Myths and Legends of the Celts (Penguin Reference) Read Free Page B

cool-headed enemies.
Most informative of all the classical commentators is the Syrian-born Stoic philosopher Posidonius (
c
.135–51 BC ), who had lived in southern Gaul for a period, freeing him from reliance on self-serving travellers’ reports. His surviving ethnographical observations comprise only an 86-page booklet in modern editions (1960, 1985), a goad to remind us of what he might have told us in still further commentary now lost. We know that Chapter 23 of his lost
History
, prepared before the first Transalpine War (131–125 BC ), contained extensive, profound information, as a summary of it appears in such later writers as Strabo, Diodorus Siculus (first century BC ) and Athenaeus (
fl
. AD 230). Some of Posidonius’ commentaries strike parallels in early Irish and Welsh literature, especially his anticipation of bardic institutions and his description of the ‘champion’s portion’, a ceremony at banquets which awarded the choicest portion of pork to the most exalted hero present.
    Posidonius’ views also inform the war commentary of Julius Caesar (100–44 BC ), although they are not credited. Best remembered today as the introductory texts for beginning Latin students, Caesar’s seven-volumed
De Bello Gallico
[Gallic War] nonetheless gives some of the closest observations we have of religious practices, notably of the druids, as well as Celtic social divisions. He perceived a Gaulish pantheon, with gods ranked according to function, but he called them by what he felt to be their Roman equivalents. Thus Gaulish Mercury stands ahead of Gaulish Apollo or Gaulish Jupiter. This became the imperial convention we now designate
interpretatio Romana
[Roman interpretation], leading to centuries of speculation over the true identity of Gaulish Mercury, Gaulish Apollo, etc. (see Chapter 2 ). Despite being one of the most partisan of writers (he was among the Celts to conquer them, 58–51 BC ), Caesar revealed surprising sympathy for the common people, whom he found living like slaves, crushed with debts and taxes and abjectly subservient to powerful
equites
(knights or barons).
    Ireland was known in the ancient world only in the geography of Ptolemy (second century AD ), yet it affords a bridge between the earliest traditions and later survivals. By-passed by the Romans and the invading plunderers who followed them, the Irish retained their early family structures, social organization, and systems of inheritance and property for more than another millennium. We read about how this world was ordered in the Brehon Laws, named for the judges or brehons (Old Irish
breithem
) of early Ireland. Brehon Law has little in common with Roman Law, which lies at the foundation of law in most modern European states, but it does find parallels in the laws of the Welsh king Hywel Dda (d. 950).
Christianity had come to Ireland by the early 400s, before the collapse of Roman rule, and with it literacy, both in classical languages and also in Irish using Roman script. Thus during the bleak centuries between the Romans and the rise of medieval culture, Irish monasteries were the only places in Europe, north of Constantinople, where one might study Latin and Greek. During these heroic centuries of early Irish Christianity, Irish clergymen recorded many of the narratives discussed in this volume. Appearing first in documents now lost, they were later copied in the great medieval codices. Writing in Irish developed from the sixth to twelfth centuries, when native or Celtic monasticism flourished, but diminished after 1170, when monastic rule came under the domination of such continental orders as the Cistercians and the Dominicans. Surviving Welsh manuscripts, also produced by monks, date from later centuries, many of the oldest materials having been destroyed.
    The great codices are leather-bound volumes made first of vellum, a parchment made of the skins of lambs, calves or young goats, and later of heavy paper. Each codex contains