drunemeton

[chimera]

Hullo from a returning past member,
The territories of tribes are ill-defined today and are taken from Roman writings. Is there any information about the Uffington region? My question is whether the White Horse on the Ridgeway is on the borders of Dobunni, Catuvellauni and Atrebates? This may indicate that the fort had a building for a drunemeton assembly as a neutral diplomatic meeting-place for those 3 lands.

[wolf560]

No idea, but that sparks a different question perhaps....
Did the tribes have "neutral grounds" upon which to meet?

The Romans were able to conquer the tribes because the tribes never really worked together against a very common and well-known threat. This implies (to me at least) that there were no such neutral grounds at all.....

Time for more research..!!!

[chimera]

In Galatia Asia Minor, the drunemeton was a gathering of 3 tribes for court cases and government.
"Caesar tells us that Druidism first started in Britain, and that the Druids of Gaul used to go to Britain to visit famous schools and sanctuaries. British Druidism had an equally high reputation in Ireland, and the Irish Druids went to Britain to complete their education. "
That website concluded that druids were trans-tribal and a unifying influence. If druids could stop battles between Kelts, they would likely be willing to discuss policy in general across borders.

[DaRC]

I think you would need to view Druids in this context very similarly to politicians. The story of Diviaticus, the Druid who advised Caesar, and his brother Dumnorix, who was anti-Roman, should illustrate the issues we have here. It's possible IMHO to overstate the power of the Druids to stop warring factions - they appear to have had some power but it must be remembered that there was a lot of warring between tribes. In addition within the Irish literature it seems that Druids were much more linked to individual Kings. If a king became High King then his Druid would probably become High Druid.

The Uffington White Horse probably pre-dates the Celtic cultural diaspora - in this respect if it was used as a Drunemeton it could have been opportunistic or coincidental due to the boundaries of the Atrebates and Dobunni.

[chimera]

There could be the impression that Druids were do-gooder pacifists who wished the boys were playing happily. But maybe there were political considerations which caused decisions for-and -against a particular battle, beyond the immediate emotion of the warriors. Like polit. parties which decide against the army generals today in a certain conflict.
The White Horse quickly becomes overgrown if not scoured of grass every few years. There was an end to the use of Stonehenge etc, 1500 BCE when those would be more likely to hold spiritual interest for incoming Kelts. The date of WH is just before major evidence of Kelts and possibly it arose when those new tribes were sorting out borders.

[wolf560]

In Galatia (modern Turkey now) there were several shrines known as "Drunemeton" which was listed as a major gathering site. http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Galatia.aspx#1-1O70:Galatia-full It was also said that a dialect of the language of Ancyra was spoken in Trier in the 5th century C.E.

According to Strabo in the 1st century BCE, it was major gathering place for Galatians. http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O70-Drunemeton.html

[echoe]

LOL. I hate winter. (wolf, you're going to have to make me go and get my books out of the garage. I'd have had them out long ago, but moving kind of makes you prepare things in boxes in advance. I had no idea I'd be talking so much about Celts!)

Okay, actually the Romans DID have an extremely hard time routing out the Celts who were very formidable. These were the Celts of the northern regions, (which for Italy isn't very far north.) in the lands above Greece and in the Provence regions of France as well as further north. The Celts got together OFTEN in wars or battles in order to support each other's tribes and the two that Caesar had the absolutely hardest time with, were brothers who were chieftans of two very vast tribes, (which were separated into smaller ones with distance between each.) They always sent messages (drums?) to each other in times of threat and the other was right there within a day. Caesar couldn't beat them, so he decided to "friend" them. In so doing, he masterminded the ultimate defeat of all Celts. He caused a rift between the brothers of the two most powerful tribes by playing mind games with them. He told one that the other had said derogatory things about him, and then told the other similar things. (he writes of this in his memiors recording the defeat of the Celts) It took him over a year, if not years (I believe it was 2 but my memory does not like to cooperate,) to finally succeed, but when he mounted his final war against them, he was able to defeat one tribe, because the other brother did not come to his aid.

But for many, MANY hundreds of years, the Celts were very formidable (they'd mounted many attacks against the Greeks,who gave them the generic name of barbars, when they first attacked, not knowing who they were, and that name stuck. The Greeks figured out intelligently that trade with the Celts, business, and friendship brought better relationships.) They were considered a major threat to the Germans and the Vikings as well, although curiouisly, both were offshoots of the Celts themselves, just earlier in history. The Germanii tribes were apart long enough from the other Celts that they became Germans, not Celts and developed a different language. Same with the Vikings, and I forget the orignal Viking names, but they still have Celtic names of towns and cities in Norway and Sweden. TONS of Celtic names across Germany and France as well. Paris probably being one of the most famous, and the Danube river another.

Hope this helps! But the Celts had ruled the vast regions between modern day France, Turkey, Switzerland, And connecting mountainous (metal working!) areas as well as plains areas. They were VERY hard to rout. Caesar was nothing if not a war machine, and he succeeded incredibly, where none other could.

[wolf560]

Hello Echoe..!!!

I'm visiting my kids so you have caught me away from my resource library as well (LOL)....

Yes, the Celts in general were very hard to defeat. Brennus led the sack of Rome in @285 BCE and a different "Brennus" sacked Delphi in 345 BCE. I read somewhere that the original Roman Gladius sword was actually a manufactured item of Celtic Blacksmiths that the Romans unsuccessfully tried over and over to reproduce. I do know at the time that the Celtic Blacksmiths were far and beyond the capabilities of most of the rest of Europe.

Although the battle of Alesia wherein Caesar with 60,000 legionnaires conquered Vercengetorix and his 80,000 warriors virtually ending the Gauillish resistance in 52 BCE, it was not the biggest defeat the Celt suffered...merely the last one. Most notably IMHO is the defeat of the Cimbri and the Teutones tribes in 101 BCE where (in some sources) over 300,000 Celts are killed and/or sold into slavery. Caesar is responsible for the next massive battle in 58 BCE where he ambushes the Helvetii tribee and decimates it (out of 360,000 Helvetii less than a third escape). There is also the interesting case that Spartacus and his 120,000 slaves and gladiators poses in 72 BCE. We don't know how many were sold into slavery afterwards (if any) but we do know that 6000 lined the Appian way all the way back to Rome.

The greatest differences between the sack of Rome in 285 BCE and Caesar's defeat of the Gauls 230 years later is actually the Germanic tribes. They were pushing the Celts west and south ... forcing them into Roman territories. The Helvetii were one such tribe that got caught on the march and were slaughtered by the Romans as they were migrating. The Cimbri and Teutones were more in control of their times but were also feeling the pressure of the migrating Germanic tribes. Caesar also allied (rather heavily) with some of these Germanic tribes giving him even more leverage against the Celts.

Interestingly enough, this eventually led to the downfall of the Western Roman Empire as Rome became too dependent upon this very kind of mercenary group. Alaric the Goth sacked Rome in 410 CE after he was denied a promotion within the Roman Army he felt he deserved for services rendered.

Those who lived by the sword were eventually felled by it 500 years later....

Side note: if you were the only major group having blacksmiths capable of making well-made iron weapons in a world where bronze weaponry was still being used..... your enemies might well believe you had "magic weapons capable of cutting through shields and other swords "...

Sources:
http://fitz-patrickmythology.com/FitzMyth2000BC-1200AD.htm
http://www.vroma.org/~bmcmanus/spartacus.html
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/625897/Vercingetorix
http://www1.american.edu/dgolash/timeline.htm

[Huathe]

Nice history lesson, Mark and Echoe!

[wolf560]

Heh Heh....
I do love talking about history.......
I think Echoe does as well.....

I firmly believe that we can gain an insight that is still relevant to what we do today by looking back into history for similar circumstances...

Here is something I was working on a few months back;
Spartacus led a 120,000 warrior strong group of escaped slaves and gladiators.
30 years earlier was when the Cimbri and Teutones were annihilated and many thousands of were sold into slavery. My thought was that only one generation later we see the largest slave revolt in recorded history that very nearly brought the Roman Empire to its very knees.

My question was; how many of the rebellion were Celtic slaves?

I never discovered how many slaves in the Empire prior to the Spartacus Slave revolt were of Celtic origin, just something that is somewhat hidden in the Annals of History I suppose...

[echoe]

LOVE history! LOL

Yep, the Celts were picked off kind of one by one after the two largest tribes were finally defeated. Caesar knew that if he couldn't get rid of the two brothers... their names started with a "D" darn it.. GEEZ I hate my memory, wait, let me see if there's anything on-line...

here's a combination of what Mark and I have been saying: http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/MA/CELTS.HTM

and yes, Caesar aligned with many Celtic and Gallic groups, but he turned traitor to them all, using his alliances to pick off tribes so that none would come to their aid and then he'd pick off the tribes he'd allied with. Kind of an ingenious strategy. He also had his men learn the ways of the Celts and Gauls so that they wouldn't fear them in warfare, as the Celts kind of didn't play by rules of war. They were very unpredictable, scary even, plenty full of whatever the druids had made them drink so they wouldn't have fear in battles.

THERE we go! one of the brothers' names was Dumnorix the other was a name with a D also... but I learned something new in the looking up... this article says they were Helvetii, from the Swiss region, and migrating. Man I'd loved to have been a historian of those times! http://www.athenapub.com/caesarg1.htm I read a translation of Julius Caesar's notes on the Gauls and he'd spent a long time figuring out how to defeat them and stop them from invading Rome.

Was it Haran you said you weren't trusting of, Mark?

Here's a copy of a map of the regions the Celts covered in their time: http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/gaz ... ml#Origins

La Tene and Halstatt on the maps are two EXTREMELY important archeological sites. Halstatt has a meaning that is derived from the word Salt because there was good salt mining in that region. La Tene archeological digs brought out some of the most outstanding metal work ever seen from that time period... And indeed, if you really want ugly twisting of history, the swastika is found in the metal work from La Tene. Hitler knew of this because of the archeology, and used it to show how the Germans were superior due (unusually) in part to the connection with the Celtic history to the Germanii tribes. So many things that link up in history. Just mind boggling isn't it? And the Celts were somehow linked back to the Aryans, (of the MidEast) by Hitler. And unbeknownst to Hitler (as DNA technology was non-existent.) there is indeed a link, and dear god that doesn't mean we should all run out and start being neo-nazi... because we ALL link back to the African DNA if we go back far enough. http://dnaancestryonline.com/the-indo-european-celt/

Anyway...

Here are some of the Celt place names that still exist in France and Belgium today... there are of course more that exist in Switzerland and Germany, but for now, I'm unable to find them. I remember the Danube River was one of them, and of course, the whole COUNTRY is named after the Germanii (plow-man) tribes. OH! I just learned something! (yay me) I did not know the word Iron is the German pronunciation of the Celtic word Iam for the same metal. Well there we go!

http://www.tartanplace.com/saintpatrick ... ename.html

Anyone here ever crossed the Asterix and Obelix comics? I used to LOVE those! They are SO funny and SO on point!

http://www.asterix.com/

[echoe]

Well here comes the memory now. Geez. The word jewelry is from a Celtic word, closer to Bijou, which is french for jewel, and that came from the Celts.

[echoe]

Must be my night for learning. I just learned that the DNA testing of the people of Greenland show that they too were predominantly Celt. They had Nordic DNA, but most of the women were Celts no ifs ands or buts. Kind of opens up a whole new line of thought, huh?

http://www.cphpost.dk/news/scitech/92-t ... blood.html

[wolf560]

Caesar knew that if he couldn't get rid of the two brothers... their names started with a "D" darn it..

THERE we go! one of the brothers' names was Dumnorix the other was a name with a D also...

Diviaticus... ?? <sp>

[echoe]

YES! you're awesome!

[wolf560]

In all honesty (LOL)
Diviaticus came to mind immediately while I was having trouble remembering Dumnorix....

[echoe]

can't believe I forgot to add one of the other obvious Celt words: Pony. We use that word yet today also, from the Goddess Epony, the goddess of horses. and they say the Celts didn't influence us!

[wolf560]

Epona was probably one of the more famous Celtic Deities that began to spring up all over the Roman Empire. Some say it was because of the mercenary cavalrymen that the Roman Army began to hire after awhile. I hear Mithraism crept into the Empire in the same fashion finally becoming "God of the Soldiers".

[Strabo]

May I congratulate Wolf560 on being a year ahead of me in understanding what Drunemeton really meant. The so-called Celts who founded Galatia in 276 BC came from a region near the Iron Gates on the Danube and were not Celtic-speakers in the modern sense, but a load of Iron-Age warriors from the north to whom Mediterranean (olive-skinned) peoples gave the name Galatai = milky-white, i.e. palefaces. Their language(s) were closer to German. Drunemeton is a two-part compound, whose first part 'border' survives in English as thrum = edge piece of cloth. Its second part is related to the English/Greek word Nemesis, meant something like 'apportion', and survives in German nehmen 'take', or a Greek word for something like 'allotted pasture'. So Drunemeton meant, exactly as the ancient author Strabo described, a border place for tribes to meet. This is also precisely what the very common ancient place name Mediolanum meant -- 'middle ground' -- whose components survive in modern English medium and lawn. You can still read the old nonsense that Mediolanum meant 'middle of the plain', which does not fit the actual places' topographical situations at all well.

Please be extremely skeptical when reading anything about ancient "Celtic" speech anywhere far removed from the Atlantic coasts of Europe or rivers that run towards the Atlantic. A large fraction of everything now in print about Gaulish names is hopelessly infected by circular logic, because people whom the ancients called "Celts" have been incorrectly equated with modern Celtic language speakers. Names that were probably constructed in other languages, closer to Germanic, have been used to expand the lexicon of "Continental Celtic" to the point where it should perhaps be renamed "common European". Those names have been used to expand the supposed area of Celtic speech ... and round and round it goes.

[Dendrias]

That seems, Strabo, to be so easy. I doubt it is.

The German verb "nehmen" (take) means exactly the opposite thing that Greek "némein" (something like to allot pasture) means. So with Nemesis, who doesn't "take" anything, but gives.