the mountainous regions and on the Central European Plain, cattle breeding, and not only nomadic, becomes the dominant way of life. Based on examples from the history of Europe and other regions, it can be assumed that such differences in occupations and living conditions led to the emergence of social associations or political alliances. It is also reasonable to assume that at that time tribes of farmers and pastoralists appeared, and the existence of individual tribal unions can be concluded based on the results of studying the remains of material culture.

Early use of metals. First half of the 2nd millennium BC. e., among other things, brought merchants of metal products to the territory of Europe and laid the foundation for the processing of metals by its inhabitants. It is difficult to say how the Europeans learned processing technologies - either solely through communication with foreign merchants, or migration from Asia Minor became a fundamental factor.

The oldest copper and bronze items, mainly jewelry and weapons, were found in Greece and the Eastern Balkans, on the lands of the Middle Danube and Transylvania. Most of these things have Anatolian prototypes, and the distribution in Greece, Macedonia, and even in the more northern regions of the Anatolian ceramics style indicates that not only itinerant traders from Asia Minor visited there, but also found refuge for migrant families.

Here we come to an important point: it is highly probable, but not proven, that the Anatolian settlers were speakers of an Indo-European language. To shed light on this question is the task of archeology associated with the study and dating of the written monuments of Asia Minor. However, no matter what language the ancient metalworkers in the Balkans spoke, their influence on Central Europe was extremely great, and one of the characteristic objects that they brought with them to the north was a copper or bronze drilled ax. Neolithic pastoral tribes in Northern and Central Europe by that time had already learned how to make stone weapons on the model of Mesolithic axes from deer antlers, in which holes for a wooden handle were also punched. Within the main regional cultures their own, typical forms of axes appeared, but the most common ones definitely originate from metal prototypes. Cattle breeders made for themselves stone copies of foreign metal axes (Fig. 1). The latter were of higher quality and no doubt too expensive, so that people could not buy them in large quantities.

There was another way in which metal battle axes with a hole for the handle could fall into the hands of European pastoralists of the Neolithic era - from the Caucasus through the Pontic steppes.

The lands to the north of these mountains and to the west, to the Lower Danube, also belonged to pastoral tribes. The tombs of their leaders testify to the relative prosperity and exorbitant claims of those who lived on the banks of the Terek and Kuban. Proximity, on the one hand, to the most important metallurgical sources of the Caucasus, and, on the other hand, to the trade routes of the city-states of Asia Minor and Upper Mesopotamia, could make them in some way mentors and educators of pastoralists who lived on pasture lands that lay to the north and west.

Here again the question arises of the origin of Indo-European speech - now in connection with the Pontic tribes. If the rulers of the Hittites really came from these social strata, as some scientists believe, then their geographical cradle could be in the Kuban-Terek area. It is possible, however, that Northern Anatolia was also within the borders of the ancestral home of the Indo-Europeans.

Circle of battle ax cultures. In addition to metalworking techniques and the manufacture of stone copies of battle axes, there were other common features in the culture of European and Pontic pastoralists revealed through archeology - for ethnology they are perhaps even more important than types of weapons. For example, based on the study of pottery found in single burials under round mounds or hills (this was the main burial method), one can conclude that certain types of vessels and ornaments are widespread (Fig. 2). Both Pontic and European tribes were engaged in pig breeding and kept cattle, which means that in certain regions grain crops, if grown, were in very small quantities. Perhaps of greatest interest is the question of whether they bred horses and how they used these animals in the household. Here linguistics comes to the rescue again: documentary evidence from the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. e. - Hittite and Hittite-related sources - confirm that horse-breeding terminology was fully reflected in the Indo-European language, to the point that even personal names contained "horse" elements.

Horses. Horse skeletons, as well as the bones of pigs and cattle, are often found in burials within the cultural zone in question. Of course, horses, along with other domestic animals, may have been kept primarily for their meat and milk, but it does not appear that the tarpan, a short European horse, was grazed along with cattle and raised for slaughter. From a practical point of view, people must have appreciated the endurance of tarpans even in very ancient times and used them as a draft force. The speed qualities of horses for pastoralists of the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC. e. did not matter, since the speed of movement was dictated by herds of livestock, so tarpans were probably used as pack animals, and riding became possible much later - with the advent of selective cattle breeding and better conditions life. It can be said with certainty that carts on solid wheels came into use by the inhabitants of the Middle Danube region at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. e., but, most likely, they harnessed bulls, not horses.

Indo-Europeans. Common features in material cultures, the importance of horses in the life of eastern and western tribes of pastoralists, linguistic parallels - all these factors in combination largely contributed to the creation of the concept of the origin of the Indo-European people, which says that at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. e. tribes of Indo-European warriors began to expand from Northern Europe or from the Eurasian steppes, eventually conquering all European lands and even some regions of the Near and Central East. At the present stage of the development of science, it is impossible to seriously talk about the exclusively northern roots of the Indo-Europeans and the existence of migrations of such a huge scale in the past, while the assertion of a purely eastern origin of this people makes the framework of its ancestral home even more vague and requires clarification.

According to the writer of these lines, most of the archaeological data concerning the territories between the Black and Baltic Seas testify to the gradual development of similar concepts and needs in different population groups due to the same living conditions, environment and occupations, which could have happened without the participation of settlers, but at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. e. in the material culture and features of the use of horses in the economy, new influences are traced, brought from the southeast by pastoralists and artisans who lived on the outskirts of the civilizations of Asia Minor. In the lands of Anatolia in those days they already spoke Indo-European languages, the only thing that can be said about Europe is that all the inhabitants of the pasture lands within the continuum, apparently, belonged to a common language group.

To call pastoralists - carriers of the culture of battle axes - Indo-Europeans is possible only with a certain assumption and in the most general sense. Next, it is necessary to mention other tribes whose life is more or less elucidated by archeology. These are the bearers of the culture of bell-shaped cups, who created characteristic graceful vessels from reddish clay (Fig. 3), which antiquarians of later eras called goblets or drinking bowls.

Circle of cultures of bell-shaped cups. The bearers of these cultures can also be called pastoralists. They roamed over vast areas Western Europe and shared lands from Bohemia to Britain with the battle ax culture tribes; their main weapon was a bow with arrows topped with jagged flint tips, and the bulk of the herds were sheep. The bell-shaped pottery style most likely developed on the basis of the ceramic tradition that existed in the Western Mediterranean region in the early Neolithic, and the culture of bell-shaped goblets as a phenomenon, perhaps, represents a Western version of the transition to a predominantly pastoral economy, which was already mentioned above as widespread trend in Neolithic Europe.

The bearers of the culture of battle axes and tribes armed with bows can be considered as close, complementary social phenomena, despite the difference in their origin (some are Eurasians, the ancestral home of others is the Mediterranean and, possibly, certain regions of North Africa). There is no need to trace the paths of the wanderings of the bearers of the culture of bell-shaped cups, who left traces of their stay in the caves of France and Spain, in territories from Portugal to Scotland - the remains of representatives of these tribes were also found in the collective burials of Neolithic farmers in Western Europe. The creators of the bell-shaped cups obviously had the ability to adapt to other population groups or force them to subjugate them to their power. They left behind single burials, without mounds, and occasionally metal jewelry and weapons found in such graves indicate that their former owners traded with communities that processed copper and bronze.

The historical significance of the culture of bell-shaped cups lies in the fact that the communication of its bearers with tribes belonging to the culture of battle axes led to the emergence of many hybrid cultures in which the Eurasian element gradually replaced the rest. The British position that the bearers of the bell-beaker culture belonged to Indo-European group, often served as the basis for putting forward various linguistic assumptions, it now seems clear that the creators of the mixed culture of bell-shaped goblets and battle-axes adopted speech from their eastern ancestors rather than from western ones.

Continuity and interpenetration of cultures in the Bronze Age. No matter how different opinions may be about the linguistic relationship of primitive pastoralists, the picture of evolution in the early and middle phases bronze age does not allow for ambiguous interpretations: their natural areas are still inhabited by the main tribes, mainly cattle-breeding, owning bronze weapons, which are becoming more and more, and at the same time retaining the tradition of single burial mounds for their leaders; warriors in power now wear gold-plated jewelry and weapons; battle axes are less common and have not so much practical as symbolic meaning. Examples of the activities of these later and undoubtedly more aristocratic communities include the South German Kurgan culture, the Wessex culture of South Britain, and the culture of the second period of the Danish Bronze Age. The common point of their heyday can be placed around the 15th century BC. e.

However, it should not be forgotten that in the same period there were many other population groups - some were mainly engaged in agriculture, others were the last representatives of very ancient tribal communities, and still others were carriers of an even more primitive economic structure. In Europe, especially in its central regions, the agricultural communities that lived on the banks of the rivers, apparently, contributed to the economy of the dominant pastoral tribes - they served as the object of raids and robberies, paid tribute, and were in slave dependence.

Northern Alpine cultural province. During the 2nd millennium BC. e. the climate of the temperate zone of Europe was becoming drier, at first this was one of the reasons for the decline in the primitive agriculture, and over time significantly reduced the number of settlements with a primitive agricultural way of life. The study of funeral rituals and remnants of material culture allows us to conclude that the population was generally moving to a pastoral economic structure and that by the end of the 13th century BC. e. in the lands lying north of the Alps and from Bohemia to the Rhine, that is, in the ancestral home of the Celts, the final series of the most important events of protohistory began to unfold.

First of all, this is the emergence of a radically new complex of material cultures and as a result of a change in the funeral ritual in the coastal areas of the Upper Danube. carriers new cultures We became primarily the tribes that inhabited the lands of modern Austria and Bavaria, as well as the communities associated with them in Southwestern Bohemia. Being sedentary farmers, they occupied completely different areas than the more ancient tribes of pastoralists who had already won certain positions in Europe. Of course, the former farmers did not leave the riverine plains because the climate became too dry, but rather they were displaced by people who brought with them more advanced methods of cultivating the land.

These people founded settlements and lived in rectangular wooden houses surrounded by gardens and cultivated land. It is to them that Europe owes the emergence of settled agriculture and the rapid development of bronze casting - the emergence of new methods of processing metals, new forms of weapons and tools, as well as the use of metal products in various areas of the economy (Fig. 4). They most often burned the corpses, and the ashes and remains of the bones were placed in special vessels, or urns, for burial in burial grounds. Many of these cemeteries are so extensive that they are called fields, after which the term "urn field cultures" entered into scientific use.

A primitive agricultural civilization flourished on the lands of the Upper Danube, took root in the region of the Swiss lakes, in the valleys of the Upper and Middle Rhine, and eventually penetrated even further to the west and north. The expansion proceeded slowly as the need arose to conquer new lands, but instead of fighting, trade relations with the indigenous population were often established, and the result was a mixture of old and new cultures, with a strong predominance of the latter, and in different areas this synthesis acquired its characteristic features. .

In connection with the question of the origin of the Celts, the population of the so-called Northern Alpine cultural province of the urn fields, centered on the territory of modern Southern Germany and Switzerland (Map 2), requires closer study.

The historical background that served as the basis for the development of the cultural and economic structure of the former inhabitants of the province, who can be considered its aborigines, has already been outlined. Now it is necessary to try to clarify some facts and resolve issues related to the conditions for the emergence of new prerequisites for evolution, because the huge scope of the expansion of the mentioned cultural province does not explain everything.

The origins of the culture of the fields of burial urns. In this context, it is necessary to return to the southeastern zone of Europe. Anatolian trade relations established by copper and bronze craftsmen at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. e., were still strong; trade routes ran through the Balkans, along the Middle Danube to the gold-bearing tributaries of the Tisza River and to Transylvania, where there were rich copper deposits. On the territory of this region, from the Balkans to Transylvania, original cultures of the Bronze Age originated, the areas of their distribution are directly connected with the areas of concentration of bronze production and trade. Information about these cultures is somewhat limited by the rigid framework of archaeological research conducted in the region, but it is known that large Bronze Age communities existed for a long time in the vast lands along the Middle Danube, including at the foot of the Slovak Mountains, as well as in Transylvania and in tributary basins of the Tisza. In the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. e. The Minoan-Mycenaean civilization of the Aegeans had a very important influence on the population of this region. This probably happened to a large extent through the trade in gold and copper, as well as other raw materials of which no record has survived, and possibly slaves.

It is necessary to take into account three particularly significant factors concerning the population of the Middle Danubian region in the heyday of the Bronze Age: they were settled villagers who practiced mainly the funerary ritual of cremation with the burial of ashes in urns in extensive cemeteries, and their artisans, engaged in the manufacture of metal products, were strongly influenced from the Mediterraneans, and it was from them that new types of weapons and tools could be adopted.

Here it is necessary to mention that the rulers of the Mycenaean world in the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. e. were Indo-Europeans who apparently spoke Greek, - such a conclusion can be drawn from the recently deciphered texts of Linear B. However, the funeral ritual of cremation was not in use among the Greeks of those times. The emergence of the rite of cremation, in the form in which it first appeared in the Hungarian Bronze Age and later spread to the north and west of Europe, is a rather complex scientific problem. At one time, cremation was practiced by Neolithic communities in Eastern and Central Europe, and occasionally resorted to it later - probably on special ritual occasions - so, in essence, the appearance of fields of burial urns did not bring anything new to the practice.

Map 2. Northern Alpine cultural province of urn fields

burials. Archaeological research relating to the centuries in question testifies to the existence at that time in the territory of Asia Minor of an entire province with a developed cremation ritual, and ceramic objects found in Hungary and neighboring western lands and belonging to the culture of the fields of funerary urns, bear the imprint of the Anatolian style, which may indicate their origin from oriental metal samples. Unlike the Mycenaeans, the Hittites burned the bodies of their dead kings, as is known from written sources, and recently, in the territory of their ancient capital, archaeologists discovered a cemetery containing the remains of cremations. Thus, it can be assumed that the territories of South-Eastern Europe up to the Lesser Carpathians were in the area of ​​distribution of the Anatolian culture in the 2nd millennium BC. e., and possibly even earlier.

Troubled times. During the heyday of Mycenae, European trade was focused mainly on this market, which brought tangible results in the development of new decorative styles and production techniques. The decline of the Mycenaean civilization and the collapse of the Hittite empire, which began in the XIII century BC. e., shook the foundations of the international order and economic structure. Evidence of this - the increasing robbery raids in the coastal regions of the Eastern Mediterranean - are well known to history. The assumption that the inhabitants of Central Europe hunted for robberies is unconvincing - the Mediterraneans had many barbarian tribes in their neighbors who occupied more advantageous positions for an attack - however, the echoes of events in this region were, apparently, very noticeable on the Middle Danube. The turmoil in the Mediterranean may have forced many farmers to abandon their homes and move to the upper Danube. This is just one of many aspects related to the distribution of urn fields throughout Europe. The reason for their appearance in northern Italy and even more distant lands in the north of the Carpathians, in East Germany and Poland requires a detailed account of other population groups and cultures, which is beyond the scope of the topic under discussion.

Returning to the question of the historical conditions under which the urn-field culture took root in the Upper Danube region, three facts of paramount importance must be mentioned. Firstly, the new ceramic style was familiar to the inhabitants of at least several Middle Danubian villages - objects made in this style are found in mounds and cemeteries containing the remains of corpses and dating back to the times immediately preceding the exodus of inhabitants from these places. There is also evidence that they were skilled in handicrafts, land cultivation and burial rituals more than high level, characteristic of the carriers of the culture of the fields of burial urns. Secondly, the Hungarian bronze craftsmen were technically superior to their Western contemporaries for a long time. This fact in a sense explains the use of new types of metal tools, in particular a bronze piercing-chopping sword, by the bearers of the urn fields culture, and the emergence of sheet metal forging skills. Thirdly, rapid development mining in the Eastern Alps, where copper was mined, may be due to the temporary depletion or inaccessibility of Transylvanian and Slovak resources, contrary to the assumption that the interest of the Mycenaeans in these sources of ore was quite intense shortly before the decline of their civilization. It can be concluded that the phenomenon of the Upper Danubian culture of urn fields is closely related to the historical situation in the Middle Danube basin, however, the possibility of external influence from the inhabitants of distant lands, primarily the steppe, coinciding in time with the events discussed above, cannot be completely ignore.

The model of the economic structure, settlements, material culture and, to some extent, the funeral ritual that existed in the northern Alpine province of the urn fields was adopted, with some changes, by the historical Celts.

Horsemen and leaders. In the previous paragraphs, from the standpoint of archeology, the stages of existence of the prehistoric population of Central Europe were considered, starting from its appearance on these lands and ending with the period of strengthening of positions, which occurred around the beginning of the 10th century BC. e. Judging by the contents of the graves, social inequality among the carriers of the culture of the fields of burial urns was not too great, although in some burials, in addition to vessels with ashes, swords and utensils were found, which indicates their belonging to the leaders or elders of free clans, to which in small village communities could be treated with special respect. The fact that in those days, although rarely, but leaders of a higher rank appeared, is evidenced by such burials as a burial ground in the vicinity of Milavets in Bohemia: the ashes of the deceased are placed in a bronze vessel mounted on wheels, a bronze sword and other objects lie nearby. In Hart an der Alz (Bavaria), a burial was discovered containing the remains of cremation, a skillfully forged sword, three bronze and several clay vessels of fine workmanship, apparently intended for an otherworldly feast, and, which is of the greatest interest, the remains fused in the fire bronze parts for a four-wheeled cart. This is the first direct evidence that the carriers of the urn field culture used wagons in their household and funeral rituals.

The question of the power of the leaders is extremely important, since most of the surviving material evidence concerning the northern Alpine cultural province is related more to the ruling strata than to ordinary farmers. There are many factors to consider when answering this question.

During the period of domination of agricultural communities on the territory of Europe, ancient warlike tribes of pastoralists made themselves felt from time to time, and it is very likely that throughout the expansion of the cultural province of the fields of burial urns, the mixing and interpenetration of cultures did not stop. In addition, some facts point to eastern influence. In the VIII century BC. e., that is, in the last phase of the late Bronze Age, in the territory from modern Hungary to the southern outskirts of the northern Alpine province, bronze bits and bronze details of harness appear, very close in type to those found by archaeologists in the Pontic steppes of the Caucasus and even in Iran (Fig. 5) . The question of when and where this horse harness first appeared and who used it is quite complicated. Apparently, steppe horse breeders are related to this, but their number was not very large, their significance from the point of view of linguistics is negligible, and their contribution to the history of the Late Bronze Age was limited to the improvement of military affairs and horse breeding. Perhaps these were mercenaries from the Assyrian and Urartu troops who had served their time. Not a single magnificent burial has been found containing their remains, there is no indication that they used funeral wagons in the rites of burial.

The next in the chronological chain are the burials of noble warriors who greatly influenced the formation of the Celtic people. In such burials, remains are found mounted on wagons, enclosed, as a rule, in wooden grave chambers under mounds, sometimes their scattered parts are found instead of wagons. Next to the deceased, his contemporaries usually placed an iron sword and a spear, clay utensils in large quantities, chopped carcasses of a pig and a bull. In addition to wagon parts, some burials contain a wooden yoke for a pair of teams and bronze bits for two draft and one riding horse.

The people buried in these graves stood at the origins of the development of the Iron Age economic structure in Central Europe, and their material culture is usually called Hallstatt - after the name of the place in Austria, where the first objects related to this culture were discovered (photo 14, 15). And most importantly, these graves of the tribal nobility, the so-called "princely" burials, the oldest of which are found in Bohemia, Upper Austria and Bavaria, laid the foundation for a long line of magnificent burials containing corpses and ritual wagons and serving as the main source of information about the Celtic leaders and culture in the period from Herodotus to - in Britain - Caesar.

What were the leaders of the Hallstatt Iron Age? They used horse harness - improved models of oriental samples, more diverse in shape (Fig. 6). The closest prototypes of iron swords or their bronze copies (photo 7) come from the Upper Adriatic, in particular, they were made in the territory of modern Bosnia. The wooden burial chambers under the burial mounds (photos 10, 11) also indicate an eastern source from which the Scythians also drew, or the influence of the Etruscan culture, whose pompous funeral ritual using wagons reached its peak in those days. The ritual significance of carts - real or their reduced copies - was, of course, known in Bavaria and Bohemia several centuries before. Since in the early Hallstatt culture elements of the urn-field culture predominate, and their significance is preserved to a certain extent in subsequent phases of development, it can be assumed that the leaders buried in the first graves containing funeral wagons and iron swords were local residents or assimilated descendants of mixed marriages. . Their presence in the northern Alpine zone led to a more intensive process of cultural borrowing from the inhabitants of the Adriatic, and before political center began to shift to the west, the trade of the inhabitants of the Rhone Valley with the Greek Massalia began to develop, and trade routes with the Etruscans were laid through the central Alpine passes.

Burials containing funeral wagons are only the most remarkable of the many different forms of burials of the early Hallstatt period, but the study of their distribution area, from this period to La Tène times, allows us to conclude that they belonged to one particular tribe or one "princely » surnames. Early burials of this type are found in Bohemia, Bavaria and Upper Austria, and most of those dating from the 6th century BC. e., - in Württemberg, Switzerland, on the Upper Rhine, and individual graves - in Burgundy (map 3). At the beginning of the 5th century BC. e. trade with the Etruscans is being established directly, and two-wheeled chariots take the place of funeral carts - they were found in burials on the Middle Rhine, in Koblenz and on the Moselle. Soon Champagne became an important center of such a funeral ritual (photo 21, 22), and in the 3rd century BC. e. several warriors are buried in accordance with this tradition in Britain. One gets the impression that over the course of two centuries, for reasons that are not entirely clear, some kind of militant

Map 3. The main localization sites of graves containing funeral wagons

a society that possessed a certain power moved within the boundaries of the northern alpine cultural province. These people did not completely leave their old lands, but the center of their power and prosperity gradually shifted to the west. It is worth mentioning that only in the period of the late Hallstatt culture, gold jewelry began to appear in the burials of leaders (photos 12, 13) - and this should also be associated with the establishment of direct contacts with the Etruscans, since it was their masters who owned other metal objects, also found in these graves and in those belonging to the La Tène culture of the 5th century BC. e. At this point in history, the archaeological evidence finally matches the written evidence - the early references of ancient authors to the Celts. However, before going any further, it is necessary to go back to the 7th century BC. e. in order to more fully and correctly interpret the archaeological and philological data.

Celts as a nation in the VI century BC. e. The area of ​​distribution of Celtic names on the territory of modern Spain and Portugal is quite wide and in in general terms coincides with the map of urn fields, the path of the creators of which can be retrospectively traced through southern France and the Rhone Valley to the southwestern limits of the northern Alpine cultural province of urn fields. Their expansion, which began in the period and under the conditions of the late Bronze Age, barely had time to reach Catalonia, as the migrants were swept by a wave of another influence - the Hallstatt culture that originated in their ancestral home - which brought with it new methods of metal processing and a new artistic style. Catalan urn fields appeared, in all likelihood, not earlier than the beginning of the 7th century BC. BC, but, regardless of the real date of their foundation, this is the only satisfactory explanation for the spread of Celtic names in the Iberian Peninsula. The creators of the urn fields eventually dispersed to the south and west of Catalonia, and a little later, other bearers of the same culture came to the Iberian Peninsula from the western foothills of the Pyrenees and settled along the Atlantic coast. By the 2nd century BC. e., when the entire region was absorbed by the Roman Empire, they still retained their identity and were not assimilated by the indigenous population of these lands. Thus, the story of Herodotus about the Celts who lived in the vicinity of the Pyrenees and not far from the Pillars of Hercules received an archaeological and philological justification.

The question then arises whether the migrants who brought the urn-field culture to Catalonia were Celts, or at least Celtic-speaking, to use modern terminology, or whether their pursuers, the Hallstatt troops of warriors, played a major role in spreading the name. The writer of these lines is inclined to the latter assertion, since only with the advent of the Hallstatt militant society was a mechanism set in motion that could unite under one national name the barbarian tribes from Spain, through Central Europe, to the eastern foothills of the Alps. We must not forget also the mention of Hecataeus about Nyrax. But even if you do not take it into account, the Hallstatt cultural province (map 4), which formed in the 6th century BC. e., coincides with the habitat of the Celtic peoples, as can be judged from the territory of the distribution of Celtic names and from the early written evidence of ancient authors, and coincides more accurately than during the period of Celtic expansion of the 5th and 4th centuries BC. e., in which the linguistically Celtic province, which lay south of the Pyrenees, did not participate.

If the written history of Transalpine Europe began a thousand years earlier, the origin of the Celts could be traced not only by studying the general economic structure and social trends, but also by the example of the fate of individual clans, dynasties and even personalities. But the “human” aspect of the events concerning the Proto-Celts still remained behind the scenes, therefore this chapter presents the results of studying this problem.

Map 4. The extent of the Hallstatt cultural province at the beginning of the 5th century BC. e.

lemmas obtained by "roundabout" ways. However, this approach also has its advantage - it allows you to cover many factors that influenced the formation of the Celtic people, and at the same time makes it possible to lift the veil of secrecy in search of national roots. It seems logical that knowledge of the features of the formation similar unions or tribes that came to the attention of ancient historians and are much better studied, can help in understanding the role and specifics of the unifying element that led to the emergence of the Celtic civilization.

Herodotus gives two curious descriptions of the steppe peoples of Eastern Europe, whose names he uses in the same ethnological sense as the term "Celts". We are talking about the Cimmerians and Scythians. In both cases, groups of tribes that had various origins and living in different areas, were united, each under the rule of a warlike "princely" tribe. When the "princely" tribe was defeated in battle, the union of tribes broke up and new groups arose that united the heterogeneous population under other names. By the way, Cimmerian horsemen may have been involved in the creation of the bronze horse harness, which originated from the Caucasian regions and appeared, as mentioned above, at the end of the Bronze Age of the burial urn fields. The dominion of the Cimmerians was ended by the intervention of the Scythians, who became the eastern neighbors of the inhabitants of the Hallstatt cultural province at the end of the 6th century BC. e. and in turn were overthrown by another nomadic people moving west, the Sarmatians.

As for the Celts, the situation was not so simple, since they led a largely sedentary lifestyle associated with an agricultural economic structure, occupied vast expanses and existed in different geographical conditions. Some parallels can be found during the decline of the Roman Empire, in the 4th and 5th centuries AD. e., - then the ruling clans, or "princely" tribes, united vast territories and their inhabitants under their rule. An example of this is the Goths and Franks. On a smaller scale, this can be illustrated by the origin of the word "English". A very small number of true Angles participated in the Anglo-Saxon invasion, but the immigrants soon adopted the self-name "English", since it was the representatives of the noble family of the Angles who led the migration from the coast of Frisia.

In this regard, we can put forward the following hypothesis: the name Keltoi, which became known for the first time precisely in this Greek form, was adopted by the population of the Northern Alpine cultural and linguistic province (and also the lands that fell into the sphere of its expansion), which were subordinate to the Hallstatt "princely" tribe, whose representatives are buried in graves containing funeral wagons, and whose tribal or family name was this word.

Another widespread name, galatae, probably has a similar origin, but it should not be forgotten that it appeared in the writings of ancient authors much later than the centers of Hallstatt culture fell into decay, namely at those times when the Celts, already being the creators of La Tene culture, again dispersed over large areas. New circumstances and new forms of intertribal relations arose.

The final paragraphs of this chapter are devoted to the Celtic settlements in Britain and Ireland, as well as an assessment of the role of ancient Irish laws and literature as a mirror of the life of the Celtic society in all its manifestations.

Migrations to Britain. As mentioned above, the Belgae were the only Celtic or partly Celtic people whose migrations to Britain are directly documented. According to historical and archaeological data, the migration took place at the beginning of the 1st century BC. BC, but first it is necessary to go back to more distant times and consider the archaeological evidence for the existence of those Celtic-speaking population groups alluded to in the periplus of Pytheas. Caesar tells about their confrontation with the Belgae, and Tacitus speaks of them as opponents of the Romans. These tribes lived near the ancient Belgian kingdoms on the continent.

Archaeological evidence relating to Britain and Ireland indicates that on these islands at the end of the 2nd millennium BC. BC, when the Northern Alpine cultural province of the fields of burial urns began to take shape on the continent, there was an inert, but widespread material culture, based, on the one hand, on the heritage of the cultures of bell-shaped goblets and battle axes, and, on the other hand, on Mesolithic and Western Neolithic sources. The brilliant and many-sided Early Bronze Age lasted about two or three centuries, reaching its peak in the 15th century BC. BC, followed by a less remarkable period during which a mixed and perhaps even homogenous population led mainly a nomadic pastoral life. Blacksmithing, however, continued to develop in this environment, and the islanders did not lag behind the bronze craftsmen who created the northern continental tradition.

The first sign of the influence of the Northern Alpine cultural province of the fields of burial urns known to archeology was the appearance of bronze swords of the Middle Rhine type in the area of ​​the Thames estuary. Most likely, new adventurers brought them to the islands, and not foreign merchants. The swords can be dated to the 10th century BC. e. At about the same time, bronze axes came into general use on the two islands and were a more suitable trade item. The appearance of axes - the most useful bronze tools in the economy - and the development of sheet metal processing techniques (the spread of both of them throughout Transalpine Europe became possible due to intensive ore mining with the beginning of the era of urn fields) opened up new opportunities for the islanders and gave impetus to the development of trade metal. Local artisans could now satisfy requests and needs new era, so they stopped bringing weapons from the continent, at least in large quantities.

As a result of the expansion of the province of urnfields in southern Britain, the first settlers appeared - refugees from northern France, judging by the pottery made in the style of the French Middle Bronze Age and discovered in Kent. A more serious and large-scale wave of immigration flooded the island at the beginning of the 8th century BC. e. New settlers occupied lands rich in chalk deposits in the south of England; material evidence of their presence is also found in Sussex, Dorset and Wiltshire. It is not necessary to analyze in detail in this book the differences between archaeological cultures - what is important for us is that these immigrants shared some common characteristics. First, they brought with them the economic structure of settled agriculture (some of their settlements and field cultivation systems have survived to this day). This, as shown above, is one of the characteristic features of the urn field culture, alien to the inhabitants of Western and Northern Europe in the 2nd millennium BC. e. Secondly, their funeral ritual included cremation and burial of ashes in urns (however, in this respect, the ancient inhabitants of the island did not learn anything new from them, since the cremation ritual, which grew out of the Late Neolithic ritual, universally known in Britain and Ireland, was practiced there long before the arrival of the settlers). Thirdly, the new ceramic tradition that spread in England belonged, as in the first case, to the culture of the Middle Bronze Age rather than to the culture of the urn fields. All this confirms the conclusion made earlier about the all-encompassing nature of the expansion of the urn-field culture, which spread north of the Rhine, swept France and was perceived by the bearers of older cultures. The real ceramic style of the urn-field culture appeared in England only with the first colonists who came from the central regions of the northern Alpine province. The area of ​​their settlement on the island was limited to the southern coast, and the ceramic style was soon mastered by the local population. Among the last migrants, apparently, were inhabitants from the shores of the Swiss lakes, fleeing the invasion of the Hallstatt warriors who invaded the region in the 7th century BC. e.

The settlers - presumably Celtic or Celtic - referred to above, apparently moved not so far beyond the borders of their original range - lands rich in Cretaceous deposits. The territories that lay to the north and west and were distinguished by a more severe climate were occupied by other migrants - warriors armed with swords and using Hallstatt-type horse harness. Almost nothing is known about them. Did they travel in whole communities, with women who owned household crafts, or crossed to the islands in small parties in search of adventure? The latter seems more likely, since in Britain and Ireland, archaeologists everywhere find objects that can be called Hallstatt-type military decorations, but nowhere have been found associated with their owners the remains of everyday material culture inherent in their continental relatives. This is certainly a controversial question, and the answer to it is not so simple. Leading the slow process of migration and having greater mobility than ordinary settlers, the Hallstatt warriors had the opportunity to create detachments of assistants, which included representatives of the peoples they conquered. Thus, migrants could bring to Britain and Ireland not only weapons and jewelry, but also new principles. social organization.

So, if the dating of the "Massaliot Peripla" is the beginning or the middle of the 6th century BC. e. - true, in the contemporary era of its author, the southern coastal lands of Albion were inhabited by numerous immigrants of the late Bronze Age, who submitted, perhaps, to the same Hallstatt warlike leaders who wore long bronze or iron swords and put on their horses - riding or draft - harness and jewelry made in the Central European style. In the time of Pytheas in Albion, the name pretani became widespread. What is the reason for this, and can archeology help resolve this issue?

The answer must be sought in events related with beginning of the 5th century BC. e., - then colonists from the Netherlands and Northern France appeared in South and East Britain, before whom the previous settlers in terms of numbers and level of development of the economic structure recede into the background. The new wave of immigrants did not interfere with the local obsolete material culture of the Hallstatt type, but were themselves the descendants of the inhabitants of the northern Alpine cultural province of the fields of urns, which scattered from the Lower Rhine to Champagne and the Seine valley.

For clarity, the culture of these last settlers can be designated by the archaeological term "British Iron Age A", and its carriers can be compared in historical significance with the Anglo-Saxons of the post-Roman period. They subjugated all local residents, including their settler predecessors, smoothing out the differences between population groups. The population of the island at that time should have increased significantly - also because the emergence of new iron tools made new lands available for cultivation, and therefore for habitation.

The carriers of the Iron Age A culture, who first occupied the southern and eastern coastal territories, then settled in areas with dry fertile soils, and later on the harsh lands of the Midland bordering Wales, moving inland to the Pennines. This expansion lasted for about two centuries, and despite the continued influx of immigrants from the Continent, the bearers of the Iron Age A culture made up the majority of the population of Britain before the Roman invasion. What happened at that time in the lands lying north of the Cheviot Mountains is unknown. It seems that the carriers of the Middle Bronze culture, who were lagging behind in development and mastered the metal tools of the Late Bronze types, were influenced only by the Hallstatt wanderers. The tribes belonging to the culture of the Iron Age A, settled in southern Scotland only at the dawn of the Christian era with the beginning of the Belgo-Roman clashes.

There is no doubt that the bearers of the Iron Age A culture were Celts, and it is highly probable that some of them, if not all, called themselves pretani or preteni - claims or claims. At the end of the Hallstatt era (5th century BC), the redistribution of power and property on the continent became one of the reasons for the emergence of new trends in the development of material culture and the emergence of remarkable decorative art. Archaeologists know this phenomenon under the names "La Tène culture" and "La Tène artistic style". All the same population groups and, apparently, the same ruling aristocratic clans stood at its origins. Among the rulers, the leaders occupied the main place, whose rich burials containing funeral chariots were found on the Middle Rhine and in Champagne. It was probably they who led the above-mentioned great expansion of the Celtic tribes to the east of Europe, into Italy and the Balkans, and it was partly their fault that the bearers of the Hallstatt tradition and culture of the Iron Age A were forced to seek refuge in Britain. The La Tène conquerors themselves landed on the island only in the middle of the 3rd century BC. e., occupying mainly the south coast, and in particular Sussex. The new settlers were probably not numerous, but it can be assumed that entire families or some social formations were transported from the continent, since they left behind not only weapons, but also household utensils, indicating that household crafts were not alien to them. The culture these people brought to Britain was called the "British Iron Age B", sometimes the term "Marne culture" is used, since their ancestral home can be roughly correlated with the modern French department of the Marne. It is highly probable, however, that with this wave of migration ironworkers, and perhaps even chieftains, arrived in Britain from the Middle Rhine regions. It does not seem that the Marne tribes expelled the local inhabitants of the island from their lands, most likely they forced them to submit to their power or formed independent enclaves. In the north they settled the Yorkshire moors and may have occupied the southwestern reaches of Scotland. The tribal nobility of the Iron Age B acquired new possessions and patronized the island school of La Tène art. This conclusion can be drawn from the fact that, thanks to her position as a ruling elite, she had the means to strengthen the Celtic character of the culture of the population of the island, at least in the lands south of the Cheviot mountains. In the southwest and in the Bristol Bay region, La Tène settlers appeared in the 3rd or 2nd centuries BC. BC, which, apparently, was the result of the development of Cornish trade, and remained there until the time of Caesar, when a wave of refugees splashed onto their lands.

The final phase of the colonization of Britain before the Roman invasion began with the appearance of Belgic settlements in the southeast of the island. This event has a lot of archaeological evidence, it was also covered by Caesar himself. The colonists were from the Belgian union of tribes that occupied the territory between the Rhine, Seine and Marne. Some of these tribes, mainly those who lived on the coast, were primitive carriers of a mixed culture of the fields of burial urns and Hallstatt, and they came from the regions beyond the Rhine or were driven from there. The rest of the tribes were descended from the La Tène culture, who lived in Champagne, and it was their representatives who moved to Britain.

The life of the Belgian settlers in Britain will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter, but here it is enough to mention that they can be considered Celts in terms of linguistic affiliation and social organization and that it was they who became the core of local resistance to the Romans, first on the lands of their own kingdoms, then, having been defeated and being exiled - in the west and north. It seems highly probable that an authentic Belgian dynastic tradition survived in Wales during the Roman occupation and was revived by the Britons in the Middle Ages.

Celts in Ireland. The Celtic language and literature, preserved in Ireland since ancient times, provide the richest material for research, but the complex of archaeological evidence relating to this island is far from complete.

Since the Early Bronze Age, Ireland has played an important role in the production of metal products, and island bronze craftsmen did not hesitate to master new casting techniques and more advanced forms of products. At the same time, no indications were found of the resettlement of foreigners in Ireland who could become their teachers. This may have happened for the first time in the 6th century BC. e., which date a large number of bronze and ceramic objects found in vast areas - Mount Antrim and Down in the north, Westmeath and Roscommon in the center, Clare and Limerick in the southwest - and testify to the appearance in Ireland of settlers who were carriers of one from the variants of the Hallstatt material culture. As with Britain, one might suspect Hallstatt adventurers here, but fairly clear patterns in pottery production point to more cohesive immigration groups. These people could be representatives of the surplus population of the Iron Age A culture who emigrated from Britain, however, based on some archaeological evidence - and the theory mentioned above pops up again - it can be concluded that there was an early wave of migration from the Lower Rhenish areas that reached Ireland through Scotland or through the Scottish coast. At least one point on the map of the northeast coast of Scotland is proof of this. In addition, it is quite possible that the settlements on the shores of the lakes, reminiscent of cranno-gi and concentrated mainly on the Upper Shannon, were modeled on the villages of the western Alpine zone.

The next reference point in archaeological research on the territory of Ireland is connected with the wonderful metal products in the La Tène style. First of all, these are engraved bronze sheaths for iron swords, bronze bridles with decorative ornaments and bronze horns. According to the style, the oldest of these things are usually dated from the 1st century BC. e., and their prototypes are considered to be products related to the era of the British Iron Age B. However, at present, the question remains whether these works of La Tene handicraft art are the work of wandering craftsmen who previously worked for the "Galshat" leaders, or indicate the arrival in Ireland of new masters who brought their own craftsmen with them. Some philological evidence can be interpreted in favor of the latter, but it is difficult to draw a definitive conclusion. At least one circumstance is not in doubt: if the metal products in question really saw the light no earlier than the 1st century BC. e., then their creators could only come to the island from Britain, namely from Yorkshire or from South-West Scotland, refugees or other migrants from Gaul were not able to create these elegant gizmos, since La Tène art on the continent had already declined by that time .

The migration to Ireland of a large number of Gallic exiles fleeing Roman rule is not confirmed archaeologically, but some indications of this set are contained in ancient Irish literature, confirmation can also be found in the geographer Ptolemy, who recorded in the 2nd century AD. e. names of several Celtic tribes. The same applies to the arrival of the Britons on the island, which should have taken place in the 1st century AD. e. after the final conquest of southern Britain by the Romans under the leadership of Claudius.

At the present stage of the development of science, it seems impossible to assess the true contribution of immigrants from Gaul and Britain to the culture of Ireland and their influence on the life of the local population. It remains an open question whether they brought to Ireland the Celtic social order and culture that took root on the island and flourished in the 5th century AD. e., when Christian missionaries arrived there, or their activities contributed only further development Celtic Ireland, at the cradle of which stood the "Hallstatt" leaders of the 6th century BC. e. Linguistics is not able to help in resolving this problem, since it relies on late documentary evidence, but a brief overview of the features of the Irish language and an assessment of its place in philological science seems useful.

The language of Old Irish literature is considered the predecessor of modern Gaelic and belongs to that branch of the Celtic language family, which is commonly called Q-Celtic, which contains more archaic elements than the R-Celtic branch, which includes Gaulish, Brythonic and Welsh. In the time of Caesar, and perhaps long before him, P-Celtic dialects dominated the continent and Britain, but Q-Celtic elements can still be traced in the names of Gaul and Spain, as well as in the far from complete epigraphic material relating to the Roman era. Philologists disagree on how long ago the division of the Celtic language into two branches occurred and whether p- and q-Celts understood each other before Latin had a strong influence on Gaulish and Brythonic.

Regardless of the answer to these questions, the fact remains that a language and literature unclouded by the influence of the Roman Empire and directly related to the ancient Celts survived only in Ireland.

To retrospectively trace the path of Irish traditional knowledge and literature from the Middle Ages to protohistorical times is an important, complex and undeservedly overlooked task by scientists. The last lines of this chapter will be devoted to summary circumstances, against the background and through which some elements of the spiritual culture of the ancient Celts were preserved for posterity.

If in the early Teutonic kingdoms of post-Roman Europe christian church opposed only by a weak rudimentary system of social order, administration and justice, then in Ireland the missionaries had to face a highly organized society of learned men, among whom were the guardians of domestic laws, masters who owned sacred arts, creators of heroic tales and keepers of genealogies. Over time, paganism was eradicated, but traditional knowledge continued to be transmitted orally - such schools existed side by side with monasteries. In the 7th century, if not earlier, monks appeared with a special status: these comprehensively educated Christians were, among other things, also bearers of ancient Celtic wisdom. As a result, the first records of oral traditions in the local language were published, Irish written literature was born - the oldest in Europe after Greek and Latin. The tradition of a reverent attitude to knowledge and, accordingly, the utmost accuracy of their oral transmission was adopted by those who first recorded this knowledge, as well as their followers, who copied ancient manuscripts over the centuries. Thus the language and form of the texts first written down in VII or VIII centuries, received adequate representation in the manuscripts of the 15th or 16th centuries, which may contain only very minor inaccuracies. The earliest examples of the written Irish language that have come down to us are found in church books of the 8th and 9th centuries, where the Latin text is accompanied by explanations, and sometimes other comments on mother tongue the monks who worked on them. These ecclesiastical books, which have a fairly accurate dating, play an important role in the chronological milestone, allowing you to correlate with the time scale the language of the Irish treatises preserved in later lists.

It should be noted that the texts that have survived to this day are only part of a whole complex of knowledge that existed in oral form, say, in the 8th century AD. e., and some of the earliest manuscripts containing the most important information are known to be irretrievably lost.

The systematic study of the Old Irish language and literature has been carried out only during the last hundred years and is in a certain sense in the preparatory stage. The content of legal treatises, epic and mythological traditions sheds light on the life of Ireland in prehistoric times, clarifies many of the remarks of ancient authors about the continental Celts and provides invaluable material for a comparative analysis of Indo-European social institutions, mythologies and languages. Celtic Ireland was the western stronghold of the Indo-European cultural tradition, Aryan Northern India closed its sphere of influence in the east. Separated by vast spaces, the Celts and Aryans kept this tradition for a long time, after its creators, their common ancestors, had sunk into oblivion.

A century after the Celts invaded northern Italy and sacked Rome, formidable aliens appeared in the northwest of the Balkan Peninsula. From there, the Celts advanced into the Danube region, into Thrace, and then undertook invasions into Macedonia and Greece.Fear of a new, previously unknown people gripped the Hellenicworld…

The penetration of the Celts in the Danube and the Balkans

According to archeology, the ancestors of the Celts, correlated with the bearers of the late stage of the Hallstatt archaeological culture, lived in the upper reaches of the Danube in southern Germany and eastern France. This also correlates with the localization of the country of the Celts by Herodotus in the middle of the 5th century BC. e. Although the most powerful and wealthy Celtic centers of the VI - the first half of the V century BC. e. were in Bavaria, the eastern distribution area of ​​the Hallstatt archaeological culture covered today's Styria, Carinthia, Lower Austria, Burgenland, part of Slovakia and Hungary.

Chariot on a Hallstatt bronze situle from Vach, 5th century BC BC e. National Museum, Ljubljana

The bearers of the Hallstatt archaeological culture were, along with the ancestors of the Celts, the Illyrians. They occupied a vast territory in the Adriatic, from Istria to Albania, and further east, as far as Bosnia. Hallstatt culture also experienced significant influence from the Thracians living in the eastern part of the Balkans, and through their mediation from the Cimmerians and Scythians from the northern Black Sea steppe. The presence of Greek and Etruscan imports testifies to the trade relations that existed between the peoples who lived in the interior of the continent and the Greek colonies that arose in the 5th century BC. e. on the Adriatic coast.

At the turn of the 5th-4th centuries BC. BC, that is, at about the same time that the Celts invaded the Po Valley in northern Italy, their other migration stream rushed from west to east along the corridor formed by the Danube valley between the northern foothills of the Alps and the western bend of the Carpathian mountains. A reflection of this migration is the spread of characteristic burial fields and material culture, close to the culture of the inhabitants of southern Bavaria.

At first, the newcomers captured and colonized the rich centers of that time in northern Salzburg and in the Dürnberg region. From here in 380-350 BC. e. they gradually advanced into Lower Austria and western Hungary, to the area around Lake Balaton. Here, after themselves, they left the large burial grounds of Shonron, Erd, Koshd, Sob, Salachka in the valley of the Kaposh River. Some groups of Celts at this time penetrated into southwestern Slovakia and, moving further east, around 300 BC. e. reached Transylvania in what is now Romania.

Having settled in the Danube region, the Celts from here began to make campaigns in the south and southeast direction. The object of their attack was the Illyrians who lived in the territories of modern Bosnia, Herzegovina, Croatia and in the western part of Serbia.

Celtic invasions of Illyria and Thrace

About 358 B.C. e. The Greek historian Theopompus told how the Celts defeated the Illyrian Ardians by poisoning their food. When in 335 B.C. e. Alexander the Great defeated the Thracian Triballi tribe on the lower Danube, he was visited by Celtic envoys who arrived "from the Ionian Sea", that is, from the region of modern Slovenia and Croatia. The Celts produced for the king favorable impression his courage, Alexander made an alliance with them and sent the ambassadors back.

Meanwhile, the raids of the Celts on the lands of the Illyrians became a real disaster for the latter. In fear of warlike aliens around 310 BC. e. the autariats, who lived on the territory of modern Serbia, left their homeland and rushed south, to Paeonia and Dardania. The Macedonian king Cassander granted the refugees the land around Mount Orbel. The few remaining to live on the former lands of the autariat became part of the Scordis union created by the Celts.

Celtic helmet from the early 3rd century BC. e. from a burial in Chiumesti, Romania. Ancient authors repeatedly mentioned the custom of the Celts to decorate their weapons with images of animals, birds, horns, etc.

In 298 BC. e. The Celts attacked Thrace for the first time, but their invasion was repulsed by King Lysimachus while trying to cross the Rhodopes. Lysimachus, himself a brave warrior and an experienced commander, kept foreign invaders at a distance from his Thracian possessions. However, in 281 BC. e. Lysimachus died in the battle of Kurupedion, and after that, Seleucus, who defeated him, fell at the hands of Ptolemy Ceraunus.

Macedonia and Thrace plunged into the abyss of internecine struggle, and in these conditions the Celts decided to try military happiness again. In the same year 281 BC. e. The leader of the Celts Kambavl ravaged the lands of the Getae who lived on the Danube, and then invaded Thrace. The victors took a lot of booty here and returned home without hindrance, telling how rich the Thracians and their neighbors were, how weak and defenseless they were.

Defeat of Macedonia

By the beginning of 279 BC. e. the Celts gathered forces for a large campaign, in which more than 150 thousand infantrymen and 15 thousand horsemen were to participate. The soldiers were accompanied by a convoy of 2,000 carts. In order to feed such a multitude of people, the Celts decided to split up. Keretrius led his warriors against the Thracians and Triballi, who lived in the north-east of modern Bulgaria. Brennus and Achikorius marched south against the Paeonians living in the valley of the Vardar River in southwestern Bulgaria and part of Serbia. Belgius marched on Macedonia.

By that time, the Macedonian throne had been seized by Ptolemy Keravn. Having a self-confident and hot temper, he set out to meet the Celts with a small army that was with him, which also consisted of recruits. Belgius offered the king to buy peace from him for a lot of money. However, Ptolemy refused, mockingly adding that he would only make peace with the Celts when they gave him their leaders as hostages and surrendered their weapons. The ambassadors withdrew, saying that Ptolemy would soon find out whether the Celts offered peace for themselves or for his benefit.

The penetration of the Celts into the Balkans, their predatory campaigns against Thrace, Macedonia and Greece, as well as the invasion of Asia Minor

A few days later there was a battle. The Macedonians could not even withstand the first onslaught of the Celts. The wounded Ptolemy was thrown down by a rearing elephant, and he was captured alive by his enemies. The Celts cut off his head and carried it in front of the ranks, planting it on a spear. Although the barbarians did not besiege the fortified cities, they brutally devastated the entire countryside. The population of the country was horrified by the defeat and did not even think about resistance. Only in the summer the old commander Sosthenes managed to gather some forces around him and push the Celts to the north of the country.

Invasion of Greece

It soon turned out that the Belgian warriors were only the vanguard of the Celtic forces. In the autumn of the same year, 279, Brennus invaded Macedonia with the main forces. He easily defeated Sosthenes, who opposed him, and subjected the country to new cruel devastation. The Celts then turned south and invaded Greece. They went through all of Thessaly and came to the border of Phocis.

The main goal of their campaign was the famous Delphic Temple of Apollo, about the riches of which the Celts had heard from the Thessalians. As during the Persian invasion 200 years before, the Greeks who lived north of the Isthmus of Corinth - Phocians, Boeotians, Locrians, Aetolians and Athenians - united and sent an allied army to Thermopylae. However, it was many times outnumbered by the enemy.

Small detachments to help the Greeks were sent by the kings Antiochus I and Antigonus II Gonat. The Peloponnesians did not take part in the fight against the barbarians, and Sparta even threatened those cities that intended to send their soldiers to northern Greece. Soon fierce battles broke out in the Thermopylae passage itself. As Pausanias writes,

“The Hellenes marched out in silence and in full battle order; when they entered into hand-to-hand combat, their infantrymen did not run out of order so much as to disrupt their own ranks, and the lightly armed, remaining in place, threw their darts and sent their arrows and slings ... The Galatians had weaker military equipment than the Hellenes : they only had big shields(firea), they had no other weapons that covered the bodies. Even greater was their lack of military training. They rushed at the enemies, seized with blind fury and reckless anger, like some kind of wild beasts. Even those hacked with axes or swords, as long as they did not stop breathing, this fury did not leave; hit by arrows or darts, they did not lose their courage until life left them.

Terracotta figurine of a Celtic warrior, 3rd–2nd century BC. BC e.

The battles at Thermopylae went on without any visible result for seven days. Then Brennus singled out 40 thousand people from his army under the command of Kombutis and Orestorius and sent them to devastate Aetolia by roundabout routes. The Aetolian contingent was the largest part of the Greek army. According to Brenn's plan, the Greeks would not have been able to defend themselves with their former courage if the Aetolians could be forced to return to defend their own homeland.

Therefore, the Celts brutally defeated the border city of Kallion, slaughtering the men and brutally torturing the women. The Aetolians who remained at home, including the elderly and children, opposed the invaders. As a result of the outbreak of a nationwide war, most of the barbarians were destroyed, the few survivors returned to their main forces.

Meanwhile, in Brenna's head has already matured new plan. The locals, in an effort to drive the invaders away, showed them a bypass path around the Thermopylae Pass, the same one that the Persians had once used. The path was guarded by a detachment of Phocians, who offered fierce resistance to the barbarians, but could not hold back the enemy, who many times outnumbered them.

The Greeks noticed the danger only at the very last moment. Upon learning that the enemy was about to be in their rear, the allied army left their positions in the passage and retreated, and part of the army was taken out on the ships of the Athenian fleet that came close to the shore.

Attack on Delphi

Brenn with the soldiers who were with him rushed straight to Delphi. Behind him, Achikorius slowly advanced with the main forces. He was in turn pursued by the Aetolians and other Greeks.

The temple of Delphi attracted the barbarians with its legendary wealth, which was estimated at 110,000 pounds of silver and 5,000 pounds of gold. Tradition says that part of the wealth captured by the Celts was taken by them to Gaul and thrown into a sacred lake near the capital of the Volks, Tolosa (Toulouse)

The temple of Apollo was defended by no more than 4 thousand soldiers, mostly Phocians, Aetolians and local residents. Brenn, arousing the courage of his warriors, told them that the statues of gods and heroes, brightly shining in the sun and visible from afar, were made of pure gold. The gods, he said, should be generous to brave warriors so their wealth should rightfully belong to the winners. A fierce battle broke out in front of the temple itself.

It seems that the Celts managed to capture the temple for a while and plunder its treasures. Then, however, their luck ran out. The god Apollo himself seemed to defend his wealth. The same Pausanias says:

“The whole land, which was occupied by the army of the Galatians, shook violently for most of the day, and thunder and lightning rumbled without ceasing; they terrified the Celts and did not let them hear the orders clearly; in addition, lightning, falling from the sky, struck not just one person, but burned those standing next to him, themselves and their weapons ... Such were the misfortunes and horrors that haunted the barbarians throughout the day; but during the night they were destined to experience much more terrible: a frost hit, and with the frost it snowed, large stones rolled down, and whole cliffs, breaking away from Parnassus, fell directly on the barbarians, and under these overturning rocks, more than one or two people, but thirty or more people at once; they all met with death."

The Aetolians took credit for their victory over the Celts of Brenna. On the reverse of the silver tetradrachm minted by them, a personified Aetolia was depicted sitting on a pile of Celtic trophies.

Inspired, the Greeks again hit the enemy with fresh forces. Brenn was seriously wounded in this battle. In pain, he drank undiluted wine and committed suicide. Achikorius, who became the leader of the Celts after his death, burned the wagons burdening the army, left 10 thousand of his wounded to their fate, and returned home with the rest lightly. The Greeks pursued him, without entering into skirmishes and instead exterminating the detachments and lagging behind soldiers that separated from the army. At the same time, the Aetolians showed particular zeal, striving to take revenge on the enemy for the ruin of their country.

Celts in Thrace

Expelled from Greece and Macedonia, the barbarians returned to Thrace and again betrayed its lands to robbery. The Odrysian kingdom in the southeastern part of the country fell victim to their attack. The Celts destroyed his capital, Sevtopol, and ravaged the royal graves that were in it.

Traces of the Celtic invasion are the ruins of the fortresses of Krakra (Pernik in western Bulgaria) and Pisteros (Pazardzhik, southern Bulgaria) that they devastated. During excavations of the latter, a treasure of 561 silver coins was found in the layers of destruction, including minting recent years the reign of Lysimachus, as well as a La Tène sword, a spearhead and a characteristic fibula. The finds make it possible to date the destruction of the city in 281–279 BC. e.

Gradually, the paths of individual Celtic detachments began to diverge. Some warriors hastened to offer their services as mercenaries to the Macedonian king Antigonus Gonat. When their envoys arrived at the king's camp at Lysimachia on the Thracian Chersonese (Gallipoli peninsula), Antigonus organized a pompous meeting, seeking to impress the barbarians with the richness of his military attire. Instead, he only succeeded in fueling their greed.

The barbarians conspired to attack the Macedonian camp at night and seize its wealth. Antigonus learned of their plans. He led the troops out of the camp, and when the Celts came for booty, he caught them in the camp walls, as if in a trap, and killed most of them. The remnants of the Celts joined the detachments of their compatriots Leonnoria and Lutaria, in 278 BC. e. crossed into Asia Minor. Over the next few decades, they betrayed her lands to non-stop ruin.

Another part of the Celts, under the leadership of Komontorius, founded their own kingdom in Thrace with a center in Tilis, located near the modern village of Tulovo in the Stara Zagora region in Bulgaria. In the first decades of its existence, the kingdom in Tilis owned significant territories in coastal Thrace, from where more and more groups of Celts moved to Asia Minor.

The mighty Byzantium annually paid 80 talents of tribute to the Celts. To acquire this money, the Byzantines imposed a tax on ships passing through the Bosphorus and in 220-219 BC. e. were forced to wage a difficult war against Rhodes and his ally, the Bithynian king Prusius I. In 219 BC. e. through the mediation of the Celtic king Kavar, peace was concluded between the warring parties.

Celts in the north of the Balkan Peninsula and in the Danube region in the III-II centuries. BC e.

In 212 B.C. e. the Thracians revolted, killed Kavar and destroyed the throne in Tilis. A monument to his short-term power is a luxurious Celtic burial with weapons and a war chariot, discovered by archaeologists in Mezek, in the valley of the Maritsa River.

Celts in the Danube

The third part of the Celts, led by Bafanat, retreated to the middle Danube and settled here, subjugating the local Illyrian and Thracian tribes. Over the next 200 years, a vast area stretching from the eastern foothills of the Alps to Transylvania came under strong Celtic influence. Its material manifestations were weapons and decorations of the La Tene style, as well as burials, the rite of which corresponds to the practices adopted among the contemporary inhabitants of southern Germany, Switzerland and the Middle Rhine region.

The increase in the number of La Tène burials in the southern part of the Great Hungarian Plain testifies to the ongoing during the 3rd century BC. e. population influx. The Celts came both from the northwest, along the Danube corridor, and returned from the southeast. Thus, a bronze kanthar of Greek work, found in Shoba (Hungary), a close analogy of which is a kanthar from Galaxidi near Delphi, may well turn out to be military booty brought here by one of the participants in the Brenna campaign.

Frieze with Galatian trophies from the propylene of the Pergamon Library, 2nd century BC. e. It depicts Celtic shields and a conical helmet with horn-shaped decorations, swords, spears, and a chariot drawbar. Pergamon Museum, Berlin

Gradually, the contours of the Celtic tribal federations take shape in the Danube region. The most powerful people here were the Skordisks, who lived on the territory of modern Serbia between the Sava and Drava rivers. Their capital was Singidun (Belgrade). Skordisci fought against the Triballi and Getae, attacked the borders of Macedonia from time to time, and also served the Macedonian and Epirus kings as mercenaries. AT end III century BC e. The Scordisci began to mint their own gold and silver coins as an imitation of Greek and Macedonian designs.

On the territory of northeastern Croatia and Slovenia lived the Taurisks, whose capital was Segestika, the Roman Siskia (Shishak). The Taurisks were a wealthy people who owned gold mines and developed them together with the Norics.

Boii have long lived in western Slovenia and northeastern Austria, as well as in Hungary and the Czech Republic. Hence, during the second half of the III century BC. e. separate groups penetrated north of the Sudetenland into the territory of southern Poland. The locations of the cemeteries and settlements they left correlate well with the communication routes along which trade was carried out in such goods mined in the north of the European continent as amber, fur, wax, salt and graphite.

Roman conquest of the Danube

The Romans penetrated the Danube region in the middle of the 2nd century BC. e. from the territory of Dalmatia. The tribes of the Japodes, Istrians, Karns and Liburnians who lived here raided the Illyrian neighbors and the Greek cities of Iss, Epetion and Tragirium. They turned to Rome for protection.

In 155 BC. e. the consul Publius Cornelius Scipio Nazika defeated the Dalmatians, and at the same time undertook a campaign against the Scordis who supported them. In 149-146 BC. e. the consul Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus launched a campaign against the Taurisks, during which their capital Segestica was destroyed.

With the transformation of Macedonia into a Roman province in 146 BC. e. the Romans increasingly had to deal with Scordisk raids on its borders and on their allied Thracian communities. In 141 BC. e. The Skordisks were defeated by the Macedonian governor Decimus Junius Silanus. Six years later, Mark Koskonius won another victory over them in Thrace.

In 119 BC. e. The Scordisci again attacked Macedonia, defeated the army of its governor Sextus Pompey in the battle of Stobi and killed him himself. The command was taken over by the quaestor Mark Annius, who, having received reinforcements, managed to push back the invaders. In 114 BC. e. Skordiski again defeated the governor Gaius Cato, and in 107 BC. e. on the river Hebrus in Thrace, proconsul Mark Minucius Rufus fought with their detachments.

The largest invasion of the Scordisks occurred in 85 BC. e., when the barbarians, like their ancestors 200 years before, managed to break into Greece. There they sacked the sanctuary of Zeus at Dodona. The following year, the Roman general Lucius Cornelius Scipio Asiagenes undertook an act of retribution. His forces first attacked the Scordisks in their habitats and inflicted a heavy defeat on them that forever crushed their military strength.

East Celtic helmet II-I centuries BC. e., made, probably, by Skordis masters-gunsmiths. Found in the river Sava

By that time, the Celts of the Danube had another formidable opponent - the Dacians. To fight them, the king of the Taurisks, Kritasir, made an alliance with the Boii and Scordisks, but in the decisive battle he was utterly defeated and died. The victors brutally devastated his possessions. Around 65 B.C. e. The king of the Dacians Burebista inflicted such a defeat on the Boii that the places of their settlement were called Boigem ("wasteland of the Boii"). The remnants of the local population went west, to Norik, where they unsuccessfully besieged Norea. In 58 B.C. e. the Boii joined the Helvetii in their wanderings. And after the defeat by the Romans in the battle of Bibrakte, Gaius Julius Caesar settled the surviving Boii in the region of the Aedui.

After the death of Burebista around 45 BC. e. the power of the Dacians for a time weakened again. The Romans, moving deeper and deeper into the Danube, one after another conquered the Celtic tribes, exhausted in constant struggle. In 29-28 BC. e. military operations against them were led by Mark Licinius Crassus. And in 15 BC. e. the future emperor Tiberius, advancing from Macedonia, finally subjugated the Scordis and conquered their country, which became part of the Roman province of Dalmatia.

Literature:

1. Birkhan G. Celts. History and culture. - M., 2007.
2. Zhigunin V.D. International relations of the Hellenistic states in 280–220. BC e. - Kazan, 1980.
3. Zlatkovskaya T. D. The tribal union of the Getae under the leadership of Burebista // Bulletin of Ancient History. No. 2. - 1955.
4. Kolosovskaya Yu. K. Pannonia in the I-III centuries. - M.: Nauka, 1973.
5. Mongait A. L. Archeology of Western Europe: Bronze and iron age. - M.: Nauka, 1974.
6. Phillip J. Celts and Celtic Civilization. - Prague, 1961.
7. Shirokova N.S. Resettlement of the Celts // City and state in ancient societies. - L., 1982.
8. Shchukin M. B. At the turn of the era. - St. Petersburg: Farn, 1994.

There are various hypotheses for the formation of the Celts as a historical community. According to an earlier one, the ancestors of the people came to Central Europe from the Black Sea region. (In particular, the shape of combat helmets speaks in favor of their ties with the East. The peoples of Western Europe are characterized by rounded helmets, for example, the Greeks, Romans, medieval knights and Vikings. The gunsmiths of the Slavs, Iranians, Indians preferred a pointed shape. The Baltic people of the Prussians , located between the Germans and the Slavs, used both types.Many helmets of the Celts, in fact the westernmost group of Indo-Europeans, were pointed!).

Now most researchers are inclined to the hypothesis of the autochthonous origin of the Celts in the area between the Middle Rhine and the Middle Danube. The origins of their culture are seen in the so-called Hallstatt C (7th century BC) - the beginning of the Iron Age. M. Schukin gives a vivid description of the periods of Celtic history. “At the beginning of the path, the clan aristocracy probably played the leading role. In the southern part of Central Europe, in the Alpine zone, burials of its representatives are known with luxurious golden hryvnias and bracelets, with chariots in the graves, with bronze vessels. It was in this aristocratic environment that a peculiar style of Celtic art, the Celtic La Tène culture, was born.” (Shchukin, 1994. - p. 17). In the 6th century BC e. hordes of fiery-red Celts shocked Europe, sweeping on their war chariots through the territory of modern France, Spain, Britain. The lands of present-day France began to be called by their name Gaul (Celts, Gauls, Galatians - all these are different forms of the same ethnonym). This country became the core of the Celtic lands and the base of a new expansion, this time to the east. “During the valiant reign of Ambigata, both he and the state became rich, and Gaul became so abundant in both fruits and people that it turned out to be impossible for her to manage. As the population rapidly increased, Ambigath decided to rid his realm of excess people. Belovez and Segovez, the sons of his sister, he decided to designate for settlement those places that the gods indicate in fortune-telling ... Segovez got the wooded Hercynian mountains, and Bellovez ... the gods showed the way to Italy. He led all those who lacked a place among his people, choosing such people from the Bituriges, Arverni, Sennons, Aedui, Ambarri, Carnuts and Aulerci. (Livy, 5, 34 - according to Shchukin, 1994. - p. 80). In this phrase of the source, the mechanism of mobility of the Celts is perfectly shown.

The surplus population of various tribes, gathering together, captured new lands without breaking ties with their homeland. The people of Bellovese defeated the Etruscan towns in the Po Valley (about 397 BC). Their sensational but unsuccessful assault on Rome, the episode with the Capitoline geese and the phrase: “Woe to the vanquished” (about 390 BC) entered history. Then the war in Italy acquired a positional character. More promising were the actions of those Gauls who settled in the Hercynian mountains. They occupied Bohemia and the Middle Danube basin (due to the fact that the army of Alexander the Great acted in the East). Then, taking advantage of the weakening of Macedonia after the war of the Diadochi, the Celts destroyed the army of its king Ptolemy Keravnus and plundered Greece. At the invitation of the king of Bithynia, they crossed over to Asia Minor. It must be said that the Hellenistic kings willingly hired the Celts, appreciating their specific military skills (perhaps similar to those used in oriental martial arts). But the Celts (here they were called Galatians) unexpectedly formed their own state in the center of Asia Minor, organizing themselves on the model of Gaul. Finally, around the same period, the Celts settled Ireland.

During the 3rd century BC. e. the Celts began to suffer defeat. The very ease of conquest was fraught with danger. The vast distances weakened the lines of communication. The Celts were unable to develop their own statehood. The rulers of the organized powers (Rome, Macedonia, Pergamum, Syria) who had recovered from their defeats began to repulse them. “After a series of military failures, having lost part of the conquered lands, the Celtic population is concentrated in Central Europe from the Danube to the Carpathians. During the period of "central European consolidation" there is an internal restructuring of the social structure. The war chiefs have probably lost their authority. The "industrial revolution" begins - they are made in droves, for the sale of tools, those forms of them that have survived in Europe until the Middle Ages, and sometimes to the present day, a coin appears, proto-cities of oppidum arise - fortified centers with developed production "(Shchukin , 1994. - p. 18). Cities (the first in Europe north of the Alps!) and villages were connected by a network of roads. There was a developed river navigation. The Gauls in Brittany built large wooden ships, equipped with leather sails and anchor chains, much better adapted to sailing on the high seas than the ancient galleys. AT politically Celtica was still a conglomeration of tribal associations, led by "kings" and aristocracy, who lived in fortified areas and, like the medieval nobility, passionately loved horses and dog hunting. But the highest power belonged to the class of priests who had a single organization and gathered annually in the territory of present-day Chartres. They fell into three categories. Druids formed the highest caste - the compilers of myths and performers of rituals. Philides performed the functions of jurists, they also kept in memory the ancient history of the country, closely intertwined with mythology. Finally, the bards glorified military leaders and heroes in their poems. According to Caesar, the Gallic druids did not trust the written word and retained a huge amount of information in their memory. Not surprisingly, the training period of the druid reached 20 years. In Ireland, the same period was shorter - seven years.

Possessing a developed handicraft technology, the Celts had a strong influence on the neighboring “barbarian” peoples. It is possible that the Laten culture, homogeneous throughout the vast expanses of Western and Central Europe, was propagated by groups of itinerant craftsmen passing from one leader to another. The existence of a strong sacralization of the craft and participation in such groups of priests is also likely.

Such was the Celtic civilization. “In many respects, it is closer to the new than to the Greco-Roman culture due to its sailing ships, chivalry, church order, and above all their own, though imperfect attempts to make the support of the state not the city, but the tribe and its highest expression - the nation. (Mommsen, 1997, vol. 3. - p. 226). However, the Celts had to pay for the structural “perestroika” and “Central European consolidation” with the loss of combat skills. And the dominance of the priests, far from the tasks of real politics, had negative consequences. From the east, the Celts were pressed by wild Germanic tribes. In the south, Rome was gaining strength more and more. In 121 BC. e. The Romans occupied southern France, creating the province of Gallia Narbonne. At the same time, two tribes, the Cimbri and the Teutons, invaded Celtic Gaul from across the Rhine. The Romans also got it - they were defeated in two battles. But Rome was able to draw conclusions from the defeats, Marius carried out a military reform, creating a professional army. Gaul was ruined. And then came the fatal for the Celts 60-50 years. BC e. Burebista, the king of the Dacians destroyed or expelled them from Central Europe; Ariovistus, the German leader drove them out of Germany. And finally, Caesar made his dizzying campaign and in a few years conquered Gaul - the core of the Celtic lands. This country quickly succumbed to the influence of Roman civilization. Its population was called the Gallo-Romans - that is, the Gauls living according to Roman law. Gaul became one of the most developed and populated provinces of the empire. The class of priests who were champions of independence was destroyed. But the veneration of the Celtic gods continued, albeit within the framework of increasing syncretism.

A similar fate befell all the other mainland Celts. Their culture survived only in the British Isles among the Britons (England) and Scots (Ireland). So Celtica entered the Middle Ages.

Celts- one of the most famous and mysterious ancient peoples. There was a time when the sphere of their military activity covered most of Europe, but by the beginning of a new era, only a tiny part of this people in the very north-west of the continent retained its independence. During the period of maximum power ancient celts their speech was from Spain and Brittany in the west to Asia Minor in the east, from Britain in the north to Italy in the south. Celtic culture refers to the basic foundations of a number of cultures of modern Western and Central Europe. Some of the Celtic peoples still exist today. The peculiar art of the Celts still amazes both professional art critics and wide circle connoisseurs, and the religion that embodied their subtle and complex worldview remains a mystery. Even after the unified Celtic civilization left the historical stage, its heritage in various forms experienced a revival more than once.

These people were called Celts, the Romans called them galls(roosters), but how they called themselves, and whether they had a single name is unknown. The ancient Greek and Latin (Roman) authors probably wrote more about the Celts than about other peoples of Europe, which is consistent with the significance of these northern neighbors in the life of ancient civilization.

Map. Celts in Europe in the 1st millennium BC

The entry of the Celts into the historical arena

First news about the ancient Celts in written sources found around 500 BC. e. It says that these people had several cities and were warlike neighbors of the Ligures, a tribe that lived near the Greek colony of Massalia (now the French city of Marseille).

In the work of the "father of history" Herodotus, completed no later than 431 or 425 BC. e., it was reported that the Celts inhabited the upper reaches of the Danube (moreover, according to the Greeks, the source of this river is in the Pyrenees), their proximity to the kinets is mentioned, most Western people Europe.

Around 400 BC e. the tribes of this people invaded Northern Italy and occupied it, subjugating the Etruscans, Ligurians, and Umbrians who lived here. Around 396 BC. e. The Celts-Insubras founded the city of Mediolan (now Italian Milan). In 387 BC. e. the Celtic people, led by Brennus, defeated the Roman army at Alia, and then. True, the city Kremlin (Capitol) could not be captured. This campaign is associated with the origin of the Roman proverb " Geese saved Rome". According to legend, the Celts moved at night to storm the Capitol. The Roman guard was asleep. But the invaders were noticed by geese from the temple of the goddess Vesta. They made a noise and woke the guards. The attack was repulsed, and Rome was saved from capture.

In those years, the Celtic raids reached the south of Italy, until Rome put a limit to them, striving for hegemony in Italy and relying on a reformed army. Faced with such a rebuff, some groups in 358 BC. e. moved to Illyria (north-west of the Balkan Peninsula), where their movement ran into a counter onslaught of the Macedonians. And already in 335 BC. e. Celtic ambassadors entered into negotiations with Alexander the Great. Probably, the concluded agreement on the division of spheres of influence allowed the Macedonians and Greeks to go to 334 BC. e. to the conquest of Persia, without fear for their rear, and gave the Celts the opportunity to establish themselves on the Middle Danube.

From 299 BC e. the military activity of the Celts in Italy resumed, they managed to defeat the Romans at Clusium, to attach a number of tribes dissatisfied with Rome. However, four years later, in 295 BC. e., the Romans took revenge, uniting and subjugating a significant part of Italy. In 283 BC. e. they occupied the lands of the Senon Celts, cutting off their other tribesmen access to the Adriatic Sea. In 280 BC. e. inflicted a crushing defeat on the northern Italian Celts with the allies on Lake Vadimon.

Then it intensified military expansion of the Celts in southeastern Europe. Perhaps it was the outflow of forces in this direction that weakened their onslaught in Italy. By 298 BC. e. include information about their penetration into the territory of modern Bulgaria, though unsuccessful. In 281 BC. e. numerous Celtic detachments flooded a number of regions of the Balkan Peninsula, and the 20th thousandth army of the Galatian Celts was hired by Nicomedes I, king of Bithynia (on the territory of modern Turkey), for the war in Asia Minor. A huge army of Celts led by Brennus in 279 BC. e. , plundering, among other things, the sanctuary in Delphi, especially revered by the Greeks. And although the barbarians managed to be ousted from Greece and Macedonia, they remained the dominant force in more northern regions Balkans, establishing several kingdoms there. In 278 BC. e. Nicomedes I again invited the Galatians to Asia Minor, where they strengthened themselves by establishing in 270 BC. e. in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bmodern Ankara, a federation under the control of 12 leaders. The federation did not last long: after the defeats of 240-230. BC e. she lost her independence. The same or some other Galatians in the second half of the 3rd or at the beginning of the 2nd c. BC e. appear among the tribes that threatened Olbia on the northern coast of the Black Sea.

In 232 BC. e. again conflict broke out and the Celts in Italy, and in 225 BC. e. the local Gauls and the relatives called by them from behind the Alps were brutally defeated. At the site of the battle, the Romans built a memorial temple, where many years later they thanked the gods for the victory. This defeat was the beginning of the decline of the military power of the Celts. The Carthaginian commander Hannibal, who moved in 218 BC. e. from Africa through Spain, southern France and the Alps to Rome, counted on an alliance with the Celts in Italy, but the latter, weakened by previous defeats, could not help him to the extent that he expected. In 212 BC. e. uprisings of the local population put an end to Celtic domination in the Balkans.

Having finished the wars with Carthage, the Celtic people. In 196 BC. e. defeated the Insubres, in 192 BC. e. - Boii, and their center Bononia (modern Bologna) was destroyed. The remnants of the Boii went north and settled on the territory of the present Czech Republic (the name of one of the regions of the Czech Republic - Bohemia - came from them). By 190 BC. e. all the lands south of the Alps were captured by the Romans, later (82 BC) establishing the province of Cisalpine Gaul here. In 181 BC. e. not far from modern Venice, Roman colonists founded Aquileia, which became a stronghold for the expansion of Roman influence in the Danube region. During another war, by 146 BC. e. the Romans took possession of Iberia (present-day Spain) from the Carthaginians, and by 133 BC. e. finally subjugated the Celtic-Iberian tribes living there, taking their last stronghold - Numatia. In 121 BC. e. under the pretext of protecting Massalia from the raids of its neighbors, Rome occupied the south of modern France, subduing the local Celts and Ligures, and in 118. BC e. the province of Gallia Narbonne was created there.

At the end of the II century. BC e. Roman historians wrote about the onslaught on the Celts from their northeastern neighbors - the Germans. Shortly before 113. BC e. the Boii repulsed the attack of the Germanic tribe of the Cimbri. But they moved south, united with the Teutons (who were probably Celts), defeated a number of Celtic tribes and Roman armies, but in 101 BC. e. The Cimbri were almost completely destroyed by the Roman general Marius. Later, other Germanic tribes nevertheless ousted the Boii from the Czech Republic to the Danube regions.

By 85 BC. e. The Romans broke the resistance of the Scordisci, who lived at the mouth of the Sava, the last stronghold of the Celts in the north of the Balkans. About 60 BC e. The Dacians under the leadership of Burebista almost destroyed the Tevrisci and Boii, which is probably part of the events associated with the expansion of the Thracian tribes, which crushed the Celtic domination in the territory to the east and north of the Middle Danube.

Shortly before 59 BC. e., taking advantage of civil strife in Gaul, the Suebi and some other Germanic tribes, led by Ariovistus, captured part of the territory of the Sequans, one of the strongest Celtic tribes. This was the reason for the intervention of the Romans. In 58 BC. e. Julius Caesar, then proconsul of Illyria, Cisalpine and Narbonne Gaul, defeated the union of Ariovista, and soon basically took control of the rest, "shaggy" Gaul. In response, the ancient Celts rebelled (54 BC), but in 52 BC. e. fell Alesia, the base of the most active leader of the rebels - Vercingetorix, and by 51 BC. e. Caesar crushed the resistance of the Celts completely.

During a series of campaigns from 35 to 9 BC. e. the Romans established themselves on the right bank of the Middle Danube, conquering the Celtic and other local tribes. Later, the province of Pannonia arose here. In 25 BC. e. Galatia in Asia Minor submitted to Rome, having lost the remnants of independence, but the descendants of the Celts continued to live in these lands, preserving their language for several more centuries. In 16 BC. e. part of the Roman state became the "kingdom of Norik", uniting their possessions in the Upper Danube, in 16 AD. e. Here the Roman provinces of Noricus and Raetia were formed.

Following waves of Celtic settlers, the Romans also came to Britain. Julius Caesar visited there in 55 and 54. BC e. By 43 AD e., under the emperor Caligula, the Romans, having crushed the stubborn resistance of the Celts, captured South Britain, and by 80, during the reign of Agricola, the border of Roman possessions on these islands took shape.

Thus, in the I century. the Celts remained free only in Ireland.