Herodotus, about half a century later, speaks of the Celts as dwelling "beyond the pillars of Hercules" — i.e. in Spain — and also of the Danube rising in their country.
Aristotle knew that they dwelt "beyond Spain", that they had captured Rome, and that they set great store by warlike power. References other than geographical are occasionally met with even in early writers. Hellanicus of Lesbos, an historian of the fifth century BC, describes the Celts as practising justice and righteousness. Ephorus, about 350 BC, has three lines of verse about the Celts in which they are described as using "the same customs as the Greeks" — whatever that may mean — and being on the friendliest terms with that people, who established guest-friendships among them. Plato, however, in the "Laws", classes the Celts among the races who are drunken and combative, and much barbarity is attributed to them on the occasion of their irruption into Greece and the sacking of Delphi in the year 273 BC. Their attack on Rome and the sacking of that city by them about a century earlier is one of the landmarks of ancient history.
The history of this people during the time when they were the dominant power in Mid-Europe has to be divined or reconstructed from scattered references, and from accounts of episodes in their dealings with Greece and Rome, very much as the figure of a primeval monster is reconstructed by the zoologist from a few fossilised bones. No chronicles have come down to us, no architectural remains have survived [but see, e.g. "The Celts, First Masters of Europe" — Christiane Eluère, published by Thames and Hudson (1993) — Ed]; a few coins, and a few ornaments and weapons in bronze decorated with enamel or with subtle and beautiful designs in chased or repoussé work — these, and the names which often cling in strangely altered forms to the places where they dwelt, from the Euxine to the British Islands, are well-nigh all the visible traces which this once mighty power has left us of its civilisation and dominion. Yet from these, and from the accounts of classical writers, much can be conjectured with a very fair measure of probability. The great Celtic scholar whose loss we have recently had to deplore, M. d'Arbois de Jubainville, has, on the available data, drawn a convincing outline of Celtic history for the period prior to their emergence into full historical light with the conquests of Caesar {In his Premiers Habitants de l'Europe, vol. ii. — TWR}, and it is this outline of which the main features are reproduced here.
In the fourth century, Macedon was attacked and almost obliterated by Thracian and Illyrian hordes. King Amyntas II was defeated and driven into exile. His son Perdiccas II was killed in battle. When Philip, a younger brother of Perdiccas, came to the obscure and tottering throne which he and his successors were to make the seat of a great empire, he was powerfully aided in making head against the Illyrians by the conquests of the Celts in the valleys of the Danube and the Po. The alliance was continued and rendered, perhaps, more formal in the days of Alexander. When about to undertake the conquest of Asia (334 BC) Alexander first made a compact with the Celts "who dwelt by the Ionian Gulf" in order to secure his Greek dominions from attack during his absence. The episode is related by Ptolemy Soter in his history of the wars of Alexander. {Ptolemy, a friend and, probably, indeed, half-brother, of Alexander, was doubtless present when this incident took place. His work has not survived, but is quoted by Arrian and other historians.— TWR} It has a vividness which stamps it as a bit of authentic history, and another singular testimony to the truth of the narrative has been brought to light by de Jubainville. As the Celtic envoys, who are described as men of haughty bearing and great stature, their mission concluded, were drinking with the king, he asked them, it is said, what was the thing they, the Celts, most feared. The envoys replied: "We fear no man: there is but one thing that we fear, namely, that the sky should fall on us; but we regard nothing so much as the friendship of a man such as thou". Alexander bade them farewell and, turning to his nobles, whispered: "What a vainglorious people are these Celts!" Yet the answer, for all its Celtic bravura and flourish, was not without both dignity and courtesy. The reference to the falling of the sky seems to give a glimpse of some primitive belief or myth of which it is no longer possible to discover the meaning. {One is reminded of the folk-tale about Henny Penny, who went to tell the king that the sky was falling. — TWR} [But those who are open to suggestion may find it interesting to read "The Secret of Atlantis" — Otto Muck, published by Book Club Associates (1978) — Ed].
The national oath by which the Celts bound themselves to the observance of their covenant with Alexander is remarkable. "If we observe not this engagement", they said, "may the sky fall on us and crush us, may the earth gape and swallow us up, may the sea burst out and overwhelm us". De Jubainville draws attention most appositely to a passage from the Táin Bo Cuailgne, in the Book of Leinster {The Book of Leinster is a manuscript of the twelfth century. The version of the Táin given in it probably dates from the eighth. See de Jubainville, Premiers Habitants, ii. 316. — TWR}, where the Ulster heroes declare to their king, who wished to leave them in battle in order to meet an attack in another part of the field: "Heaven is above us, and earth beneath us, and the sea is round about us. Unless the sky shall fall with its showers of stars on the ground where we are camped, or unless the earth be rent by an earthquake, or unless the waves of the blue sea come over the forests of the living world, we shall not give ground" {Dr Douglas Hyde in his Literary History of Ireland (p.7) gives a slightly different translation. — TWR}. This survival of a peculiar oath formula for more than a thousand years, and its reappearance, after being first heard of among the Celts of Mid-Europe, in a mythical romance of Ireland, is certainly most curious and, with other facts which we shall note hereafter, speaks strongly for the community and persistency of Celtic culture {It is also a testimony to the close accuracy of the narrative of Ptolemy. — TWR}.
Two questions must now be considered before we can leave the historical part of this Introduction. First of all, what are the evidences for the widespread diffusion of Celtic power in Mid-Europe during this period? Secondly, where were the Germanic peoples, and what was their position in regard to the Celts?
The word dunum, so often traceable in Gaelic place-names in the present day (Dundalk, Dunrobin, etc.), and meaning fortress or castle, is another typically Celtic element in European place-names. It occurred very frequently in France — e.g., Lug-dunum (Lyons), Viro-dunum (Verdun). It is also found in Switzerland — e.g., Minno-dunum (Moudon), Eburo-dunum (Yverdon) — and in the Netherlands, where the famous city of Leyden goes back to a Celtic Lug-dunum. In Great Britain the Celtic term was often changed by simple translation into castra; thus Camulo-dunum became Colchester, Brano-dunum Brancaster. In Spain and Portugal eight names terminating in dunum are mentioned by classical writers. In Germany the modern names Kempton, Karnberg, Liegnitz, go back respectively to the Celtic forms Cambo-dunum, Carro-dunum, Lugi-dunum, and we find a Singi-dunum, now Belgrade, in Servia, a Novi-dunum, now Isaktscha, in Roumania, a Carro-dunum in South Russia, near the Dniester, and another in Croatia, now Pitsmeza. Sego-dunum, now Rodez, in France, turns up also in Bavaria (Wurzburg), and in England (Sege-dunum, now Wallsend, in Northumberland), and the first term, sego, is traceable in Segorbe (Sego-briga), in Spain. Briga is a Celtic word, the origin of the German burg, and equivalent in meaning to dunum.
One more example: the word magos, a plain, which is very frequent as an element of Irish place-names, is found abundantly in France; and outside of France, in countries no longer Celtic, it appears in Switzerland (Uro-magus, now Promasens), in the Rhineland (Broco-magus, Brumath), in the Netherlands, as already noted (Nimègue), in Lombary several times, and in Austria.
The examples given are by no means exhaustive, but they serve to indicate the wide diffusion of the Celts in Europe and their identity of language over their vast territory. {For these and many other examples see de Jubainville's Premiers Habitants, ii. 255 et seq. — TWR}
The Celtic culture illustrated by the remains at Hallstatt developed later into what is called the La Tène culture. La Tène was a settlement at the north-eastern end of the Lake of Neuchâtel, and many objects of great interest have been found there since the site was first explored in 1858. These antiquities represent, according to Dr Evans, the culminating period of Gaulish civilisation, and date from round about the third century BC. The type of art here found must be judged in the light of an observation recently made by Mr Romilly Allen in his Celtic Art (p. 13):
"The great difficulty in understanding the evolution of Celtic art lies in the fact that although the Celts never seem to have invented any new ideas, they professed [sic; ? possessed] an extraordinary aptitude for picking up ideas from the different peoples with whom war or commerce brought them into contact. And once the Celt had borrowed an idea from his neighbours he was able to give it such a strong Celtic tinge that it soon became something so different from what it was originally as to be almost unrecognisable."
Now what the Celt borrowed in the art-culture which on the Continent culminated in the La Tène relics were certain originally naturalistic motives for Greek ornaments, notably the palmette and the meander motives. But it was characteristic of the Celt that he avoided in his art all imitation of, or even approximation to, the natural forms of the plant and animal world. He reduced everything to pure decoration. What he enjoyed in decoration was the alternation of long sweeping curves and undulations with the concentrated energy of close-set spirals or bosses, and with these simple elements and with the suggestion of a few motives derived from Greek art he elaborated a most beautiful, subtle and varied system of decoration, applied to weapons, ornaments, and to toilet and household appliances of all kinds, in gold, bronze, wood, and stone, and possibly, if we had the means of judging, to textile fabrics also. One beautiful feature in the decoration of metal-work seems to have entirely originated in Celtica. Enamelling was unknown to the classical nations till they learned from the Celts. So late as the third century AD it was still strange to the classical world, as we learn from the reference of Philostratus:
"They say that the barbarians who live in the ocean [Britons] pour these colours upon heated brass, and that they adhere, become hard as stone, and preserve the designs that are made upon them."
Dr J Anderson writes in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland:
"The Gauls as well as the Britons — of the same Celtic stock — practised enamel-working before the Roman conquest. The enamel workshops of Bibracte, with their furnaces, crucibles, moulds, polishing-stones, and with the crude enamels in their various stages of preparation, have been recently excavated from the ruins of the city destroyed by Caesar and his legions. But the Bibracte enamels are the work of mere dabblers in the art, compared with the British examples. The home of the art was Britain, and the style of the pattern, as well as the association in which the objects decorated with it were found, demonstrated with certainty that it had reached its highest stage of indigenous development before it came in contact with the Roman culture." {Quoted by Mr Romilly Allen in Celtic Art p. 136. — TWR}
The National Museum in Dublin contains many superb examples of Irish decorative art in gold, bronze, and enamels, and the "strong Celtic tinge" of which Mr Romilly Allen speaks is as clearly observable there as in the relics of Hallstatt or La Tène.
Everything, then, speaks of a community of culture, an identity of race-character, existing over the vast territory known to the ancient world as "Celtica".
They are mentioned by Pytheas, the eminent Greek traveller and geographer, about 300 BC, but they play no part in history till, under the name of Cimbri and Teutones, they descended on Italy to be vanquished by Marius at the close of the second century. The ancient Greek geographers prior to Pytheas know nothing of them, and assign all the territories now known as Germanic to various Celtic tribes.
The explanation given by de Jubainville, and based by him on various philological considerations, is that the Germans were a subject people, comparable to those "un-free tribes" who existed in Gaul and in ancient Ireland. They lived under the Celtic dominion, and had no independent political existence. De Jubainville finds that all the words connected with law and government and war which are common both to the Celtic and Teutonic languages were borrowed by the latter from the former. Chief among them are the words represented by the modern German Reich, empire, Amt, office, and the Gothic reiks, a king, all of which are of unquestioned Celtic origin. De Jubainville also numbers among loan words from Celtic the words Bann, an order; Frei, free; Geisel, a hostage; Erbe, an inheritance; Werth, value; Weih, sacred; Magus, a slave (Gothic); Wini, a wife (Old High German); Helith, Held, a hero, from the same root as the word Celt; Heer, an army (Celtic choris); Sieg, victory; Beaute, booty; Burg, a castle; and many others.
The etymological history of some of these words is interesting. Amt, for instance, that word of so much significance in modern German administration, goes back to an ancient Celtic ambhactos, which is compounded of the words ambi, about, and actos, a past participle derived from the Celtic root AG, meaning to act. Now ambi descends from the primitive Indo-European mbhi, where the initial m is a kind of vowel, afterwards represented in Sanscrit by a. This m vowel became n in those Germanic words which derive directly from the primitive Indo-European tongue. But the word which is now represented by amt appears in its earliest Germanic form as ambaht, thus making plain its descent from the Celtic ambhactos.
Again, the word frei is found in its earliest Germanic form as frij-s, which comes from the primitive Indo-European prijo-s. The word here does not, however, mean free; it means beloved (Sanscrit priya-s). In the Celtic lanhuage, however, we find prijos dropping its initial p — a difficulty in pronouncing this letter was a marked feature in ancient Celtic; it changed j, according to a regular rule, into dd, and appears in modern Welsh as rhydd = free. The Indo-European meaning persists in the Germanic languages in the name of the love-goddess, Freia, and in the word Freund, friend, Friede, peace. The sense borne by the word in the sphere of civil right is traceable to a Celtic origin, and in that sense appears to have been a loan from Celtic.
The German Beute, booty, plunder, has had an instructive history. There was a Gaulish word bodi found in compounds such as the place-name Segobodium (Seveux), and various personal and tribal names, including Boudicca, better known as the "British warrior queen", Boadicea. This word meant anciently "victory". But the fruits of victory are spoil, and in this material sense the word was adopted in German, in French (butin), in Norse (byte), and the Welsh (budd). On the other hand, the word preserved its elevated significance in Irish. In the Irish translation of Chronicles xxix. 11, where the Vulgate original has "Tua est, Domine, magnificientia et potentia et gloria et victoria", the word victoria is rendered by the Irish buaidh, and, as de Jubainville remarks, "ce n'est pas de butin qu'il s'agit". He goes on to say: "Buaidh has preserved in Irish, thanks to a vigorous and persistent literary culture, the high meaning which it bore in the tongue of the Gaulish aristocracy. The material sense of the word was alone perceived by the lower classes of the population, and it is the tradition of this lower class which has been preserved in the German, the French, and the Cymric languages." {Premiers Habitants, ii. 355-6. — TWR}
Two things, however, the Celts either could not or would not impose on the subjugated German tribes — their language and their religion. In these two great factors of race-unity and pride lay the seeds of the ultimate German uprising and overthrow of the Celtic supremacy. The names of the German are different from those of the Celtic deities; and their funeral customs, with which are associated the deepest religious conceptions of primitive races, are different. The Celts, or at least the dominant section of them, buried their dead, regarding the use of fire as a humiliation, to be inflicted on criminals, upon slaves or prisoners in those terrible human sacrifices which are the greatest stain on their native culture. The Germans, on the other hand, burned their illustrious dead on pyres, like the early Greeks — if a pyre could not be afforded for the whole body, the noblest parts, such as the head and arms, were burned and the rest buried.
Ireland has therefore this unique feature of interest, that it carried an indigenous Celtic civilisation, Celtic institutions, art, and literature, and the oldest surviving form of the Celtic language {Irish is probably an older form of Celtic speech than Welsh. This is shown by many philological peculiarities of the Irish language, of which one of the most interesting may here be briefly referred to. The Goidelic or Gaelic Celts who, according to the usual theory, first colonised the British Islands, and who were forced by successive waves of invasion by their Continental kindred to the extreme west, had a peculiar dislike of the pronunciation of the letter p. Thus the Indo-European particle pare, beside or close to, becomes in early Celtic are, as in the name Are-morici (the Armoricans, those who dwell ar muir, by the sea); Are-dunum (Ardin, in France); Are-cluta, the place beside the Clota (Clyde), now Dumbarton; Are-taunon, in Germany (near the Taunus Mountains), etc. When this letter was not simply dropped, it was usually changed into c (k, g). But about the sixth century BC, a remarkable change passed over the language of the Continental Celts. They gained in some unexplained way the faculty for pronouncing p, and even substituted it for existing c sounds; thus the original Cretanis became Pretanis, Britain; the numeral qetuares (four) became petuares, and so forth. Celtic place-names in Spain show that this change must have taken place before the Celtic conquest of that country, 500 BC. Now a comparison of many Irish and Welsh words shows distinctly this avoidance of p on the Irish side and lack of any objection to it on the Welsh. The conclusion that Irish must represent the older form of the language seems obvious. It is remarkable that even to a comparatively late date the Irish preserved their dislike of p. Thus they turned the Latin Pascha (Easter) to Casg; purpur, purple to corcair, pulsatio (through French pouls) to cuisle. It must be noted, however, that Nicholson in his Keltic Researches endeavours to show that the so-called Indo-European p — that is p standing alone and uncombined with another consonant — was pronounced by the Goidelic Celts at an early period. The subject can hardly be said to be cleared up yet. — TWR}, right across the chasm which separates the antique from the modern world, the pagan from the Christian world, and on into the full light of modern history and observation.
Some of these references have already been quoted, and we need not repeat the evidence derived from Plato, Ephorus, or Arrian. But an observation of M Porcius Cato on the Gauls may be adduced. "There are two things", he says, "to which the Gauls are devoted — the art of war and subtlety of speech" (rem militarem et argute loqui).
"They who are thus interdicted [for refusing to obey a Druidical sentence] are reckoned in the number of the vile and wicked; all persons avoid and fly their company and discourse, lest they should receive infection by contagion; they are not permitted to commence a suit; neither is any post entrusted to them... The Druids are generally freed from military service, nor do they pay taxes with the rest... Encouraged by such rewards, many of their own accord come to their schools, and are sent by their friends and relations. They are said there to get by heart a great number of verses; some continue twenty years in their education; neither is it held lawful to commit these things [the Druidic doctrines] to writing, though in almost all public transactions and private accounts they use the Greek characters."
The Gauls were eager for news, besieging merchants and travellers for gossip {The Irish, says Edmund Spenser, in his View of the Present State of Ireland "use commonlye to send up and down to know newes, and yf any meet with another, his second woorde is, What newes?" — RWR}, easily influenced, sanguine, credulous, fond of change, and wavering in their counsels. They were at the same time remarkably acute and intelligent, very quick to seize upon and to imitate any contrivance they found useful. Their ingenuity in baffling the novel siege apparatus of the Roman armies is specially noticed by Caesar. Of their courage he speaks with great respect, attributing their scorn of death, in some degree at least, to their firm faith in the immortality of the soul {Compare Spenser: "I have heard some greate warriors say, that in all the services which they had seen abroad in forrayne countreys, they never saw a more comely horseman than the Irish man, nor that cometh on more bravely in his charge ... they are very valiante and hardye, for the most part great endurours of cold, labour, hunger and all hardiness, very active and stronge of hand, very swift of foote, very vigilaunte and circumspect in theyr enterprises, very present in perils, very great scorners of death". — TWR}. A people who in earlier days had again and again annihilated Roman armies, had sacked Rome, and who had more than once placed Caesar himself in positions of the utmost anxiety and peril, were evidently no weaklings, whatever their religious beliefs or practices. Caesar is not given to sentimental admiration of his foes, but one episode at the siege of Avaricum moves him to immortalise the valour of the defence. A wooden structure or agger had been raised by the Romans to overtop the walls, which had proved impregnable to the assaults of the battering-ram. The Gauls contrived to set this on fire. It was of the utmost moment to prevent the besiegers from extinguishing the flames, and a Gaul mounted a portion of the wall above the agger, throwing down upon it balls of tallow and pitch, which were handed up to him from within. He was soon struck down by a missile from a Roman catapult. Immediately another stepped over him as he lay, and continued his comrade's task. He too fell, but a third instantly took his place, and a fourth; nor was this post ever deserted until the legionaries at last extinguished the flames and forced the defenders back into the town, which was finally captured on the following day.
The Celtic warrior loved display. Everything that gave brilliance and the sense of drama to life appealed to him. His weapons were richly ornamented, his horse-trappings were wrought in bronze and enamel, of design as exquisite as any relic of Mycenean or Cretan art, his raiment was embroidered with gold. The scene of the surrender of Vercingetorix, when his heroic struggle with Rome had come to an end on the fall of Alesia, is worth recording as a typically Celtic blend of chivalry and of what appeared to the sober-minded Romans childish ostentation {The scene of the surrender of Vercingetorix is not recounted by Caesar, and rests mainly on the authority of Plutarch and of the historian Florus, but it is accepted by scholars (Mommsen, Long, etc.) as historic. — TWR}. When he saw that the cause was lost he summoned a tribal council, and told the assembled chiefs, whom he had led through a glorious but unsuccessful war, that he was ready to sacrifice himself for his still faithful followers — they might send his head to Caesar if they liked, or he would voluntarily surrender himself for his the sake of getting easier terms for his countrymen. The latter alternative was chosen. Vercingetorix then armed himself with his most splendid weapons, decked his horse with its richest trappings, and after riding thrice round the Roman camp, went before Caesar and laid at his feet the sword which was the sole remaining defence of Gallic independence. Caesar sent him to Rome, where he lay in prison for six years, and was finally put to death when Caesar celebrated his triumph.
But the Celtic love of splendour and of art were mixed with much barbarism. Strabo tells us how the warriors rode home from victory with the heads of fallen foemen dangling from their horses' necks, just as in the Irish saga the Ulster hero, Cuchulain, is represented as driving back to Emania from a foray into Connaught with the heads of his enemies hanging from his chariot-rim. Their domestic arrangements were rude; they lay on the ground to sleep, sat on couches of straw, and their women worked in the fields.
"The Gallic peoples had risen far above the condition of savages; and the Celticans of the interior, many of whom had already fallen under Roman influence, had attained a certain degree of civilisation, and even of luxury. Their trousers, from which the province took its name of Gallia Bracata, and their many-coloured tartan skirts and cloaks excited the astonishment of their conquerors. The chiefs wore rings and bracelets and necklaces of gold; and when these tall, fair-haired warriors rode forth to battle, with their helmets wrought in the shape of some fierce beast's head, and surmounted by nodding plumes, their chain armour, their long bucklers and their huge clanking swords, they made a splendid show. Walled towns or large villages, the strongholds of the various tribes, were conspicuous on numerous hills. The plains were dotted by scores of open hamlets. The houses, built of timber and wickerwork, were large and well thatched. The fields in summer were yellow with corn. Roads ran from town to town. Rude bridges spanned the rivers; and barges laden with merchandise floated along them. Ships, clumsy indeed but larger than any that were seen on the Mediterranean, braved the storms of the Bay of Biscay and carried cargoes between the ports of Brittany and the coast of Britain. Tolls were exacted on the goods which were transported on the great waterways; and it was from the farming of these dues that the nobles derived a large part of their wealth. Every tribe had its coinage; and the knowledge of writing in Greek and Roman characters was not confined to the priests. The Aeduans were familiar with the plating of copper and of tin. The miners of Aquitaine, of Auvergne, and of the Berri were celebrated for their skill. Indeed, in all that belonged to outward prosperity the peoples of Gaul had made great strides since their kinsmen first came into contact with Rome." {Caesar's Conquest of Gaul, pp. 10, 11. Let it be added that the aristocratic Celts were, like the Teutons, dolichocephalic — that is to say, they had heads long in proportion to their breadth. This is proved by remains found in the basin of the Marne, which was thickly populated by them. In one case the skeleton of the tall Gallic warrior was found with his war-car, iron helmet, and sword, now in the Musée de St-Germain. The inhabitants of the British Islands are uniformly long-headed, the round-headed "Alpine" type occurring very rarely. Those of modern France are round-headed, The shape of the head, however, is now known to be by no means a constant racial character. It alters rapidly in a new environment, as is shown by the measurements of the descendants of immigrants in America. See an article on this subject by Professor Haddon in Nature, Nov, 3, 1910. — TWR}
"Upon Tara's green was a vast and wide-foliaged tree, and eleven slaves hewing at it; but every chip that they knocked from it would return into its place again and there adhere instantly, till at last there came one man that dealt the tree but a stroke, and with that single cut laid it low." {Silva Gadelica by S H O'Grady, p. 73. — TWR}
The fair tree was the Irish monarchy, the twelve hewers were the twelve Saints or Apostles of Ireland, and the one who laid it low was St Ruadan. The plea of the king for his country, whose fate he saw hanging in the balance, is recorded with moving force and insight by the Irish Chronicler {The authority here quoted is a narrative contained in a fifteenth-century vellum manuscript found in Lismore Castle in 1814, and translated by S H O'Grady in his Silva Gadelica. The narrative is attributed to an officer of Dermot's court. — TWR}:
" 'Alas', he said, 'for the iniquitous contest that ye have waged against me; seeing that it is Ireland's good that I pursue, and to preserve her discipline and royal right; but 'tis Ireland's unpeace and murderousness that ye endeavour after'."
But Ruadan said, "Desolate be Tara for ever and ever"; and the popular awe of the ecclesiastical malediction prevailed. The criminal was surrendered, Tara was abandoned, and, except for a brief space when a strong usurper, Brian Boru, fought his way to power, Ireland knew no effective secular government till it was imposed upon her by a conqueror. The last words of the historical tract from which we quote are Dermot's cry of despair:
"Woe to him that with the clergy of the churches battle joins."
This remarkable incident has been described at some length because it is typical of a factor whose profound influence in moulding the history of the Celtic peoples we can trace through a succession of critical events from the time of Julius Caesar to the present day. How and whence it arose we shall consider later; here it is enough to call attention to it. It is a factor which forbade the national development of the Celts, in the sense in which we can speak of that of the classical or the Teutonic peoples.