08-07-2010, 03:15 PM
There are two points that some folks here seem to be ignoring:
1) Caesar knew - and even counted as friends (Diviciacus, for instance) - educated Gauls, who certainly would have been able to tell him the name by which the Gauls called themselves.
2) A fair number of "Romans" in Caesar's day were ethnically Cisalpine Gauls - yes, they had become Romanized in the 2nd c. BC and spoke Latin, but they still maintained some sense of their Celtic heritage and surely would have passed on information about their former Celtic language and culture to their non-Celtic neighbors (and now fellow-Romans).
1) Caesar knew - and even counted as friends (Diviciacus, for instance) - educated Gauls, who certainly would have been able to tell him the name by which the Gauls called themselves.
2) A fair number of "Romans" in Caesar's day were ethnically Cisalpine Gauls - yes, they had become Romanized in the 2nd c. BC and spoke Latin, but they still maintained some sense of their Celtic heritage and surely would have passed on information about their former Celtic language and culture to their non-Celtic neighbors (and now fellow-Romans).
Christopher Gwinn
