Gaul was a region of Western Europe during the Iron Age and Roman era, encompassing present
day France, Luxembourg, Belgium, most of Switzerland, parts of Northern Italy, as well as the parts
of the Netherlands and Germany on the west bank of the Rhine.
According to the testimony of Julius Caesar, Gaul was divided into three parts: Gallia
Celtica, Belgica and Aquitania.
Archaeologically, the Gauls were bearers of the La Tène culture, which extended across
all of Gaul, as well as east to Rhaetia, Noricum, Pannonia and southwestern Germania during
the 5th to 1st centuries BC.
During the 2nd and 1st centuries BC, Gaul fell under Roman rule: Gallia Cisalpina was
conquered in 203 BC and Gallia Narbonensis in 123 BC.
Gaul was invaded by the Cimbri and the Teutons after 120 BC, who were in turn defeated by
the Romans by 103 BC.
Julius Caesar finally subdued the remaining parts of Gaul in his campaigns of 58 to 51
BC.
Roman control of Gaul lasted for five centuries, until the last Roman rump state, the Domain
of Soissons, fell to the Franks in AD 486.
While the Celts Gauls had lost their original identities and language during Late Antiquity,
becoming amalgamated into a Gallo-Roman culture, Gallia remained the conventional name of the
territory throughout the Early Middle Ages, until it acquired a new identity as the Capetian
Kingdom of France in the high medieval period.
Gallia remains a name of France in modern Latin.
Name
The Greek and Latin names Galatia, and Gallia are ultimately derived from a Celtic ethnic
term or clan Gal(a)-to-.
The Galli of Gallia Celtica were reported to refer to themselves as Celtae by Caesar.
This name, from a stem *kel-to has been suggested as ultimately derived from a common origin
with the names in Gal- by certain linguists.
Hellenistic folk etymology connected the name of the Galatians to the supposedly "milk-white"
skin of the Gauls.
The English Gaul is from French Gaule and is unrelated to Latin Gallia, despite superficial
similarity.
As adjectives, English has the two variants Gaulish and Gallic.
The two adjectives are used synonymously, as "pertaining to Gaul or the Gauls", although
the Celtic language or languages spoken in Gaul is predominantly known as Gaulish.
The name Gaul is derived from the Germanic term walha, "foreigner, Romanized person",
an exonym applied by Germanic speakers to Celts and Latin-speaking people indiscriminately,
making it partially cognate with the names Wales and Wallachia.
The Germanic w- is regularly rendered as gu- / g- in French, and the diphthong au is the
regular outcome of al before a following consonant.
Gaule or Gaulle can hardly be derived from Latin Gallia, since g would become j before
a, and the diphthong au would be unexplained; the regular outcome of Latin Gallia is Jaille
in French which is found in several western placenames.
Also unrelated in spite of superficial similarity, are the nams Galli and Gael.
The Irish word gall did originally mean "a Gaul", i.e. an inhabitant of Gaul, but its
meaning was later widened to "foreigner", to describe the Vikings, and later still the
Normans.
The dichotomic words gael and gall are sometimes used together for contrast, for instance in
the 12th-century book Cogad Gáedel re Gallaib.
History Pre-Roman Gaul
The early history of the Gauls is predominantly a work in archaeology—there being little
written information concerning the peoples that inhabited these regions—and the relationships
between their material culture, genetic relationships, and linguistic divisions rarely coincide.
Before the rapid spread of the La Tène culture in the 5th to 4th centuries BC, the territory
of eastern and southern France already participated in the Late Bronze Age Urnfield culture out
of which the early iron-working Hallstatt culture would develop.
By 500 BC, there is strong Hallstatt influence throughout most of France.
Out of this Hallstatt background, during the 7th and 6th century presumably representing
an early form of Continental Celtic culture, the La Tène culture arises, presumably under
Mediterranean influence from the Greek, Phoenician, and Etruscan civilizations, spread out in
a number of early centers along the Seine, the Middle Rhine and the upper Elbe.
By the late 5th century BC, La Tène influence spreads rapidly across the entire territory
of Gaul.
The La Tène culture developed and flourished during the late Iron Age in France, Switzerland,
Italy, Austria, southwest Germany, Bohemia, Moravia, Slovakia and Hungary.
Farther north extended the contemporary pre-Roman Iron Age culture of northern Germany and Scandinavia.
The major source of materials on the Celts of Gaul was Poseidonios of Apamea, whose writings
were quoted by Timagenes, Julius Caesar, the Sicilian Greek Diodorus Siculus, and the Greek
geographer Strabo.
In the 4th and early 3rd century BC, Gallic clan confederations expanded far beyond the
territory of what would become Roman Gaul, into Pannonia, Illyria, northern Italy, Transylvania
and even Asia Minor.
By the 2nd century BC, the Romans described Gallia Transalpina as distinct from Gallia
Cisalpina.
In his Gallic Wars, Julius Caesar distinguishes among three ethnic groups in Gaul: the Belgae
in the north, the Celtae in the center and in Armorica, and the Aquitani in the southwest,
the southeast being already colonized by the Romans.
While some scholars believe the Belgae south of the Somme were a mixture of Celtic and
Germanic elements, their ethnic affiliations have not been definitively resolved.
One of the reasons is political interference upon the French historical interpretation
during the 19th century.
In addition to the Gauls, there were other peoples living in Gaul, such as the Greeks
and Phoenicians who had established outposts such as Massilia along the Mediterranean coast.
Also, along the southeastern Mediterranean coast, the Ligures had merged with the Celts
to form a Celto-Ligurian culture.
In the 2nd century BC, Mediterranean Gaul had an extensive urban fabric and was prosperous,
while the best known cities in northern Gaul include the Biturigian capital of Avaricum,
Cenabum, Autricum and the excavated site of Bibracte near Autun in Saône-et-Loire, along
with a number of hillforts used in times of war.
The prosperity of Mediterranean Gaul encouraged Rome to respond to pleas for assistance from
the inhabitants of Massilia, who were under attack by a coalition of Ligures and Gauls.
The Romans intervened in Gaul in 125 BC, and by 121 BC they had conquered the Mediterranean
region called Provincia.
This conquest upset the ascendancy of the Gaulish Arverni peoples.
Conquest by Rome
The Roman proconsul and general Julius Caesar pushed his army into Gaul in 58 BC, on the
pretext of assisting Rome's Gaullish allies against the migrating Helvetii.
With the help of various Gallic clans he managed to conquer nearly all of Gaul.
But the Arverni, under their Chieftain Vercingetorix, still defied Roman rule.
Julius Caesar was checked by Vercingetorix at a siege of Gergorvia, a fortified town
in the center of Gaul.
Caesar's alliances with many Gallic clans broke.
Even the Aedui, their most faithful supporters, threw in their lot with the Arverni, but the
ever loyal Remi and Lingones sent troops to support Caesar.
The Germani of the Ubii also sent cavalry, which Caesar equipped with Remi horses.
Caesar captured Vercingetorix in the Battle of Alesia, which ended the majority of Gallic
resistance to Rome.
As many as a million people died, another million were enslaved, 300 clans were subjugated
and 800 cities were destroyed during the Gallic Wars.
The entire population of the city of Avaricum were slaughtered.
During Julius Caesar's campaign against the Helvetii approximately 60% of that nation
was destroyed, and another 20% was taken into slavery.
Roman Gallia
The Gaulish culture then was massively submerged by Roman culture, Latin was adopted by the
Gauls; Gaul, or Gallia, was absorbed into the Roman Empire, all the administration changed,
and Gauls eventually became Roman citizens.
From the third to 5th centuries, Gaul was exposed to raids by the Franks.
The Gallic Empire, consisting of the provinces of Gaul, Britannia, and Hispania, including
the peaceful Baetica in the south, broke away from Rome from 260 to 273.
Following the Frankish victory at the Battle of Soissons in 486 AD, Gaul came under the
rule of the Merovingians, the first kings of France.
Gallo-Roman culture, the Romanized culture of Gaul under the rule of the Roman Empire,
persisted particularly in the areas of Gallia Narbonensis that developed into Occitania,
Gallia Cisalpina and to a lesser degree, Aquitania.
The formerly Romanized north of Gaul, once it had been occupied by the Franks, would
develop into Merovingian culture instead.
Roman life, centered on the public events and cultural responsibilities of urban life
in the res publica and the sometimes luxurious life of the self-sufficient rural villa system,
took longer to collapse in the Gallo-Roman regions, where the Visigoths largely inherited
the status quo in the early 5th century.
Gallo-Roman language persisted in the northeast into the Silva Carbonaria that formed an effective
cultural barrier, with the Franks to the north and east, and in the northwest to the lower
valley of the Loire, where Gallo-Roman culture interfaced with Frankish culture in a city
like Tours and in the person of that Gallo-Roman bishop confronted with Merovingian royals,
Gregory of Tours.
The Gauls
Social structure, indigenous nation and clans 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 council of elders, and initially a king.
Later, the executive was an annually-elected magistrate.
Among the Aedui, a clan of Gaul, the executive held the title of Vergobret, a position much
like a king, but his powers were held in check by rules laid down by the council.
The regional ethnic groups, or pagi as the Romans called them, were organized into larger
multi-clan groups the Romans called civitates.
These administrative groupings would be taken over by the Romans in their system of local
control, and these civitates would also be the basis of France's eventual division into
ecclesiastical bishoprics and dioceses, which would remain in place—with slight changes—until
the French Revolution.
Although the individual clans were moderately stable political entities, Gaul as a whole
tended to be politically divided, there being virtually no unity among the various clans.
Only during particularly trying times, such as the invasion of Caesar, could the Gauls
unite under a single leader like Vercingetorix.
Even then, however, the faction lines were clear.
The Romans divided Gaul broadly into Provincia, and the northern Gallia Comata.
Caesar divided the people of Gallia Comata into three broad groups: the Aquitani; Galli;
and Belgae.
In the modern sense, Gaulish peoples are defined linguistically, as speakers of dialects of
the Gaulish language.
While the Aquitani were probably Vascons, the Belgae would thus probably be a mixture
of Celtic and Germanic elements.
Julius Caesar, in his book, Commentarii de Bello Gallico, comments:
Religion
The Gauls practiced a form of animism, ascribing human characteristics to lakes, streams, mountains,
and other natural features and granting them a quasi-divine status.
Also, worship of animals was not uncommon; the animal most sacred to the Gauls was the
boar, which can be found on many Gallic military standards, much like the Roman eagle.
Their system of gods and goddesses was loose, there being certain deities which virtually
every Gallic person worshipped, as well as clan and household gods.
Many of the major gods were related to Greek gods; the primary god worshipped at the time
of the arrival of Caesar was Teutates, the Gallic equivalent of Mercury.
The "ancestor god" of the Gauls was identified by Julius Caesar in his De Bello Gallico with
the Roman god Dis Pater.
Perhaps the most intriguing facet of Gallic religion is the practice of the Druids.
The druids presided over human or animal sacrifices that were made in wooded groves or crude temples.
They also appear to have held the responsibility for preserving the annual agricultural calendar
and instigating seasonal festivals which corresponded to key points of the lunar-solar calendar.
The religious practices of druids were syncretic and borrowed from earlier pagan traditions,
with probably indo-European roots.
Julius Caesar mentions in his Gallic Wars that those Celts who wanted to make a close
study of druidism went to Britain to do so.
In a little over a century later, Gnaeus Julius Agricola mentions Roman armies attacking a
large druid sanctuary in Anglesey, also known as Holyhead, Wales.
There is no certainty concerning the origin of the druids, but it is clear that they vehemently
guarded the secrets of their order and held sway over the people of Gaul.
Indeed they claimed the right to determine questions of war and peace, and thereby held
an "international" status.
In addition, the Druids monitored the religion of ordinary Gauls and were in charge of educating
the aristocracy.
They also practiced a form of excommunication from the assembly of worshipers, which in
ancient Gaul meant a separation from secular society as well.
Thus the Druids were an important part of Gallic society.
The nearly complete and mysterious disappearance of the Celtic language from most of the territorial
lands of ancient Gaul, with the exception of Brittany, France, can be attributed to
the fact that Celtic druids refused to allow the Celtic oral literature or traditional
wisdom to be committed to the written letter.
The Celts practiced headhunting as the head was believed to house a person's soul.
Ancient Romans and Greeks recorded the Celts' habits of nailing heads of personal enemies
to walls or dangling them from the necks of horses.
See also Ambiorix
Asterix—a French comic about Gaul and Rome set in 50 BC
Bog body Braccae—trousers, typical Gallic dress
Cisalpine Gaul Galatia
Gallia Narbonensis Gallo-Roman culture
Gaulish language Gauls
Lugdunum Roman Republic
Roman Gaul Vercingetorix
Roman Villas in Northwestern Gaul Notes
References Birkhan, H..
Die Kelten.
Vienna.
External links The Gallic Wars