Volcae

The Volcae (German called Volker or also called Volken , from the Teutons called Welsche ) were an ancient Celtic people. The Volcae probably had their original settlement area between the Rhine , Main and Leine and in the Thuringian Forest .

background

Map of Gaul (58 BC).

The Teutons named all Celts after the tribe of the Volcae as * walhoz (Welsche). Caesar used the term to differentiate himself from the Gauls . According to Caesar, they settled in the Hercynian Forest , which in Caesar's time included the Black Forest to the Thuringian Forest, the Ore Mountains and the Bohemian Forest, as well as the Carpathian Mountains . This is considered proof that at the turn of the ages the Celtic culture was still important in Central Europe . In the centuries that followed, the Volcae were Romanized and merged into the Celto-Roman culture. Numerous unearthed coins called rainbow bowls are attributed to them.

According to the entry in the Encyclopædia Britannica , the Volcae were a Celtic tribe in Gaul, divided into two groups. First, there were the Tectosages , in the valley of the upper Garonne around Tolosa settled and on the other Arecomici that on the right bank of the Rhône lived and their center Nemausus was. Both areas belonged to around 121 BC. To the Roman province of Gallia transalpina . The tectos were involved in raids on Greece and Asia Minor and, according to earlier opinions, the gold Tolosa was famous for came from the looting of a temple in Delphi .

According to this view, the Volcae a part of the three armies were under the Celtic military leader Brennus Macedonia , Illyria overran and Greece ( Senonen , Elvier = southern Protohelvetier and Gaesaten = Volcae and others). The booty was known in Rome as the Gold of Tolosa and was kept in the national shrine, in whose sacred pool the treasure of 15,000 talents or 110,000 pounds of silver and 5,000 pounds of gold was sunk. The tectos came about in 278 BC. As mercenaries to Asia Minor and settled in the area of ​​today's Ankara . They called themselves Galatians here .

Quintus Servilius Caepio , who formed the Volcae coalition in 105 BC. He actually raised the treasure, for which, according to legend, the gods punished him with a defeat in a battle against the Cimbri .

The Volcae term was later used as a historical generic term, which also includes Helvetier and Boier .

Strabo assigned the following areas to the Volcae in his Geographica . He wrote that the tectos were only located in the immediate vicinity of Toulouse while the Arecomisci colonized the entire coastal region from the Rhône to the Pyrenees . Claudius Ptolemy , however, ascribed the western coastline to the tecto legends.

literature

• A. Dirkzwager; Strabo: Strabo via Gallia Narbonensis. EJ Brill, Leiden 1975, ISBN 9-004-04367-5 .
• Christian Goudineau, Michel Christol : Nîmes et les Volques Arècomiques au Ier siècle avant J.-C. In: Gallia . Volume 45, 1987, Number 1, pp. 87-103 (on- line ).
• Piergiuseppe Scardigli:  Volcae. In: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde (RGA). 2nd Edition. Volume 32, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2006, ISBN 3-11-018387-0 , pp. 563-567.

Web links

Wiktionary: Volcae  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Volcae (Celtic tribe) in: Encyclopædia Britannica.
2. ↑ See Piergiuseppe Scardigli:  Volcae. In: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde (RGA). 2nd Edition. Volume 32, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2006, ISBN 3-11-018387-0 , pp. 563-564.
3. ↑ Strabo - Geography on penelope.uchicago.edu, accessed on May 24, 2014.
4. ↑ A. Dirkzwager; Strabo: Strabo via Gallia Narbonensis. P. 86.