The Gauls or Celts represent inveterate adversaries of Rome. The Gallic sack of Rome in the early fourth century remained a blot on the city’s history. Repeated battles engaged Romans with Celts in northern Italy during the third and early second centuries. The Achaean historian Polybius, who wrote his work in Rome under Roman patronage, recorded those wars, reflecting attitudes of ambivalence that mingled contempt with fear and respect. Gauls struck terror into foes, and harbored special hostility against Rome (Polyb. 2.18.1-2, 2.31.7, 3.34.2, 3.78.5).30 Polybius probes their faults, perhaps a reassurance to Roman readers: Gauls are greedy, fickle, and untrustworthy, internally divided, addicted to drinking, frightening in their initial assault but incapable of keeping it up (Polyb. 2.7.5-6, 2.19.3-4, 2.32.7-8, 2.33.2-3,
2.35.6, 3.78.2). The historian, however, acknowledges commendable traits that made the Gauls worthy rivals. He introduces them as men of size and beauty, boldly courageous in war, a boldness to which he reverts on a number of occasions (Polyb.
2.15.7, 2.18.1-2, 2.35.2, 3.34.2). He admired the good order of their military formation (Polyb. 2.29.5). And, most tellingly, he ascribes their rallying against Rome to a fierce resistance against what would otherwise be wholesale expulsion and destruction (Polyb. 2.21.9). These are no mere cliches and stereotypes.
Greeks interested themselves in Gallic ethnography. Posidonius wrote on the subject in the early first century BC. Comments on Gauls, whether from Posidonius or elsewhere, surface in Diodorus and Strabo, reflecting what may indeed have become commonplaces: Gauls were tall and muscular, immoderate drinkers, occasionally drinking themselves into a stupor, greedy and acquisitive, terrifying in appearance and fearless in war (Diod. Sic. 5.26.3, 5.27.4, 5.28.1, 5.29.1-3, 5.31.1; Strabo 4.4.2-6).31 And Cicero, when it suited his purpose at a court of law, denounced Gauls as untrustworthy witnesses. They pay no attention to oaths for they pay no respect to religion or the gods. Even the most admirable of Gauls does not belong on a plane with the lowest citizen of Rome (Cic. Font. 27, 29-31). 2 These are rhetorical ploys, not sober assessments.
Serious Romans took Gauls seriously. A fragment of Cato the Elder takes us by surprise on this score. He had observed Celts at first hand in the Hannibalic War and in Spain. Cato reports that most of Gaul pursues two things most assiduously: the art of war and speaking with wit (Cato F 2.3, Beck and Walter 2001-4; cf. Diod. Sic. 5.31.1; Strabo 4.1.5).33 We would not have expected the latter.
The Roman best in a position to speak knowledgeably about Gauls was Julius Caesar who fought them for nearly a decade. His observations are complex and considered. To be sure, Caesar conveys some cliches. He too probably read Posidonius or other ethnographic treatments of the Gauls. So, his Gallic Wars includes allusions to them as a capricious and unstable people (Caes. B Gall. 2.1.3,3.8.3,4.5.1,4.13.3). And the label of a nation that is quick to go to war but unable to sustain it reappears in Caesar’s account as well (Caes. B Gall. 3.19.6). He delivered other negative verdicts when it suited the purposes of his narrative. He deems recklessness as a national trait and ties it to foolishness and weakness of mind (Caes. B Gall. 7.42.2, 7.77.9). He even accused some Gauls of treachery - though not as a national trait (Caes. B Gall. 7.5.5-6, 7.17.7, 7.54.2).34
Caesar could also draw attention to characteristics of the Celts in a literary device to reflect upon the deficiencies of his own society. His treatise opens with praise of the Belgae as bravest of all Gallic tribes precisely because they dwelled at the greatest distance from the Roman province (Caes. B Gall. 1.1.3; cf. 2.4). He makes a comparable comment about the Gauls as a whole: they used to exceed the Germans in valor, but those days have passed; proximity of Roman provinces acquainted them with luxury goods, and they have gone soft (Caes. B Gall. 6.24.1, 6.24.5-6).35
But Caesar did not rely on artificial concoctions or literary stereotypes. He fought Gallic tribes and he delivered thoughtful judgments - many of them quite positive. The Nervii, for instance, gained renown as the fiercest of Gallic fighters, deliberately prohibiting import of wine and other goods that might enervate their spirits, scorning other tribes that had surrendered to Rome and abandoned ancestral virtue (Caes. B Gall. 2.15.3-5, 2.27.5). Caesar frequently ascribed courage (virtus) to Gallic warriors.3 And, like Polybius before him, Caesar presented Gauls as fighting to preserve the liberty that they had inherited from their ancestors rather than suffer servitude under the Romans (Caes. B Gall. 1.17.4, 3.8.4, 3.10.3, 5.27.6, 7.1.5, 7.1.8, 7.4.4, 7.37.4, 7.77.13-16).
Perhaps most noteworthy is Caesar’s evaluation of Celtic religious practices. The Druids, the priestly establishment among the Gauls, later branded as dangerous and suppressed by Augustus, religious leaders who condoned and supervised human sacrifice, received no strictures from Caesar. He described their rituals in straightforward and detached fashion, passing no negative verdict even upon the sacrificial rites, approving their educational endeavors, and noting their doctrine of metempsychosis that encouraged valor among their people (Caes. B Gall. 6.13.3, 6.14.1-6, 6.16.1-2). And his description ofCeltic gods makes them equivalent to Roman divinities, both in name and in function, without suggesting any distinction or peculiarities (Caes. B Gall. 6.17.1-3).37 Far from distancing Roman characteristics from the alien, Caesar practically turned the Gauls into good (or better than) Romans.
A century later the emperor Claudius argued for the introduction of Gallic provincials into the Roman Senate. The speech that Tacitus puts into his mouth, a faithful one at least in spirit, as we know from a contemporary inscription, accurately epitomizes Roman sentiments. Claudius affirmed that what ultimately caused the failure of Sparta and Athens, despite their military predominance, was the practice of shunning conquered peoples as aliens. Rome’s success, by contrast, came precisely because the nation, from Romulus on, translated former foes into new citizens (Tac. Ann. 11.23-5; cf. ILS 212). The Gauls can serve on this score as prime example of the Roman disposition toward foreigners, even ancient enemies.
World History
