THE CAMBRIDGE MEDIEVAL HISTORY I 101

Constant Ferment and Unrest

7-03. Constant Ferment and Unrest

About the close of the fifth century B.C., a new civilisation appears in the Keltic domain, a civilisation which, from the fine taste and technical perfection of its productions, deserves in more than one respect to rank with that of the classical nations. This is the so-called La Tene Civilisation, which takes its name from a place on the north side of the Lake of Neuchatel where especially numerous and varied remains of it have come to light. Where its centre is to be located we do not know — somewhere, we may conjecture, in the South of France or in Switzerland. Starting from this point it spread through all the parts of Europe, which were not under the sway of the Greek and Roman civilisation. Following the course of the Rhone, of the Rhine, and of the Danube, it rapidly conquered all the countries in which Gallic tongues were spoken and maintained its supremacy until the Graeco-Roman civilisation deposed it from its primacy.

It was with this highly developed civilisation — so far superior, especially in its highly advanced knowledge of the working of iron, to the Northern, which still only made use of bronze — that the Teutons came in contact in their advance towards the south-west. It is quite intelligible that the Teutons in the course of their two hundred years of struggle with the Kelts for the possession of north-western Germany, should have eagerly adopted the higher civilisation of the Kelts.

Vague reminiscences of the former supremacy of the Keltic race survived into historic times. Ac fuit antea tempus cum Germanos Galli lirtuie superaient, ultro bella inferrent, propter hominum midtitudinem agrique inopiam trans Rhenum colonias mitterent writes Caesar — a piece of information which he must have derived from Gaulish sources. Here belongs also the Gallic tradition reported by Timagenes according to which a part of the nation was said ab insulis extimis confluxisse et tractibus Transrhenanis crebntate bellorum et adluvione femdi maris sedibus expulsos. Caesar himself mentions a Keltic tribe, the Menapii, on the right bank of the lower Rhine.

It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the Keltic Teuriscans of northern Hungary were originally settled in south-central Germany between the Erzgebirge and the Harz, but later (about B.C. 400) were forced out of this district by the pressure of the advancing Germans, and retired in two sections towards the south and south-east.

About the year B.C. 200 the Teuton occupation of north-west Germany was, as we have seen, completed, having reached the Rhine on the west and the Main on the south. But the great forward movement towards the south-west was not to be stayed by these rivers. Vast waves of population kept pressing downward from the north, and giving fresh impetus to the movement. The whole Germanic world must at that time have been in constant ferment and unrest. Nations were born and perished. Everywhere there was pressure and counter-pressure. Any people that had not the strength to maintain itself against its neighbours, or to strike out a new path for itself, was swept away. The tension thus set up first found relief on the Rhenish frontier. About the middle of the second century B.C. Teutonic hordes swept across the river and occupied the whole country westward of the lower Rhine as far as the Ardennes and the Eifel. These hordes were the ancestors of the later tribes and clans which meet us here in the first dawn of history, the Eburones, Condrusi, Caeroesi, Paemani, Segni, Nervii, Grudii, and also of the Texuandri, Sunuci, Baetusii, Caraces, who appear later, as well as of the Tungri who after the annihilation of the Eburones by Caesar succeeded to their territory and position of influence. The Treveri, on the other hand, who had their seat further to the south beyond the Eifel, were doubtless Kelts.

The Teutonic invasion of Gaul must have taken place mainly in the second half of the second century B.C., but it was still in progress in Caesar's time. It may suffice briefly to recall in this connexion the successful campaign of Ariovistus; the incursion immediately before Caesar entered upon his province, of 54,000 Harudi into the country of the Sequani; the invasion of the Suebi under Xasua and Cimberius in the year 58; and of the Usipetes and Tencteri at the beginning of the year B.C. 55. That there were even later immigrations of Teutonic hosts into north-eastern Gaul may be conjectured from the absence of any mention by Caesar of several of the tribes which were settled here in the time by the Empire, and this conjecture is raised almost to a certainty by the known instance of the Tungri.

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