ABSTRACT
Curiously, the one certain eye-witness account, Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars, contains remarkably little about the appearance of the people whom he fought. We are driven to turn to the more distant Greek sources. However, there are limitations. Describing unfamiliar cultures it is tempting to notice only the most general and the strange; we operate in stereotypes, often reflecting more on the fears and prejudices of our own society than any real features of those whom we meet. For Greeks and Romans all peoples beyond the Mediterranean basin were automatically barbaric and ‘uncivilized’. Diodorus Siculus, a contemporary of Caesar's, summarizes the general image (History, V, 28):
The Gauls are tall of body, with rippling muscles, and white of skin, and their hair is blond, and not only naturally so, but they also make it their practice by artificial means to increase the distinguishing colour which nature has given it. For they are always washing their hair in limewater, and they pull it back from the forehead to the top of the head and back to the nape of the neck, with the result that their appearance is like that of Satyrs and Pans, since the treatment of their hair makes it so heavy and coarse that it differs in no respect from the mane of horses. Some of them shave the beard, but others let it grow a little; and the nobles shave their cheeks, but they let the moustache grow until it covers the mouth.
