A Brief History of the Celts (13 page)

There is no extensive evidence of women generally taking part in warfare, although there is a strong insular Celtic tradition of female warriors and queens leading their people in battle. Women
like Boudicca or Cartimandua certainly did command their people in battle during the Roman conquest. We will discuss their role in detail in Chapter 6.

For the Romans, war was a cold-blooded profession. The legionaries had been trained to fight as units. Unquestioning obedience to the commands of their officers was essential and they relied on
their fellows to act with them as a cohesive force. Roman generals wrote and studied military treatises, and planning and method became important. That planning, that
ruthlessness, finally gave Rome the military advantage. Indeed, a certain lack of humanity, a devotion to discipline, and a severity of punishment to any who lacked complete commitment
to the will of a central power, appear necessary for the growth of an imperial regime. The Roman legionary had to be more frightened of his superiors than he was of the enemy. The same principle
has often applied in modern armies.

However, the Roman claim that the Celts never showed any staying power in warfare was not true. In 57
BC
, the Nervii at the battle of the River Sambre, a tributary of the
Meuse, fought to the death under their chieftain, Boduognatus. Caesar, hardly ever speaking well of the Celts in battle, was moved to report:

The Nervii, Caesar reports, were almost annihilated. Only 500 men were left capable of bearing arms out of the 60,000 who had formed their army. Of 600 nobles only three
survived.

When the Celts did fight as an army, they fought as a tribal group and were divided into septs or sub-divisions of the tribe – just as they were at Culloden in 1746. If the model of the
Scottish clan army is a model for the ancient Celts, it seems that each sept had an hereditary place in the line of battle.

The ‘age of choice’, when Celtic males came to manhood,
was seventeen years old, so every male over that age, fit enough to carry arms, would be part of the
regiment of his clan or tribe. The chieftain was automatic commander. They marched into battle with pipes, drums and voices raised in war songs or battle cries.

Livy describes how the Celts used such noise and tumult to throw their enemies into confusion and terror. ‘They are given to wild outburst and they fill the air with hideous songs and
varied shouts.’ Further, ‘their songs, as they go into battle, their yells and leapings, and the dreadful noise of arms as they beat their shields in some ancestral custom, all this is
done with one purpose, to terrify the enemy.’ Diodorus Siculus says the Celts had trumpets (
carnyx
) that were peculiar to them. Such trumpets may be seen on the panels of the
Gundestrup Cauldron, and fragments have been found at various Celtic sites. The mouthpiece of one trumpet in the shape of a boar’s head was found in Banff. Representations of other trumpets
are seen on a triumphant Roman arch at Orange in southern France. ‘When they blow upon them, they produce a harsh sound, suitable to the tumult of war.’

All in all, then, we see that the Celtic warrior was every bit as sophisticated and well armed, though perhaps not as well disciplined, as his Greek and Roman counterparts.

CELTIC WOMEN

C
eltic women were the subject of much comment from the writers of Greece and Rome, and there continues to be much speculation and argument about
them. Compared with their sisters in the classical world, they enjoyed considerable rights and freedom and, indeed, even political power. Plutarch reports how Celtic women ambassadors intervened to
prevent a war among the Celts of the Po valley during the fourth century
BC
. Women ambassadors from the Celtic Volcae were sent to negotiate a treaty with Hannibal. When the
Romans arrived in Britain they found Celtic warrior queens ruling in their own right. Were these exceptions to the rule or did Celtic women have a role in Celtic society which made their
contemporaries in Greece and Rome appear primitive?

The evidence from the late Hallstatt and early La Tène graves on the Continent, such as the ‘princess of Vix’ and the female chariot burial from Rheinheim, shows that some
women were regarded as worthy enough to be buried in rich graves with the accoutrements usually reserved for warrior
kings. Chariot burials of females have been found in what
was the Parisii territory of eastern Yorkshire during the third to first centuries
BC
.

The classical writers are eager to point out that Celtic women are not as ‘womanly’ as the Greeks and Romans. Ammianus Marcellinus says:

‘The women of the Celts,’ Diodorus Siculus comments, ‘are nearly as tall as the men and they rival them also in courage.’

Our classical sources, however, are not interested in recording any details about Celtic female leaders unless they are exceptional, such as Cartimandua or Boudicca. We know of a ruler called
Onomaris, arguably meaning ‘Mountain Ash’, who was chieftainess of the Scordisci. She is recorded as leading her people in battle against the Illyrians of the Balkans. The Scordisci
settled by the Danube and founded their capital at Sinigdunum, which is now Belgrade.

Also from this area emerged ‘Queen Teuta’ in 231
BC
. A group of tribes in the region of modern Kotor on the Illyrian coast were ruled by a king called Agron,
the masculine form of Agrona, a Celtic war goddess, whose tradition survived in Wales as ‘the Washer of the Ford’. In the autumn of 231
BC
Agron died from pleurisy. He was succeeded by a woman called Teuta. This comes from the Celtic
teutates
(people), cognate to the Irish
tuath
(tribe) and similar to
the Gaulish male name or title Toutiorix (King of the People). Teuta may well mean ‘The People’s Queen’.

Polybius has little good to say about Teuta, mainly because she decided to extend her kingdom by attacking the neighbouring Greek state of Epiros. Whatever else he was, Polybius was a Greek, a
prominent member of the Achaean Confederation. Teuta’s warriors are clearly identified as Celts. The kingdom of Epiros was employing Celtic mercenaries at the time, and Polybius is very
sarcastic about this fact. Indeed, the Celtic mercenaries decided to join forces with their compatriots from Teuta’s kingdom. Polybius is scathing about Epiros’ decision to entrust its
safety to the hands of such people.

Rome decided to take a hand in the affairs of Teuta and sent ambassadors to lecture her. If the arrogance of the Fabii ambassadors towards the Celts at Clusium is anything to go by, perhaps it
is no wonder that Teuta, as Polybius puts it, ‘gave way to a fit of womanish petulance’. She had the Roman ambassador and his party assassinated. But because the rules of hospitality
applied, she waited until the ambassador and his party were already on their ships about to make sail for Rome. It was not a politically wise thing to do. Rome dispatched 200 ships commanded by
Gnaeus Fulvius to attack Teuta’s kingdom.

Teuta and her people were besieged in Kotor by legions commanded by Lucius Postumius who systematically reduced the rest of her cities. Teuta finally concluded a treaty with Rome, agreed to pay
reparation and gave assurances of her good behaviour in the future. Rome’s victory was celebrated in 228
BC
.

The next major female Celtic figure we come across is Chiomara, wife of Ortagion of the Tolistoboii of Galatia. At
the time when the Romans invaded Galatia under Gnaeus
Manlius Volso in 189
BC
, Chiomara was captured by the Romans. A centurion raped her. When the centurion discovered she was the wife of the Celtic king they were fighting
against, greed overcame caution, or perhaps the Roman was arrogant. He sent a ransom note to Ortagion. The exchange took place on a river bank in neutral territory. When the centurion was busy
picking up his gold, Chiomara turned, took a sword from those who had come to escort her to her husband, and calmly decapitated him. She then took his head in Celtic fashion to her husband. The
exchange of greeting related by Plutarch is fascinating.

Professor David Rankin has pointed out that the recorded words ‘preserve genuine, gnomic Celtic idiom’.

Plutarch gives information about another Celtic heroine of Galatia. Camma, probably a priestess of Brigantu, the equivalent of the goddess Artemis, was married to a chieftain named Sinatos.
Sinatos was murdered by a man called Sinorix (King of Storms) and Camma was forced to marry him. It was a ritual at wedding feasts to drink from a common cup. Camma put poison in the cup and
allayed Sinorix’s suspicion by drinking first, so accepting death herself so long as Sinorix drank and died as well.

There is not much written about Celtic women rulers until after the Romans invaded Britain in
AD
43. We find that in the Lancashire and Yorkshire area there was a tribal
confederation called the Brigantes. It is argued that they were named after Brigantia, the Exalted One. They were ruled by a queen named Cartimandua (Sleek Pony) and Tacitus describes her as
pollens nobilitate
(powerful in
lineage). She was, he adds, ‘flourishing in all the splendour of wealth and power’.

Cartimandua decided to accept Roman suzerainty and become a client king. She proved her loyalty to Rome by betraying and handing over Caractacus (Caradog), the high king of southern Britain, who
had made the mistake of seeking asylum with her. In fact, one of the tribes that made up the Brigantian confederation, the Setanti, had, in
AD
48, supported Caractacus,
presumbly against her wishes. Was this her revenge? Cartimandua was fairly secure until her husband, Venutius of the Jugantes, began to take an anti-Roman view. He was, says Tacitus, ‘since
the loss of Caractacus, the first in fame and valour and military experience.’

We can only guess at the domestic situation. Cartimandua divorced her husband and asked the Romans to send a legion to help put down Venutius’ rebellion. The legion, commanded by Cesius
Nasica, was duly sent. She married her former husband’s armour-bearer and charioteer, Vellocatus, which has been seen as another form of the name Billicotas (Courteous Warrior). However,
Venutius appears to have had some degree of support among the Brigantes and to have driven Cartimandua out of her kingdom. The Romans only just rescued her and her new husband.

In
AD
72 Quintus Petilius Cerialis finally caught up with Venutius near Stanwick and defeated him, smashing the powerful Brigantian confederation. Claudius Ptolemaeus,
the Greek geographer (
c
.
AD
100–178) placed the Brigantes in Ireland during his survey. This might not be a mistake, for it is possible that some elements of
the Brigantes fled, like many other Britons, to seek political refuge in Ireland. In 1927 excavations carried out at Lambay Island, off the coast of Dublin, unearthed artefacts that are untypical
of Irish weapons but closer to the finds in cemeteries from the Brigantian area.

Dominating all the women of the ancient Celtic world is undoubtedly the figure of Boudicca, or Boadicea as it is Latinised. The name means ‘Victory’. We are
told that her husband was Prasutagus, king of the Iceni, in what is now Norfolk. The Iceni were a rich and cultivated people, issuing their own coinage since about 10
BC
.
When the Romans invaded in
AD
43, it seemed that Prasutagus accepted Roman overlordship and became a client king, paying a tax to Rome so long as Rome did not interfere with
his kingdom.

In
AD
60/61 Prasutagus died, leaving Boudicca a widow. Nero’s policy was now one of direct rule. Perhaps because of this Prasutagus, in Roman fashion, had made a
will leaving his kingdom and goods to be divided between the Roman emperor and his two daughters ‘in equal shares’. This has caused some confusion among scholars: the fact that Boudicca
was subsequently accepted as ruler of the Iceni meant that she had to have a bloodline claim in her own right as well as being elected by her family to that position in accordance with Celtic
law.

The argument, however, was irrelevant because the civil administrator of the Roman province of Britain, Catus Decianus, extended Roman direct rule over the Iceni. He did so in a particularly
brutish way. He marched with some troops into their kingdom, whereupon the Iceni, unsuspectingly, greeted him as an ally with traditional Celtic hospitality. Decianus then turned his troops on the
people, seizing goods and leading away citizens as hostages and slaves. Boudicca protested at the ravaging of her people and she herself was stripped and whipped in public while her two teenage
daughters were raped in front of her. Others of her relations were taken into slavery and the soldiers confiscated goods, chattels and personal wealth.