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Coinage in Celłic society

perhaps from Hampshire, Britain (see chapter 7), and may well relate to Caesars comment that the Gauls were using British soldiers for ‘most’ of their domestic wars. In both casos the untidy geographical distribution which gives few dues to its point of origin could be due to the coinage having been paid out during a brief period, for a specific enterprise, and thereafter rapidly dispersed among representatives of communities who had no ongoing ties of tribute or taxation with the authority that had issued it, so that it never returned to source. Such a fate was characteristic of coigage paid out to foreign mercenary soldiers everywhere (see chapter 1).

The Iowest echelon of Celtic society consisted of poor free men and slaves. The former might act as charioteers, attendants, and shieldbearers for warriors and nobles, but neither group had any independent military funetion. Instead, their principal contribu-tions to a traditional Celtic society were their agricultural labour which produced rents and customary payments to landowning Celts of all grades, the persona! services they provided for their lords, and the increment they represented as dependants to the establishment of a noble house. They might perhaps have received bronze coinage for subsistence while in attendance on a noble or warrior employed as a mercenary for a Hellenistic overlord, but they are unlikely under normal circumstances ever to have received or used precious metal currency.

The structure of a Celtic tribal kingdom

A typical Celtic noble would possess extensive estates of his own worked by tenants and slaves (the mid-first century Helvetian noble Orgetorix was said by Julius Caesar to have had an establishment of 10,000). He would have a large following of free warriors under formal contract whom he could summon for service when needed and who would pay annual dues from the produce of their land, and also a number of dependent nobles who attended his court, provided military support from their own warrior following for major campaigns, and paid him an annual tribute. Together with his own persona! land or domain, and unfree dependants, the collective possessions of his free compatriot dependants, noble and commoner alike, constituted a noble’s territory, which he would continually seek to increase during his lifetime. If he struck a coinage, it might be expected to circulate throughout his territory, overlapping with that of his most senior dependants in cases where they also struck a coinage. This pattern of distribution may perhaps be seen in Cunobelin's British kingdom in the first century ad (see chapter 7). In addition, a noble would entertain ‘men of skill’, guests, and a private personal retinue of extra-tribal noble youths (according to Julius Caesar, the mid-first century Aeduan noble Dumnorix always kept young cavalry — i.e. nobles — about him). For important military campaigns he might also hire mercenary soldiers. The expense of maintaining such an establishment was formidable, and in a classic warrior society seems to have been the leading form of investment of wealth. The commonplace employment of mercenary soldiers madę a natural context for the introduction of coinage in due course.

The introduction of coinage was, however, an important innovation. We are told that cattle and gold were the traditional early forms of Celtic wealth, but far greater sums could be accumulated in the form of gold than in the form of livestock. The accumulation of wealth, and especially of gold coins, was poten-tially threatening to a social order such as this, because it meant that lesser nobles could scheme to assemble their own armies and free themselves from dependence upon their seniors, thereby diminishing the actual standing of the latter. Celtic political hierarchies were inherently unstable, heavily dependent upon the personal prestige and achievements of individual leaders, easily shattered if a leader was defeated or subordinates became disillusioned with him, and in any case prone to disintegrate into their component parts when the leader died.

Paramount kingdoms - the most highly centralized form of tribal hierarchy - were headed by high kings such as Ambigatus or Cunobelin who had lesser kings in their pay. Paramount kings’ pre-eminence depended morę upon their liberality, prestige, and ability to sustain alliances with important foreign powers like the Roman empire, than upon any real coercive power. Unified paramount kingdoms embracing entire geographical regions were in practice seldom formed, and even less often sustained for very long. The history of the two principal Southern British kingdoms in the generation before the Claudian conquest affords a glimpse into the vicissitudes to which they were subject (see chapter 7).

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