Description
Celtic Europe
Celtic culture in Europe almost certainly predates the rise of the Roman Republic, and definitely predates the rise of the Roman Empire. By the First Century A.D. the Celts and Romans were fighting major wars -made more complicated by the fact that the Celts were never a unified group and individual tribes often allied themselves with the Roman Armies in an effort to continue long-standing feuds with other tribes. (Eventually the mixing of Roman and Celtic culture changed the face of Western Europe -strong evidence suggests that the legendary King Arthur was in fact a real man who emerged from a Romanized Celtic culture.) Nevertheless it is the Celts who fought against Rome and the Romanization of their culture -specifically the Gaulish leader Vercingetorix and the British Queen Boudicca and the many Druid leaders who so terrorized the Roman Armies that Ireland remained a land of mystery to Romans who conquered two thirds of the known world- who still capture our imagination today. The original of this deceptively simple ring was probably originally made, worn and lost by a Western European Celt -probably a Gaul- sometime during the first century B.C. when the fire of the Roman sun was burning bright and Stonehenge was already a millennia old.
