MARCH OF THE CELTS:
A SURVERY OF THE HORSE IN
ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND LITERATURE ©
by Dale Carlyonr

There can be little doubt that horses have played an essential role in the course of human civilization. The cave paintings at Lascaux in southwestern France, dated between 15,000 and 13,000 BCE, contain pictures of many animals, the majority of which are images of horses.[1] If it is true that these images had a shamanic or otherwise significant symbolic importance, then it is likely that, in addition to being a source of food, the horse was also an object of spiritual veneration. Horses were heavily hunted in prehistory, even becoming extinct in some regions of the world, such as the Americas.[2] It is possible that the reason horses did not become extinct in Europe and Asia is because they were kept as livestock as early as 8000 BCE.[3] It is unclear exactly how early horses were used for transportation or plowing in Europe, but the first unquestionable evidence of horses being used as trained animals dates to around 2000 BCE with the chariot burials of the Sintashta-Petrovka culture in the southern Ural Mountains, a region sometimes considered to be the natural boundary between Europe and Asia.[4] It may be that horse domestication gradually spread outward from the Russian steppes to the far reaches of Europe; in any case, the use of horses for chariots began in the eastern Mediterranean, in Egypt, and in China within the second millenium BCE. It was not until the Iron Age that cavalry—that is, the military use of men on horseback—was a mainstay in military strategy, and it is during the Iron Age, of course, that we encounter the first Classical writings that speak of the Celts.[5]

However it was that the Celts became charioteers and equestrians, a number of Classical sources make it a point to emphasize the mastery that the Celts exhibited with the use of both chariots and cavalry. Like other ancient peoples, the Celts were proficient in the use of horses for military purposes. Pausanias, a Greek travel writer of the second century AD, describes heavy use of cavalry by the Celtic tribes that sacked Delphi:

The muster of foot amounted to one hundred and fifty-two thousand, with twenty thousand four hundred horse. This was the number of horsemen in action at any one time, but the real number was sixty one thousand two hundred. For to each horseman were attached two servants, who were themselves skilled riders and, like their masters, had a horse.

When the Gallic horsemen were engaged, the servants remained behind the ranks and proved useful in the following way. Should a horseman or his horse fall, the slave brought him a horse to mount; if the rider was killed, the slave mounted the horse in his master's place; if both rider and horse were killed, there was a mounted man ready. When a rider was wounded, one slave brought back to camp the wounded man, while the other took his vacant place in the ranks.[6]


Pausanias also mentions that marca is the Celtic word for “horse.” Whether or not he adds this detail to increase his own credibility on the subject of the Celts, it is interesting to note that march is still the Welsh word for “charger” or “horse.” It must be kept in mind that Pausanias was by no means a firsthand observer, having lived several centuries after the event in question. His account is very likely an embellished one, but it reflects the earliest contact that the Celts had with the Classical world.

Writing a century before Caesar, Polybius mentions numerous continental Celtic tribes in his Histories and their involvement in a variety of conflicts, including the use of both cavalry and chariots:

The Gaesatae, having collected a richly equipped and formidable force,crossed the Alps, and descended into the plain of the Po in the eighth year after the partition of Picenum. The Insubres and Boii held stoutly to their original purpose; but the Veneti and Cenomani, on the Romans sending an embassy to them, decided to give them their support; so that the Celtic chiefs were obliged to leave part of their forces behind to protect their territory from invasion by these tribes. They themselves marched confidently out with their whole available army, consisting of about fifty thousand foot and twenty thousand horse and chariots, and advanced on Etruria.[7]


Caesar's Commentaries speak of the use of cavalry by the Celts in the Gallic Wars:

On the following day they move their camp from that place; Caesar does the same, and sends forward all his cavalry, to the number of four thousand (which he had drawn together from all parts of the Province and from the Aedui and their allies), to observe toward what parts the enemy are directing their march. These, having too eagerly pursued the enemy's rear, come to a battle with the cavalry of the Helvetii in a disadvantageous place, and a few of our men fall. The Helvetii, elated with this battle, because they had with five hundred horse repulsed so large a body of horse, began to face us more boldly, sometimes too from their rear to provoke our men by an attack. Caesar [however] restrained his men from battle, deeming it sufficient for the present to prevent the enemy from rapine, forage, and depredation. They marched for about fifteen days in such a manner that there was not more than five or six miles between the enemy's rear and our van.[8]


Caesar's Commentaries go on to mention the use of not only cavalry, but also chariot tactics by the tribes that his troops encountered in Britain. Whereas the use of chariots had waned throughout most of Europe and the Middle East by the time of the Gallic Wars, the British Celtic tribes that the Romans fought during their first incursion into the island were expertly skilled in their use in battle. The Commentaries give a fascinating account of what Caesar's men saw:

Their mode of fighting with their chariots is this: firstly, they drive about in all directions and throw their weapons and generally break the ranks of the enemy with the very dread of their horses and the noise of their wheels; and when they have worked themselves in between the troops of horse, leap from their chariots and engage on foot. The charioteers in the mean time withdraw some little distance from the battle, and so place themselves with the chariots that, if their masters are overpowered by the number of the enemy, they may have a ready retreat to their own troops. Thus they display in battle the speed of horse, [together with] the firmness of infantry; and by daily practice and exercise attain to such expertness that they are accustomed, even on a declining and steep place, to check their horses at full speed, and manage and turn them in an instant and run along the pole, and stand on the yoke, and thence betake themselves with the greatest celerity to their chariots again.[9]


The chariot was still in use in Britain a century later, being mentioned in accounts of Boudicca's revolt against the Romans, and its use continued until 200 CE.[10] That at least some Celtic tribes of Britain were highly fond of horses is hard to doubt when one considers the White Horse of Uffington, a figure stylized on a hill in modern Oxfordshire, England. While the horse (if it is indeed a horse, as it has been called since the eleventh century) may date back as far as three thousand years, it actually requires frequent cleaning in order to remain visible, and this was done every seven years during a local fair until the late nineteenth century.[11] Though it cannot be said who began this tradition, it seems likely that a similar practice would have been in place before the Romans or subsequent invaders settled the island.

Although chariots appear in Irish mythology and are a mainstay in the Táin Bó Cúailgne, the Irish archaeological record is strangely lacking in evidence of chariots.[12] Despite this, even if chariots were never heavily used in Ireland, the Irish would have known of them from their trade and contact with Britain and the Continent. It is possible that the Christian scribes who penned the written version of the Táin (assuming that the Táin does, in fact, derive from an earlier oral tradition) included chariots in the story as a response to the Classical literature that they were familiar with, such as the Iliad. There were certainly horses in Ireland as early as the second millenium BCE, but they were very small like most contemporary horses on the Continent, measuring only as tall as a modern day Shetland pony.[13] Nevertheless, horse-trappings represent the greatest number of archaeological finds from Iron Age Ireland.[14] Horses, therefore, even if diminutive, were vitally important to life throughout Ireland in the Iron Age, being used as draught animals and perhaps even being ridden, though the latter cannot be proved archaeologically. It is important to note that the riding of horses is not portrayed as a regular feature of life in early Irish epic; based on modern findings, it is hard to say how closely these writings reflect the age they were meant to depict.[15] In any case, horses were used heavily for military purposes in Ireland after the Norman invasion.

Though the evidence is not as plentiful as scholars would like, it is clear that Celtic tribes, both Continental and insular, utilized the horse both widely and wisely. As archaeology continues to uncover answers to complex questions regarding the Celts, a cross-disciplinary approach will serve to focus and broaden the modern image of our enigmatic ancestors.


Dale Carlyon lives near the Gulf of Mexico in Texas. He is currently a member of the Oak Grove, and has been practicing shamanism and studying Celtic lore since his teens. A graduate of Loyola University New Orleans, where he earned a degree in English, he is now in the process of beginning graduate work in Celtic and Irish Studies. His hobbies include a great deal of reading and writing, making and performing both traditional Celtic as well as goth/industrial music, DJ-ing, and karate. Contact Dale at carlyond@gmail.com or visit him at http://awenyddion.zaadz.com.

March of the Celts: A Survey of the Horse in Archaeology, History, and Literature copyright © 2007 by Dale Carlyon, all rights reserved. Used with permission. Top of Page

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ENDNOTES:

  1. “Lascaux.” from Wikipedia, the Online Encyclopedia. Internet. Last accessed 7/29/2007. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lascaux.   [Return to Article]

  2. “Domestication of the Horse.” from Wikipedia. Last accessed 7/29/2007. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/domestication_of_the_horse.   [Return to Article]

  3. “Domestication of the Horse.”   [Return to Article]

  4. “Domestication of the Horse.”   [Return to Article]

  5. “Domestication of the Horse.”   [Return to Article]

  6. Pausanias, Description of Greece with an English Translation, Book XIX, entries 9 and 10, by W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D., and H.A. Ormerod, M.A., in 4 Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1918. Online, internet. Last accessed 7/29/2007. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=Paus.+10.19.1   [Return to Article]

  7. Polybius, The Histories, Book 2, passage 23. Online, Internet. Last accessed 7/29/2007.   http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Polybius/2*.html.   [Return to Article]

  8. Caesar, Julius. Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic and Civil Wars: with the Supplementary Books attributed to Hirtius, Book 1, Passage 15. Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library. Online, Internet. Last Accessed 7/29/2007. http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/CaeComm.html.   [Return to Article]

  9. Caesar, Commentaries, Book 4, Passage 33. Last Accessed 7/29/2007.   [Return to Article]

  10. “Celt.” Wikipedia. Last accessed 7/29/2007. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/celt.   [Return to Article]

  11. “Uffington White Horse.” Wikipedia. Last accessed 7/29/2007. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/uffington_white_horse.   [Return to Article]

  12. Raftery, Barry, Pagan Celtic Ireland: The Enigma of the Irish Iron Age, p. 104, London: Thames and Hudson Ltd, 1994.   [Return to Article]

  13. Raftery, p. 108.   [Return to Article]

  14. Raftery, p.108.   [Return to Article]

  15. Raftery, p. 107.   [Return to Article]

March of the Celts: A Survey of the Horse in Archaeology, History, and Literature copyright © 2007 by Dale Carlyon, all rights reserved. Used with permission. Top of Page

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