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The inhabitants of the Celtica region called themselves Celts [1] in their own language, and were later called Galli by Julius Caesar: All Gaul is divided into three parts, one of which the Belgae inhabit, the Aquitani another, those who in their own language are called Celts, in ours Galli, the third.
The Gauls (Latin: Galli; Ancient Greek: Γαλάται, Galátai) were a group of Celtic peoples of mainland Europe in the Iron Age and the Roman period (roughly 5th century BC to 5th century AD). Their homeland was known as Gaul (Gallia). They spoke Gaulish, a continental Celtic language.
The various names used since classical times for the people known today as the Celts are of disparate origins.. The names Κελτοί (Keltoí) and Celtae are used in Greek and Latin, respectively, to denote a people of the La Tène horizon in the region of the upper Rhine and Danube during the 6th to 1st centuries BC in Graeco-Roman ethnography.
They lived in Cisalpine Gaul (Gallia Cisalpina), also called Gallia Citerior or Gallia Togata, [27] was the part of Italy continually inhabited by Celts since the 13th century BC. [28] Conquered by the Roman Republic in the 220s BC, it was a Roman province from c. 81 BC until 42 BC, when it was merged into Roman Italy. [29]
Plutarch reports that Celtic women acted as ambassadors to avoid a war among Celtic chiefdoms in the Po valley during the 4th century BC. [160] Posidonius' anthropological comments on the Celts had common themes, primarily primitivism , extreme ferocity, cruel sacrificial practices, and the strength and courage of their women. [ 161 ]
Caesar, however, had denied their earlier request to settle in Gaul, and the issue turned to war. The Celtic tribes sent out a cavalry force of 800 against a Roman auxiliary force of 5,000 made up of Gauls, and won a surprising victory. Caesar retaliated by attacking the defenseless Celtic camp, and slaughtering the men, women, and children.
Expansion of the Celtic culture in the 3rd century BC. The Druids were not the only political force in Gaul, however, and the early political system was complex, if ultimately fatal to the society as a whole. The fundamental unit of Gallic politics was the clan, which itself consisted of one or more of what Caesar called pagi. Each clan had a ...
On the one hand, great female Celts are known from mythology and history; on the other hand, their real status in the male-dominated Celtic tribal society was socially and legally constrained. Yet Celtic women were somewhat better placed in inheritance and marriage law than their Greek and Roman contemporaries.