"Celt" Conjecture

[Rumo]

I agree that the Rhine was not the cultural barrier between the Gauls and the Germans and I dont believe Ceasar did either, it was a convenient political border to illustrate that he can conquered all of Gaul. I dont take all he writes a verbatum statement of what he really believed. This does not prove that he was clueless to the reality.
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It looks bad doesn't it ... but only if you take it literally rather than as allegorical, and propoganda at that. This, for me, is not evidence that the Romans did not know their enemy in reality. I cannot equate the Ceasar who achived what he did with a guy who did not know where Germania really started. As I have intimated before enthongraphy was not a science back then.

Appeals to metaphors, allegory, propaganda, etc are tenuous and sometimes self-defeating when they not properly explained and argued. How would we know when someone makes a careful observation or when he just holds some preconceived ideas? People also lie, people are also ignorant, people are also wrong. If we don't allow Caesar and other authors to be like that, they will stop being people, they will become our own idealized constructs.

And the reason I'm arguing about the factual accuracy of BG is because it was argued here that Caesar's assertion on the name Celts have for themselves must be regarded true, must be read ad litteram.

Then please bash in these quotes attributed to Generals who said such things ... I am interested in who said what.

I meant the other way around. You should bring such quotes if you claim military officers have solid ethnographic knowledge. I'd like to read some memoirs, a journal, or, why not, a short study authored by a US general, about - let's say - marriage traditions and rituals in a small village on the slopes of Zagros mountains.

As for time dissipating identity there is still a country called Belgium today which has its route way back when, certainly longer that we are being asked to accept with the Massilia conection. Sure very different from back then but much more has happened in the interim.

There's a considerable hiatus between ancient Belgae and modern Belgians (care to discuss about Belgians in ... 9th century AD?). Modern Belgian identity is not really ethnic (though sometimes there might be a conjunctural emphasis which can be considered ethnic in nature), and most important, it was a revived under a bookish influence. Thus this example rather suggests the opposite. In a tribal, illiterate world, the identity and the name of the Belgae would have died (as it did, actually). So why then should we believe the name of the Celts reflects an authentic age-old aboriginal identity and not a Graeco-Roman construct?