The Celts: A History

As with all books on pretty much any subject, this book has its pros and cons. Discussions of the Celts these days seem to be very polarized–either they are a bunch of drunken, warlike barbarians who benefited immensely from the civilizing influence of Rome, or they are under-rated geniuses who actually invented everything any civilized person could want long before Rome or anyone else in the Classical world. In fact, the truth is in the middle–the Celts were far more like the Romans than either group acknowledges, there were many admirable things about their various cultures, and the Romans were neither more nor less violent and warlike than they were.

This book falls squarely in the category of Celts as under-rated geniuses, and if you read it understanding that this is the author’s bias, then it’s not a bad book. There are relatively few outright errors, but much that is relevant is left out, much that is included is irrelevant, and the slant is sometimes so great that the reader is in danger of falling off the edge. The most obvious is the author’s commitment to the idea that there is a single Celtic culture (which most archaeologists now reject), indicated, for example, by his persistent portrayal of “Celtic” as a single language and the variants on it as dialects. In fact, there were many different Celtic languages, and there is no more a single Celtic language than there is a single European language. There are many blanket statements that lack any reference to back them up, which as a scholar I find very frustrating, and often the references that are included are very old; for example, there is an archaeology reference that dates from the 1920s! Ellis may be surprised to discover that the field has changed a lot since then, and interpretations that are more than 20 years old are no longer standard in the field. Documentary sources are also treated oddly. Texts from Ireland that are clearly not historical are treated as though they are the work of modern historians (e.g. no one accepts as factual the Irish documents that claim to describe rulers from 1000 BCE!). Predictably, Roman sources that are complimentary to the Celts are cited without comment, as though they are perfectly accurate, while those critical of the Celts are subject to scrutiny for bias and found wanting. And sometimes these are the same authors and the same texts! Similarly, information that is damaging to the Celts is simply not mentioned, for example sources indicating that the status of Celtic women, while better than that in Rome, was nowhere near as high as that of men. And I’m still trying to work out why anything in India, mentioned frequently, is relevant to the interpretation of Celtic cultures.

However, if you read this book with the understanding that it far from an unbiased portrait of Celtic cultures (and, FYI, the portrayal of the work of people like James, Collis, and others in the preface is badly distorted–read them for yourself and then judge), then it is a decent survey of what we know about them. Just be aware that there is a lot of other relevant information that is left out, and you should read other books alongside it to provide a more accurate portrait (e.g. Cunliffe’s The Celts, or James’ The Atlantic Celts, or Wells’ Beyond Celts, Germans, and Scythians).