this same period the British Isles were overrun and thoroughly occupied by Celtic Nordics named Goidels and the Celtic tongue was imposed upon the Mediterranean population, although the latter survived as a race in large numbers, especially in the western parts of England and Ireland. These Celtic-speaking Mediterraneans were, until recently, called "Iberians"; but fifteen hundred years ago the invading Saxons called all the people they found in England "Welsh."
In about 300 B.C. a new wave of Celts entered Gaul and Britain. This time they came from the German plains, speaking a somewhat different form of Celtic. On the Continent they were known as the Belgæ and in the British Isles as the Brythons. They gave their name to the British Islands. By Cæsar's time they had conquered the northern third of Gaul and all of England; but the Roman armies put an end to their farther advance. They did not reach Ireland.
Roman writers describe the Celts in Gaul as pure Nordics and speak of them as forming the ruling classes and military aristocracy until their virtual destruction by Julius Cæsar in his ten years of conquest. His campaigns in Gaul are said to have destroyed a million men, chiefly of the warrior caste.
At the time of their greatest expansion the Gauls sacked Rome (387 B.C.). They pressed no farther south and soon retreated to and remained in Cisalpine Gaul, that is, the valley of the Po and the country north of the Apennines.
The Nordic Gauls or Galatians—to use the Greek form of their name—devastated Greece about 297 B.C. and passed over into Asia Minor. There they settled in what was long known as Galatia, now Angora, the present seat of the Turkish Government. These Galatians were the last Nordics to enter Asia Minor, if we except the armies of the Crusaders.
From the description of the physical characters of the Celtic-speaking tribes they closely resembled the Germanic tribes that followed them into the Roman Empire. Some French anthropologists find that the present-day population of France is nearly four-fifths Alpine and they have decided to call the Alpines "Celts," to avoid admitting that the Celts were physically the same as the hated Germans. This error is not shared by the leading French anthropologists, such as deLapouge, but it has been accepted by some anthropologists.
Careful study of the references to the Celts by classic writers leaves no doubt that the Gauls, Galatians, Belgæ, and Brythons were Nordics as were their successors the Visigoths, Suevi, Alemanni, Burgundians, and, above all, the Franks. In fact, France down to the time of the Reformation was a Nordic land.
Soon after the time when the Belgæ first appear in Europe, Nordic tribes speaking a Germanic dialect are mentioned in history. The first of these tribes to come in conflict with the Romans were the Teutones and Cimbri, who after defeating several Roman armies, were utterly destroyed in 103 B.C. These people were the forerunners of many tribes and nations which emerged, one after another, from the swamps and forests of the north. The original home of most of them seems to have been in Scandinavia, where they had been developing for several thousand years. These newcomers were the latest and final linguistic group to appear in the history of Europe. As Teutonic Nordics they have dominated the scene ever since. The use of the word Teutonic is here purely linguistic in order to distinguish these late comers from the earlier, Celtic-speaking Nordic tribes.
The Teutonic Nordics formed a substantial element among the Belgæ and Brythons and their expansion may well have been the cause of the westward thrust of the latter. The Teutons began to press southward on the Roman Empire early in the Christian era and this pressure continued for some three centuries until the Empire collapsed under their successive invasions.
As said above, the Celts and the Teutons were identical physically and the use of the word "Celtic" cannot be justified as a racial term at the present day. Among living Nordics, those of Celtic origin cannot be distinguished physically from those of German or Scandinavian extraction. Possibly red hair and the psychical peculiarities associated with it may be rather more Celtic than Scandinavian. We find in classical writers the names and description of the barbarians beyond the borders of the Empire. They were all described as blue-eyed, fair or red-haired giants. Height, however, must be considered as relative to that of the Romans, whose legions in the later years of the empire were apparently composed of small men. With each generation the names applied to the barbarian tribes change, but the description of physical characters remains the same.
The finest of these Teutonic barbarians were the Goths who, according to their historian, Jordanes, crossed over from Sweden about 300 B.C. and settled on the banks of the Vistula, whence they expanded into South Russia, which they occupied for centuries. In fact, a remnant of their language (Krim Götisch) was spoken in the Crimea until the seventeenth century. The Gepidæ were a branch of the Goths who lay to the west of the main body, and the Alans, a closely related tribe, were located well to the east. It is interesting to note that some of the Alans, fleeing from the Huns, took refuge in the Caucasus where the Ossetes to this day show occasional Nordic physical characters.
The main body of the Gothic nation was split in two in 375 A.D. by the invasion of the Huns, a Tatar people from Central Asia. Those who took refuge in the west, in South Germany and Gaul, were called Visigoths. A part of the Visigoths, however, fled across the Danube, devastated the provinces of the Byzantine Empire and slew the reigning emperor, Valens, in 378 A.D.
The eastern branch, or Ostrogoths, were conquered by the Huns and remained in Dacia. Later, after Attila's death and the disruption of his empire, the Ostrogoths, under the great Theodoric, invaded Italy and came near to building a unified Italian nation nearly fourteen hundred years ago.
The Visigoths, who had been long in contact with Roman civilization, occupied Gaul. When Attila crossed the Rhine in 451 A.D. they fought on the side of the Romans at Chalons, one of the decisive battles of history, and their king, the Visigothic Theodoric, fell in the battle. The Ostrogoths, on the other hand, were the best troops of the Hunnish host.
The Visigoths entered Spain in 412 A.D. Their allies, the Suevi, conquered and ruled Galicia and the provinces on the Atlantic which now constitute Portugal. The invasion of Spain by the Visigoths resulted in the expulsion of a closely related Teutonic people, the Vandals, who, with their allies, a remnant of the Alans, crossed over into Africa in 428 A.D. On the site of Carthage the Vandals erected a kingdom which lasted a hundred years. They ruled the African coast westward to the Atlantic, conquered and settled in Corsica and under their king, Genseric, sacked Rome in 455 A.D.
These Vandals, originally from Sweden, first appear in history on the Baltic coast, thence they passed down through Central Europe and westward into France and thence into Spain, where they settled and remained until they were driven into Africa. They may have left behind some of their blood to mingle with the later-coming Germanic tribes in Spain. It is possible also, though not probable, that to them are due some of the blond characters still found in the Atlas Mountains. As a race, however, their disappearance is complete.
The Visigoths maintained their control in Spain until 711 A.D. when the Mohammedan Arabs crossed the Straits of Gibraltar and completely defeated the Visigothic armies. Why the power of this people collapsed so suddenly and completely is one of the mysteries of history, but after the great seven days' battle on the Guadalquivir in which their king, Roderick, was slain, the whole peninsula was easily conquered by the Arabs. At this time, it is true, the blood of the Visigoths had been greatly mixed with that of the subject races, resulting perhaps in a weakening of their fighting power.
One of the reasons for the easy conquest of the Visigoths by the Moors lay in the hatred for them as Arians by the old Orthodox Catholic population who regarded their conquerors as heretics, and the assistance rendered by the Jews whom the Visigoths had treated harshly and who are reputed to have induced the Moors to make their invasion.
A remnant of the Visigoths fled northerly into southern Gaul, which was called Gothia Septimania. There the name Visigoths was corrupted into Vigot or Bigot, which was a term of reproach used
