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that of their camels. This habit suits their moveability, scanty property, small supply of food, and a sterile or uncultivated country.

The religious rites of the Kimmerians included. occasionally human sacrifices; one of the most ancient and universal superstitions, which affected and disgraced mankind in the first stages of their idolatrous and polytheistic worship. Strabo, after remarking of the Kimbri, that their wives accompanied them in war, says that many hoary priestesses of their oracle followed, clothed in white linen garments bound with a brazen girdle, and with naked feet. These women, with swords in their hands, sought the captives through the army, and threw them into a brass vessel of the size of twenty amphora. Then one of the prophetesses, ascending an elevation, stabbed them singly, as suspended above the cauldron; and made her divinations from the manner in which the blood flowed into it. The other assistants of the horrible superstition opened the bodies, and predicted victory from the inspection of the bowels. In their conflicts, they used a species of immense drum; for they struck upon skins stretched over their war chariots, which emitted a very powerful sound.34 Plutarch describes the women to have been placed on their waggons in the conflict with Marius; and when the men gave way in the battle, to have killed those who fled, whether parents or brothers. They strangled their infants at the same time, and threw them under the wheels, while fighting the Romans, and at last destroyed themselves rather than survive. the calamity. These descriptions lead us to recollect some analogous passages of Tacitus concerning the Britons at the period of the Roman invasion. He describes women, with firebrands in their hands,

34 Strabo, lib. vii. p. 451.

CHAP.

II.

BOOK

I.

The Kelts

sprang

from Kimmerians.

running like furies among the army of the Britons in Anglesey; and adds, that they stained their altars with the blood of their captives; and consulted their gods by the fibres of men. He mentions also, that before their destruction of the colony at Camelodunum, "Women, agitated with the prophetic fury, sang its approaching ruin." 35

But upon investigating the remains of antiquity, we find another ancient people, placed in some of the western regions of Europe, at the time when Greek history begins. They were called KeλTO, and afterwards Faλata; and Cæsar says of them, that they called themselves Celta or Keltæ, though the Romans gave them the appellation of Galli.36

The Keltoi, to follow the Greek orthography of the word, appear to have been one of the branches of the Kimmerian stock. The term Kimmerian, like German, or Gaul, was a generic appellation. The people to whom it extended had also specific denominations. Thus, part of the Kimmerians who invaded Asia, under Lygdamis, were likewise called Trerones, or Treres.37 That the Kelta were Kimmerians is expressly affirmed by Arrian in two passages 38; and with equal clearness and decision by Diodorus 39, and is implied by Plutarch.40

As the Kimmerians traversed the north of Europe,

35 Tacitus Annal. lib. xiv. Stabat pro litore diversa acies, densa armis virisque, intercursantibus feminis. In modum furiarum, veste ferali, crinibus dejectis, faces preferebant - Nam cruore captivo adolere aras; et hominum fibris consulere deos fas habebant -Et feminæ in furore turbatæ, adesse exitium canebant.

36 Cæsar. Comment. de Bell, Gal. lib. i. s. 1. Pausanias says of these people, "They have but lately called themselves yaλarai. They anciently called themselves KEATOι, and so did others," p. 6. And that yaλaтai was but another appellation of the Keλ701, see Diod. Sic. lib. v. p. 308. ed. Hanov. 1604. So Origen calls the Druids of Gaul, τους Γαλατων δρυαδας, adv. Cels. Galatai seems to be a more euphonous pronunciation of Keltoi; and Galli is probably but the abbreviation of Galatai. Strabo also says, all this nation whom they now call Gallikon or Galatikon, p. 298.

37 Strabo, lib. i. p. 106. In another place he says, Magnetus was utterly destroyed by the Treres, a Kimmerian nation, lib. xiv. p. 958.

38 Appian in Illyr. p. 1196, and de Bell. Civ. lib. i.
39 Diod. Sic. lib. v. p. 309.

p. 625.

40 Plut in Mario.

II.

from east to west, the Kelts seem to have proceeded CHAP. more to the south and south-west. Some geographers, before Plutarch, extended the country of the Kelts as far as the sea of Azoph.41 Ephorus was probably one of these; for he is not only mentioned to have made Keltica of vast magnitude, and including much of Spain 42; but he likewise divided the world into four parts, and made the Kelts to inhabit one of the four towards the west. 43 This statement leads us to infer, that the Kelts had been considered to be an extensive people 44; which indeed the various notices about them, scattered in the writings of the ancients, sufficiently testify. All the classical authors, who mention the Kelts, exhibit them as seated in the western regions of Europe. While the Kimmerians pervaded Europe from its eastern extremity, to its farthest peninsula in the north-west, their Keltic branch spread down to the south-western coasts. When their most ancient transactions are mentioned by the Greek and Roman writers, we find them placed in France, and Spain, and emerging into Italy.

In the time of Herodotus, the Kelts were on the western coasts of Europe. He says, that they inhabited the remotest parts of Europe to the west 45; and in another part, he states them to live beyond the pillars of Hercules, and about Pyrene; and he places among them the origin of the Danube.46

41 Plut. in Mario.

42 Strabo, lib. iv. p. 304.

43 Strabo, lib. i. p. 59. Ephorus, in his fourth book, which was entitled Europe, Strabo, p. 463., divided the world into four parts, ibid. p. 59.: in the East he placed the Indians; in the South, the Ethiopians; in the West, the Keltæ; and in the North, the Scythians.

Ephorus was a disciple of Isocrates, who desired him to write a history (Photius, 1455), which he composed from the return of the Heraclidæ into the Peloponnesus to the twentieth year of Philip of Macedon. It obtained him a distinguished reputation. His geography is often mentioned, and sometimes criticised by Strabo, But he is extolled for his knowledge by Polybius, Diodorus, and Dionysius Halicarnassus.

45 Herod. Melpom. c. 49. 48 Herod. Euterpe. c. 33. Cunesioi, beyond the Kelts.

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The Kelts

in the West

of Europe.

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Aristotle frequently mentions the Kelts. In one place, he notices them as neither dreading earthquakes, nor inundations 47; in another, as rushing armed into the waves 48; and in another, as plunging their newborn infants in cold water, or clothing them in scanty garments.49 In other works attributed to him, he speaks of the British island as lying above the Kelts 50: he mentions Pyrene as a mountain towards the west in Keltica, from which the Danube and the Tartessus flow; the latter north of the columns of Hercules; the former passing through Europe into the Euxine.51 He elsewhere speaks of Keltica, and the Iberians.52 He places the Kelts above Iberia; and remarks that their country was too cold for the ass, which our present experience contradicts; or, perhaps, we should rather say, that the temperature of France has been softened by the demolition of its forests, the disappearance of its marshes, and the cultivation of its soil. Hipparchus also mentioned Keltica, but seems to have extended it into the arctic circle; for he placed Keltæ at the distance of six thousand stadia from Marseilles, and said that the sun shone all night in Keltica during the summer, and was not raised above the horizon more than nine cubits in winter. 53

The opinions may be fanciful, but they show this great astronomer's notion of the extent of the Keltic

47 Arist. nokwv Nukoμ. lib. iii. c. 10.

49 Arist. ПoλT. lib. vii, c. 17.

48 Arist. neuk. Evdŋu, lib. iii. c. 1. 50 De Mundo, c. iii. p. 552.

51 Meteor. lib. i. c. 12. This passage makes it probable, that by Pyrene the ancients meant the Pyrenees, though Herodotus calls it a city, and places it inaccurately as to the sources of the Danube.

52 De Mirab. Auscult. 1157. de Gen. An. lib. ii. c. 8. Strabo also calls their country Keltica, and Livy, Kelticum. Timagetes placed the springs of the Danube in the Keltic mountains. Schol. Appoll.

53 Strabo cites Hipparchus, p. 128.; but adds his own belief, that the Britons were more north than Keltica, by 1500 stadia. In the time of Strabo the Keltæ were not more north than France. Hipparchus lived 150 years before Strabo, and Keltica had become much limited, when the Roman wrote, by the successful progress to the Rhine of the German nations. The Belgæ had then passed this river,

and even entered Gaul.

population. The Boii who named Bohemia, and the CHAP. Helvetians, are both admitted to be Keltic.54

The tendency of the notices of the Kelts, by Herodotus, Aristotle, and Ephorus, is to show, that in their times, this people lived in the western parts of Europe, about Gaul and Spain. They are spoken of as being in the same places by later writers.55 But the evidence of Cæsar is particularly interesting on this subject. In his time the German or Scythic hordes had spread themselves over Europe, and had incorporated, or driven before them, the more ancient races, whom we have been describing. But he found the Kelts possessing, at the period of his entrance into Gaul, the most considerable, and the best maritime part of it. He mentions that the Seine and the Marne separated them from the Belgæ, and the Garonne from the Aquitani.56 But if the Kelts occupied the sea-coast of France, from the Seine to the Garonne, and had been driven to the Seine by the invasions of northern assailants, they were in a position extremely favourable for passing over into Britain; and the same circumstances would impel them to it, as afterwards drove the Britons to seek refuge on a part of their coast, when the Saxons pressed upon them.

The Kelts had certainly been much spread upon the Continent, in the times anterior to Cæsar, and had shaken both Greece and Rome by perilous invasions. From the earliest of their predatory migrations which has been recorded by the classical writers, we find, that they were in the occupation of France about 600 years before the Christian æra. At that period, their population in this country was so abundant, that their chiefs recommended two of

5 See Tac. Mor. Germ. Strabo, lib. vii. Cæsar. de Bell. Gall.

53 As Pausanias, p. 62. Diod. Sic p. 308.; and Strabo in many places; also by Livy.

56 Cæsar. Comment. de Bell. Gall. lib. i. c. 1.

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