Celtic art in Pagan and Christian times

John Stuart Mill · en
“Were they settled in Macedonia they imitated with more or
    less success the tetradrachms of Philip and of Audoleon,
    king of Paeonia; did they advance towards Thrace, they
    copied the tetradrachms of Thasos. The Senones of Rimini
    took for their model the Roman and Italian _aes grave_;
    in the north of Italy, finding themselves in contact with
    nations who used the monetary system of the drachm and
    its multiples and divisions, the Gauls copied them until
    the time they were driven back on the Danube. In Liguria
    they copied the drachms of Massalia. Were they encamped on
    the banks of the Danube in Noricum, or in Rhaetia, they
    again copied the monetary systems of their neighbours.
    The tetradrachms of the Boii on which are inscribed the
    name of ‘BIATEC,’ one of their chiefs, reproduced
    the type of the last Roman of the family of Fufia struck
    between the years 62 and 59 B.C. In a word, the
    same habit of imitation is found everywhere in the cradle of
    Gaulish numismatics properly so-called; on the left bank of
    the Rhine, it was the gold staters of Philip which served
    as the model for gold pieces and sometimes for silver;
    in Aquitaine, it was the coins of Emporia, Rhoda, and
    Massalia. Armorica and the frontier countries were the first
    who adopted for their coinage types which can be called
    national, although still reflecting those imitated from the
    Macedonian staters. Let it be noticed that we are in one of
    the most Celtic parts of Gaul: it is therefore natural that
    the difference in genius between the two races of Celts and
    Gauls should manifest itself most clearly.”

[37] _Archéologie Celtique et Gauloise_, p. 387.


INVASION OF BRITAIN BY GOIDELIC CELTS IN THE BRONZE AGE

The aborigines of Europe, who were driven westward by the successive
waves of Aryan conquest, appear to have been in the Neolithic stage
of culture, and they are identified by Prof. W. Boyd Dawkins with the
Iberians mentioned by Strabo. Prof. W. Boyd Dawkins gives a map in
his _Early Man in Britain_ (p. 318) showing the relative distribution
of the Iberic, Celtic, and Belgic races in the historic period. In
this map the Iberians occupy the north of Africa, the west of Spain
and France, the country round Marseilles, the whole of Wales, and
the south-west of Ireland. The Celts follow behind to the eastward,
pressing the Iberians towards the Atlantic.

In the opening address of the Antiquarian Section at the meeting of the
Royal Archæological Institute at Scarborough in 1895, Prof. Dawkins
said:—[38]

[38] _Archæological Journal_, vol. lii., p. 342.