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The Celts outside Gaul

The Celts outside Gaul

the Celts. They therefore struck no coinage of n end to the coinage which had existed before

alloyed bilion ‘Rainbow cups* from near Vichy may perhaps represent the contingent of central Europę Boii to whom the Aedui gave refuge in the aftermath of Caesar*s defeat of the Helvetii in 58 bc.

Northern Italy

Northern Italy (Cisalpine Gaul) was a distinct Celtic region in its own right, settled by transalpine warriors during the fifth and fourth centuries bc. There was a tradition, preserved by the historian Polybius and perhaps influenced by a later series of Celtic raids in the third and second centuries, that the Gauls had entered Italy from the east, but it is in fact elear from the order in which their settlements were founded that the original Celtic immigrants to the north Italian plain had come from the west. Their tribal names give some idea where they may have come from: the Boii from central Europę, the Senones and the Cenomani from northern Gaul and the Rhineland, and the Insubres, apparently, from Burgundy.

During the fifth and fourth centuries, the Cisalpine Celts were most closely involved with the Etruscans, whom they are said to have dri ven from their outposts in the north Italian plain, but with whom they also did a vigorous trade in a wide rangę of commodities and for whom they often served as mercenary soldiers. There was, indeed, a tradition that the Etruscans themselves were responsible for luring the Celts into Italy to assist in their internal political feuds. The historian Appian (Gallic History 10) recounts a characteristic encounter with the Cisalpine Senones during this period:

The Senones, although they had a treaty with the Romans, nevertheless furnished tnercenaries against them, and the Senate accordingly sent an embassy to remonstrate against this infraction of the treaty. Britomaris, the Caul, incensed against them because his father had been killed by the Romans while fighting for the Etruscans in this very war, siew the

ambassadors while they held the herald’.s staff in their handsand wore the inviolahle garments of their office. He then cut their hodies in smali pieces and seattered them in the fields. (Appian went on todescribe the Romans' revenge.)

Long-term eontact with the Etruscans gave rise to the characteris-tic Lepontic alphabet which was used on the earliest inscribed Cisalpine coins, and which is also found on native coinages in the Alps. There was indeed a tradition that the Alpine district of Rhaetia was settled by Etruscan fugitives from the north Italian plain.

Cisalpine Gaul was the first colonial Celtic territory to be established in such close geographical proximity with the Mediter-ranean world, and also the first to be conquered by Romę. This process began early in the third century bc, was interrupted by the Second Punie War (218-201) and was eompleted during the course of the second century. The tide turned dccisi vely against the Gauls in 225 when the Boii and Insubres together with the transalpine Caesatae launched a massive raid upon Roman Italy, but were destroyed by the Roman army at Telamon in Etruria. The Gauls assisted Hannibal during his invasion eight years later, which only inereased Roman determination to put them down when the war was over. In 218 Roman colonies were planted as garrisons at Płaceńtia and Cremona, and in 191 the Boii, most warlike of the Cisalpine Celts, were driven from their territories south of the Po. From a growing number of military outposts the process eon* tinued, and in the 140s Polybius said that he himself had seen the Gauls driven back to the Alps. In 100 a colony at Eporedia in the foothills of the western Alps eompleted Roman control of the entire Po plain, and in 81 the Roman dictator Sulla reorganized the area as Italy's northern district. Thereafter it became a vital food-producing area for the city of Romę, and also an important legionary reeruiting-ground, for warrior traditions died hard, and as Roman subjects the Celts everywhere madę excellent and willing soldiers—as the English were to discover much later when they in their turn came to rule the Scots.

The Cisalpine Gauls were conquered by Romę before they had developed unified kingdoms: their independent deve!opment was halted long before anything resembling a paramount kingdom could be formed. Instead, the senior nobility (reguli, or ‘kinglets’) of each tribal grouping seem to have formed consultative feder-

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