- Chapter Fourteen -
The leaders of the Gaesatae collected a richly equipped and formidable force
which descended into the Po valley in 225 Be for what turned out to be an ill-fated
expedition.
The Cisalpine Celts had no gold coinage of their own, so if they paid the Gaesatae
their advance in coin, it can only have been in that of other communities, especially
the ubiquitous Macedonian currency struck in the name of Philip II long after his
death, but popular with foreign mercenary soldiers. It was in fact posthumous
types of Philip II gold staters that furnished the prototypes for nearly all the most
influential early coinages in the Gallic sphere, including the Alps, Rhineland and
central Gaul, areas from which Polybius's 'Gaesatae' (whose name actually only
means 'spearsmen') were recruited (Nash 1987: 84 ff.).
Celtic coinage therefore originated during the third century Be, in a period of
intensified military contact with the rulers of Macedon, Tarentum, Rhode and
Carthage as the latter fought losing struggles with Rome, and Syracuse, Massalia and
probably Emporion as they supplied military and naval assistance to their Roman
allies. This was followed by a new epoch in economic relations with the Mediter-
ranean world, since Rome did not employ mercenary soldiers, but had an enormous
and growing need for trade goods from Celtic Europe - above all, slaves and metals.
This would not in itself have led to the adoption of coinage in Celtic Europe, but
its impact upon a Celtic world that was already integrating coinage into its social
functioning for other reasons did give an enormous spur to further development.
We have good documentary evidence from contemporary observers that !he Celts'
eagerness to import wine was at least as great as their greed for gold, and that in Gaul
during the second and first centuries Be, the slaves that the Romans needed in ever
increasing numbers were being purchased from Celts with amphorae of wine by
Mediterranean merchants \;lased at Narbonne and other cities in southern Gaul
(Diodorus Siculus, World History v.26).
In the Danube Basin, where the Celts had for centuries mingled with other native
communities, and had by the early first century Be evolved a distinctive hybrid
regional culture, silver in the form of Republican denarii does actually seem to have
been the preferred medium of exchange for slaves, and Roman Republican coinage
flooded into the area in extremely large quantities when the suppression of piracy
in the eastern Mediterranean enforced the development of other avenues for slave
procurement (Crawford 1977).
This unusual situation only emphasizes by contrast what an insignificant role
Roman, or any other, coinage played in long-range external trading activity else-
where. Outside the Danube Basin, trade between the Celts and the Mediterranean
world was conducted by means of direct exchange, in which wine certainly played
an important part. There is clear archaeological evidence that from the mid -second
century Be onwards, Italian wine amphorae were being imported in rising numbers
into almost every area of Gaul and even southern Britain (Cunliffe 1991: 434 ff.),
betraying local accumulation of wealth, prestige and power; and within this social
context Celtic coinages began to proliferate and spread, with increasingly well-
differentiated designs that are sometimes far removed from their remote
Mediterranean models.
As the use of coinage spread from its earliest centres, therefore, a number of