Tag Archives: Celts

Great Britons: Cartimandua – Queen of Brigantia (reblog)

Unfortunately, life got in the way of my second post on Frigg, but here’s something on the *other* queen of the Britons, Cartimandua. She doesn’t get as good of a press as Boudicca, but she should be better known.

The times of the Roman invasion of Britain are shrouded in mystery, and only accessible from Roman accounts or archaeology. From the little we know, Cartimandua was Queen of Brigantia, the area that is today Yorkshire, and allied with the Romans, growing rich as a client state.

For more, click here.

The image of Malham in Yorkshire is by Tim Hill, from Pixabay.

 

Julius Caesar as Ethnographer (reblog)

Caesar’s campaigns in Gaul, Germany and Britain occasioned great excitement in Rome. For Catullus “the Gaulish Rhine, the formidable Britons, remotest of men” represented “the memorials of great Caesar” (Cat. 11.10-11). Cicero too considered Caesar’s exploits against the Britons the stuff of poetry (Q Fr. 2.16.14). The reading public must have been interested in what he had to say about his foreign adversaries.

Read more here.

The image at the top is from a bust of Caesar, in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples. Wikimedia.

Hammer-Gods: Thor, Hercules and Sucellos

These three gods have a lot in common: they’re all brawny types whose worshippers were mainly working people, farmers, labourers, miners and even slaves. But what intrigued me about them was that their followers all wore their symbol – the hammer or club each god wielded.

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Celtic Hercules

When you consider what Hercules did for Gaul, it’s no wonder that they loved him. He founded the city of Alesia, and introduced the rule of law. “And for the entire period from the days of Heracles this city remained free and was never sacked until our own time…”1 (Diodorus Siculus 4.19.1)

Other myths said that Hercules was the father of Celtos, Galatos and Iberus, the ancestors of the Celts, Galatians and Iberians. This would make him the ancestor of the French, Spanish and Anatolian Celts, who would thus become many-times-grand-children of Jupiter.

To honour their fore-father, they offered statuettes of him at shrines (especially the god Borvo’s), and many Gaulish gods, including Ogmios and Smertrios, were paired with him as part of interpretatio celtica. (MacKillop: 248)

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Link

As curator of the Celts exhibition, I got to spend a lot of time showing people wonderful Iron Age treasures. Some of my favourites were the big metal neck rings called torcs that were worn across much of Europe (and beyond) around 2000 years ago. One of the things I was asked most often is, ‘But how did you put them on?!’ It’s a very good question, seeing as they often look like solid metal rings with nowhere near enough space to squeeze your neck through.

Read more here.

British Museum blog

Julia Farley, Curator, European Iron Age collection, British Museum

As curator of the Celts exhibition, I get to spend a lot of time showing people wonderful Iron Age treasures. Some of my favourites are the big metal neck rings called torcs that were worn across much of Europe (and beyond) around 2000 years ago. One of the things I get asked most often is, ‘But how did you put them on?!’ It’s a very good question, seeing as they often look like solid metal rings with nowhere near enough space to squeeze your neck through.

Many British torcs are a bit like this one:

00033809_001 The Snettisham Great Torc. Found in Snettisham, UK. Electrum, 150 BC–50 BC. Diam. 19.9 cm. British Museum 1951,0402.2. (Photo: (c) The Trustees of the British Museum)

Although this is one of the most famous examples, the form is typical: open at the front, with a flexible…

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Hyperborea: Beyond the North Wind (links post)

Hyperborea, and the Hyperboreans, seem to have had an enduring life among the ancient Greeks and Romans, even if they couldn’t always agree on where it was. It first intrigued me because of the story that Apollo went there every winter.

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