• The Celtic Empire: The First Millennium of Celtic History, 1000BC – AD51

  Filed under Celtic culture
  Sep 11

  

  European recorded history north of the Alps begins with the Celts. At their height, they stretched over the ancient world from Ireland and Britain to Turkey and Czechoslovakia, from Belgium and Gaul to Spain and Italy. They sacked Rome, invaded Greece, and even attempted to take over the Egypt of the Ptolemy pharaohs. Yet theirs was an empire without an emperor, a civilization that encompassed the continent but had no central government. To tell its history, Ellis matches his story…
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  Tagged as: 1000BC, AD51, Celtic, Empire, First, History, Millennium
  
  3 Comments

3 Responses to “The Celtic Empire: The First Millennium of Celtic History, 1000BC – AD51”

1. 

   Lundy said on September 11th, 2009 at 6:19 am

   Peter Beresford Ellis cheerfully admits to a degree of hyperbole in the title of this excellent survey of Celtic history. There was no “Celtic Empire” as such, and no centralized Celtic authority, but this people, the aboriginal tribe of Europe, occupied the continent from its fringes in Iberia and Ireland all the way to central Anatolia. As such, they formed the foundation stock of the modern Irish, Welsh, Scottish, English, Bretons, French, Swiss, Austrians, Spanish and Portuguese, as well as contributing their bloodlines to the Italians, Balkan peoples, Turks, and even Germans and Slavs.

   The Celts had an overwhelming cultural impact on the formation of modern Europe, but it is an impact which is shrouded, due to the Roman domination of the Celts around the time of Christ. Most European rivers have Celtic names (the Danube, the Don, the Dnieper, and the Donets are all named for the Celtic river-goddess Danu; and the Rhine and the Rhone both are named from the Celtic word for “valley”).

   Unfortunately, the Celts abjured writing in favor of human memory, so that, as their cultural nexus dispersed so did their learning and lore. Hence, we know relatively little about these people, the ancestors of many of us of European background. What we do know is often distorted, or plain wrong, written by Greeks and Romans, the latter (particularly Caesar, in his “Gallic Wars”), setting out to deride the barbarians seen as only fit for conquest.

   Ellis tries mightily to lift the veil in this book. He has a fine appreciation for his subject, and if he makes the error of sometimes casting his Celts as “noble savages,” replete with democratic thoughts and ways, he can be forgiven for doubting the Roman histories.

   Given the relative lack of written primary source material, and the enigmatic messages of archaeological ruins, the book is necessarily too short, and reads as the quickest thousand-year history in print. It’s still an excellent effort to bring these people, so long in the darkness, back into the light.

2. 

   Helladius said on September 11th, 2009 at 6:42 am

   - had they been inseparable, they would have been insuperable.

   Thus are paraphrased Tacticus’s thoughts on that great ancient tribe, the Celts, to whom so much of Western Civilization is owed yet so little acknowledged. As Ellis tells us, many of the famous Roman writers and historians were profoundly influenced by Celtic literature – if not Celtic themselves. Celts served as mercenaries in the armies of Rome, Asia Minor, Greece and Egypt; they populated Europe from Bulgaria to Spain; they treated with Alexander and, on numerous occasions, and oh-so-narrowly missed the opportunity to beat Caesar. Ellis introduces us to the basic elements of Celtic society, a very democratic model that was largely shattered by the Roman conquest, and then takes us to those enclaves, such as Ireland and non-Roman Britain, where the culture continued to flourish. An extremely well-written history; a useful counterweight to Roman history, which too often neglects the Celtic achievement.

3. 

   Baeddan said on September 11th, 2009 at 6:49 am

   This is the worst book I’ve ever read on ancient history. The author minimizes the negatives of the so-called Celtic culture, while portraying the Greeks and Romans as the destroyers of Western Civilization rather than the FOUNDERS of it. Throughout this revisionist tirade he presented no proof of his claims. In reversing the archaeological and written records he wants the credulous reader to believe that the various tribes that are lumped together under the false Celtic umbrella somehow built the world we now live in. I don’t know how this rubbish got published? I recommend John Collis’ ” Celts: Origins And Re-inventions” as a truthful balance to this nonsense.

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