Originally Posted by
nick griffin
Even the well-organized civilizations of Greece and Rome were hard-pressed by the Celtic expansion. According to Livy's The Gallic Wars , the Celts of Gaul, impelled by overpopulation, formed a confederation under Ambicatus, king of the Bituriges. He sent out two colonial expeditions, each under the command of one of his nephews. Sigovesus led one column eastward through the forests of Germany and down the Danube, while Bellovesus commanded an invasion of Italy over the Alps in 396 B.C.
Certain areas north of the River Po had already been settled by Celts in the previous century, and the estimated 300,000 newcomers passed through these peacefully. Further south, however, the cities of the Etruscan civilization were looted and destroyed. The people of the Boii tribe, whose original homeland still bears the name Bohemia, seized the countryside around their new settlement, which we know today as Bologna. Related tribes founded other towns, including Milan.
After a brief pause, the push south continued in 387 B.C. A Roman army sent to oppose them was so terrified by the war cries of some 30,000 Gauls that the soldiers panicked. The Roman force was utterly destroyed, and the triumphant Celts swept southward. A powerful army under Brennus completed the humiliation by occupying Rome and extracting an enormous ransom of gold before withdrawing to the north.
For the next 40 years Celtic armies terrorized Italy. Rome was attacked three more times, and much of central and northern Italy was repeatedly looted and laid waste.
Livy, however, also records that the ill-disciplined tribesmen often drank themselves into oblivion and grew fat on the rich but easy pickings. The invaders were decimated by plague and later by famine. Even worse, they had no idea of the power of organization. Where the Celts had tribal loyalties and reckless individual bravery, the Romans had devotion to the state and iron discipline.
Rome raised and trained new armies from the south and, around 349 B.C., went on the offensive. According to the Graeco-Roman historian Polybius, the Celts, once again marching to plunder Rome, were so surprised to encounter serious opposition that they fled. A series of Roman victories drove the surviving Celts back to the north. By 335 B.C. they were forced to accept harsh peace terms and settled down in Cisalpine Gaul (i.e., Gaul on the Italian side of the Alps), as the Romans named the new Celtic colony, noted for its productive agriculture.
Nothing is known directly of the movements of the colonial expedition sent out by Ambicatus to the east. Around this time, however, Celtic settlements appeared along the lower Danube and in parts of the Balkans. By 369 B.C. the Gaulish population of the region was strong enough for Celtic mercenaries to play a notable part in the Peloponnesian War.
From then on, Celts were regularly employed by the Greeks, both in their own civil wars and against their neighbors to the east. In 335 B.C. a delegation of Celts from the Adriatic paid court to Alexander the Great, who asked whether it were true that their people feared nothing. "Only," they replied, "that the sky might fall."
Hellenic civilization was by now fading rapidly, owing to widespread race-mixing between the Indo-European masters and their aboriginal slaves. In 280 B.C. the Celts moved to take advantage of this decadence. Two Celtic armies routed the Macedonian army. Macedonian resistance ended when a third army of Celts, commanded by another Brennus, arrived the following year to deliver the coup de grace. Brennus' army was estimated at 150,000 foot and up to 20,000 horse and almost certainly included many former mercenaries with experience of Greek military organization.
In any event, having dealt with the Macedonians, Brennus marched on Greece. A largely Athenian army tried to hold the strategic pass at Thermopylae but was defeated much more easily than the Spartans had been two centuries earlier. Town after town went up in flames. Even Delphi was sacked and its sacred oracle looted. Some confusion followed, and Brennus was wounded, according to the Greeks by the god Apollo himself.
The Celts withdrew in good order, but Brennus, disgraced by the withdrawal and injury, committed suicide, and his mighty host broke up. A Celtic kingdom was established in Thrace, but a combination of interbreeding with the earlier inhabitants and pressure from its Greek neighbors meant that it was quickly Hellenized and overwhelmed.
Other Celts took service under various warring Greek rulers or moved northward founding various towns, including Belgrade. A thin line of Celtic placenames even runs along the coast of the Black Sea north of the Danube, with a scattering of La Tene artifacts being found in southern Russia, including a cemetery near Kiev, and as far as the Sea of Azov.
An army of 10,000 Celts with a similar number of dependents were invited to Asia Minor by a local king in 278 B.C. They quickly found it more profitable to operate on their own account, ravaging and extracting tribute from the terrified cities. Their antics were curbed eight years later by a crushing defeat at the hands of a Syrian force equipped with elephants. The majority then settled on a series of poor plateaux henceforth known as Galatia, now in Turkey.
Historical accuracy of Celtic units?
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Re: Historical accuracy of Celtic units?
)? also, what are some good sources of more detailed info on brennus' march through greece?
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