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The Celtic languages are a group of related languages descended from Proto-Celtic. They form a branch of the Indo-European language family. The term "Celtic" was first used to describe this language group by Edward Lhuyd in 1707, following Paul-Yves Pezron, who made the explicit link between the Celts described by classical writers and the Welsh and Breton languages.
Gallia, was a region of Western Europe during the Iron Age occupied by present-day France, Belgium and other neighbouring countries.
In Gallo-Roman religion, Ambisagrus was a Gaulish god worshipped at Aquileia in Cisalpine Gaul, where he was identified with Jupiter Optimus Maximus.
The Lepontii were an ancient Celtic people occupying portions of Rhaetia in the Alps during the late Bronze Age/Iron Age. Recent archeological excavations and their association with the Golasecca culture and Canegrate culture point to a Celtic affiliation. From the analysis of their language and the place names of the old Lepontic areas, it was hypothesized that these people represent a layer similar to that Celtic but previous to the Gallic penetration in the Po valley. The suggestion has been made that the Lepontii may have been celticized Ligurians.
The Ligurian language was spoken in pre-Roman times and into the Roman era by an ancient people of north-western Italy and current south-eastern France known as the Ligures.
Cisalpine Gaul was the part of Italy inhabited by Celts (Gauls) during the 4th and 3rd centuries BC. After its conquest by the Roman Republic in the 220s BC it was considered geographically part of Roman Italy but remained administratively separated. It was a Roman province from c. 81 BC until 42 BC, when it was de jure merged into Roman Italy as indicated in Caesar's unpublished acts. Cisalpine means "on the hither side of the Alps", as opposed to Transalpine Gaul.
Lepontic is an ancient Alpine Celtic language that was spoken in parts of Rhaetia and Cisalpine Gaul between 550 and 100 BC. Lepontic is attested in inscriptions found in an area centered on Lugano, Switzerland, and including the Lake Como and Lake Maggiore areas of Italy.
Celtiberian or Northeastern Hispano-Celtic is an extinct Indo-European language of the Celtic branch spoken by the Celtiberians in an area of the Iberian Peninsula between the headwaters of the Douro, Tagus, Júcar and Turia rivers and the Ebro river. This language is directly attested in nearly 200 inscriptions dated to the 2nd and 1st centuries BC, mainly in Celtiberian script, a direct adaptation of the northeastern Iberian script, but also in the Latin alphabet. The longest extant Celtiberian inscriptions are those on three Botorrita plaques, bronze plaques from Botorrita near Zaragoza, dating to the early 1st century BC, labelled Botorrita I, III and IV. In the northwest was another Celtic language, Gallaecian, that was closely related to Celtiberian.
Ambicatus or Ambigatus is a legendary Gallic king of the Bituriges, said to have lived ca. 600 BC. According to a legend recounted by Livy, he sent his sister's sons Bellovesus and Segovesus in search of new lands to settle because of overpopulation in their homeland. Segovesus headed towards the Hercynian Forest, while Bellovesus is said to have led the Gallic invasion of northern Italy during the legendary reign of the fifth king of Rome, Tarquinius Priscus, where he allegedly conquered the Etruscans and founded the city of Mediolanum (Milan).
The Proto-Celtic language, also called Common Celtic, is the ancestral proto-language of all the known Celtic languages, and a descendant of the Proto-Indo-European language. It is not directly attested in writing, but has been partially reconstructed through the comparative method. Proto-Celtic is generally believed to have been spoken between 1300 and 800 BCE, after which it began to evolve into individual Celtic languages. Proto-Celtic is usually associated with the Urnfield or Hallstatt archaeological cultures. Celtic languages share common features with Italic languages that are not found in other branches of Indo-European, suggesting the possibility that an earlier Italo-Celtic linguistic unity may have existed.
The Continental Celtic languages is the now-extinct group of the Celtic languages that were spoken on the continent of Europe and in central Anatolia, as distinguished from the Insular Celtic languages of the British Isles and Brittany. Continental Celtic is a geographic, rather than linguistic, grouping of the ancient Celtic languages.
The Golasecca culture was a Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age culture in northern Italy, whose type-site was excavated at Golasecca in the province of Varese, Lombardy, where, in the area of Monsorino at the beginning of the 19th century, Abbot Giovanni Battista Giani made the first findings of about fifty graves with pottery and metal objects.
The Insubres or Insubri were an ancient Celtic population settled in Insubria, in what is now the Italian region of Lombardy. They were the founders of Mediolanum (Milan). Though completely Gaulish at the time of Roman conquest, they were the result of the fusion of pre-existing Ligurian and Celtic population with Gaulish tribes.
Bellovesus is a legendary Gallic chief of the Bituriges, said to have lived ca. 600 BC. According to a legend recounted by Livy, the king Ambigatus sent his sister's sons Bellovesus and Segovesus in search of new lands to settle because of overpopulation in their homeland. While Segovesus headed towards the Hercynian Forest, Bellovesus is said to have led the Gallic invasion of northern Italy during the legendary reign of the fifth king of Rome, Tarquinius Priscus, where he allegedly conquered the Etruscans and founded the city of Mediolanum (Milan).
The Celtic Cisalpine Gaulish inscriptions are frequently combined with the Lepontic inscriptions under the term Celtic language remains in northern Italy. While it is possible that the Lepontians were autochthonous to northern Italy since the end of the 2nd millennium BC, it is well-known that the Gauls invaded the regions north of the river Po in several waves since the 5th century BC. They apparently took over the art of writing from the Lepontians, including some of the orthographic peculiarities. There are 20 Cisalpine Gaulish inscriptions, five of which are longer than just one or two words. The inscriptions stem largely from the area south of the Lepontians.
The Gauls were a group of Celtic peoples of Continental Europe in the Iron Age and the Roman period. The area they originally inhabited was known as Gaul. Their Gaulish language forms the main branch of the Continental Celtic languages.
Gaulish was an ancient Celtic language that was spoken in parts of Continental Europe before and during the period of the Roman Empire. In the narrow sense, Gaulish was the language spoken by the Celtic inhabitants of Gaul. In a wider sense, it also comprises varieties of Celtic that were spoken across much of central Europe ("Noric"), parts of the Balkans, and Anatolia ("Galatian"), which are thought to have been closely related. The more divergent Lepontic of Northern Italy has also sometimes been subsumed under Gaulish.
References
- ↑ Kruta, Venceslas (1991). The Celts. Thames and Hudson. pp. 52–56.
- ↑ Stifter, David (2008). Old Celtic Languages (PDF). p. 33.