Celt and Roman [Hardcover]

Mr. Peter Beresford Ellis (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0312214197 | ISBN-13: 978-0312214197 | Publication Date: August 15, 1998

This is the first popular account of the Celts of Italy and the land known as Cisalpine Gaul--a much neglected area in the history of Rome's rise to dominance. In 390 BC, a Celtic army captured Rome and occupied it for seven months until the Roman senate paid them off. For the next fifty years, Celtic armies remained nearby, and for two centuries the Celts of Italy resisted Rome with a stubborn defiance, often annihilating entire consular armies sent against them. Rome could not claim to be master of the Po Valley Celts until 191 BC. This much-needed book explains the historical factors behind Rome's overt racial prejudice against the Celts and shows at the same time the important Celtic contribution to the development of Roman culture--in weaponry and warfare, in transport technology and, above all, in the Celtic contribution to early Latin literature.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

On July 18, 390 B.C., a huge Roman army went out to face an equally huge Celtic force arrayed on a field just 11 miles north of Rome. The Roman commanders, writes Peter Berresford Ellis, had distinguished themselves in war; their troops, likewise, were tested veterans. Yet, wrote the Roman historian Livy, the generals had failed to make proper prayers and sacrifices or to seek portents of the gods, and the Celts destroyed them with quick ferocity in what became known as the Battle of Allia. The day would ever after be marked on the Roman calendar as the dies Alliensis, a day of bad auspices and bad luck, when "future generations of Romans would refuse to undertake any public enterprise."

Ellis examines the tangled relations that obtained between Rome and Italy's many Celtic peoples, who periodically rose in arms against the empire but who also contributed much to its power through complex and often-broken alliances. (The Carthaginian general Hannibal, Ellis writes, would discover just how complex, when he enlisted the support of Italian Celts in his war against Rome; much of his time was spent warding off Celtic attempts to assassinate him.) As Rome's power grew, its legions eventually subdued the Celtic tribes. Even at peace, however, Ellis writes, the Celts gave Rome much cause for worry, although Celts like Catullus, Cornelius Nepos, Lucretius, and Cato enriched Roman culture. --Gregory McNamee

From Library Journal

Ellis, an international authority on the ancient Celts, here offers a broad sketch of Celtic life and culture in the period up to 190 B.C.E., when Celtic migrations and Roman expansion brought the two peoples into bitter conflict. The Celts had a tribal society based on kinship groups with descent in the male line; they spoke an Indo-European language, and Celtic women, who sometimes acted as ambassadors and priestesses, enjoyed more equality and independence than their Roman and Greek sisters. Fierce warriors, the Celts were gradually overwhelmed by the Romans, to whose culture they made valuable contributions in warfare, iron technology, and language. Based on Roman texts and Celtic archaeological and etymological evidence and written in a pleasant, almost chatty style, this authoritative and entertaining book will appeal to both the beginning student and the scholar.?Bennett D. Hill, Georgetown Univ., Doylestown, PA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (August 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312214197
• ISBN-13: 978-0312214197
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,931,716 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

58 of 65 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Tainted at best, October 26, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Celt and Roman: The Celts of Italy (Celtic Interest) (Hardcover)

This book was so extremely bias against the Romans that one could easily conclude that the author lost his most beloved ones in a battle against the Romans!! Even his phraseology throughout the book betrays what seems to be a personal hatred of this ancient race. I found his contemptuous remarks to be distracting to the ease of reading. That aside, the author struggles in this book to portray the Celts as a culture much more advanced than was perceived by the first hand accounts of ancient Greek and Roman writers and historians. In doing so he resorts to some fairly weak leaps of logic. His primary view seems to be that to arrive at historical accuracy all one needs to do is to reverse whatever the Roman accounts were in each and every case.

The arguments in this book for Celtic superiority over the Romans is so tainted that in some cases I actually laughed out loud. Reading this book one would think that the armies of Rome won most of their battles by dumb luck. Which is not bad considering that Rome's greatly outnumbered armies eventually conquered almost all of the Celtic lands and added Britian to the Empire, holding it for over 400 years!

If you're interested in names and dates this book is fine. But if you're interested in what the ancient Celts and the Italic/Roman people were actually like, and how the cultures interacted, you'll need to look elsewhere.

44 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Mediocre History, October 26, 2003

By 

Michael Taylor "Scipio" (Princeton, NJ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Celt and Roman (Hardcover)

Professor Ellis, the author of numerous books on various Celtic groups, has an admirable goal: to give a detailed account of the oft neglected Celtic groups in Northern Italy. Yet the result is highly unsatisfying. Quite simply, Professor Ellis does not have the sheer mastery of Roman histiography to accomplish the task. While he relies heavily upon Livy, he goes out of his way to attempt to discredit Livy at every turn; certainly Livy's patriotic account must be read with a degree of skepticism, but Ellis goes too far.
Ellis proves a dogmatic anti-imperialist, and his constant condemnation of Roman expansionism frequently obscures the nuances of the situation. The nature of Roman imperialism remains a topic of significant historical debate: were the Romans driven by greed, or by a genuine need for security? While Ellis suggests that the Celts were a source or Roman paranoia, he does not engage in the debate, nor does he seem familar with it.
Finally, although Ellis argues that classical sources distort the image of the Celts, he relies excessively upon them. A study that included more archeological evidence would have been more helpful and informative. One might has well read Livy and come to their own conclusions about the Celts rather than read Prof. Ellis' book.

50 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Delusional., April 4, 2006

By 

Now - See all my reviews

This review is from: Celt and Roman (Hardcover)

As the other reviewers pointed out this is bad revisionism. The author is rewriting history, and lacks proof. The Celts are the bad joke of European society. This book won't change that.