MaxKaladin
First Post
Joshua Dyal said:
Wha... ?!? What territory where they taking from the Celts before Caesar conquered Gaul? Seems to me that the Germans were rather quietly sitting around in Scandinavia and behind the Rhine before Caesar conquered Gaul. And, since Caesar didn't really do anything resembling modern ethnographic studies, we don't know for sure where the dividing line was between Germanic and Celtic peoples, it was "traditionally" put at the Rhine is all.
Well, for an immediate example I'd say the territory of the Helvetii. That was a Celtic tribe up in what is now modern Switzerland that was being pushed out of its territory by the expanding Germanic Seuvi tribe. Their attemt to flee into Gaul is what gave Caesar his excuse to invade.
On a longer term, I'd say a fair bit of northern Germany. All my books are in storage right now, but I've got a historical atlas that has a series of maps showing the gradual expansion of the Germanic tribes from what is now modern Denmark into modern Germany over a period of centuries. They kept gradually pushing back the Celts and other peoples and expanding their own territory. They had only recently reached the Rhein when the Romans started paying attention to the area.
Here it is. This is the current version of the atlas I was thinking of: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/A...6738500/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/103-0925085-2691813