Certain material remains found in north Italy, e.g. at Sesto Calende, may belong to this invasion. The next great wave of Celts recorded was that which swept down on north Italy shortly before 400 b.c. These invaders broke up in a few years the Etruscan power, and even occupied Rome herself after the disaster on the Allia (390 b.c.). Bought off by gold they withdrew from Rome, but they continued to hold a great part of northern Italy, extending as far south as Sena Gallica (Sinigaglia), and henceforward they were a standing source of danger to Rome, especially in the Samnite Wars, until at last they were either subdued or expelled, e.g. the Boii from the plains of the Po. At the same time as the invasion of Italy they had made fresh descents into the Danube valley and the upper Balkan, and perhaps may have pushed into southern Russia, but at this time they never made their way into Greece, though the Athenian ladies copied the style of hair and dress of the Cimbrian women. About 280 b.c. the Celts gathered a great host at the head of the Adriatic, and accompanied by the Illyrian tribe of Autariatae, they overthrew the Macedonians, overran Thessaly, and invaded Phocis in order to sack Delphi, but they were finally repulsed, chiefly by the efforts of the Aetolians (279 b.c.). The remnant of those who returned from Greece joined that part of their army which had remained in Thrace, and marched for the Hellespont. Here some of their number settled near Byzantium, having conquered the native Thracians, and made Tyle their capital. The Byzantines had to pay them a yearly tribute of 80 talents, until on the death of the Gallic king Cavarus (some time after 220 b.c.) they were annihilated by the Thracians. The main body of the Gauls who had marched to the Hellespont crossed it under the leadership of Leonnorius and Lutarius. Straightway they overran the greater part of Asia Minor, and laid under tribute all west of Taurus, even the Seleucid kings. At last Attila, king of Pergamum, defeated them in a series of battles commemorated on the Pergamene sculptures, and henceforth they were confined to a strip of land in the interior of Asia Minor, the Galatia of history. Their three tribes—Trocmi, Tolistobogians and Tectosages—submitted to Rome (189 b.c.), but they remained autonomous till the death of their king Amyntas, when Augustus erected Galatia into a province. Their descendants were probably the “foolish Galatians” to whom St Paul wrote (see [Galatia]).
Ancient writers spoke of all these Gauls as Cimbri, and identified them with the Cimmerians of earlier date, who in Homeric times dwelt on the ocean next to the Laestrygones, in a region of wintry gloom, but where the sun set not in summer. Nor was it only towards the south and the Hellespont that the Celtic tide ever set. They passed eastward to the Danube mouth and into southern Russia, as far as the Sea of Azov, mingling with the Scythians, as is proved by the name Celto-scyths. Mithradates VI. of Pontus seems to have negotiated with them to gain their aid against Rome, and Bituitus, a Gallic mercenary, was with him at his death.
The Celts had continually moved westwards also. The Belgae, who were Cimbric in origin, had spread across the Rhine and given their name to all northern France and Belgium (Gallia Belgica). Many of these tribes sent colonies over into south-eastern Britain, where they had been masters for some two centuries when Caesar invaded the island (see [Britain]). But there is evidence that from the Bronze Age there had been settlers in northern Britain who were broad-skulled and cremated their dead, a practice which had arisen in south Germany in the early Bronze Age or still earlier. It is not unlikely that, as tradition states, there were incursions of Celts from central Gaul into Ireland during the general Celtic unrest in the 6th century b.c. It is certain that at a later period invaders from the continent, bringing with them the later Iron Age culture, commonly called La Tène, which had succeeded that of Hallstatt, had settled in Ireland. Not only are relics of La Tène culture found in Ireland, but the oldest Irish epics celebrate tall, fair-haired, grey-eyed heroes, armed and clad in Gallic fashion, who had come from the continent. The Celts in Italy, in the Balkan, in France and in Britain, overspread the Indo-European peoples, who differed from themselves but slightly in speech. The Celts represented Indo-European q by p, whilst the Greeks, Illyrians, Thracians, Ligurians, and aborigines of France, Britain and Ireland represented it by k, c or qu. The Umbrian-Sabellian tribes had the same phonetic peculiarity as the Celts. Thus Gallic petor (petor-ritum, “four-wheeler”), Umbrian petur, Homeric πίσυρες, Boeotian (Achaean) πέτταρες, Welsh pedwar; but Gaelic cethir, Lat. quatuor. The Celts are thus clearly distinguished from the Gaelic-speaking dark race of Britain and Ireland, and in spite of usage it must be understood that it is strictly misleading to apply the term Celtic to the latter language.
See also Ridgeway, Early Age of Greece, vol. i., and Oldest Irish Epic; Ripley, The Races of Europe; Sergi, The Mediterranean Race.
(W. Ri.)
Celtic Languages
Introduction.—The Celtic languages form one group of the Indo-European family of languages. As might be expected from their geographical distribution, they hold a position between the Italic and Teutonic groups. They are distinguished from these and other branches of the family by certain well-marked characteristics, the most notable of which are the loss of initial and inter-vocalic p, cf. Ir. athair with Lat. pater; Ir. lān, “full,” Welsh llawn, Breton leun, with Lat. plenus; Gaulish are-, “beside,” Ir. ar. Welsh, Breton ar, with Gr. περί, παρά; and the change of I. E. ē to ī, cf. Ir. fīr, “true,” Welsh gwir, Breton gwir, Lat. verus. We may further mention that the I. E. labialized velar gv is represented by b, e.g. Ir. bo, “cow,” Welsh buwch, Gr. βοῦς, Sanskr. gāus; Ir. ben, “woman,” Gr. γυνή, whilst the medial aspirates bh, dh, gh result in simple voiced stops. I. E. sonant r and l become ri, li. Other distinctive features of the modern dialects are not found in Gaulish, partly owing to the character of the monuments. Such are the -ss- preterite and the fusion of simple prepositions with pronominal elements, e.g. Ir. fri-umm, “against me,” Welsh wrth-yf, Breton ouz-inn. The initial mutations which are so characteristic of the living languages did not arise until after the Romans had left Britain. The Celtic languages betray a surprising affinity with the Italic dialects. Indeed, these two groups seem to stand in a much closer relationship to one another than any other pair. As features common to both Celtic and Italic we may mention: (i) the gen. sing, ending -ī of masc. and neut. stems in o; (2) verbal nouns in -tion; (3) the b- future; (4) the passive formation in -r.
The various Celtic dialects may be divided as follows:—(1) Gaulish; (2) Goidelic, including Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx; (3) Brythonic, including Welsh, Breton and Cornish. Gaulish and Brythonic, like Oscan and Umbrian among the Italic dialects, change the I. E. labialized velar guttural qv to p, whilst the Goidelic dialects retain the qv which later gives up the labial element and becomes k, e.g. Gaulish petor-, “four,” Ir. cethir, Welsh petguar, Breton pevar, Lat. quattuor; Ir. cia, “who,” Welsh pwy, Lat. quis; Gaulish epo-, “horse,” Welsh eb-ol, Breton eb-eul, Ir. ech, Lat. equus. Several attempts have been made to prove the existence of Celtic dialects with qv on the continent. Forms containing p occur in the Coligny calendar, discovered in 1897, by the side of others with qv, a state of affairs not yet satisfactorily accounted for. The Rom tablets, discovered in 1898, have not been interpreted as yet, but p forms are found on them exclusively. In an excursus we shall deal with the language of the Picts.
No comprehensive handbook of the Celtic languages on the lines of Gröber’s Grundriss der romanischen Philologie or Paul’s Grundriss der germanischen Philologie was available in 1909. The reader may refer to Windisch’s article “Keltische Sprachen” in Ersch und Gruber’s Allgemeine Encyklopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste, and V. Tourneur, Esquisse d’une histoire des études celtiques (Liége, 1905; vol. ii. with full bibliography). Also H. Zimmer, “Die kelt. Litteraturen” in Die Kultur d. Gegenwart, T. i. Abh. xi. I, Berlin and Leipzig, 1909. The materials for the study of the older forms of the languages are to be found in Zeuss’s Grammatica Celtica as revised by Ebel. A comparative grammar of the Celtic dialects has been prepared by H. Pedersen (Göttingen, 1908). See also Whitley Stokes and A. Bezzenberger, Wortschatz der keltischen Spracheinheit (Göttingen, 1894).
I. Gaulish.—Celtic place-names are found as far east as the Dniester and Dobrudja, and as far north as Westphalia. The language of the Galatians in Asia Minor must have stood in a very close relation to Gaulish. Indeed few traces of dialectical differences are to be observed in continental Celtic. Unfortunately no literary monuments written in the ancient speech of Gaul have come down to us, though Caesar makes mention of religious poems orally transmitted by the Druids, and we also hear of bardi and vates. But a large number of personal and place-names have been preserved. The classical writers have, moreover, recorded a certain number of Gaulish words which can generally be identified without difficulty by comparing them with words still living in the modern dialects, e.g. pempedula, “cinquefoil,” cf. Welsh pump, “five,” and deilen, “leaf”; ambactus, Welsh amaeth; petorritum, “four-wheeled chariot,” cf. Welsh pedwar, “four,” and Ir. roth, “wheel,” or rith, “course.” We have further between thirty and forty inscriptions (three in north Italy) which we may without hesitation ascribe to the Gauls. These inscriptions are written in either N. Etruscan or Greek or Latin characters. We are thus in a position to reconstruct much of the old system of declension, which resembles Latin very closely on the one hand, and on the other represents the forms which are postulated by the O. Ir. paradigms. Hence Gaulish is particularly valuable as preserving the final vowels which have disappeared in early Irish and Welsh. The few verb-forms which occur in the remains of Gaulish are quite obscure and have not hitherto admitted of a satisfactory explanation. The statements of ancient authors with regard to the Belgae are conflicting, but there cannot be much doubt that the language of the latter was substantially the same as Gaulish. Caesar observes that there was little difference between the speech of the Gauls and the Britons in his day, and we may regard Gaulish as closely akin to the ancestor of the Brythonic dialects. It is difficult to say when Gaulish finally became extinct. It disappeared very rapidly in the south of France, but lingered on, possibly till the 6th century, in the northern districts, and it seems unnecessary to discredit Jerome’s statement that the speech of the Galatians in Asia Minor bore a strong resemblance to the language he had heard spoken in the neighbourhood of Trier. There is no evidence that Breton has been influenced by continental Celtic. The number of Gaulish words which have come down in the Romance languages is remarkably small, and though at first sight the sound-changes of French and Welsh seem to bear a strong likeness to one another, any influence of Gaulish pronunciation on French is largely discounted when we find the same changes occurring in other dialects where there is little or no question of Celtic influence.