It has been said by some that the Celts never developed a real civilization because they never developed a written language. However, if the lack of a written language overshadows the artistic, commercial, and cultural aspects that the Celts developed, then they never were to be considered civilized. But, were they illiterate?
One of the reasons that the Celts were considered illiterate was that the religious classes, the Druids, refused to commit the oral tradition of their learning to something as mundane, and so lacking in mystery, as the written word. It was felt, as reported by many historians of the day, including LIVY, that the oral tradition was a much more dynamic device to produce learning. Verbal eloquence was also considered a more desired attribute than written eloquence. (The Celts considered Hercules to be the greatest of all Roman or Greek gods, because they felt he was more eloquent than the others. In one such demonstration, a man dressed as Hercules was leading a group of people through a town. He had gold and silver chains attached to his tongue, which were held by the following throng, because the Celts felt that the greatest strength came from eloquence.)
But were they illiterate? Hardly. Although the Celts never put their Celtic languages to paper in a major fashion, they were able to read and write in other languages. Many contracts were written in the lingua franca of the day, be it Greek or Latin. Early on, Celts were trading with the Greeks, first from their colony of Massila, modern day Marseilles, and later from the Hellenistic isles themselves. Numerous tribes that lived in close proximity to the Greeks, the Scordisci in the Balkans, or the Aeudi and Helvetii in Gaul, often communicated in Greek. Four Celtic soldiers that were employed by the Greeks that set up the Ptolemic dynasty in Egypt left a notation on the walls of a pyramid that they had captured an Egyptian fox, and what their names were, in Greek. Julius Caesar, whose reports on the Celts should be taken with a grain of salt, said that although the Celts committed all of their history to the oral tradition, "they use the Greek alphabet for almost everything else."
Later Celts, under the sway of the Romans, wrote in Latin. Many everyday affairs were conducted in Latin, even before the Roman conquest of Gaul. Virgil, the great Latin poet, was a Celt. It was said that the Celts taught the Romans how their language could be used, in more and better ways. (In Ireland, two millennia later, it was said that the Irish were better at the use of the English language than the English.) Part of this was due to the value that the Celts placed on the spoken word, and how expressive it was compared to writing. It was that sense of expressiveness that pushed the Celts to try to reproduce the written word.
There were examples of writing in the Celtic language. For the most part, it has been in the inscriptions of the names of gods and goddesses on statues. Other examples are the Celtic words on coinage. However, a calendar has been found, at Coligny in France, that was written in Latin characters, but definitely with Celtic words and phrasing. Another document, discovered in Switzerland in 1983, was written in Latin cursive letters, but in the Celtic language.
So, while the Celtic languages never developed a written alphabet, the Celts were far from illiterate.
Burial Rites| Who Were the Celts?| La Tene|Halstaat
Burial Rites| TORCS| Hillforts and Oppida
Boudicca and the Romans| Druids||Social Classes
Terrifying Helmets|Arms And Weaponry|Gods and Goddesses
Were the Celts Illiterate?|European Celtic Place Names
Email: celtoman@hotmail.com
