The Celts, Gerhard Herm

Notes on the book:
Pliny the Elder, encyclopedic Natural History
Diogenes Laertios, famous Greek collector of quotations, end of 2nd century AD
Strabo: Greek historian, geographer; 64 BC to 24 AD


Chapter One: The People Who Came Out of the Darkness




Chapter Nine: The Mastery of Death: Deities and Druids

Pliny the Elder, encyclopedic Natural History, 6th day of every month, the Celts held a great feast;

Orovist, the chief of the Druids; his daughter Norma; later, the opera, composed in 1831

Celtic Druids represented the same class as the Hindu Brahmins. Like the Brahmins, the Druids were also political leaders, clearly standing above generals and warriors. [Very similar to the archbishop of Westminster and York at the time of British kings and queens before the modern era.]

Calendars

• Stone Age man: Stonehenge and Carnac
• Meton of Athens; a geologist; 5th century BC Greek
• the Coligny calendar, 2nd century AD; Druids trying to hold onto Gallic calendar when Julian calendar being forced on all?; Gaulish language;

Gaulish language - wiki

The Gaulish (also Gallic) language is an extinct Celtic language that was spoken by the Gauls, a people who inhabited the region known as Gaul (Cisalpine and Transalpine) from the Iron Age through the Roman period. Cisalpine -- Italian side of the Alps to the Po River; Transalpine -- Swiss/French side of the Alps extending across far southern France, along the Riviera

Gaul:

A region of Western Europe during the Iron Age and Roman era, encompassing present day France, Luxembourg and Belgium, most of Switzerland, the western part of Northern Italy, as well as the parts of the Netherlands and Germany on the left bank of the Rhine.

Lug:

Among Celts in close contact with Ancient Rome, such as the Gauls and Celtiberians, their mythology did not survive the Roman empire, their subsequent conversion to Christianity, and the loss of their Celtic languages. It is mostly through contemporary Roman and Christian sources that their mythology has been preserved. The Celtic peoples who maintained either their political or linguistic identities (such as the Gaels, Picts, and Brythonic tribes of Great Britain and Ireland) left vestigial remnants of their ancestral mythologies, put into written form during the Middle Ages. -- wiki

Lug: the Celtic god that appears most frequently in their tales; place names based on Lug across the Celtic world (Ludgunum -- Lyon; Kudgunum Batavorum -- Katwijk, near Leiden; Lucas Augusti -- modern Galician city of Lugo; Liegnitz, Leyden).

German trinity of gods: Wotan/Odin, Donar/Thor, and the god of war, Zin/Tyr

Celtic trinity of gods: Teutates, Esus, and Taranis

Chapter Ten: The Coming of Caesar

Gaius Julius Caesar: 100 - 44 BC

• statesman 
• general
• distinguished writer of Latin prose
• instrumental in gradual transformation of Roman Republic into Roman Empire

Chapter Eleven: The Vain of Vercingetorix

The chieftain of the Arverni tribe, who united the Gauls in an ultimately unsuccessful revolt against Roman forces during the last phase of Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars. Vercingetorix came to power in 52 BC, when he raised an army and was proclaimed king at Gergovia. -- wiki

Chapter Twelve: Campaigns at the Word's Edge