PICTONES

A Celtic tribe in Gaul, with its main center at Lemonum (Poitiers). Julius Caesar depended on the Pictones to build ships for him on the Loire. At the time of the Roman conquest, Duratios was King of the Pictones and frequently aided Caesar in naval battles. The Pictones supported the Romans because they were afraid of the expansionist strategies of other Gaulish tribes. Even so, they did send 8,000 men to support Vercingetorix during the Gaulish rebellion of 52 BC.

PICTS

A general Latin name given to the people who lived in the northern half of Scotland, “Pictland,” in the third century AD. “The Painted People” was a nickname given by the Romans to northern Brits who wore woad or sported tattoos. “Pict” does not therefore really define a tribal or ethnic group in the Roman period, and Pictland, Alba, and Caledonia seem to have been thought of as being much the same area— Scotland.

In the past it has been suggested that the Picts were in some way the pre-Celtic inhabitants of Scotland, but that presupposes a belief that the Celts arrived in these islands during the Iron Age. Now that we see that they were well-established there by that stage, in fact they had been settled in Britain for thousands of years, the concept of “pre-Celts” has no meaning.

One theory holds that the Picts came originally, in the first millennium BC, from Ireland, having been displaced by incoming Celts—but there seems to be no particular reason for believing this. Any cultural or “ethnic” differences between the Picts and the people living to the south could be explained by their geographical isolation. They did evolve some extraordinary pictorial symbols, which appear to relate to their language. In other words the Picts’ carved memorial stones carry pictograms (no pun intended).

The Irish called the Picts Cruithin, which is an early Irish transliteration of Britanni, so the Irish were not really identifying them as a distinct people either.