11.3 Europe: 400 to 301 b.c.  (Page 4/5)

Although after the destruction of Veii by the Romans the Etruscan preponderance in central Italy came to an end, some Etruscan cities still flourished. Vulci had failed to help Veii in its death struggle and continued to exist as a thriving city. After a forty year truce, fighting again flared up between Rome and Tarquinii with the former the final victor in 314 B.C. At long last Caere had finally broken with Rome and had joined Tarquinii in its last days. Its independence gone, Caere still was a great cosmopolitan city to which Roman sons were sent to learn the Etruscan language and literature. (Ref. 75 )

In the last of the century the Gauls actually settled down in northern Italy (Cisalpine Gaul) laying the foundations for the cities of Turin, Bergamo and Milan. The Kyllyrioi disappeared from Sicily in the early century and slavery became the only form of involuntary labor and this remained so after the island was conquered by the Romans. (Ref. 249 ) (For more about Sicily, see NORTH CENTRAL AFRICA).

Central europe

The population of this region was essentially Celtic, particularly in Austria and Germany, although some Germanic tribes were wandering down from Scandinavia about the Vistula River and these may have been pushed somewhat west at this time by Huns leaving the region of the Volga. McEvedy (Ref. 136 ) writes that there were still no Teutons south of the latitude of Berlin and that this was to remain so for two more centuries. East of the Germanic tribes were the Balts and the Slavs.

The Hallstatt Celtic culture in Austria was based on salt which was mined particularly at Salzburg and at Durrnberg near Hallein. In Bohemia tin became an important export. The newer La Tene Culture evolved full flower in the old Celtic homelands, marking the second phase of the P-Celtic speakers' expansion. They developed an original art, part of which involved covering tiny surfaces of pots, sword sheaths and ornaments with mazes of lines, tiny animal figures and faces, all cut in minute detail. They manufactured brass and covered copper objects with tin and silvered them over with mercury.

In their first contacts with the Mediterranean world the Celtic people struck terror throughout the existing civilizations. They were tall, blond, with hair standing up stiff from their foreheads from lime washings, and then hanging long behind like horses' manes. They wore long mustaches and dressed in brightly colored shirts and breeches with cloaks fastened at the shoulder with brooches. The cloaks were striped or checkered. Some wore bronze helmets and chain breast armor, although others went naked into battle where they charged with wild screaming and singing, some on foot and some in four-wheeled chariots drawn by two horses and carrying one driver and one javelin thrower. Cavalry operated in the same way, each mount with two riders. But the most terrifying of all was their custom of cutting off their enemies' heads and nailing them over the doors of their huts.

In general the Celts preferred to remain potentially mobile and kept their possessions all in a state of readiness for travel, but in some locations they did build rather impressive settlements. One such was near Manching, Bavaria, where the outer wall was four miles long, enclosing an area of some forty thousand acres. There is evidence of goldsmiths, bronze foundries, iron and glass works, potteries and trading houses. Not far away was a foundry where sixty-two smelt furnaces have been excavated. Every Celtic town had small foundries and most had salt sources nearby. (Ref. 91 )