Histoire des Celtes

xxviij

Scandinavia. He bases this on what ancient geographers and historians say: that Scandinavia was occupied by the Teutons, and that Germany then had no other boundaries to the North than the Northern Sea. But were these ancient authors well-informed? Regarding Poland, the largest part, according to him, was in Germany, and the Vistula is counted among its rivers by Pliny, Solinus, and Ptolemy. The Estians original: "Estions", who are the Prussians, were also Celts because they were Germans.

That the peoples of the island of Britain were Celts is not difficult to believe. This island, first called Albion and then Britain—because the inhabitants painted their bodies (*) Britten British, in Celtic, means painted. From this comes the fact that ancient authors call them Picti the Painted Ones/Picts. The Britons and the Picts are therefore not two different kinds of people, as modern writers have supposed: Note by the Abbé des Fontaines., as Julius Caesar says—was populated by the Gauls, according to the most common opinion. The author adds: "that he has, however, seen somewhere that the Britons gloried in having sent colonies into the Gauls. Whatever the case may be," he says, "of this dispute, etc."

But is this something that can be called into question? Is there any scholar who disputes that the tyrant Maximus Magnus Maximus, a Roman usurper in the 4th century drew a great quantity of young men from Britain whom he sent into the Gauls, and who, after his defeat, settled in Armorica modern-day Brittany; and that subsequently a great number of island Britons, oppressed by the Saxons, also went there and gave their name to this part of the Gauls? () See the History of Brittany* in 6 volumes, printed by Nyon the younger and Rollin, where this is explained more clearly than elsewhere, at the beginning of the first book. Note by the Abbé des Fontaines. Furthermore, it is proven by the testimony of Caesar that the Britons and the Gauls had the same customs and the same religion. The same names for their princes and their districts clearly show that they also had the same language, which has been preserved in the mountains of Wales, in our Lower Brittany, and in Biscay referring to the Basque region, though the author's linguistic categorization here is historically debated.

There is a little more difficulty regarding Ireland. However, Diodorus Siculus says that the Britons of Ireland were the most ferocious of the Gauls. But what Diodorus adds shows too much his ignorance of geography for his authority to carry weight. It is claimed that the ancient language of Ireland has no conformity with Celtic. It is nevertheless by the conformity of languages that one judges the origin and identity of peoples. We will examine later if Tudesque the Old Germanic language, or the language of the Germans, was anciently the same language as Celtic.

The author claims that all the peoples settled along the Danube as far as the Pont-Euxin the Black Sea were Celts. Thus, not only the Germans, but the Getae (who are the same as the Goths) and the Dacians were Celts, as well as the Bastarnae, the Visigoths, the Gepids, the Vandals, the Heruli, etc. Regarding the countries situated on the right bank of the Danube as far as the Black Sea, it is certain that they were populated by Celts, since it is there that the Gauls were who sought the alliance of Alexander the Great. It was their ambassadors who replied to this prince, when he asked them what they feared most in the world: "We fear nothing, unless it be that the sky should fall." Alexander was not angry at this bluster, and only said that the Gauls were ἀλαζόνες boasters or imposters, the Gauls who ravaged

EXTRACT. xxix

Macedonia and Greece about 45 years after the death of Alexander, and who then passed into Asia Minor, where they occupied the regions since called Galatia, or Gallo-Greece, had come from the provinces south of the Danube. It was these Gauls from Illyria who plundered the Temple of Delphi: they had formerly possessed a large part of Greece under the name of Pelasgians.

However, the Gauls who passed into Asia took the name of Tectosages; from which Strabo concludes that they had come from the region of Toulouse, where there was a people who bore the same name. The author attacks this conclusion and claims that the name of Tectosages was common to an infinite number of Celtic peoples. "As they believed themselves," he says, "descended from the God Teut, whom Julius Caesar calls Dis, and Tacitus calls Tuiston, they took the name of Teutones, Teutonarii, Teutohodiaci, Tectosages." I pass over a long detail on several other barbarian peoples, who all, according to the author, were Celts. I also willingly pass over everything he sets forth at great length to prove that all the ancient inhabitants of Greece were Scythians or Celts. One must read the proofs of all this in the book where this piece is curious and important for ancient history and for the understanding of mythology. These Scythians or Celts of Greece are those who have been called Pelasgians.

The author then shows that the Ligurians, situated on the coast of Genoa, and all the peoples from the Alps to the Apennine Mountains, were Celts, such as the Boii and the Insubres; there is no doubt on this subject. They were Gauls who had driven from this country the Tuscans Etruscans and the Umbrians, ancient inhabitants of Italy: the author says that the Umbrians were originally Gauls. For the Tuscans, he claims they were Indigétes indigenous, that is to say, they did not draw their origin from any other country; which the author treats as an absurdity, taking the name of Indigetes or Aborigines strictly. There is here (Chapter 10), regarding the ancient inhabitants of Italy, a profound erudition which serves as the foundation for several of the author's conjectures. The arrival of the Trojans in Italy appears to him, as to many other scholars, a pure fable, and he believes with Strabo that [the Veneti were] in Italy, in the country where the State of Venice is today. Thus the Venetians are originally Gauls. Finally, if Mr. Pelloutier is to be believed, the Romans were originally half-Celt, half-Greek. Numa Pompilius being of Sabine origin, and consequently a Celt, favored the customs and religion of the Celts. This is why the first Romans, according to the testimony of Varro and Plutarch, had neither images nor statues to represent the Divinity, no more than the Celts. But the Tarquins, who were Corinthians, established in Rome the customs and worship of the Greeks, from whom the Romans subsequently borrowed almost all their usages and part of their language.

It is certain that most of the words of the Latin language are derived from Greek. However, Mr. Pelloutier finds several terms derived from the Celtic language. For this purpose, he cites several German words that have much conformity with Latin words having the same meaning. But, 1st: is German, or Tudesque, the same language as Celtic, which is the one spoken today in Lower Brittany, in the Principality of Wales in England, and in Biscay? German and Latin words have no conformity with the words of this language: 2nd: How can the author know if certain