Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [104]
They made chariots, they made elaborate jewellery of gold, silver and bronze, they made pottery which they covered with swirling patterns, they made figures of animals in clay and metal which, with their extraordinary abstract quality, seem to possess an inner life of their own. They made tunics and cloaks for themselves of dazzling colours and they decked out their chariot horses with gorgeous caparisons. They made verses, endless verses, in their lyrical, mystical language, sung by bards to celebrate their ancient heroes and their gods. And they made gods. The Celtic world was full of gods: full of marvels, superstitions, magical birds and beasts. All men knew of the fierce, illogical and grimly humorous doings of the twilight world that existed, all the time, alongside the world of men; in the unlikely event that any Celt ever forgot the other world, there were always priests to remind them.
“These Celts are mad,” the Romans said. “They eat like senators, they sing, they weep, and then they fight each other for pleasure.”
“They are all poets: drunk with poetry,” a merchant once explained.
“They are drunk with drink,” came the cynical Roman reply. “And their Druid priests are disgusting.”
All these statements were true. The fact was that the Romans could make nothing of the Celts. A good Roman loved systematic government, hierarchy, bureaucracy: the Celts had innumerable petty chiefs and kings, tied to each other by generations of blood vows and clientships so tangled that no logical Roman could ever make sense of them. Even their gods, like the great Dagda, the protector of the tribe, seemed to take pleasure in changing into unlikely shapes and playing tricks on mankind: not to satisfy their lusts and desires – this the Romans could have understood – but for no reason at all.
“We shall teach them to love order,” the Romans said. But it was not easy.
It was Julius Caesar who first tried to tame the Celts, in Gaul. That brilliant opportunist saw the nature of the problem at once:
“We’ll break up the petty kings and their clientships, replace them by magistrates,” he decided. “The bigger ones we must either subdue or win over to our side by flattering them and making them rich. Then we’ll educate their sons – turn them into Roman gentlemen. That always does the trick.”
It was a wise policy, and to an extent it worked. But there were some who refused all blandishments. The group of tribes known as the Belgae, part Celtic, part Germanic, took to Roman culture, but refused Roman rule, and were driven across the sea. But as the years passed, the calculated Roman wooing converted many to the benefits of civilisation, both in the province of Gaul, and in the still unconquered island across the Channel. Though many Celtic tribes scorned Roman domination, their chiefs often knew the Roman merchants of Gaul who brought them the huge amphorae of wine, the gems and other luxuries they enjoyed. Ambitious rulers had heard – even if they could not quite imagine them – of the stupendous palaces of the imperial city; and they were envious. They had seen, too, the convenient written records the Roman merchants kept of their transactions, and though the Celts had no writing of their own, some of the more educated tribal chiefs could speak and even write a little Latin.
“The islanders will fight; but they’ll come over to us,” Claudius remarked. This was the belief of those planning the invasion. “Sooner or later these barbarians always do.”
It was spring in the year A.D. 44, and the people of Sarum had been expecting the Romans for a month. The weather had been capricious: one day brilliant sunshine would make the chalk ridges shimmer and steam; the next, heavy grey clouds would scud over the entrance to the valley bringing an unexpected flurry