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Title: The Celtic Empire: The First Millennium of Celtic History, 1000BC - AD51 by Peter Berresford Ellis ISBN: 0-7867-0933-2 Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub. Date: 09 September, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.67 (6 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Excellent Book - Expert Author!
Comment: This book was excellent and the author is really an expert in his field. I was recently drawn to Celtic spirituality. I read this book slowly to completely understand it, and it was worth every minute! It is very academic and filled with historical information.
Rating: 4
Summary: Our Forgotten Heritage
Comment: Peter Beresford Ellis cheerfully admits to a degree of hyperbole in the title of this excellent survey of Celtic history. There was no "Celtic Empire" as such, and no centralized Celtic authority, but this people, the aboriginal tribe of Europe, occupied the continent from its fringes in Iberia and Ireland all the way to central Anatolia. As such, they formed the foundation stock of the modern Irish, Welsh, Scottish, English, Bretons, French, Swiss, Austrians, Spanish and Portuguese, as well as contributing their bloodlines to the Italians, Balkan peoples, Turks, and even Germans and Slavs.
The Celts had an overwhelming cultural impact on the formation of modern Europe, but it is an impact which is shrouded, due to the Roman domination of the Celts around the time of Christ. Most European rivers have Celtic names (the Danube, the Don, the Dnieper, and the Donets are all named for the Celtic river-goddess Danu; and the Rhine and the Rhone both are named from the Celtic word for "valley").
Unfortunately, the Celts abjured writing in favor of human memory, so that, as their cultural nexus dispersed so did their learning and lore. Hence, we know relatively little about these people, the ancestors of many of us of European background. What we do know is often distorted, or plain wrong, written by Greeks and Romans, the latter (particularly Caesar, in his "Gallic Wars"), setting out to deride the barbarians seen as only fit for conquest.
Ellis tries mightily to lift the veil in this book. He has a fine appreciation for his subject, and if he makes the error of sometimes casting his Celts as "noble savages," replete with democratic thoughts and ways, he can be forgiven for doubting the Roman histories.
Given the relative lack of written primary source material, and the enigmatic messages of archaeological ruins, the book is necessarily too short, and reads as the quickest thousand-year history in print. It's still an excellent effort to bring these people, so long in the darkness, back into the light.
Rating: 5
Summary: Fighting retail, they were beaten wholesale...
Comment: - had they been inseparable, they would have been insuperable.
Thus are paraphrased Tacticus's thoughts on that great ancient tribe, the Celts, to whom so much of Western Civilization is owed yet so little acknowledged. As Ellis tells us, many of the famous Roman writers and historians were profoundly influenced by Celtic literature - if not Celtic themselves. Celts served as mercenaries in the armies of Rome, Asia Minor, Greece and Egypt; they populated Europe from Bulgaria to Spain; they treated with Alexander and, on numerous occasions, and oh-so-narrowly missed the opportunity to beat Caesar. Ellis introduces us to the basic elements of Celtic society, a very democratic model that was largely shattered by the Roman conquest, and then takes us to those enclaves, such as Ireland and non-Roman Britain, where the culture continued to flourish. An extremely well-written history; a useful counterweight to Roman history, which too often neglects the Celtic achievement.
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Title: The Ancient Celts by Barry Cunliffe ISBN: 0140254226 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 28 February, 2000 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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