ABSTRACT
The Greeks gave the name Keltoi to the barbarian peoples of central Europe, who came down in their raiding parties from the fifth century BCE and terrorised the settled city-states of the Mediterranean. During the late fifth century these tribes expanded westwards into Gaul, Britain and Ireland, southwest into Iberia, southwards into northern Italy and eastwards through the Balkans and into Asia Minor. Tribes now considered ‘Celtic’ include the Helvetii in the area of what is now Switzerland, the Boii in what is now Italy, the Averni in what is now France, and the Scordisci in what is now Serbia. Nineteenth-century historians set great store by the supposed difference between ‘Celtic’ and ‘Germanic’ root-stocks, but modern research indicates that these were originally part of a common north European tradition, already differentiating into separate linguistic groups when they were geographically split apart by the Romans. We use the word ‘Celtic’ as short-hand for the indigenous peoples of north-west Europe who, apart from the Irish, were colonised by Rome and in all cases were cut off by the boundary of the Roman Empire from the ‘German’ tribes east of the Rhine and north of the Danube. 1
