SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

II{ Saga-Book of the Viking Society
tion from the leading classes, from the nobility and the
druids, for he came into contact with the chieftains, not
with the people. But the inscriptions and monuments
are mostly dedicated by men of the broad masses,
peasants or merchants or craftsmen. Can we be so sure
that their beliefs were the same as those of the aristocracy?
The answer can only be: certainly not. It is
impossible to draw a picture of the way in which the
population of Gaul had come into being, but I must
briefly point out to you what in my opinion the situation
was. We are wont to speak of a Gaulish people, but this
phrase is very misleading. There was a Celtic superstructure,
rapidly diminishing from East to West in its
quantity and importance. The Celtic Gauls had come
as conquerors and had established themselves as rulers,
who subjugated the aborigines in a most cruel way. The
original population still continued to exist and multiply;
it reached back into the Older Stone Age and no one can
say what kind of race it was nor what language it spoke.
During the first centuries after the conquest they disappear
into invisibility; Caesar speaks of them contemptuously
as a miserrima plebs. But after the Roman
conquest things changed rapidly. The leading classes
assimilated Roman civilization, adopted the Latin
language and scorned the traditions of their ancestors.
Moreover they were disintegrating completely. The
druids had been suppressed; the nobles were reduced to
poverty by crushing taxes; very soon a new class of
nobility came to the fore, the equiies, men of the people
grown rich by trade or other means, and they superseded
the old nobility. But, with the ruling classes declining
and disappearing, the miserrima plebs got the opportunity
to manifest itself; the peasants, who had formerly
been mere slaves, attained well-to-do circumstances; they
were able to erect monuments, sometimes sumptuous, bv
which they expressed their devotion to their gods.
Here we must emphasize the words "their gods". For