How Greek and Roman artists saw the Celts

[An Fiach Ban]

Actually, the Romans didn't even have saddles for their horses - they learned to make saddles from the Gauls. Likewise, they stole the chariot from the Celts. The Celtic word for chariot is carbad - which we get "car" from today. What really turned the tide between the Romans and the Celts was that the Romans learned Greek military tactics and put a professional army in the field. Even if the Celts had superior technology, they did not have a disciplined professional army with Greek battle formations.

The Greeks invented the concept of the NCO. The lowest level but crucially important commander who was able to make decisions for a group of armed men, this quite frequently turned the tide of battle. The Celts fought as heroic individuals, the Persians as slaves.

 

[Tadhg Gaelach]

i would agree with you but add that the Punic wars ( against Cartage) made the Romans tough and cruel. Paradoxically, the attempts of Hannibal Barker to destroy Rome was the making of Rome - he taught them how to fight. Funny you mentioned the saddle. I was thinking i saw a programme that mentioned this but couldnt remember from whom they robbed it. The birth of Rome is a fascinating story shrouded in myth and legend. For sure, their neighbours had a pastoral mindset and the Romans were like a bunch of modern narco-terrorists.

If you were a 'foreigner' (non Roman) but willing to fight and work hard, you were welcome to join their club. As a gang of marauding angry blokes, they took pride in robbing women from neighbouring tribes. The Etruscans never figured what they were dealing with until it was too late. Hannibal was good at winning battles but rubbish at controlling the peace and capitalising on his victories.

The Roman's expansionary mindset worked very well until they had conquered most of the known world, and then they fell apart. Robbing new territory to award it to your loyal soldiers was a brilliant business model.

I think what really made the Romans vicious was debt. The Roman aristocracy were up to their necks in debt all the time. Julius Caesar admits that the main reason he invaded Gaul was that the money lenders were about to foreclose on his family's estates and he needed booty and slaves to sell. Likewise, the Roman soldier was always living in debt from one pay day to the next. Debt makes people more desperate than anything else in the world, and desperation makes them cruel and brutish. As you say, the Roman model was based on eternal expansion - just as our system does today. You have to keep expanding just to keep up with the interest payments - but then the time comes when you can't expand any more.

 

[valamhic]

It was a great pity for the world that Europe didn't stay Celtic. This narco-terrorist mindset was unleashed on the whole world, once Celtic Europe faded.

I understand the Irish O'Reilly's were Ce;ts

 

[valamhic]

I think what really made the Romans vicious was debt. The Roman aristocracy were up to their necks in debt all the time. Julius Caesar admits that the main reason he invaded Gaul was that the money lenders were about to foreclose on his family's estates and he needed booty and slaves to sell. Likewise, the Roman soldier was always living in debt from one pay day to the next. Debt makes people more desperate than anything else in the world, and desperation makes them cruel and brutish. As you say, the Roman model was based on eternal expansion - just as our system does today. You have to keep expanding just to keep up with the interest payments - but then the time comes when you can't expand any more.

Thats the Irish wind industry to a tee.

 

[FF/FG/Lab/SF..stitchup]

As you say, the Roman model was based on eternal expansion - just as our system does today. You have to keep expanding just to keep up with the interest payments - but then the time comes when you can't expand any more.

our current system depends heavily on the concept of 'economic growth'. Without that we are always bunched. A notion quite alien to most civilisations of the past.

A roman/chinese/Aztec could live 100 years before or after one of their relatives and life would be almost identical for all , with the same prices for everything.

 

[Jean Paul Smarty]

our current system depends heavily on the concept of 'economic growth'. Without that we are always bunched. A notion quite alien to most civilisations of the past.

A roman/chinese/Aztec could live 100 years before or after one of their relatives and life would be almost identical for all , with the same prices for everything.

I think the EU are a present day,political version of the Roman Empire.

 

[erin is the only truth]

Greek "art" is mechanical. They weren't really artists, more like skilled, but uninspired, craftsmen.

The best craft has an occult character to it, and is everywhere known as the magic symbol of the celtic knot.

You can see this kind of occult craft in all primitive societies, and it is everywhere in Ireland that this primitivity is at its highest, that Irishness is also at its highest.

In order to become Irish again, we must become primitive again; we must become occult magian.

 

[Tadhg Gaelach]

I think the EU are a present day,political version of the Roman Empire.

I think it consciously models itself on the Roman Empire.

 

[Irish McCeltunstein]

Greek "art" is mechanical. They weren't really artists, more like skilled, but uninspired, craftsmen.

The best craft has an occult character to it, and is everywhere known as the magic symbol of the celtic knot.

You can see this kind of occult craft in all primitive societies, and it is everywhere in Ireland that this primitivity is at its highest, that Irishness is also at its highest.

In order to become Irish again, we must become primitive again; we must become occult magian.

And sure don't the Cailíns look lovely altogether with their knotted hair.