Julius Caesar and the Headhunting Celts: A Mini-Essay

     In the summers of 55 and 54 B.C.E., Julius Caesar launched two unsuccessful attempts to invade Britain and conquer its Celtic inhabitants (almost a century after his efforts, Emperor Claudius, possessing an army of 40,000 men, brought the island under Roman rule).[1] Although severe storms, failed support for his cavalry, and violent resistance from the Celts contributed to the fiascos, Caesar and those who chronicled his ventures returned with a colorful image of Britain and its people. Throughout the empire, particularly Rome, the reading populace was enthralled by these accounts and the strange world they presented. Some elements, such as the Celtic belief in reincarnation and the process of burning letters on funeral pyres for the deceased to deliver to the dead, seemed entirely foreign to the Roman population, especially since their own perspectives on death did not consider rebirth.[2] Others, particularly the graphic descriptions of headhunting and human scarifies presented in the reports of Caesar and Diodorus Siculus, mortified society and they developed a voracious appetite for information regarding this distant land’s peculiar rituals. In the texts of Diodorus and Strabo, Romans learned about the massive man-shaped wickerworks which were stuffed with cattle and humans and set ablaze as sacrifices to the gods.[3] In the works of Caesar and Diodorus, they grimaced at how Celtic tribes, believing that possession of an individual’s head gave the possessor control of their spirit, decapitated their enemies during battle and embalmed their craniums to display in chests.[4] And, within the descriptions penned by Caesar himself, stunned readers discovered that, at the heart of all this bloodshed, were the Druid priests, whose ultimate power over the Celtic people made them arbitrators of the spiritual realm and judges to earthly concerns.[5] It was a series of graphic images and it fed the imagination of the Roman public, yet, as scholars such as Ramon Jiménez and Stuart Piggott attest, it was not entirely true. As Piggott explains, our knowledge of Celtic society prior to Roman invasion is limited and much of our information comes from the accounts written by Caesar and his counterparts.[6] Hence, much of what we know is tainted and Caesar was not removed from exaggerating the power of the priest and the bloodlust of their Celtic follows – it made for great storytelling and villainized a people the empire planned to conquer. [7] Plus, the Romans were not immune to cruelty: human sacrifices were not formally outlawed until the first century B.C.E. and Emperor Trajan was notorious for demanding the heads of his defeated enemies to be presented to him.[8]

Works Referenced

Caesar, Julius. The Battle for Gaul. Trans. Ann Wiseman and Peter Wiseman. Boston: David R. Godine, 1980.

Diodorus Siculus. Historical Library (Diodorus of Sicily). Trans. C.H. Oldfather. London: W. Heinemann, 1933.

Jiménez, Ramon. Caesar Against the Celts. Edison, NJ: Castle Books, 2001.

Piggott, Stuart, Glyn Daniel, and Charles McBurney, eds. France Before the Romans. Park Ridge, NJ: Noyes Press, 1973.

Strabo. Geography. Trans. H.L. Jones. London: W. Heinemann, 1917. 
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[1] Jiménez, 157.
[2] Jiménez, 35.
[3] Strabo, 2.
[4] Diodorus, 250.
[5] Caesar, 14.
[6] Piggott, 110.
[7] Jiménez, 38.
[8] Jiménez, 38.