The Gallic Republic, a Forgotten Political Construction
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When Rome conquered Gaul in the 50s B.C., it was adding to its empire a territory that was already highly structured and partly centralized in social, religious and political terms. This is the hypothesis put forward by Jean-Louis Brunaux in his new book, which takes issue with the widespread image of pre-Roman Gaul as uncivilized. In so doing, he offers an explanation to the mystery of Gaul's rapid and profound integration into the Roman Empire. In short, the conqueror would have completed the transformation of ancient Gaul into a coherent confederal city, undertaken over five centuries by a brotherhood of philosophers advising the Gallic powers: the druids, literally “those who see far”, “those who possess superior knowledge”.
Few traces remain of this intellectual and political history. Yet this forgotten world attracted the interest of Greek philosophers, who first witnessed the activities of their Gallic counterparts. They likened the wisdom of the Druids to a form of divination (expressed as oracles, rather than discussed) and their practice to Pythagoreanism (as a social and political magisterium). Their analyses are illuminated by the accounts of later observers of Gaul - the polymath explorer Poseidonios, read and adapted by Caesar - and by dynamic archaeological research, which has been profoundly renewing our understanding of the protohistory of the Gauls for several decades. The discovery of sanctuaries perfectly similar to Greek and Roman temples indicates that they belonged to the same religious world. Recent excavations reveal that here, as in Greek cities and Rome, entertainment was central to public life. Conversely, the singular art of the Gauls is now recognized as an “original and innovative” expression of sophisticated abstract thought.
On the whole, material traces are beginning to be reconciled with the testimony of texts. Jean-Louis Brunaux, who has spent a lifetime researching them, has succeeded in assembling them in a way that sketches the silhouette of this sunken world: a world that had developed a coherent political model, inscribed with its own style in the order of Mediterranean civilizations.
Druids at the heart of Gallic society
The earliest identifiable Gallic populations were the “ direct descendants of rural Neolithic communities ”, often linked to the Mediterranean world of the Bronze Age through trade in metallurgical resources. At the time of the legendary kings of Rome (8th-6th century), they appear to have been dominated by wealthy aristocracies who distinguished themselves by their luxury and lifestyle, including Greek-style wine-drinking banquets, without the rest of the community being politically structured. At the end of this period, however, egalitarian warrior societies were formed, led by appointed chiefs who would later form the basis of the cities. The technology of iron weapons favored warfare, and through it, the organization of solidary peoples, established on the territories they appropriated. In this context, assemblies appeared, a kind of senate bringing together the great landowners and heads of old families, where the Gauls developed an art of eloquence praised by their Roman contemporaries. Soon, in addition to this restricted council, a general assembly of citizens, the “armed council”, convened by the magistrates, developed. Thus, by the 3rd century at the latest, the three basic institutions of the ancient city were well established in Gaul.
This territorial and political structuring of Gaul is largely the product of the Druids. Powerless, their authority lay in their science, or in Greek terms, their “philosophy”. At first, this knowledge was that of predicting the future, by interpreting the signs observable in the sky, the stars; but it then developed into a physical and mathematical science, associated with a knowledge of the gods and cults. In all respects, the holders of this knowledge “saw further” than other men. When Gaul became linked to Mediterranean trade networks by virtue of its metallurgical resources, it was probably they who acted as interpreters and intermediaries with the Etruscans, Phoenicians and Greeks. In contact with them, their knowledge was further enriched by new technical skills, which they in turn appropriated and developed. Generally speaking, Gaul's integration into Mediterranean trade greatly complicated Gaulish society, infrastructure, political culture... but the Greeks who settled in Marseilles also discovered in their partners, particularly their druids, a shared taste for the art of oratory and natural science. And this intellectual elite gradually organized itself into “a country-wide community, which met every year”.
The construction of the Druid community was the result of a process independent of the existing powers. At the end of the process, the druids of all peoples sent representatives to an annual assembly held near Chartres, in the center of Gaul, under the presidency of the most eminent among them. On a local scale, they seem to have organized the peoples into cities, federating tribes that retained their identity, and organizing civic assemblies that gave political expression to the plebs. Their main lever for achieving these ends seems to have been their role as educators of the children of the political and economic elite: while the most brilliant pupils were called upon to become druids, the others applied the druids' teachings to their civil activities, starting with the geography of the country. They also instilled a common culture in all Gauls, north and south, mountain, sea and plain. In this sense, the Druidic school is the breeding ground of the Gallic republic.
Druid authority: from religious to political
Religious know-how is neither the whole nor even the essence of Druidic science; nor did they have a monopoly on it until much later. Other people conducted the sacrifices at the heart of ancient religions, and it was up to the “diviners” to interpret the signs. In this field, the Druids' contribution lies above all in the invention of a philosophy of the gods and the divine: a theology. Alongside the myths sung by the poets (the bards) and the sacred laws implemented by the soothsayers (who officiated before the magistrates), they cultivated a science based on a rational, analytical approach to divine facts. Under these conditions, they developed a rigorously abstract conception of the divine. Soon, traditional priesthoods were marginalized with their obscure religious ideas, reduced to the practical function of sacrificers and excluded from divination reserved for the druids in astrological form. As for the song of the bards, more moving and simpler than philosophical speculation, but still useful for celebrating the social order, it was confined to a limited, complementary role. There was no longer any question of praising anthropomorphic divine figures. Similarly, the visual arts are forbidden figurative representations in favor of abstraction alone, just as the ideas of the learned theology of the Druids were abstracted. Divine knowledge thus became their reserved domain.
The ban on images, which they upheld as vigorously as they protected their monopoly on writing, actually had several motivations. The importation of Greek and Etruscan ceramics and metal objects, which spread from Marseilles in particular, encouraged chieftains' desire to be represented in the image of their heroes. But it also spread an anthropomorphic representation of the gods throughout the Gallic world, translating Greek mythology and introducing conceptions of the divine that ran counter to the speculative theology of the Druids. From this point onwards, the encounter with Greek models gave rise to a new, original and hybrid art form, in the service of the Druids' influence. Artists adopted the new techniques, retaining only the non-figurative elements (the shape of objects, colors, ornamental motifs), and developed an art of geometric composition. Druidic Gaul thus opted for abstract art, the best support for a theology of philosophers, which also offered new perspectives for the formal research of craftsmen under the orders of the Druids. Poetry and music were probably under the same regime.
Control of the arts underpinned the institution of a public religion: cults that allowed the community and its hierarchy to take center stage. It was organized around a pantheon of six deities known through their “Roman interpretation”, six forces presiding over as many dimensions of collective life: Mercury (trade), Apollo (care and healing), Mars (war), Jupiter (forces of nature), Minerva (manual labor) and Dis Pater (linked to the cycles of life and death). The Druids became their prophets, obligatory intermediaries in any communication with them, and directed the staging of their cult. The ancient soothsayers became their vicars, charged with carrying out the gestures of sacrifice; the bards expressed their action in music. This dramaturgy was played out in theaters of a new kind: sanctuaries based on the Greek model (of the temenos), which the Gauls discovered during their colonial and war expeditions to Italy and Greece1. These expeditions multiplied in the 3rdcentury , under the authority of the Druids. From then on, these Greek-style sanctuaries became the focal point of the Gallic political communities in the process of being established.
The political structuring of Gaul
The confederal structuring of the populations of the future Gaul - already firmly established in a territory enclosed by the Pyrenees, the Alps, the Rhine and the coast - was the product of a slow process. A first group - designated by the Greeks as “Celtic” - brought together peoples interested in the trade polarized by Massalia (the name Keltas designates “associates”). The lure of profit then encouraged an influx of tribes who joined together to form the “Volques” (“peoples”) of Toulouse and Nîmes. The dynamism of these communities was such that it triggered a Gallic colonization movement in the East, northern Italy, Bavaria, Anatolia... To the north, the Belgians, and to the west, the Aquitanians, formed the other two major groups making up Gaul (Gallia) from the 4th century onwards. The whole was divided into some 80 peoples or cities, who knew each other well and maintained intense diplomatic relations, both in alliance and rivalry. These political ties were organized by the Druids. After overseeing the creation of a precise map of the territory of Gaul, which was used to build the first road infrastructures (later improved by the Romans), the Druids set up their own organization. Each year, at the geometric center of Gaul, between Orleans and Chartres, an assembly of representatives designated from the druid brotherhoods present in each city met. This map and this assembly would later become the first instruments of Gaul's political organization.
Before that, the new public religion controlled by the druids was the cement of the new Gallic “nation”: it brought together citizens of all statuses under the authority of the druids, bypassing traditional hierarchies but without challenging them. At departmental level, the various “cities” (Aedui, Venetes, Sequanes, Arvernes, etc.) were made up of three basic institutions analogous to those of the Greek cities and Rome. A Senate, made up of the landowning and military elites, exercised superior authority. A general assembly brought together the plebs, divided into parties, protected by tribunes from the nobility, and divided locally into multi-level territorial entities (families, villages, districts). Unlike the Roman assembly, which votes but does not deliberate, the Gallic workers' assembly is a place for debate, sometimes heated. Finally, at the top of each city, power was exercised by magistrates elected each year: as a general rule, a civil ruler, co-opted by the Senate, and a military leader, elected by the assembly.
But Gaul's political organization is distinguished above all by its confederal structure: on a broader scale, the annual meeting of the druids' deputies in fact formed the first “national assembly” of the Gallic peoples. The powers of this confederate institution were immense: it arbitrated disputes between cities and between individuals, promulgated community law, supervised the election of local magistrates and organized the election of the confederation's president2. Until the 1st century B.C., this assembly of druids was primarily a diplomatic institution; but faced with the Roman conquest, it provided the model for the assembly of confederate warriors who, in 52 B.C., elected Vercingetorix as both holder of the “national principate” and confederate military magistrate.
For several centuries already, the general assembly of the druids had been coupled with assemblies of the Gallic chiefs, whose periodic convening and meeting was facilitated by the efficient system of post relays set up for the religious assembly. In the 5th century, a first Gallic coalition brought together the “Celtic” peoples around Berry; in the 3rd century, another confederation united “Belgic” Gaul. The annexation of southeastern Gaul (125-121 B.C.) by Rome undermined the general assembly of Gallic chiefs, which may well have led to its replacement by the assembly of warriors, modelled on the assembly of druids.
After the 50s BC and the military defeat, Gaul had to give up sovereignty. Its political organization, however, explains its singular fate within the Roman world, as the victorious armies took very little possession of it, yet it was quickly integrated by Rome: endowed with infrastructure, efficient institutions and established laws and regulations, Gaul was easily grafted onto Rome's empire. In a sense, Caesar completed the political unification of the Gallic nation under a unifying leader, before Augustus perpetuated this construction by placing its central institution under the aegis of Rome in its new center, the capital of Roman Gaul, Lyon.
Jean-Louis Brunaux's daring and fascinating account not only offers a fresh perspective on Gaul. It is also a particularly stimulating way of broadening the scope for comparison between ancient political models. And he invites us to reconsider the long history of the nation, to measure with nuance what the political forms of France owe (or not) to the invention of Gaul.
Notes :
1 - For example, the capture of Delphi, in 278.
2 - Each year, a city was awarded the “national principate”, often alternating between the Aedui and Sequanes