Николас Остлер - Empires of the Word - A language History of the World

Inscriptions in Gaulish had all died out a hundred years after the Roman conquest, although there are scattered anecdotes indicating some survival of the spoken language for a couple of hundred more years. In the second century St Irenaeus, who came west from Asia Minor to take up a bishopric in Lugdunum (Lyons), reports having to learn ‘a barbarous tongue’ when he arrived there. [451]In the third century, the great lawyer Ulpian stated that certain sworn statements could be made in Gaulish. [451]Then, towards the end of that century, the historian Lampridius mentions that a Druidess had used Gaulish to foretell the death of Alexander Severus (who reigned 222-35). And in a dialogue of Sulpicius Severus (363-425), a Gaul who does not speak Latin well is told: ‘speak to us in Celtic, or if you prefer, in Gaulish’. And even in the fifth century, Sidonius Apollinaris [451]declares that the nobility of the Arverni, a tribe in central southern Gaul, had just recently learnt Latin and cast off the ‘rough scales of Gaulish speech’ ( sermōnis Gallicī squāmam).

But from the evidence of the languages’ progeny (the sorry fact that they had none), it is clear that Gaulish and Celtiberian were effectively finished by the Roman takeover, and its introduction of Latin. Despite the Gaulish respect for eloquence noted by Lucian, Classical culture had nothing positive to say about the value of the Celtic language traditions, and they were allowed to lapse.

This total loss is surprising, since five hundred and more years later so many myths were written down in Irish and Welsh, retelling the adventures of gods such as Nuada of the Silver Hand (Gaulish Nodens ), Lugh of the Long Arm—or Lieu Skilful Hand—( Lugus ), Brigid the High ( Brigindona or Brigantia ), Goibhniu or Gofannon the Smith ( Gobannio ), Morrigan or Rhiannon the Great Queen ( Rigantona ), and not forgetting Ogma ( Ogmios ) himself; and surviving iconography (for example, on the magnificent cauldron found at Gundestrup) shows that other gods, such as the horned Cernunnos, had complicated myths. This demonstrates that there must have been a wealth of fascinating and unfamiliar subject matter that the Gauls could have retold if they had had the will.

The loss was not inevitable, for the transformation that Latin had undergone to incorporate prestigious Greek shows that it was quite possible for one ancient language to take on board another’s culture without being capsized; [845]and the survival of Greek in the east itself shows that even Latin was not invincible, in the face of a self-confident tradition. But neither Gauls nor Celtiberians made any attempt that we know of to recast Roman culture in their own Celtic terms. Rather, they seem to have adopted the new Roman, and Latin-speaking, ways with alacrity, since it is precisely the areas of western Europe that spoke Celtic in the ancient world which now have Latin-derived languages: French, Occitan, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, as well as a few other smaller languages derived from Latin. This is doubly surprising when we contrast the nature of Roman society with what the Gauls and Celtiberians had previously known. A civic, centralised, urban society replaced the more scattered, and sometimes more mobile, village life of the past. Evidently, for the Celts, it felt like progress. The Romans must have won the loyalty of the rising generation, for Vercingetorix, the organiser of Gaul’s last struggle for independence, was never invoked as a heroic inspiration (until Napoleon III took him up 1900 years later), and there were only a couple of revolts, fairly easily put down, in the generation following the Roman conquest of Gaul. Gaul had fallen to Caesar in a blitzkrieg taking just eight years. By contrast, it had taken Rome almost two centuries to completely establish its control of Spain (from the expulsion of the Carthaginians in 206 to Augustus’s Cantabrian Wars ending in 19 BC). Nevertheless, Spain too quietened down about the same time, and at last accepted as its fate the Pāx Romāna.

Surrender, then, or perhaps even enthusiastic take-up, was the majority option when the inhabitants of ancient western Europe were brought into the Roman empire. But it is worthwhile sparing a moment to consider two cases where this option was not taken.

One was Basque, presumably the language of the Aquitanians of southwest Gaul [846](and the Vascones in Iberia) in Caesar’s time, which survived the influx of Latin to replace its Gaulish and Celtiberian neighbours, as it has survived everything else that history has thrown at it in the last two thousand years. It is the special case, par excellence, of European language history, since it pre-dates all the Indo-European languages. There are records of Basques serving in the Roman army (indeed, a group of them travelling with the over-mighty general Marius allowed him to mount a brief reign of terror in Rome in 86 BC; [451]others are known to have served on Hadrian’s Wall in Britain), but their identity proved equal to the challenge of Roman rule. They borrowed the words for ‘olive’ and ‘oil’ ( oliva, olio ), and ‘statue’ ( estatu ), showing the acceptance of certain aspects of Roman life that had been new to them, but otherwise show no effect from five hundred years of presence in the Roman empire.

The more complicated case is that of language survival in Britain. We have already seen from the evidence of place names that a language either very like Gaulish, or a dialect of it, was spoken here at the time of the Roman invasions. Personal names tell the same story: among the names of noted kings and queens among the Britons we have Cassi-vellaunos (’oak-dominator’), Tascio-vanos (’badger-slayer’), Cuno-belinos (’dog of the god Belinos’—Shakepeare’s Cymbeline), Caratacos (’beloved’), Boudicca (’Victoria’—cf. Irish búadach , ‘triumphant’).

After the conquest of AD 43, which led to full-scale permanent occupation, the Romans made a conscious effort to spread Latin, and indeed Roman education, among the British elite. Tacitus comments cynically on the education plans of Agricola (governor of Britain from 77 to 84 and, as it happened, his father-in-law):

he instructed the sons of the chiefs in liberal arts, and expressed a preference for the native wit of the British over the studies of the Gauls, so as to plant a desire for eloquence in people who had previously rejected the Roman language altogether. So they took to our dress, and wearing the toga. Gradually they were drawn off into decadence, with colonnades and baths and chic parties. That was called a civilized life [ humānitās ] by these innocents, whereas it was really part of their enslavement. [451]

In a bitter irony, these studies were initiated in the winter after Agrícola had finally obliterated, with much carnage, the centre of Druidical learning on the Isle of Anglesey.

Although they had started from the same language, we can detect, from the odd remark made by Romans, that the British were bracketed with, but not quite up to, the continental Gauls in their adoption of Latin. In a satire on the way the world had gone mad, Juvenal (a contemporary of Tacitus in the second century AD) wrote:

Today the whole world has its Greek and Roman Athens; the eloquent Gauls have taught the British to be advocates, and Thüle is talking of hiring an oratory teacher. [451]

The mention of Thüle here, which as far as the Romans were concerned might have been the North Pole, shows that Juvenal is thinking in terms of extremes. This is the condescension of the Roman establishment, showing much in common between old and more recent imperialisms: the conquerors might well tell subject minorities that their only hope lay in civilising themselves, but would never take them seriously when they tried to make good on this aspiration.