King of the Celts: Arthurian Legends and Celtic Tradition

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Many of these artefacts have been uncovered in the elaborate burials of the wealthy elite, dubbed “princely tombs” by archaeologists. Other historians, however, point to the existence of Celtic place-names across Europe that date to before the Hallstatt period; they argue that the process may have happened in reverse.

Because the burials "dated to roughly the time when Celts are mentioned near the Danube by Herodotus, Ramsauer concluded that the graves were Celtic". Lugh's wives are variously given as Bui, Nás, Echtach, or Énglic, although in some sources he has all four. Latin authors started to cast Celts less as brutal barbarians, and more as “noble savages,” supposedly offering a contrast with Roman luxury. Dietler, Michael, "Our ancestors the Gauls": archaeology, ethnic nationalism, and the manipulation of Celtic identity in modern Europe Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine (7.A century later, Greek geographer Hecataeus of Miletus gave them a name—Keltoi, translated into Latin by the Romans as Celtae. Alliances and mergers were constantly being made and broken as noted by Tacitus many years before, the situation being further muddled by the interference of Rome who would award the title “King of the Britons” to whoever was currently in favour. Sir Thomas Malory added his own slant to the legends in his “Le Morte d’Arthur” written three hundred years later, but the reality is rather more mundane.

Insular Celtic languages are attested from the 4th century AD in Ogham inscriptions, though they were clearly being spoken much earlier. This text tells the story, before Lugh is born, of the invasion of Ireland by the Tuatha Dé Danann who are victorious against the current inhabitants, the Fir Bolg at Mac Tuired, a plain in Connacht in northwest Ireland. At the Battle of Alesia, also in 52 BC, the Romans besieged and defeated his forces; to save as many of his men as possible, he gave himself to the Romans. The earliest records of a Celtic language are the Lepontic inscriptions of Cisalpine Gaul (Northern Italy), the oldest of which pre-date the La Tène period.Venturing inland along the Rhône Valley, those traders encountered a people who spoke a tongue the Greeks did not recognise.

The Senones, a tribe newly arrived in Italy, overcame Roman forces near the city and flooded into the capital. C., the Hallstatt graves provide detailed evidence of an Iron Age community whose economy was based on nearby salt mines. Pliny the Elder noted the use of Celtici in Lusitania as a tribal surname, [32] which epigraphic findings have confirmed. He was surrounded by ornate drinking horns and a large bronze cauldron, which still held the remains of high-proof honey mead.

They used their chariots in battle, steering them in all directions while hurling their weapons, generally causing the enemy to separate apart. Lugh's foster-father is sometimes Manannán mac Lir, the main Irish-Celtic sea god, who teaches Lugh many skills. However, there is no mention of who won or who lost, or whether the men of Cornwall and Devon were fighting each other or on the same side.