SOCIETY

By the first century BC, there is clear evidence of the nature of Celtic societies. They are heroic, on the Mycenaean model. They are hierarchical, with kings and queens at the top, heading an aristocracy of warriors. Some of the earliest Irish literature shows swaggering, boastful, aggressive heroes who are constantly quarreling and fighting in order to prove their worth to their peers. The quarrels are often over small matters, but even a small snub cannot be overlooked. It is very reminiscent of the sort of society described in Homer’s Iliad, which was not written down until about 700 BC, but contains material from 500 years earlier.

Priority at the feast was important to these heroes (See Food and Feasting). Feasting can be detected in the archeology of places such as Danebury hillfort in Hampshire, England, where there were hooks to carry cauldrons, spits, and middens containing the remains of joints of meat.

In Ireland cattle-raiding was another way in which warriors showed their prowess. Wealth was measured in cattle—the cow was the unit of currency.

Julius Caesar set out the structure of Celtic society clearly. It was organized into Druids (learned men), warrior-nobles, and ordinary people. He mentioned at least one king, Divitiacus, who in the early first century BC held lands on both sides of the English Channel. At the lowest level there were slaves, so the plebes (ordinary people) must have comprised at least two categories: slaves and freemen. Slaves certainly existed in Britain; the slave-gang chain complete with neck-shackles found at Llyn Cerrig Bach in 1943 proves this. Diodorus Siculus says that in Gaul a slave could be bought for an amphora of wine.

Irish sources show that Celtic society was rather more complex than Caesar noticed, which is what we might expect. The Irish texts mention kings, sub-kings, warrior nobles (flatha), lesser nobles, freemen (bo-airigh), and serfs. Freemen consisted mainly of farmers who paid food-rent to the king, though the class included priests, artists, and craftsmen as well as landholders. The main social unit was the extended family or derbfine, which included the four generations of descendants from a common great-grandfather, and groups of these made up the tuath, or tribe. The derbfine owned land collectively, in common; there was no individual ownership.

Looked at in terms of straightforward hierarchy, Irish society was feudal, with the High King of All Ireland at its head; below him the five kings of the provinces, Ulster, Munster, Connaught, Leinster, and Meath; below them the kings of the counties, and below them again the kings of the hills and the peaks. Then came the four classes of nobles, then the cattle-chiefs, then freemen and craftsmen, and then last of all the bondsmen. All of these except the last held land.

Kings were more than political and judicial leaders: they were battle leaders too, and they had priestly functions to perform when making sacrifices and when undertaking divination. In some Gaulish tribes, such as the Santones, the Remi, and the Treveri, the nobility abolished kingship, devolving the kingly powers upon a magistrate called a vergobret after an election. He served for a year only, and to prevent a return to kingship a second magistrate was appointed to take military power. The nobles devised every means possible to avert a return to kingship.

The king (Latin rex, Gallic rix) and his sub-kings bound themselves to one another by personal oaths of allegiance; similar bonds held lower social classes to higher social classes.

By 100 BC Celtic society had taken on a strongly stratified structure. The emergence of craftsmen and artists into the status of freemen was an interesting development. This may reflect the development of long-distance trade and the consequent availability of exotic raw materials for craftwork. The same long-distance contacts would have exposed kings and nobles on the Atlantic fringe to the refined art and craftwork produced in the Mediterranean region. The western kings wanted their own craftsmen to produce similarly refined pieces and so the craftsmen and artists achieved enhanced status.

Relationships between people were more ordered than might be expected. Classical writers normally intent on portraying the Celts as savages occasionally found themselves praising them for the structure and restraint of their society. Tacitus wrote a book called Germania about the northern tribes. One of his motives seems to have been to warn the emperor about the danger from the north, from these particular barbarians, but Tacitus found some things about them wholly admirable. Monogamy was strongly upheld, he said. Unmarried women guarded their virginity and valued it as something precious; they lived in a state of impregnable chastity. When an act of adultery came to light, which happened only occasionally, the offenders were punished severely, with flogging and public humiliation. All of this was in stark contrast to the scandalous goings-on in contemporary Rome. In certain ways, Tacitus said, the barbarians were more civilized than the Romans.

Inter-tribal politics were complicated. Quarrels and skirmishing were common. But the placing of major religious sanctuaries on tribal frontiers, and sometimes at the point where the frontiers of three tribes ran together, suggests occasional peaceful meetings. In northern France, for instance, the sanctuary of Morvillers was at the place where the lands of the Ambiani, Caleti, and Bellovaci met; Gournay was

Where the lands of the Ambiani, Bellovaci, and Viromandui met.

No doubt the sanctuaries were, like Christian churches, regarded as places of protection: places where “sanctuary” in the more general sense might be claimed. There may have been annual festivals at which representatives of neighboring tribes would gather to worship together, settle disputes, and negotiate political problems of common interest. In Caesar’s time several Gaulish tribes, such as the Bellovaci, had a council, described by a Roman general as a senate, and it allowed the nobles of the tribe to debate issues. But the tribal senate could be a very large body, of 600 members. It met when there was a crisis that affected the fate of the entire civitas.

But the tribes were not bound together with one another and did not easily agree. There was no real mechanism to bring them to agreement. This is clear from the response of the British tribes to the two Roman invasions. Some of the tribes were favorable toward Rome, seeing the advantage of greater access to luxury goods. By the time of the Claudian invasion, several of the tribal territories had become client kingdoms, and therefore in effect Roman allies. The British tribes were divided and this made conquest by Rome easy.

But in Caesar’s time, the tribes of one region in south-eastern England did come together to resist Caesar: the Trinovantes with their capital at Colchester, the Catuvellauni with their capital at St. Albans, and to some extent the Cantii across the Thames estuary in Kent. The confederation was fragile, however, and perhaps too much depended on the charisma of individual tribal chiefs.

In Britain, in the post-Roman sixth century, the social hierarchy had at its top the king (tighern or gwledig), though certainly in time of war there was an overking, commander-in-chief, or leader of battles above him (amerawder orpendragon). Under the king came the nobles (uchelwr) and the king’s hearth companions (teulu or altrix). Then came the ordinary people: the free-born citizens (boneddig), bondmen (taeog), and slaves (caeth).

Although the Celtic lands were divided up into countless kingdoms—some large, some small—there was a recognition that there was a need for a joint effort when a common threat appeared. Confederations of kings were formed, appointing one of their number overking to act as military commander-in-chief He was known by different titles: sometimes by the Latin title dux bellorum (leader of battles), or sometimes by a Celtic title, amerawder (emperor) or gwledig (overking). Geoffrey of Monmouth has often been criticized for imposing a mindset from his own times on the Dark Ages, but his list of the “Kings of Britain” may actually tell us the

Succession of overkings. Geoffrey was using an early medieval list:

GORTHEYRN. GWETHUYR VENDIGEIT. EMRYS WLEDIC.

UTHERPENDRIC. ARTHUR.

CONSTANTIUS. AURELIUS. lUOR.

MAELGON GOYNED.

Translated and expanded, this becomes:

Vortigern the Elder (of Powys);

Vortigern the Younger (of Powys);

Ambrosius the Overking (of Dumnonia); Uther Pendragon (of Dumnonia); Arthur (of Dumnonia);

Constantine (of Dumnonia); Aurelius (the Aurelius Caninus mentioned by Gildas = Cynan of Calchvynnydd);

Ivor(?); Maelgwn of Gwynedd.

This is interesting in that it is consistent with what can be pieced together from other sources. It also shows the high kingship passing from one kingdom to another, but always within the province of Britannia Prima (Wales and the English West Country).

SOUTERRAIN

An underground chamber associated with Iron Age settlements in Brittany. The souterrain is tunneled out of the natural coarse granitic sand and then enlarged by making side chambers. It is still uncertain what these chambers were for, but the likeliest function is for storing seed-grain. Some archeologists believe they were built as refuges or for ritual (see Fogou).