Celts

Celts, term used by ancient and modern writers to describe a population group occupying in prehistoric and historic times lands mainly north of the Mediterranean, from the Spanish peninsula and the British Isles in the west to Galatia in central Asia Minor (see GALATIANS). Their unity can be recognized from the fact that they had a common speech, evinced in place-names, and from a common artistic style. It is generally thought that the Celts spread from the region of the Upper Danube during the Bronze Age. Celtic tribes invading from across the Rhine and settling in Gaul came to be known themselves as Gauls. Hence the invaders of Italy who sacked Rome in c.370 BC and who entered the Balkans and raided Delphi in 279 BC and crossed the Hellespont in 278 are referred to either as Celts or as Gauls. The latter gave their name to the territory of Galatia, where Celtic was still spoken in the fifth century AD. The Celts in Europe were overrun by invading Germans crossing the Rhine from the third century BC onwards and by the migrations of the Cimbri and Teutones soon after 120 BC, and so they withdrew from Bohemia and south Germany. They were also conquered by Rome in the Gallic wars and some, e.g. the Belgae, became assimilated to their invaders.

Celts, a grouping of Indo-European peoples of diverse ethnic origin recognized as sharing a common culture, reflected in their social and political institutions, their religious observances, and their languages. From around 1000 to 100 BC they spread out from their original territory, probably that area of present-day central Europe in which the border of southern Germany meets that of the Czech Republic and Austria, ranging eventually from Britain and Ireland to Spain, Transylvania, Galatia, and Italy. At c.500 BC, the beginning of the second period of the Iron Age, the La Tène period—so named after a site discovered in the 19th cent. at Lake Neuchâtel in Switzerland—the Celts begin to enter the written record in the works of Greek historians. The oldest archaeological evidence relating to them comes from Hallstadt, Austria, and dates to c.700 BC. Celtic peoples had settled in Britain from the 5th cent. BC. From about the 3rd cent. BC it is reasonable to refer to a Celtic presence in Ireland. Of the pre-Celtic language or languages of Ireland nothing is known. The Romans did not annex Ireland, with the consequence that, until the invasion of the Vikings in the 9th cent., Celtic civilization and culture survived intact in Ireland. Celtic society, as with most Indo-European societies, was patriarchal. Its religion [see Irish mythology] associated deities with rivers, wells, and trees. The oak was sacred, and there were animal-gods, such as Taruos in Gaul (Irish tarbh), and the mare Epona [Irish ech, reflecting the p/q differentiation—see Celtic languages]. They believed in an afterlife, which was why they showed such disregard for death in battle. Fasting against an enemy, a widespread Indo-European custom, was sometimes used to obtain redress of a wrong.