The Bronze Age and the Celtic World

All philologists are agreed that with the language of Thrace it formed the Thraco-Phrygian group, from which, according to some philologists, modern Albanian is derived. Dacian is also believed to have belonged to the same group. Some years ago Dr. Tomaschek collected together, from Greek and Latin sources, all the words which might be considered as belonging to this group, but most of these are place-names or names of plants. This is not very satisfactory material for our purpose, for place-names may have been inherited from the previous inhabitants, while names of plants may be loan words. Further than this most of the words have been preserved by Greek writers, and there is no Q in the Greek language. Still I have thought it well to search through the lists compiled by Tomaschek, and though the result is, perhaps, not very convincing, the presence of such words as καναρος, κενθος, Quimedava or κουιμε-δαβα, Coila or Cuila, κερκινη, and several others certainly hints that the Thraco-Phrygian tongues may have been Q dialects.[469]

The arguments from the east, while they do not in any way contradict our equation, and may even be said to give it some support, are not quite decisive; at any rate something more conclusive is desirable. It is useless to look for this in the west, in Celtic lands, for our documentary evidence scarcely antedates the time of Julius Cæsar, or, at any rate, such earlier evidence as we possess is both meagre and uncertain. Finally all the evidence has been the subject of dispute, on almost every item differences of opinion have been expressed, and we have no sure or unquestioned data on which to depend. The controversy has also, unhappily, become associated with other differences of opinion.

It will be well, then, to leave for a time the consideration of the Celtic evidence, and to endeavour to test our equation without reference to the linguistic data of the west. There remains, then, only one other area in which to search for our confirmatory test, the Italian peninsula.

Professor Conway[470] has given us to understand that the Osco-Umbrian dialects, which were P languages, were spoken throughout Italy from Umbria southwards, and doubtless, if we may judge from the statement of Herodotus already quoted, as far north as the foot-hills of the Alps, before the Gauls had invaded the valley of the Po. The only exceptions to this spread of these dialects were Etruria, or the greater portion of it, and a part of Latium, in which Latin dialects of the Q type were spoken. These Latin dialects, Conway tells us, were spoken by the Latini, the Marsi, the Æqui, the Hernici, the Falisci, who dwelt within the borders of Etruria, and to some extent by the Sabini.[471]

The linguistic position of the Sabines seems uncertain. In the passage quoted Conway enumerates them among the tribes who spoke Q dialects, but later on, when mentioning some of those who had P speech, he adds in a footnote that perhaps Sabine should be included among these. The position of the Sabine tongue is then uncertain. If this were so, the same uncertainty may apply to the Faliscans, for little if anything is known directly of their dialect, but Conway states that it is “certain that they were akin to the Sabines across the Tiber, and that their city was subdued and governed by the Etruscans.”[472]

This leaves us with four tribes, who undoubtedly spoke Q languages, the Latini, Marsi, Æqui, and Hernici. The area occupied by them is only roughly indicated by Conway, but I gather that he agrees with the boundaries delineated by Kiepert.[473] The map given in Fig. 26 gives these bounds, and it will be seen that in many respects the region they occupy agrees with the area in which all the Italian leaf-shaped swords have been found. There are, however, certain marked differences.

Out of nine swords of Type D, four are found within the area of Q speech, and one at Sulmona, only just outside and within the area of Sabine speech. One is a stray, found somewhere in Apulia, and three, together with one of Type C, have been found not far from Lake Trasimene. The solitary sword of Type B, found at Ascoli, seems only to indicate that the line of approach was from the east.

Thus it seems that there is a fair equation between the swords and Q speech, but the latter must have been driven from the Trasimene region, and pushed westward in the Sabine area. Of the former presence and subsequent disappearances of the Q speech from the Trasimene region we have no evidence, but we have seen that the Etruscans arrived later than the leaf-shaped sword people and with a superior culture. We have also found reason for suspecting that the Villa-nova folk, who arrived still later, had made themselves a military aristocracy over the Etruscans, and the conquest or expulsion may have been due to them. We have seen that the Falisci, a tribe with Sabine affinities, were absorbed by the Etruscans. There is nothing inherently impossible in the same fate having overtaken the leaf-shaped sword people who had settled in the region around Lake Trasimene.

But with regard to the westward move of the Q peoples, and to the suggestion that they were driven from what was later Sabine territory, we are not dependent wholly upon conjecture, for Dionysius of Halicarnassus tells us that the tribes who occupied the region around Rome, after the barbarian Siculi, were the Aborigines.[474] Whether this term conveyed to Dionysius the same meaning as it does to us, or whether it was a corruption of a tribal name as some have thought,[475] does not concern us here. It is sufficient for our purpose that he mentions that their original home lay to the east, in the valley of the Velino and its tributary the Salto, which drains Lake Fucino. He mentions by name many of their cities, and describes the position of most of them. The sites of the majority have been identified, though some yet remain unknown. Judging by what can be ascertained of their position, we gather that the Aborigines occupied the Salto valley from Marruvium, on the shores of Lake Fucino, as far as Reatæ, where it joins the Velino, and thence to the junction of the latter with the Nera. One of their cities, Batia, lay considerably to the north, across the Apennines, in the direction of Ascoli, where the Type B sword was found. How far the territory of the Aborigines stretched towards Lake Trasimene is uncertain, as the sites of some of their towns remain unidentified, but several of them lay in that direction, outside the later area of Q speech, but in Sabine territory.

Dionysius tells us that one night the Sabines issued from Amiternum and seized Liste, the capital of the Aborigines, who retired to Reatæ, whence they endeavoured to recapture it.[476] They appear to have been successful eventually in recovering the land around Lake Fucino, but would seem to have lost the territory to the north-west around Reatæ. About the same time many of them migrated south-westwards to the lands around Rome.[477] As one of their original cities had been called Palatium it seems likely that it was they who gave its name to the Palatine Hill.

The general agreement between the area in which we find the leaf-shaped swords, the area occupied by the Aborigines before the Sabine expedition, and the area of Q speech, suggests that these three are one especially as there is a progressive abandonment of the north-western portion and a movement towards the south-west near the mouth of the Tiber. My suggestion is that the Aborigines were the descendants of the leaf-shaped sword people and the ancestors of the Q speaking Latin peoples of later days.

Umbrian speech, though it extended towards the south-east and surrounded the Latin tongues, is found mainly on the north-east of the Apennines, and seems to have come from that direction; before the advent of the Gauls it reached, as we have seen, to the foot of the Alps. This is the region in which we find the chief remains of the Villa-nova culture, which is not unlike that of the Dorians, so that it seems reasonable to equate this culture with the Osco-Umbrian or P dialects.

The Sabines, as we have seen, are said to have come from Amiternum, which is on the north-eastern slope of the Apennines, or rather in a valley which opens out on that side. We should, therefore, expect them to have been a P people. But, according to Dionysius, they over-ran a region peopled by the Aborigines, who we have found reason for thinking were a Q people, and, though doubtless they expelled the fighting men, a good number are likely to have remained behind. It is not surprising, therefore, that there should be some uncertainty as to whether the original Sabines spoke a P or a Q dialect.

All the Italian evidence is consistent with the view that the men of the leaf-shaped sword were Q speaking, while the men with the iron sword spoke P tongues, but before we come finally to a decision, it might be well to make a further test elsewhere. We have seen that the refugees from the mountain zone, armed with Type G swords, fled down the Rhone, the Loire, and the Seine, and that, while the men with the iron swords pursued them down the two former valleys, they left the Seine valley alone. Sir John Rhys and his supporters have suggested that Q speech was at one time spoken in Gaul, and have cited certain place-names in support of their case.[478] The value of this evidence has been disputed, but there is one name, in two forms, which so obviously belongs to Q speech, that its value cannot well be denied, and this is Sequana, the ancient name for the Seine, and Sequani, the tribe who lived by its banks. It cannot be merely a coincidence that the best attested Q names have been noted just where Type G swords are found not followed by iron swords, and this case, bearing out as it does the general tenour of the Italian evidence, seems to me to be conclusive.

I would submit, therefore, that the archæological evidence, which I have given in this and in previous chapters, proves, as conclusively as the circumstances of the case are likely to admit, that the thesis of Sir John Rhys that two waves of people left Central Europe for Italy and the west, the first speaking a Q and the second a P tongue, is absolutely correct, though modifications need to be made in the application of this theory to Greek lands. His view that the P Folk were the people of the Swiss lake-dwellings we have seen good reason to reject.

CHAPTER XIV
THE WANDERINGS OF THE WIROS

Thus with Penka I have argued for an Aryan race, which was Nordic in type, with Cuno that the primitive Wiro language developed on an open plain, which, with Latham and Schrader, I have placed on the Russian steppe. I have found myself in agreement with Sir John Rhys on the main features of his thesis that the Q and P Wiros left Central Europe in two successive waves, and I have argued that the Q Wiros were armed with bronze leaf-shaped swords. This last suggestion has already been hazarded in this country by Crawford,[479] though backed up with inadequate evidence, and in France by M. Hubert,[480] with whose evidence I am unacquainted, as his work dealing with the subject has not appeared as I write.

But in all these cases I have endeavoured to support my argument, not merely with philological data, as has been the case with most of my predecessors, but with evidence drawn from anthropology and archæology. The evidence from the Italian swords, backed up as it is by the absence of Hallstatt iron swords from the Seine valley, seems so decisive that I feel that the equation of the Q peoples with the spread of the bronze swords is beyond dispute.

But if this general reconstruction of the early history of the Wiro movements is to be considered correct, in outline at least, it must be shown that it will fit in with all the linguistic evidence available; at any rate that it is not incompatible with it. For that reason I propose in this chapter to summarise briefly, as I conceive them, the wanderings of the Wiros over Europe and Asia, from their first departure from south-east Europe.

We have found reason for believing that before 3000 B.C., and probably for long before that date, the Wiros had been occupying the Russian steppes east of the Dnieper, and had perhaps wandered across the Volga into Turkestan. They were a nomad people, living, perhaps, partly by hunting, but mainly by herding cattle on the grassy steppes, and the parklands which fringed them on the north. They had tamed the horse, and held this animal in great veneration. Its name constantly occurs as part of their own names,[481] they rode it like cow-boys “punching” their cattle, and if we may judge from the habits of their descendants, it was what may be described as a cult animal.

We have seen that they seem to have been of the Nordic type, but this statement needs qualification. We are accustomed to speak of Nordics, Alpines and Mediterraneans, and to describe their physical characters in considerable detail. We are well aware that the population of every country in Europe is mixed, and contains many examples of at least two of these types and a larger number of individuals who resemble one type in this feature and another in that; there are also many who display intermediate characters. But from this mass of heterogeneous material we believe that we have isolated these types, which we consider pure, and we treat the bulk of the population as a mixture of these, varying in its components and their proportions in each region. This postulates that there was a time, the race-making period of some writers,[482] when each of these races was living, pure and unmixed, in some area of isolation.

That this position has led to clear thinking and has advanced the science of physical anthropology is undoubted, but we have to consider whether it represents a condition which has actually occurred. That such a pure and homogeneous type would evolve if a community were isolated from all others for a sufficient length of time is probable, but we have no clear evidence that such a state of isolation has been preserved for a sufficient period in any part of Europe, or for that matter in the world. The Andamanese have for long kept themselves in fairly complete isolation in a small group of islands, yet their type seems to show evidence of admixture. The same is more true of the Australian aborigines, although the island continent has almost succeeded in keeping out other placental animals. It is true that as we go back into the past, especially into early neolithic times, the skulls in any given region appear more homogeneous than is the case at later periods. After the forests had appeared in Magdalenian times, and until the metal trade arose, communities seem to have been more isolated than either before or after. This was, apparently, the race-making period postulated by McDougall. But the communities who settled at that time in these regions of isolation were to some extent of mixed ancestry, and their isolation was not of sufficient length to insure absolute homogeneity, though we find a closer approximation to it then than has occurred since.

We have seen at the close of Chapter II. that what we have been accustomed to consider the Mediterranean race is in reality a mixture of several late palæolithic types, all somewhat resembling one another in their most conspicuous features, and the same seems to have been true of the Nordic Wiros, during their race-making period on the Russian steppe. Unfortunately we have no very long series of skulls to study, and in the case of some we are uncertain whether they belong to this or to a slightly later date. But Sergi has described a series of ninety-one,[483] which will give us some idea of their range of variation. Thirty-six of these skulls have indices varying from seventy-three to seventy-six, thirty-one more between seventy-one and seventy-eight, while the remaining twenty-four range outside these from sixty-five to eighty-one. Many of these skulls are very high, and so conform to the type of Brünn-Brux-Combe Capelle, and this has led Fleure to suspect that this late palæolithic type, the essentially intrusive element into the west of Solutrean times, is present in considerable numbers among these steppe-folk.[484] According to Sergi fifty-one out of the ninety-one show this feature and these are distributed pretty generally among all indices from sixty-five to seventy-nine.

Again, Bogdanov has given us reason for believing that two races were inhabiting the government of Moscow during the kurgan period. “One of these races was robust, with a large and long head, an elongated face, and, according to some examples, with hair more or less fair. The other, smaller and more poverty stricken, belongs to a brachycephalic people, having a shorter face, a wider and shorter head, and chestnut hair.”[485] He shows, too, that in the centre of the area the long-headed type was purest, and cites twenty-three skulls from the kurgans of Souja, in the government of Kursk, of which nineteen were true dolichocephals, while three women and one child were subdolichocephalic.

We may, I think, consider the two skulls described by Sergi with an index of eighty, and the one with an index of eighty-one, as belonging to a foreign element living on the border of the steppes, perhaps as belonging to the Tripolje folk. If so we may consider our primitive Nordics as having fairly long and narrow heads, though in this respect not so uniformly narrow as was the case with the Mediterraneans of the west. The cephalic index seems to have ranged from sixty-five to seventy-nine, though more usually from seventy-one to seventy-eight, while the more typical members of the group varied from seventy-three to seventy-six. These figures will be found to agree fairly well with observations made on the tall fair people of the present population of North Europe.

We can then imagine our Wiros as a somewhat variable race, with heads which conform to the narrow rather than to the broad type, tall and robust, though probably neither so tall nor so robust as many of the modern Nordics. There is reason for believing them to have been fair, with transparent skins, light hair and grey eyes, though it is likely enough that in colouration, too, there was considerable variation. We may well believe that the extremely fair colouring of the modern Swedes is a later specialisation, due to a few thousand years of life in a northern home, but we shall do well, I would suggest, to think of the original Wiros as blonds rather than brunets, though not necessarily or in all cases possessing an extreme degree of blondness. Such then I would have you picture the Wiros on the steppe, and I would also remind you that many of them seem to have been descendants of the late Aurignacian and Solutrean horse-hunters, and that they may have developed the rudiments of their language in some post-Solutrean time within the Carpathian ring.

We have seen reason for believing that a period of drought, occurring some centuries before 3000 B.C., drove some of them towards the Baltic. It is possible, though I think improbable, that these may have been the ancestors of the group who use Teutonic speech. I am more inclined, however, to see in them the original speakers of Lithuanian and the Baltic tongues. Whether there was also at this time a move to the east is uncertain. Kurgans are said to stretch to the north-east well into Siberia, but we have insufficient data at present to determine their age or indeed whether they belong to Wiro culture. It is possible, however, that the north-westerly movement was paralleled by one to the north-east, into the Obi basin, and the Wiros may have wandered as far north as Tobolsk, or even to the Arctic Circle.

But the great dispersal was about 2200 B.C. On this occasion the drought seems to have been more excessive or more prolonged, for it is believed that the steppe was left for awhile uninhabited. That the movements passed east and west is certain, for we find evidence of the abandonment of settled villages both in the Tripolje area and at Anau. With the westerly movement we have dealt at some length; that to the east must now demand our attention.

We have seen that shortly after 2200 B.C. nomad horsemen arrived on the Iranian plateau and that their appearance attracted the attention of Hammurabi and his counsellors. That these nomads, who were known as Kassites, were Wiros is certain, for philologists seem agreed that their language was of this type.[486] They were the first to introduce the horse into this area, and that this animal was held in reverence among them seems clear from the adoption of this beast as a divine symbol.[487] It seems unlikely that the Kassites were the sole representatives of this eastward move. It may be that it is to this date that we are to attribute the kurgans found in the Obi basin, or perhaps they found adequate pasture for their herds on the lower slopes of the Hindu Kush and the region around Balkh. We are as yet uncertain whether the group of Wiros, who may more properly claim the name of Aryas, and who spoke Indo-Iranian dialects, left the steppe at this time or on the earlier occasion but deductions drawn from linguistic evidence, from Vedic and Avestan sources, and from later Persian legend would lead us to expect that about 2000 B.C. the undivided Aryas were occupying the eastern parts of Russian Turkestan. A little later, perhaps, a group of these, speaking a language which had Iranian affinities, made themselves lords of eastern Armenia.

These are generally known as the Mitanni or Mitani barons; Professor Sayce has suggested to me that the name Mitan is the same as Midas, which would hint at a Phrygian origin, but the Iranian affinities of their language and the early date at which they appear in the Armenian mountains suggest that they arrived before the Phrygian invasion of Asia Minor, while the fact that they were located on the eastern rather than the western side of the Armenian massif leads one to believe that their line of approach was from Turkestan or the Iranian plateau on the east, rather than from Thracian territory on the west.

With the westward move of the Wiros I have already dealt in a former chapter. Having destroyed the Tripolje culture some passed along the sandy heaths of Galicia, entering Bohemia and Hungary through the Moravian gap, and displacing the Beaker-folk who passed northwards to Jutland, Holland and the British Isles. Others passed round the south-west shores of the Euxine to the Gallipoli peninsula where they divided, one party skirting the north Ægean coast to the grassy plain of Thessaly, where they introduced Dhimini ware, and where their sudden appearance on horseback gave rise to the legends of the Centaurs. The other party crossed the Hellespont, sacked Hissarlik II. and passed on to the grass lands in the centre of Anatolia. Here they organised the eastern Alpine tribes into a great empire, and though, apparently, they adopted the language of their subjects, they introduced some of their own words and idioms, including the numerals, into that tongue, and most important of all established in the Hittite empire the worship of the Wiro deities.

Such seems to have been the distribution of the Wiros about 2000 B.C., or a little later, and for the next 500 years we find little evidence of movement, except that the Kassites, about 1760 B.C. established themselves as rulers in Mesopotamia. The great split between the Indian and Iranian Aryas must have taken place about this time, causing the former to cross Afghanistan and enter the Punjab, while the latter continued to roam the steppes of Turkestan, and eventually to cross the Volga into South Russia, where they occupied the plain as far west as the foot of the Carpathians.[488]

We may now for a time leave the Asiatic sections and concentrate our attention upon those Wiros who entered what we have termed the Celtic cradle. Some passed into the mountain zone, where others had arrived before them, and made themselves lords of the settled agricultural Alpine lake-villages; these were the proto-Celts. Others seem to have remained in the plain of Hungary, continuing perhaps their former nomadic life. These, who had spread into the basin of the Morava, became the Thraco-Phrygian group. Between these two, in the lower valleys of the Drave and the Save, in Croatia and perhaps in Bosnia, were a third group, who may be termed proto-Italic. It must not be taken for granted that from the time of their arrival these three groups were quite sharply separated. We have seen, however, that the division of the people of the plain and the mountain zones arose quite early, largely from the difference between their modes of life. It is probable that many dialects arose, and that by degrees some of the mountain Wiros extended to the south-east, even as far as Herzegovina, and these gradually became separated from the main body of their fellows. The main group developed Celtic dialects, and south-eastern group Italic, though both, it must be remembered, spoke Q tongues.

Soon after 1500 B.C., when the first leaf-shaped sword, Type A, had been evolved, some Wiros seem to have passed over the mountains into the Friuli. It may have been merely a raid or a trading venture, but the Treviso specimen suggests that these swords had remained in use and had developed into a local type, so that it is possible that we may see in this, evidence of a small migration of Wiros through the Friuli to settle in the Veneto. The evidence is admittedly slight, but it seems to point to the introduction at this time into the regions lying at the head of the Adriatic of the Venetian dialects, which appear to be more archaic in form than the other Italic tongues.

During the Type B period, between 1450 and 1400 B.C., we have evidence of a northward movement to Schleswig-Holstein and Jutland, and the fact that these Type B swords continue in the north an independent development suggests that the party who carried them thither were not engaged in a temporary raid. I am inclined to see in this movement the arrival in the north of that band of Wiros, who introduced into the Baltic region Teutonic speech and the legends and the cult of Odin.[489] As we have seen Wiros had arrived there more than a thousand years before, but these earlier invaders, I have suggested, had spoken languages more akin to the Baltic group, and were, if my interpretation of the facts is correct, the red-haired worshippers of Thor.[490] Thus we get the three groups of people, forming the three classes of serfs, farmers, and nobles, which are mentioned in Scandinavian legend,[491] by the super-position of the sword-bearing Teutonic Wiros upon the early group of Baltic-speaking Wiros, who had in their turn mastered and enslaved the Mongoloid people responsible for the Arctic culture.[492]

It was soon after 1300 B.C. that a small group from the Italic zone, coming probably from Bosnia, passed south and then crossed the Adriatic, landing a little south of Ancona at the mouth of the Truentus. Passing up the valley of that river some settled at Batia near its head waters, while others crossed the Apennines to the valley of the Velinus and thence to Reatæ, which stood at its junction with the Himella. Thence some passed south eastward to Lacus Fucinus and others north-westward to Lacus Trasimenus. These, as I have endeavoured to prove, were the Wiros who introduced into the peninsula the Latin tongue and formed the essential Roman patrician gentes.

About the same time there were irruptions from the plain; the movements were probably gradual and may have begun somewhat earlier, but direct evidence of this phase is at present lacking. These people of the plain advanced into Thrace, introducing there the Thracian tongue and the worship of Ares; they dominated the aborigines, including the thrifty lake-dwelling Pæonians, and made themselves masters of much of what was afterwards known as Macedonia. Some of these tribes, notably the Briges, crossed the Hellespont and introduced Phrygian speech into Asia Minor, in the east of which it still survives as Armenian.

It was some straggling adventurers from this movement who about 1250 B.C. entered Thessaly, where, as we have seen, some Wiros had long been settled. Some may have come from Thracian lands, some down the Vardar valley, and some stragglers from the Latin group, perhaps, down the Spercheus valley, having tarried awhile around Dodona. These were the “Achæan” heroes, who seem to have made themselves masters of the Mycenean city states, groaning under the rule of Minoan tyrants. A generation later these joined others in attacking Egypt, and it was their grandsons who, under the leadership of the king of men, sacked the city of Priam.

The next movement came from the Celtic mountain zone. It was between 1200 and 1175 B.C. that the Celtic lords, accompanied by the bravest of their henchmen, left the Celtic cradle, crossed the Rhine, and passed through the Belfort gap into Gaul. By degrees they conquered the whole of the country, though they made their mark less in Aquitaine and Brittany. Others, passing in all probability down the Rhine, landed on the east coast of Great Britain, and settled in the eastern counties and in Wessex. It is too soon, as yet, to define the area which they occupied, but the available evidence, derived from the swords and the finger-tip ware, suggests the region south-east of the chalk scarp. Later on a few of these passed across the densely-wooded Midland plain, across Wales by the upper Severn valley and the Bala cleft, and reached the gold fields of Ireland. It was some little time, however, before they settled in any numbers in the land which still preserves their language.

This seems to be all that we can as yet restore of the movements of the Q Wiros, though there is a sequel to be added later; we must turn now to the problem of the P speaking people. We have seen that about the time that the Celts were leaving the mountain zone for the west, bands of Wiros from the plain, passing through the Moravian gate, across Galicia and Podolia, reached the rich valley of the Koban to the north of the Caucasus mountains. Here they learned the use of iron from their humble neighbours on the other side of the mountains, who were perhaps the Chalybes, and made for themselves steel blades for their swords. It was during their sojourn here that they must have mixed with other Wiros who were still roaming the steppes of this region, and who were almost certainly of Iranian speech, which was spoken in this area in the time of Herodotus, and still survives among the Ossetes[493] in the Caucasus mountains. They may, too, have come into contact and intermarried with other folk, who were perhaps not Wiros. For some reason, which I do not pretend to explain, their speech, which on their arrival must have been allied to Thracian, changed its phonological laws, and they acquired the habit of labialising the Qu of their original tongue.

Rostovtzeff has suggested that these Koban Wiros were the Cimmerians,[494] and since, as we have seen, these P speaking people appear a few years later in Gaul, and again are found approaching, if they do not actually reach, the peninsula of Jutland, it seems reasonable to believe that the statement of Posidonius,[495] which has received Ridgeway’s approval,[496] is correct, and that the Cimmerians of Russia and of the west,[497] as well as the people who gave their name to the Cimbric Chersonese are all one P speaking people, and that we must include in their number the Brythonic Cymry of Britain, in spite of what Rhys has written to the contrary.[498] Whether the name was originally com-brox, compatriots, or not, I must leave to philologists to determine, but if Rhys’ etymology is correct, these compatriots were those who set out from the Koban to conquer the greater part of Europe. If this be so the statement quoted by Pliny from Lycophron that the Cimmerii were a people living around Lake Avernus[499] may not be a poetic fable, as has been supposed, but may show us that some of the Villa-nova invaders of Italy retained for a time the common name which survives in Wales to-day. Thus I am assuming that the words κιμμέριοι, κίμμεροι, Cimbri Cymry are all one, and suggest the use of the term Kimri[500] for the whole group.

Herodotus tells us that the Russian Cimmerians built castles or forts,[501] a custom which is found among the early iron age or Hallstatt inhabitants of the mountain zone,[502] and reached this country somewhat later in the form of Hill-top camps. Their distribution has not yet been well worked out, but their date is Hallstatt or sometimes later, and the available evidence from their distribution in time and space suggests that they were the work of different branches of the Kimri.

A large number of the Kimri, perhaps the greater part, remained in the Koban region until the seventh century, when they were displaced by incoming Scythian hordes, who appear to have been of mixed Iranian and Mongol origin; then they overran Asia Minor as far as Sardis.[503] But many of these Kimri left the steppe almost immediately after they had developed their iron swords and settled in Thrace; later they moved up the Danube valley as far, at least, as its junction with the Save. It was not long before the bulk of them moved southwards, probably down the Vardar valley, and about 1000 B.C. began the Dorian invasion of Greece. These introduced into that country iron swords and a P tongue, which, owing to their having mingled with Iranian neighbours in the steppe, retained marked affinities with that group of languages, especially in connection with weapons and other warlike materials.

The remainder divided, the larger group pushing up the Danube valley towards Ulm and Sigmaringen where they adopted the Celtic speech of their subjects, but labialising the Qs. The smaller group made themselves masters of North Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia, and like their fellows adopted the language of the country, which was allied to Latin, but with the usual changes.

It was the latter group which was the first to move, either across the Adriatic or to the north-west and then over the Predil pass into the Friuli. Though they introduced their culture among the Veneti they did not supplant their language, but they pushed on across the Po valley, destroying the Terramara settlements and dispersing their inhabitants to Etruria, Latium and the region around Tarentum. They settled in the plain to the north of the Apennines, with their headquarters at Felsina or Bononia, and gradually conquered all the peninsula except Etruria, the Greek colonies and the lands occupied by the Latin tribes. It is doubtful whether these Kimri who invaded Italy were ever known to themselves by one name, but to others they were summed up as Ombri or Umbri. Later, as we have seen, one of their tribes, the Sabines, issuing by night from Amiternum, displaced some of the Latin tribes from the region around Reatæ, whence the dispossessed Latins departed towards the mouth of the Tiber. Here some of them coalesced with Terramara refugees, who had erected a dry terramara on a hill-top beside the river, and to this hill they gave the name of one of their abandoned cities, Palatium, so that it became mons palatinus. Later, when it had been freshly laid out and surrounded by a wall, it was called Rome.

The Sabines, who had overrun much of the Latin territory, even as far as the hill overlooking the Palatine, seem to have adopted the Latin language, while retaining a few features of their original Umbrian dialect. Soon afterwards some Kimri from Felsina seem to have made themselves war lords over Etruria, and to have for a time extended the Etruscan empire from the Alps to Pompeii, but being a small military aristocracy in a land with an ancient and advanced culture, they failed to impose their Wiro language upon the inhabitants.

But the larger group of Kimri had settled by the upper waters of the Danube and had adopted with modifications the Celtic speech. About 900 B.C. disagreements arose between them and the Q speaking Gaelic lords of the villages in the mountain zone, and no time was lost in attacking these communities in Switzerland and Savoy, in burning the pile-dwellings and expelling the inhabitants.

We must now take up again the tale of the bronze-using Q-speaking Celts, the story of fresh Gaelic movements, but this time a story of flight rather than of invasion. This was not a question only of Gaelic lords, for the Alpine peasants, who doubtless spoke a Celtic dialect and called themselves Celts, were also involved in this ruin. They fled by divers routes to the north and the west. By the swords of Type G we can trace their wanderings over Gaul, down the Rhone, the Loire and the Seine. Others seem to have fled northwards to Schleswig, Jutland, Sweden and even Finland, to escape their pursuers, while a large party landed in England, mainly between the Thames and the Wash, and found refuge with their relations who had settled on the open downs some centuries before.

The former arrivals had been Nordic lords, with perhaps a few half-breed retainers; the refugees were largely Alpine peasants, unaccustomed to pastoral pursuits on the high downs, and more anxious for water-meadows and arable patches by the margins of lakes and rivers. Settlements were made by the banks of the Thames between London and Richmond, and doubtless higher up the river. Lowlands were cleared in Wessex in the Vale of Pewsey, such as the village at All Cannings, and other settlements were made by lakes and marshes in South Wales.

In most parts of Gaul the Kimri followed the refugees, and drove them from the valleys of the Rhone and the Loire into the hills. In the Seine valley, however, the Sequani were left undisturbed and gave their name to the river. Though no positive evidence has appeared, so far as I know, there is reason for believing that many of these Gaelic wanderers found refuge in south Brittany and La Vendée, and persisted in their lake-dwelling culture. No pile-dwellings have been found in these parts, so far as I am aware, yet I suspect their existence; but perhaps the numerous islets in the Bay of Morbihan were a sufficiently safe refuge for these poor folk.

The Kimric invasion of Gaul reached at first neither to the extreme west nor to the north, for its main advance was down the Rhone valley to the Midi. But there is evidence that small bands moved towards the north-east, down the valleys of the Meuse and Moselle, and we can pick up their traces again in Belgium.[504] So far direct archæological evidence still further north fails us, at least in Hallstatt times, though perhaps the Kimri did not cross the mouth of the Rhine until they had adopted La Tène culture; but if, as I have suggested, we are to consider the name Cimbri as a variant of Kimri, they must have reached the peninsula of Jutland, to which they gave the name of the Cimbric Chersonese. That they came within sight of the Baltic sea is clear, for an old name for that sea, Morimarusam,[505] is Celtic. If, however, Rhys is correct in considering the word Goidelic,[506] it must have been given to the sea by the Gaelic refugees. In Jutland the Kimri came into contact with the Teutones, descendants of the Wiros who had carried northwards the Type B swords. Whether they fought them at first is uncertain, but by the second century they had made an unholy alliance with them to ravage the lands to the south, and they would again have carried fire and sword throughout Europe had not their operations been cut short in 102 B.C. at Aquæ Sextiæ by the Roman army under Marius.

It was apparently in the fourth century, or a few years earlier, that certain tribes of these Kimri, whether a southern branch of the Cimbri or tribes living to the south-west of the chersonese in Frisia, Holland or Belgium, is uncertain, began to move southwards and westwards. These were the Galati, Galli and Belgæ. They began in various waves to disturb southern Europe, and to harry the settled communities as far as Asia Minor, where they survived for several centuries as Galatians.

It is not necessary for our purpose to trace in detail these movements, except in so far as they affect our problem. In the second century, or thereabouts, the Veneti, one of these tribes, who had taken to the sea, sailed down the channel and settled at Vannes, at the head of the Morbihan bay.

Their arrival seems to have disturbed the Gaelic lake-dwellers of this region, for about this time we find people, whose culture show Breton affinities, settling on either side of the Irish channel. In the lake-villages of Glastonbury[507] and Meare we have evidence of the arrival of these refugees, and similar evidence may be found in Ireland, which received its first knowledge of iron and La Tène culture about this time.[508] In Ireland these timid folk built their usual lake-dwellings, and crannogs, in the lakes, though Macalister has recently seen in these fortified habitations evidence of the arrival of Gaelic conquerors, who thus defended themselves from the treachery of their subjects, among whom they were very unpopular.[509] But, as we have seen, the Gaelic war lords, with their bronze swords, had reached Ireland nearly a thousand years before.

It was during one of these late Kimric movements that the Belgian tribes began to cross the channel into Great Britain. It is doubtful, at present, whether the introduction of the use of iron and La Tène culture, which took place about 450 B.C., is to be attributed to them, for there were probably many trading posts along the coast, like the one excavated at Hengistbury Head,[510] which were in touch with the continent and could have imported these wares. Some of these settlements may even be earlier than the La Tène period; this is suspected in the case of Hengistbury, and was certainly the case at Eastbourne,[511] if the pottery found there recently really betokens a trading post, and not the arrival of a small group of Gaelic refugees from the further bank of the upper Rhine.

But these Belgic invaders were almost certainly responsible for the hill-top camps, which in the south of England seem to be earlier than 200 B.C., though probably much later in the north and west. To them we must also attribute the introduction of pedestal vases and other types of pottery which come, undoubtedly, from the Belgic area on the continent. Such Belgic movements continued until the first century, and had only ceased shortly before the arrival of Julius Cæsar in northern Gaul.

Thus the Kimri, or as we may now call them the Cymry, did not enter England until about 300 B.C., and for a time seem to have limited their settlements to the chalk lands. By degrees they spread to the oolite ridge, but it is doubtful whether they had progressed farther when Cæsar landed here. The dense Midland forest kept them back, and they seem to have made no attempt to reach Ireland, or, until after Cæsar’s time, to dispossess the Gaels of the Parret marshes. But early in the Christian era civil wars occurred between the tribes on either side of the Thames, which led eventually to Roman interference, and it was during the campaign of Aulus Plautius and his successors that dispossessed Cymric leaders, like Caractacus, fled with their followers to the west, and introduced into Wales a Cymric or Brythonic speech, the first Wiro dialect to be spoken regularly in the principality, except along trade routes and in the small Gaelic settlements above Cardiff.

CHAPTER XV
CONCLUSION

I would, however, point out that the absence of philological evidence of their presence is not conclusive evidence of their absence. If my equation of the bronze swords and the finger-tip pottery with Q speaking people is correct, and the evidence from Italy and the Seine valley seems incontrovertible, the Gaels not only came to England, but settled there in considerable numbers, and even inhabited the southern slopes of the Glamorgan hills. No absence of Goidelic elements in British place-names is proof against such positive evidence. A few of the Gaels may have reached Ireland from the mouth of the Loire, in fact it seems probable that some such movement took place, though positive archæological evidence from the French side is for the present lacking.

Lastly there is an idea prevalent in some quarters that at one time there was in Europe a great Celtic empire. Some writers speak of this as though it had been a Gaelic empire. I have been unable as yet to trace this superstition to its source. I suspect that the chapters on Brennius in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Britons[512] are the real foundation for this strange belief, though naturally no-one to-day would base a serious hypothesis upon so shifty a foundation. M. d’Arbois de Jubainville[513] seems to rely mainly on a passage from Livy[514], in which the writer states that Bellovesus and Sigovesus, nephews of Ambigatus, king of the Bituriges, were sent simultaneously on two expeditions. Livy says nothing of an empire, and the movements which he dates at 600 B.C. seem to have occurred 300 years later. Déchelette[515] had dealt with this absurd notion according to its deserts.

The empire of Ambigatus, if such a thing existed, must have been a Kimric not a Gaelic power. But empires, if we are to understand the word in the sense in which it is ordinarily used, need settled conditions, such as did not prevail in north or north-west Europe until the arrival in the latter region of the pax Romana. It is conceivably possible that among the Kimri the tribal chiefs paid some form of loose allegiance to a super-chief, just as the Dorians, and to some extent the Hellenic world, recognised, very occasionally the hegemony of Sparta; but the evidence which we possess from classical sources does not even imply the existence of any such over-lordship among the Celts. In any case such vague hegemony could only have existed among the Kimric tribes, who for a thousand years harried the people of Celtic lands and the Celtic cradle, Gaelic lords or non-Wiro subjects alike. Before their arrival the Gaelic chiefs ruled only in the mountain zone, and the establishment of an empire in a mountainous country, draining into four rivers and four seas, would have been more impossible than in the open steppe.