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Notes: Chapter 6

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Notes for Chapter 6, Vendorix, Southern Gaul, 218 B.C.

1. Gauls, Celts. I don’t claim to be any sort of expert on the Gauls or other Celtic peoples, but I found some fascinating sources on which to base Vendorix and his family. See the Bibliography under Gauls. The tricky thing about using these sources is that it’s sometimes hard to distinguish among what applied to the Gauls of France and Switzerland, what applied to the Celtic peoples of Britain and Ireland, and what applied to all of them. They were all Celts, but most of the authors available to me are British or Irish, so their focus tends to be on their own local Celtic peoples. I’ve done what I could to sort this out—apologies if I’ve tried to apply Irish information to the Gauls.
2. Bright half of the Celtic month about to commence. The only existing Celtic calendar, the fragmentary Calendar of Coligny, divides Celtic time into sixty-two months of twenty-nine or thirty days each (thus covering some five years at a time). Each month was divided into two halves, the bright half and the dark half—apparently references to lunar cycles, as the calendar seems to count nights rather than days. Some months were deemed auspicious (lucky) and others inauspicious, though there were auspicious days within inauspicious months and vice versa. As very little else is known about the Celtic calendar, I’ve not made many references to it. See Dillon & Chadwick, p. 15, and James, p. 90.
3. Four-pommel saddle. For a description of the Gallic saddle, see James, p. 79.
4. Pyrenees. In general, I’ve used the ancient names for places, but in some cases I choose to use a more familiar modern name, such as the Pyrenees, the mountain range between Spain and France (Gaul). See Place Names.
5. Oppidum. See the discussions of Gallic hill forts, which the Romans called oppida (singular, oppidum), in James, p. 60, and the other Celtic sources I cite in the bibliography. These were fortified spaces, usually on hilltops, where the farmers in the surrounding area could store their crops, hold their meetings and festivals, and protect their people.
6. Butterflies. Dorling Kindersley’s Spain, a guidebook in their Eyewitness Travel Guides series, mentions that many butterflies inhabit the high valleys of the Pyrenees, especially the Vall d’Aran in northwest Catalonia. The guidebook says the best time to see the butterflies is May through July, but I think they might still be present here and there as late as the end of August, though I don’t know this for certain. Hannibal’s passage is east of the Vall d’Aran, though not so terribly far (perhaps just over 100 miles), and later than the high butterfly season, but I found the notion of clouds of butterflies around Hannibal enchanting. The Dorling Kindersley guidebooks are marvelous.
7. Numidian cavalry scouts. Hannibal’s cavalry consisted primarily of Spanish troops (mainly heavy cavalry) and Numidians (mainly light cavalry). The latter were from Numidia, a country west of Carthage in North Africa, in what is now Algeria. The Numidians were famed for their warlike skills, and the Romans later used them too. See Connolly, Greece and Rome at War, p. 149.
8. Elephants. Hannibal left Spain with somewhere between 37 and 40 elephants. We see them here through Vendorix’s fascinated eyes. The sources are unclear as to how many elephants survived to arrive in Italy. I have all of them survive, aside from the loss of one during the Rhodanus crossing. During and after the battle at the Trebia River (see chapter 7), the cold weather killed all or most of the rest, except for the one that Hannibal is known to have still possessed after he crossed the Apennines into central Italy—his favorite, called Surrus. Two years later, in 216, Mago was supposed to bring more elephants and other reinforcements and supplies to Hannibal but was diverted to Spain. However, Livy (xxiii, 18) has elephants present at Hannibal’s siege of Casilinum, so some must have reached him by then, if Livy is to be trusted on this. Additionally, Bomilcar brought reinforcements in 215, including an unknown number of elephants (Livy, xxiii, 42). In 211, when Hannibal marched to relieve Capua, he had thirty-three elephants (Livy, xxvi, 5) despite the loss of some six elephants at Nola in 215 (Livy, xxxiii, 46) and eight at the River Himera in Sicily in 212 (Livy, xxv, 40). He lost more elephants in Lucania, at Grumentum, in 207 (Livy, xxvii, 42). Hasdrubal Barca lost many elephants at Metaurus in 207 (Livy, xxvii, 49; Polybius, xi, 1). Seven were sent to Hannibal from Carthage via Mago in 205 (Livy, xxix, 5), but Mago’s elephant attack was repulsed in Italian Gaul in 203 (Livy, xxx, 18-19). Mago had arrived in western Italy but failed to link up with Hannibal. Later in 202, Scipio used special anti-elephant tactics against Hannibal, a factor in the latter’s defeat. Peddie gathers these statistics from the ancient sources and spends several pages discussing Hannibal’s war elephants (Peddie, Appendix B). See also ________.
9. Punic. What the Romans called the language of Carthage. “Punic” stems from Phoenician, the ancestors of the Carthaginians.
10. Volcae Arecomici. Vendorix’s Gallic tribe. See Who’s Who.
11. Good wine, though Vendorix preferred beer. Most Mediterranean peoples, including the Greeks, Romans, and Carthaginians, were primarily wine drinkers, especially in Scipio’s day. The Gauls, on the other hand, preferred to drink beer. The Gauls also drank milk and used butter, which Romans tended to dislike.
12. Description of Numidian costume. See Connolly, Greece and Rome at War, p. 149.
13. Harvest festival of Lughnasa. James, p. 155, describes the four chief Celtic festivals. Since the Lughnasa was celebrated in Lugdunum, a city in central Gaul, I felt safe in using it here. The festival was associated with the god Lugh.
14. Description of Vendorix’s oppidum. Most of this comes from my various Celtic sources, which describe Celtic agriculture and their hill forts as the center of active farming communities. Some of it, of course, comes from imagination.
15. Description of Gallic costume. See Connolly, Greece and Rome at War, pp. 113 and 125.
16. Pyrenees shepherds. According to Encarta, “Dogs,” this is a breed of thick-bodied dogs with thick, white fur, broad faces, and deep chests. The breed did exist in Vendorix’s time.
17. Emmer, spelt. Grains. Emmer is a Eurasian wheat grown mainly as animal fodder. Spelt is a hardy wheat, usually grown in the mountains, and not of the quality of wheat grown for bread. Source Encarta Dictionary.
18. Narbo. Another Greek-founded trading city on the southern Gallic coast, but west of the Rhodanus River. The region eventually became known to the Romans as Narbonese Gaul.
19. Clearly a man of the nobility. Carthage was no backwater barbarian land, and Hannibal no barbarian lord. Indeed, she was a fully Hellenized nation, and Hannibal, born to her noble class, no doubt had a first-rate education even though he went with his father to Spain when he was only nine, there to live mostly in a succession of army camps.
20. Obligation of rearing Vendorix’s twin sons. Caesar, writing in his Gallic War (6, 18), says of Celtic fathers and sons: “…they do not allow their sons to approach them openly until they have grown to an age when they can bear the burden of military service, and they count it a disgrace for a son who is still in his boyhood to take his place publicly in the presence of his father.” Quoted in James, p. 53. I’ve softened this a bit so that Vendorix’s relatives rear his sons while he rears theirs, and I don’t limit contact with their father as much as Caesar says.