New Thoughts on the Belgae

E-ISSN： 1745-1744|42|165|6-16

ISSN： 0003-598x

Source： Antiquity, Vol.42, Iss.165, 1968-03, pp. : 6-16

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Abstract

Late Celtic Europe is discernible along three lines: from sources in texts, in coins, and in general archaeology. Where all converge, on any portion of its story, visibility ought to be good. Such a portion is the tale of the folk whose name was (in the Romans' spelling) Belgae. Julius Caesar, within the Gaul that he conquered in 58-51 BC, met Belgae first in the basin of the Marne, and then throughout between the Seine, the sea and the Rhine [I]. Their distinctness from neighbour Celts, which he opened his Memoirs on the Gallic War by stressing [2], was afterwards declared in Strabo’s Geography to have been quite slight in language [3]. Yet they themselves could account for it by old tradition, which Caesar learnt, on approaching the Marne, from envoys sent him by their tribe the Remi. ‘Germani,’ beyond the Rhine, had been ancestors of most of them, and these had crossed it and acquired their present good lands with eviction of Gallic occupants. In the north-east part of the country, towards the lower Rhine and in the Meuse/Maas basin, tribes could still use ‘Germani’ as their common name [5]; one supposes them therefore ‘more Germanic’ than the rest. None the less, the envoys reckoned them Belgae in the broader sense [6]. In that same sense, after Caesar’s war was won, the Roman government called all the province ‘Belgica’. But there is something more to add. The Gallic War employs another land-name, ‘Belgium’. What did this mean?