The Celts and Romans

also Kelt, c. 1600, from Latin Celta, singular of Celtae, from Greek Keltoi, Herodotus's word for the Gauls (who also were called Galatai). Used by the Romans of continental Gauls but apparently not of the British Celtic tribes. Originally in English in reference to ancient peoples; the extension of the word to their modern descendants is by 1830s, from French use in reference to Brittany (from c. 1700).

https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=keltoi

Homework

Read the sections below.  Use the Table of Contents above to navigate if you wish.

Questions to Ponder:

1.  Of the three theories: Celtic from the East, West or Center, which appeals to you?

2. How did women come to rule most of Gaul?

3.  What do you think prompted such a dramatic change in the Celts from Hallstatt to La Tène, from wealthy traders to marauding war bands?

4. What do you make of Julius Caesar's descriptions of Celtic society and Druids?

5. What do you make of Gimbutas' interpretation of ancient Earth Mother Goddess religions?

6. What aspects of the Celtic culture do you think led to their decline, from ruling almost all of Europe to exile on some lonely islands in the North Sea?

7. From what you know, how would you compare the religious traditions of the Germans, Celts and Romans?

8. What was it that led to the success of the Latin language from such humble beginnings?  Their original Indo-European culture?  They're syncrestic approach to conquered cultures?  Luck?  Let's discuss.

If you hate reading on the web, you can CLICK HERE to open a 36 page pdf of this long web page which you can print out; however, you'll have to go back to this web page to click through to some of the attachments.

Introduction

Last week we followed the evolution of the Germanic tribes from Northern Europe into history.  This week we do the same for Celtic speaking peoples, who we call the Celts, who in the first millennium BCE inhabited a wide area across southern and western Europe before coming under the domination of the Romans.  We'll look at what we know of the history of the Celtic people, with their art, myths and religions, and then do the same for the Romans.

Origins of the Celtic Languages

In prehistory we don't have written records, so it is very hard to track the spread of languages.  What we try to do is to track the spread of characteristic material cultures and genetics over a wide area and then see which cultures match the distribution of a language as it enters history.  The problem is that in the second half of the first millennium BCE, when the Greeks and Romans were describing Celtic tribes, they appeared to be widespread, with tribes in modern day Spain, France, northern Italy and even central Turkey.  There are a number of ways to fit the archeology of prehistory to this broad expanse of Celtic speaking peoples, and the "Origins of the Celts" is today very much of a puzzle with broad debate.

A recent theory, Celtic from the West, suggests that the Bell Beakers brought a proto-Celtic language when they migrated from the steppes to western Europe.  It's called Celtic from the West because the earliest Bell Beaker artifacts were found in Spain and Portugal.  It does seem likely that the Bell Beakers brought an Indo-European language with them, and as they settled across Britain and western Europe, their language may have become the lingua franca of trade.  Certainly the Celtic people seemed to be everywhere the Bell Beakers had been when history unveiled the Celts at the end of the first millennium BCE.  The main criticism of the theory is the span of time between the Bell Beakers and the Celts.  How could a language group survive for two millennia without Balkanizing into totally different languages?  Advocates say that the Bronze and Iron age were filled with trade, and the Celtic language would have been perpetuated through trade links.  But we don't know.

Another recent theory is Celtic from the Center.  We know that there were Celts in northern Italy and neighboring Gaul (modern day France) during the first millennium BCE.  We also know that the Latin spoken by the Romans is the closest of the major Indo-European language groups to Celtic.  Perhaps the Celtic language arose in northern Italy and/or neighboring Gaul, and spread during the Hallstatt period throughout Europe, again based on trade.

The conventional,  mid-20th century view of the origins of the Celtic language is termed Celtic from the East.  It posits that the Celtic language developed over a 1000 year period in central Europe, as succeeding cultures developed and flourished.  Let's see how Europe developed over the same time period that we looked at last week in the Nordic Bronze Age.

Bronze and Iron Age Archeology in Europe

You remember the Únětice culture of 2300-1600 BCE in the Czech Republic and central Europe, when rich princes seemed to unite former Bell Beakers and Corded Ware people into a culture which controlled trading networks of Baltic amber with small militaries.  The Únětice culture was followed by a Tumulus culture from 1600 to 1300 BCE, which spread more widely, from France to Hungary.  The Tumulus culture is known for their kurgan burials as well as villages which surrounded highly fortified hill forts with thick walls.  

Urnfield Culture 1300 to 750 BCE

The Urnfield Culture, from 1300 to 750 BCE succeeded the Tumulus culture, and is noted for a change in burials, from kurgans to cremations in funerary urns buried in fields.   During this period, the advanced civilizations in the eastern Mediterranean collapsed, and it is likely that warfare was widespread, evidenced by even more hill forts and ritual deposition of weapons including swords, daggers and armor in water.  Winning armies may have deposited the weapons of their victims into watery graves, as a sacrifice to the gods for their victory.

Women Leaders in Gaul

In a paper titled, Re-approaching Celts: Origins, Society, and Social Change, Rachel Pope observes that in the seventh and sixth centuries BCE, women were buried on average with more valuable grave goods than men.  Across France, Germany and Austria, she posits a "matrifocal" or women led society, where women had power and status.  There was much trade at that time with the Etruscans in central Italy, who also had extraordinary female wealth.  There was also trade with Greece, importing Greek wine to Gaul through a Greek trading port, Massalia, modern day Marseille, the oldest city in France.  Pope claims that in Gaul (modern day France, Belgium, Switzerland and parts of Germany and northern Italy) in the sixth century BCE, all high status graves belonged to women.

Perhaps the wealthiest grave of the Hallstatt period belonged to a woman termed the Princess of Vix.  Buried under a large kurgan in Burgundy, France around 525 BCE, the Princess was no more than 35 years old.  She was buried lying on a four wheeled wagon with an extraordinary gold torc necklace and in the grave chamber was a huge Greek bronze drinking krater, five feet high and capable of holding 1100 liters of water and wine.

The Vix settlement was located where the River Seine crossed a major land route from the Mediterranean to northern Europe, and it is likely that some of the wealth was derived from control of the tin trade from the mines in Cornwall, Britain.  

La Tène Culture 450-50 BCE

Shortly after the Princess of Vix died, there was a major change in culture, across France, Germany and Austria.  The La Tène culture is named after the type site of La Tène in Lake Neuchâtel, Switzerland.  In 1857 the water level of the lake dropped dramatically, and thousands of objects were found which had been ritually deposited into the lake.  These included iron swords, lance heads, shield bosses, brooches, tools, chariot parts and human and animal bones.  There were almost no female ornaments.

The La Tène period is noted for its artistic style: spirals and curvilinear geometric patterns on bronze vessels, helmets, shields, horse trappings, and elite jewelry of torc neck rings and brooches:

The transition from Hallstatt to the La Tène period went beyond just a change in artistic styles.  At 535 BCE, the hillfort at Heuneburg was burned and abandoned.  At 500 BCE Greek trade to Gaul through Massalia ended.  Around 500 BCE the salt mines around Hallstatt closed and many of the graves were robbed.  After 450 BCE, the tradition of wealthy female burials in Gaul ended.  A new masculine warrior burial tradition arose in northern Gaul.  We don't know the reasons for these changes.  The Bronze Age was ending and the Iron Age was rising.  Perhaps the decline in importance of tin and copper and the rise of iron shifted trade routes.  Also, the Etruscans allied with the people of Carthage and went to war against the Greeks in 540 BCE; that could also have disrupted trade.  For whatever reason, the archeology of western Europe changes dramatically.  And the historical sources tell us that Celtic warrior bands were on the move.

Historical Sources on the Celts and Galatai

Writing in The Histories in 435 BCE, Herodotus places the land of the Celts (Greek: Keltoi, probably a self designation) near the headwaters of the Danube at a city or town called Pyrēnē.  Some think that Pyrēnē could have been the old name for the hillfort at Heueburg.  Herodotus also notes that there were Celtic people in southwest Spain:

§ 2.33. […] the Ister [Danube] emerges from the land of the Keltoi at Pyrēnē and flows through the very middle of Europe; now the Keltoi live beyond the Pillars of Heracles, being neighbors of the Kunēsioi, who are the westernmost of all the peoples inhabiting Europe. The Ister, then, flows clean across Europe and ends its course in the Euxine sea, at Istria, which is inhabited by Milesian colonists.

§ 4.49. […] The Carpis and another river called Alpis also flow northward, from the country north of the Ombrici, to flow into it [the Danube]; for the Ister [Danube] traverses across the whole of Europe, emerging among the Keltoi, who are the most westerly dwellers in Europe, except for the Kunētes, and thus flows across Europe it comes to the borders of Scythia.

After 400 BCE, Greek writers tell of large migrations of Celtic speaking people from Gaul into northern Italy.   These Greek writers called the Celts "Galatians".   From Wikipedia:  "Linguist Kim McCone suggests it comes from Proto-Celtic *galatis ("ferocious, furious"), and was not originally an ethnic name but a name for young warrior bands. He says "If the Gauls' initial impact on the Mediterranean world was primarily a military one typically involving fierce young *galatīs, it would have been natural for the Greeks to apply this name for the type of Keltoi that they usually encountered".[28]"

In 387 BCE a tribe of Gauls were persuaded by an Etruscan to move to Italy and make war on "the peaceful inhabitants of a large and fertile land".  The Gauls did so, and when the Etruscans called on the Romans to protect them, the Gauls routed the Romans at the Battle of the Allia and then proceeded to sack Rome, a city of around 25,000-50,000 people.  There were several attacks by Gauls over the next few centuries which led to a persistent fear of Gauls by the Romans, who propitiated the Gods by burying alive a pair of Gauls and a pair of Greeks on at least three occassions.

From the 4th century BCE, the Gallic Celts travelled down the Danube, settling in modern day Hungary and invading the Balkans.  In 281 BCE an army of up to 85,000 Celtic warriors invaded Greece, looting and pillaging.  They reportedly looted 750,000 pounds of gold and 150,000 pounds of silver from the sanctuary of Delphi and brought it back to Tolosa (modern day Toulouse, France).  In 105 BCE the Romans retrieved the treasure, but were ambushed and the gold has never been found.

Another group of Gauls split off and conquered a region of central Turkey that came to be named after them, Galatia.  In the New Testament, Saint Paul penned an Epistle to the Galatians.  Paul wrote in Greek, the Galatians purportedly still spoke their Celtic language for another 300 years.  

Celtic warrior bands signed up to be mercenaries for the Greek kingdoms that ruled the east after the passing of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE.  The second century Roman writer Justin relates how ‘the kings of the east […] carried on no wars without a mercenary army of Gauls; nor, if they were driven from their thrones, did they seek protection with any other people than the Gauls. Such indeed was the terror of the Gallic name, and the unvaried good fortune of their arms, that princes thought they could neither maintain their power in security, nor recover it if lost, without the assistance of Gallic valor’.

Daniel Saveur relates how Celtic mercenaries even tried to overthrow the kingdom of Egypt.  "As early as 274 BC Galatian mercenaries served in the armies of Ptolemy II Philadelphos.  After the death of Ptolemy I, himself yet another former general of Alexander the Great, the new pharaoh had to compete against his half brother Magas of Cyrene, who rebelled against his rule, and sought to take their father’s throne for himself. The prospect of civil war, while being unable to trust his army for fear of deserting to his half-brother, may well have been the reason why Ptolemy hired a band of four thousand Galatians.  Bought with gold and the promise of loot, these ‘barbarian’ mercenaries would have been thought to have little regard for local political interests or religious issues and thus remain loyal to the king. However, employment of foreign mercenaries could also be politically dangerous. Ptolemy II defeated his half-brother but was unable to follow up on his victory as his Galatians mutinied.  According to Pausanias, the Galatians mutinied to overthrow Ptolemy II and take control of Egypt.  Despite the presence of four thousand Galatian mercenaries the attempt to overthrow Ptolemy II with his armies in the field seems overly ambitious. A better motive is brought forth by the Greek court poet Kallimachos of Cyrene (305-240 BC) who was living in Alexandria when the mutiny took place. In his Hyme to Delos he commemorates the defeat of the Celtic mercenaries who conspired to sack the cities and sanctuaries of Egypt and return to Galatia, while he was distracted by the uprising of his half-brother Magas.  The uprising did not end well for the Galatian mercenaries as Ptolemy II responded swift and drove them onto an island in the Sebbenytic tribute of the Nile, where they, according to Pausanias, ‘perished by hunger and each other’s swords’."

The Celts were terrifying in battle, often fighting naked with just a long broadsword, perhaps a spear and a man-sized shield.  Saveur relates that "Strabo writes how ‘the whole race, which is now called Gallic or Galatian, is madly fond of war, high spirited and quick to battle’. The Roman poet Virgil relates how ‘golden is their hair and golden their carb. They are resplendent in their striped cloaks, and their milk-white necks are circled with gold’. More indications are provided by Diodorus Siculus who comments how the ‘physically the Celts are terrifying in appearance, with deep sounding and very harsh voices’.  The Greek philosopher Aristotle claims how the Hellenes have no word ‘for the man who is excessively fearless; perhaps one may call such a man mad of bereft of feeling, who fears nothing, […], as they say of the Celts’."

The Decline of the Celts

The sack of Delphi may have been the highlight of the Celtic conquests; very quickly the tides turned.  In 189 BCE, Roman troops led by Consul Gnaeus Manlius Vulso attacked the Galatians and defeated them in a battle on Mount Olympus, Turkey.  Vulso's objective was the rich treasures the Galatians had collected and he was so successful that he had to order two large fleets of ships to carry the booty back to Rome.  The surviving Galatians were allowed to remain, but ceased their plundering ways.

From 58 to 50 BCE, Julius Caesar warred against the people of Gaul (present day France, Belgium, Germany and Switzerland).  His objective was to boost his political career and pay off his debts, and he was successful at both.  The Gauls in France were already sophisticated traders and had several cities.  After being conquered by the Romans, they were quickly brought into the Roman empire, and adopted Roman customs, with rich landowners paying taxes to Rome.  Over time the Gauls gave up their Gaulish language and adopted  Vulgar Latin.  Caesar wrote a book about his exploits, defeated his rival Pompey in a civil war and became the first Emperor of the Roman Empire.  Caesar invaded Britain twice, in 55 and 54 BCE but only demanded tribute from the Celtic Britons and did not make any permanent Roman settlements.

The Roman conquest of Britain lasted between 43 and 87 CE.  Rome conquered most of what is now England and Scotland before pulling back to the south of Hadrian's Wall.  At this time, the Romans stayed and incorporated Britain into their empire.  

After the Anglo-Saxon invasion and settlement of England in the fifth and sixth centuries CE, Celtic speakers were limited to Brittany France, Wales and Cornwall in western Britain, the Isle of Man, and Ireland, the Celtic Scots having adopted English.  

The flowery La Tène art style was continued in the insular art of Ireland and post-Roman Britain. It can be seen in dramatic form in the eighth century illustrated manuscripts like the Book of Kells, or fantastic jewelry like the Tara Brooch:

Celtic Myth and Religion

Despite the wide spread of Celtic speakers across Europe, we don't know as much about their myths and religions as we do of other Indo-European groups.   We have some Celtic place names and altar stones in Europe, but most of Europe was Romanized early in the first millennium.  Ireland escaped Romanization, but Saint Patrick converted the Irish to Christianity in the fifth century, so everything we have is filtered by the Christian Church.  The Church did its best to stamp out all pagan beliefs, for example, by building churches on the sites of former pagan temples or shrines, such as Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome.  The Irish Celts held festivals every three months.  The festival of Samhain on November 1, marked the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter.  It was a time when ancient burial mounds  were thought to open as portals to the Otherworld, and the spirits were appeased with offerings of food and drink.  The Irish Church renamed the festival as All Hallows Eve, or Halloween as a festival to remember the dead, including saints, martyrs, and the faithful departed.

What Irish religion and myth we do have comes from traditional stories written down by Irish monks in medieval scriptoria.  These Christian monks watered down the legends of Gods into pseudo-historical legends of a former race of people inhabiting Ireland known as the Tuatha Dé Danann, or "People of the Goddess Danu".  The Irish Goddess Danu may be related to the Vedic water goddess Danu, whose name relates to the rivers of the Indo-European homeland: Danube, Don, Donets, Dniester, and Dnieper.  The Tuatha Dé Danann were descended from a mother goddess, Danu or Anu, and came from heaven and brought advanced knowledge in the sciences, arts and magic.  The Tuatha Dé Danann defeated a race of monstrous underworld giants called the Fomorians, with parallels to Æsir and Vanir in Norse mythology, between Olympians and Titans in Greek mythology, and between Devas and Asuras in Vedic mythology.  When the Irish came, the Tuatha Dé Danann were banished to a parallel Otherworld, but as fairies they can visit our world in shape shifting form, materializing through a mist, or transporting from burial mounds.

Some of the translated Irish myths and legends can be found HERE.

Bog Mummies

In the past century over a thousand bodies have been recovered from peat bogs across Denmark, England and Ireland.  Well preserved by the acidic waters of the peat bog, the mummies can date back as much as 7000 years, although most are from the Bronze or Iron age.

The Romans

Last week we covered the fall of the Roman empire.  In this section we'll consider its origins.  This is a topic that could cover several courses; we'll just touch on some highlights.

Prehistoric Italy

Italy, like the rest of Europe was originally colonized by hunter-gatherers.  Neolithic farmers displaced the hunter-gatherers from 6000 BCE.  The arrival of bronze in Italy coincided with Bell Beaker type settlements in the third millennium.  Following that, settlement patterns followed general trends from other regions in Europe.  The Terramare culture in northern Italy from 1700-1150 BCE had many villages of 5 to 150 acres, with regular street plans and sophisticated bronze casting moulds.  This was followed by the Urnfield culture, from 1300 to 750 BCE which was fairly uniform from Italy to Germany and Poland.  Ironworking came to Italy through an offshoot of the Urnfield culture, called the Villanovan culture, from 900-700 BCE.

In reality, Rome was probably founded by Italic speaking tribes, perhaps with the assistance or at least influence of the Etruscans.  (Some believe the Capitoline Wolf was made by Etruscan artisans).  Romulus may have been an actual king who founded the city on Palatine Hill, overlooking the Tiber river.  Romulus was by legend the first of seven kings, several of whom were Etruscans, indicating the influence the Etruscans had over the emerging city.

Rape of the Sabines

In the early days of Rome, there was a shortage of women, perhaps because the city was founded by a male war tribe and associated bandits.  Romulus appealed to neighboring tribes, including the Italic Sabines to provide wives but they declined.  So the Romans announced a contest of games to the surrounding Italic tribes during the festival of Neptune.  Romulus gave a signal and the Roman men seized many young Sabine women and fought off the men.  That prompted a war against Rome by four of the neighboring tribes, but the Romans beat all four and captured their territories.  The Romans rebelled and gained independence from the Etruscans around 500 BCE.  The monarchy was replaced by a Senate in 509 BCE, consisting of noblemen.  The Romans continued to war against Etruscan, Gaulish and Italic tribes in Italy.  The Gauls of northern Italy sacked Rome in 387 BCE, but Rome fought back and eventually conquered the entire Italian peninsula by the third century BCE.  Wars with Carthage and Greece then turned Rome into the capital of a Mediterranean empire which Rome dominated by the end of the first century BCE.  At that time Rome was the largest city in the world, with an estimated 1 to 2 million people.  The map below shows the expansion and eventual contraction of the Roman empire.

Roman Genetics

When the Bell Beaker folk moved into Great Britain and the Corded Ware people moved into Denmark they completely replaced the former inhabitants within a few centuries.  However, in more southern areas of Europe, there was more of a mixture between the steppe peoples and the Neolithic farmers.  An analysis of 11 individuals from Rome dating between 900 and 200 BCE, showed that they had around 30-40% ancestry from the Pontic-Caspian steppe, similar to other Bronze Age populations in Europe.   However, that may have been a combination of male ancestry from the steppe, with indigenous female ancestry.  A recent paper showed that 5 of 7 Roman Iron Age individuals had R1b haplogroups, probably indicating Bell Beaker ancestry.  Similarly, of 21 Iron age individuals from Iron Age Etruscan burial sites, 75% had R1b haplogroups, indicating that steppe ancestry probably moved into the Italian peninsula in the second millennium BCE, perhaps from the Terramare culture.  In today's Italy, the percentage of R1 haplogroups decrease from north to south, suggesting the steppe intrusion came from alpine Italy.  Interestingly, a particular subclade of R1b: R1b-U152 seems to be associated with the Roman tribes; it is highest in the current day Italian cities that were founded by the Romans, and can be found all around the areas of the former Roman empire, including Sardinia and North Africa.

Roman Religion

The Romans started with a classic Indo-European pantheon of gods and tradition of sacrifices and religious obligations.  They were influenced by the non-Indo-European Etruscans in their temple design and practice of augury, and also influenced by the Greeks who, despite being conquered, had a more impressive history and culture.  Roman religion was based around performance of the correct prayers and sacrifices, in order to keep bad things from happening; it was not based on devout faith or dogmatic belief.  As Wikipedia says, "Roman religion was practical and contractual, based on the principle of do ut des, "I give that you might give". Religion depended on knowledge and the correct practice of prayer, rite, and sacrifice, not on faith or dogma, although Latin literature preserves learned speculation on the nature of the divine and its relation to human affairs. Even the most skeptical among Rome's intellectual elite such as Cicero, who was an augur, saw religion as a source of social order. As the Roman Empire expanded, migrants to the capital brought their local cults, many of which became popular among Italians. Christianity was eventually the most successful of these beliefs, and in 380 became the official state religion."

Rome was filled with temples to various gods.  The Vestal Virgins were virgin priestesses of Vesta, Rome's goddess of sacred hearth and flame, which has parallels to sacred hearth prayers in the Sanskrit Rig Vedas.  

Apollo was the sun god, also found in Greece, Hittite, and even Etruscan mythology.  He was the protector of herds and flocks, the god of music and arts, healing and archery.

Influence of Roman Law on Our Legal System

Philip Chrysopoulos has a nice essay on the influence of Roman law on our legal system.  In it he writes, "Concepts such as citizen rights and obligations within society, legal relationships between citizens, and obligations to the state—or the state’s obligation to its citizens—as well as family law stem from Rome. The focus on legal relationships and the duties of citizens formed the basis for many modern legal doctrines.

The concept of a legal person, whereby entities such as individuals, corporations, and states are recognized as having legal rights and obligations, originated in Roman law. Sophisticated rules regarding the ownership, transfer, and use of property are principles which continue to underpin property law in many contemporary legal systems.

Roman law also established the principle of the contract. This would include the formation and enforcement of contracts, such as mutual consent, consideration, and obligations of the parties involved. Finally, the procedural aspect of modern legal systems such as the role of the judge, the rights of litigants, have influenced the development of modern judicial procedures."

These legal concepts may perhaps be derived from the original proto-Indo-European society.  Wealth on the steppes was measured in cows, ownership of which required rights to grazing lands.  Anthony says that in pastoral societies, "those who loaned animals acquired power over those who borrowed them, and those who sponsored feasts obligated their guests."  Cows could be easily stolen, hence the tradition of cattle raiding.  For order to prevail, chiefs would have to enforce rights and obligations on the people.  Mallory and Adams trace Indo-European words to their hypothesized proto-Indo-European sources to illuminate society on the steppe.  They find words for Ruler (Latin rex), Master, to rule, and servant.  There are words for give and take, including to accept legally and to steal.  There are a number of terms associated with trade, including goods, purchase, exchange, sell, debt, and payment.  The vocabulary for law is derived from the concept of order or what is fitting, and includes *yew(e)s-Lat iūs ‘law, right, justice, duty’,  order, what is established, oath, compensation, and make restitution.  There are words for oaths, and curses for those that break oaths, as well as very many words for strife and warfare.  

David Anthony traces this back to two foundational institutions in proto-Indo-European society: "The reconstructed Proto-Indo-European vocabulary and comparative Indo-European mythology reveal what two of those important integrative institutions were: the oath-bound relationship between patrons and clients, which regulated the reciprocal obligations between the strong and the weak, between gods and humans; and the guest-host relationship, which extended these and other protections to people outside the ordinary social circle. The first institution, legalizing inequality, probably was very old, going back to the initial acceptance of the herding economy, about 5200–5000 BCE, and the first appearance of pronounced differences in wealth. The second might have developed to regulate migrations into unregulated geographic and social space at the beginning of the Yamnaya horizon."

Anthony, David W.. The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World (pp. 625-626). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition. 

Do you think that the early social organization on the steppes was powerful and flexible enough to be passed down to the many Indo-European branches, and is still used to some extent by us today?  Or are these concepts universal to any society?

The nobility among the Roman empire prided themselves on their erudition; they studied the classics, practiced rhetoric and used their knowledge as a sign of social status.  For that reason, the classic Latin language was well preserved for many centuries.  Meanwhile, amongst the commoners, the language evolved, or devolved into Vulgate or Vulgar Latin (common Latin).  Latin evolved much in the way English did; often towards simpler pronunciation and grammars.  The numerous graffiti carved on the walls of Pompeii for example, buried in 79AD, contrast colloquial Latin with the formal language of classical writers.

After the fall of Rome, all of Europe was governed by Germanic tribes.  But the strong culture of ancient Rome led to the Germanic leaders adopting Latin as opposed to the Latin speakers adopting German.  Lack of trade and communication during the medieval period led to the proliferation of many local dialects.  With trade and communication increasing during the Renaissance, the invention of the printing press, and state formation, languages then coalesced into the five Romance languages: Spanish, French, Portugese, Italian, and Romanian.  The empires built by Spain and Portugal, and to a lesser degree, France, then spread those languages around the world.  With 500 million speakers, Spanish is the second most natively spoken language in the world, next to Han Chinese.  Portugal has only 10 million citizens, but worldwide, 236 million people speak Portugese, 200 million of them in Brazil.

What was it that led to the success of the Latin language from such humble beginnings?  Their original Indo-European culture?  Their syncrestic approach to conquered cultures?  Luck?  Let's discuss.