Gallic people

Gallic peoples, who speak a branch of Indo-European known as Celtic, were widely diffused over Europe, from Asia Minor to Ireland. France, Spain, Britain and Northern Italy were all settled by Celtic speakers. Rome itself was sacked by a Gallic raiding party in 387, and the Roman army adopted the rectangular Gallic shield, the Gallic "montefortino" style helmet. Even the Latin word for sword, is Celtic, as "gladius" is related to the midieval "claymore," and probably came into use to due to the adoption of celtic short-sword styles, before the final adoption of the gladius hispaniensis.

Gauls both served as mercenaries and as freebooters in the Hellenistic world, and the kings of Pergamum made much of their ability to periodically defeat the Gauls of Anatolia. A statue from an Pergamum victory monument are among the most famous pieces of Greek art; "The Dying Gaul."

The first great ancient ethnographer to study the Gauls was Posidonius of Apamea, who visited southern Gaul around 90 BC, and was somewhat intimidated by their gruesome practice of displaying severed heads in their homes. Posidonius' work is now lost, save for fragments in Diodorus and Strabo.

Our most complete discription of the ancient Gauls comes in Book 6 of Caesar's Gallic war. He paints the picture of a highly structured society, dominated by a ferocious warrior class, who conspire with the Druidic priests to dominate the vast bulk of the population, who are little better than slaves. Despite this social stratification, the Gauls were deeply politically fragmented, with factions existing in every state, clan, and even household.

The Druids were eventually supressed by the Romans, and no doubt lost with them was a tremendous cache of folklore and cultural knowledge (the Druids knew how to write, but their education consisted of memorizing vast tracts of poetry, considered too sensitive to be recorded). Celtic continued as a major language in Gaul until the 4th century AD, although it never developed into a literary language like Coptic or Syriac.

Ammianus Marcellinus gives a portrait of Late Roman Gaul. He depicts of population of heady brawlers, from which the Army recruited heavily. Thus, for Ammianus, the Gauls stilled seemed to retain a distinct flavor, despite having been in the Roman Empire for over 400 years.