Response to Celtic overpowered.

[Frostwulf]

@Foot, I have no qualms with you closing the Celtic overpowered thread, but some accusations were levied against me and I would like to address them. I will no longer respond to the subject of the "Devastating Civil War".

several points:

1) 2 months? there's another thread for this. um...?

The reasons I brought this thread up again was I respect and think very highly of Viking and I didn't want to mix up threads. Viking asked some good questions and brought up good points that are relevant to the Celtic overpowered thread so I responded there as opposed to changing the direction of the "Gaesatae Question" thread.

2) Ridiculously long posts are a pain in the neck. If I want to do a point by point argument, I'm not doing it on an internet forum with a guy whose best source on the Celts is Goldsworthy and who uses 30 mini-quotes per post.

The long post thing has been brought up before, the reason of course is to answer all the questions, not just a few choice ones.

3) Your points on the Cimbri invasion made no sense. You say that many tribes seem capable of resistance, then give two quotations that describe: a) how the Belgae were the only successful defenders (if the Cimbri came anywhere near their territory, which I doubt...political luck for the Belgae), and b) how most Gaulish towns resorted to cannibalism to survive sieges laid by the Cimbri, waiting until the Cimbri ran out of food and moved on. How does that show capability to resist?

I will not go into this(see top of page) except to say that those quotes are from Caesars "The Gallic War". If you are interested send me a pm and I will respond to this.

While others has mostly not bothered to site their sources, for you, Frostwulf, to immediately denounce them all as "wikipedia, this forum or others, or a random internet site" is dispicable.

Not so, if someone has a legitimate source I have never said that. My biggest problem was getting someone to post any source that supported their view. If you looked through the thread you would have seen me asking multiple times for sources. If you would have just looked at my post just prior to yours you would have seen this:

Originally Posted by Power2the1
Heres an interesting tidbit from the book The Celts (A History) by Daithi O'Hogain p. 138-139:

I responded with this:

Just so you know I do appreciate you coming up with these quotes, whether I agree or disagree its nice to see something other then just supposition.
I was going to read O'Hogain until I read his credentials(Not necessary a bad thing, he is an Associate Professor of Irish Folklore at University College Dublin) and peer reviews( mostly from Nicholas Thorpe).

They could have gotten the knowledge doing research for their PHD papers and didn't bother saying so because it's the X hundredth time this subject has been brought up. Or, more simply, they just forgot which source they got their knowledge from.

So I should simply take people at their word? There are people who put down things because they heard it somewhere. When I first started this thread I took some people at their word until I started doing some reading on my own and found out that they were in error, so yea, now I do want sources. I put down well know historians and archaeologists in my arguments and even they are questioned by others, which I don't think is a bad thing.

This is even more annoying when the EB team has listed lots of books focusing on the Celts in their Bibliography page and you, who seems never to have read any of them, hide behind your Roman-focused authors and label everyone else's material as "something off the internet".

I will list the Books I have read off the list of EB and the ones I quoted from will have an * by them:
Warfare in the Classical World-John Warry*/, Warfare in the Ancient World-multiple authors/,Warfare in Antiquity-Delbruck/, The Roman Army at War 100B.C-AD 200*/The Complete Roman Army-Goldsworthy/ Warhorse: Cavalry in Ancient Warfare-Sidnell*/, Greeks, Romans, and Barbarians: Spheres of interaction-Cunliffe*/, The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek-Cunliffe/, In the Name of Rome-Goldsworthy*/,Caesar(life of a colossus)-Goldsworthy*/, The Prehistory of Germanic Europe-Schutz/,The Ancient Celts-Cunliffe*/, The Celtic Empire-Ellis*/, The Celts-multiple authors(edited by Kruta)*/, Celts and the Classical World-Rankin*

There are others which would hardly be "Roman-focused authors" such as Romans and Celts-Ellis*, The Celts-Kruta(different then the one mentioned above)*,Lords of Battle-Allen*,The World of The Celts-James*,*Atlas of the Celts-Dr. Barry Raftery; Dr.Jane McIntosh, Clint Twist*, Celtic Chiefdom, Celtic State-multiple authors*,France(Cambridge Illustrated History)-Jones*, The Celtic Atlas-multiple authors*,European Iron Age-Collis* and more.

So you agree that the Gallic tribes fought each other like how the Greek city-states used to do. Why is it then so hard for you to believe it is possible that one of these wars, possibly the Aedui vs Arverni/Sequani war, either started out as or turned into something devastating like the Peloponnesian War?

I didn't say that, I said this:

The Arverni and their clientage were weakened because of the massive loss to the Romans. When the Aedui start challenging the Arverni, it was business as usual as James,Goldworthy, Khan and etc. describe. He uses the term civil wars which is about as much sense as saying the Greek civil wars between Athens, Sparta, etc. during the 4-5th century.
Other then the term civil war I have no problem with what he says.

This was strictly about the term civil wars and I was likening it to say the wars between the Greeks should be called civil wars. The Greeks during the 4th and 5th centuries BC were not a united country (they were city states) just like the 'Celts' of Gaul were not a united country, therefore its not a civil war.

You label every single well-argued statement that you can't counter as "You are so stuck with believing this 'Devastating Gallic Civil War' thing that you interpreted it wrong."

I would like to answer this in full but I won't for two reasons, the first is I will try to honor what Foot is doing, the second is that it would require you to point out the well-argued statement, and as already pointed out, I will not respond to it.

Some of the problem lies with me that I do have very lengthy posts and some of my responses are curt(which almost always is not meant to be rude but does come across that way). But the majority of the problems for people is that they don't bother to read what was actually written. They make assumptions on what I say without really reading as I have shown on this post here. You are certainly not the only one who has done this as I'm sure there will be more. If you would have followed and read(huge amount of reading) this thread and avoid being biased you will probably change your mind.