Empires of the Word - Nicholas Ostler [167]
Inscriptions in Gaulish had all died out a hundred years after the Roman conquest, although there are scattered anecdotes indicating some survival of the spoken language for a couple of hundred more years. In the second century St Irenaeus, who came west from Asia Minor to take up a bishopric in Lugdunum (Lyons), reports having to learn ‘a barbarous tongue’ when he arrived there.35 In the third century, the great lawyer Ulpian stated that certain sworn statements could be made in Gaulish.36 Then, towards the end of that century, the historian Lampridius mentions that a Druidess had used Gaulish to foretell the death of Alexander Severus (who reigned 222-35). And in a dialogue of Sulpicius Severus (363-425), a Gaul who does not speak Latin well is told: ‘speak to us in Celtic, or if you prefer, in Gaulish’. And even in the fifth century, Sidonius Apollinaris37 declares that the nobility of the Arverni, a tribe in central southern Gaul, had just recently learnt Latin and cast off the ‘rough scales of Gaulish speech’ (sermōnis Gallicī squāmam).
But from the evidence of the languages’ progeny (the sorry fact that they had none), it is clear that Gaulish and Celtiberian were effectively finished by the Roman takeover, and its introduction of Latin. Despite the Gaulish respect for eloquence noted by Lucian, Classical culture had nothing positive to say about the value of the Celtic language traditions, and they were allowed to lapse.
This total loss is surprising, since five hundred and more years later so many myths were written down in Irish and Welsh, retelling the adventures of gods such as Nuada of the Silver Hand (Gaulish Nodens), Lugh of the Long Arm—or Lieu Skilful Hand—(Lugus), Brigid the High (Brigindona or Brigantia), Goibhniu or Gofannon the Smith (Gobannio), Morrigan or Rhiannon the Great Queen (Rigantona), and not forgetting Ogma (Ogmios) himself; and surviving iconography (for example, on the magnificent cauldron found at Gundestrup) shows that other gods, such as the horned Cernunnos, had complicated myths. This demonstrates that there must have been a wealth of fascinating and unfamiliar subject matter that the Gauls could have retold if they had had the will.
The loss was not inevitable, for the transformation that Latin had undergone to incorporate prestigious Greek shows that it was quite possible for one ancient language to take on board another’s culture without being capsized;* and the survival of Greek in the east itself shows that even Latin was not invincible, in the face of a self-confident tradition. But neither Gauls nor Celtiberians made any attempt that we know of to recast Roman culture in their own Celtic terms. Rather, they seem to have adopted the new Roman, and Latin-speaking, ways with alacrity, since it is precisely the areas of western Europe that spoke Celtic in the ancient world which now have Latin-derived languages: French, Occitan, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, as well as a few other smaller languages derived from Latin. This is doubly surprising when we contrast the nature of Roman society with what the Gauls and Celtiberians had previously known. A civic, centralised, urban society replaced the more scattered, and sometimes more mobile, village life of the past. Evidently, for the Celts, it felt like progress. The Romans must have won the loyalty of the rising generation, for Vercingetorix, the organiser of Gaul’s last struggle for independence, was never invoked as a heroic inspiration (until Napoleon III took him up 1900 years later), and there were only a couple of revolts, fairly easily put down, in the generation following the Roman conquest of Gaul. Gaul had fallen to Caesar in a blitzkrieg taking just eight years. By contrast, it had taken Rome almost two centuries to completely establish its control of Spain (from the expulsion of the Carthaginians in 206 to Augustus’s Cantabrian Wars ending in 19 BC). Nevertheless, Spain too quietened down about the same time, and at last accepted as its fate the Pāx Romāna.
* And just about the same time, Armenian