The Celtic World (Routledge Worlds)

(Barry) #1

  • Chapter Fourteen -


lavish feast to entertain all comers that lasted for many days on end (in Athenaeus,
Deipnosphists IV.37).
Although largesse could be distributed in many different ways, coinage was a
particularly convenient medium for making relatively small but conspicuous gifts or
payments to large numbers of people. Something like the social organization that
Polybius's sources or Poseidonios himself observed was probably universal in early
Celtic societies. Powerful nobles needed to attract and entertain personal retinues,
dependants, craftsmen and poets (Poseidonios also mentioned that a poet turned up
late to the feast, but flattered his way into a bag of gold all the same), foreign guests,
and armies of warriors. It was within a world such as this that coinage was integrated
during the third and early second centuries Be into many communities throughout
Celtic Europe.
But striking coinage was an expensive way to maintain dependants, make
gifts, and pay armies. Gold and silver coinage consisted of actual pieces of treasure,
and at the rate of, for instance, 7 grammes of gold per early Celtic alloyed stater and
perhaps 5 staters per soldier per season, 1,000 men would cost 35 kg of gold, a lot by
any standards. Their leaders would of course cost more. This is not an entirely
fanciful calculation, as we do have a little evidence for relevant rates of pay (d. Nash
1987: 14 ff.). The Macedonian stater contained over 8.50 grammes of pure gold, and
King Perseus of Macedon (179-168 Be) is known to have hired a large contingent of
Danubian Celtic Bastarnae for a season's campaign at a rate of 5 gold staters apiece
for infantry warriors, 10 each for the cavalry, and 1,000 for their king Claodicus
(Livy, History of Rome XLIV.26).
Enormous quantities of Mediterranean gold passed into Celtic Europe in the hands
of returning warriors during the fourth and third centuries Be as the rulers of the
Hellenistic Mediterranean spent their resources on wars of conquest, competition and
defence. The Celts were the most popular barbarian soldiers of the day (Griffith 1935),
having earned a reputation with the Greeks for being almost insanely courageous,
prepared to fight even the ocean waves, and alleging no fear of death. The Celts,
particularly those of central and western Europe, preferred their salaries in gold at a
time when silver was the normal currency medium in the Mediterranean sphere, and
colossal amounts of Hellenistic gold coinage were struck to meet their demands.
It is therefore no surprise to find that it was coinages struck by the main
Mediterranean employers of barbarian mercenary soldiers that inspired the types of
the earliest native coinages of Celtic Europe (Table 14.1). There is in fact reason to
think that some Celtic groups travelled enormous distances to participate in
Mediterranean wars. In third-century Picardy, far remote from southern Italy,
successive coinages of Tarentum were copied with such accuracy, and in the correct
order, that it is difficult to escape the conclusion that these Celts were in direct
contact over a relatively long period with some source of Tarentine coinage (Scheers
1968, 1981). It is difficult to make out a convincing case for coinage having played
any important part in trading relations between the Mediterranean world and
northern Europe at that period, and even more difficult to account for such appar-
ently consistent trading contact between Tarentum and Picardy in particular. But
coinage was the unique and universal medium of payment for mercenary soldiers,
whom the Tarentines, among many others, did employ. It is tempting to see in the

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