Romans Celts and Germans in Northern Gaul

Abstract

It would be foolhardy and fruitless to try to cover in a few pages all the aspects of the development of Celtic civilization during the period of Roman domination. In effect, the civilizations involved were extremely heterogeneous, and the contacts among them highly complex. This pageant of transfer, mutation, amalgamation and revival stretched over more than half a millenium and varied significantly according to time and place. Only a superficial observer, judging from a few broad common characteristics, would be so bold as to speak of a unified Celto-Roman civilization. In reality, the Celtic territory subjugated by the Romans comprised a good number of well-differentiated provincial civilizations : the civilization of Roman Galicia is not the same as that of Brittany, the civilization of Provence differs considerably from that of Northern Gaul, and the Danubian provinces, in their turn, are distinguished by certain characteristics which cannot be confused with those of Galatia or Cisalpine Gaul. Yet all these regions were inhabited by Celtic tribes at the time of the Roman conquest; the cultural divergences can be accounted for by variations both in the pre-Celtic substrata of these areas and in the way in which their inhabitants reacted to the contact of Roman civilization.