authority. What fragments we have, however, seem cognate with their insular counterparts whose culture has survived the millennia. With the gods of Gaul, unfortunately, we can only glimpse them through Greek or Roman eyes, especially the eyes of Lucan and Caius Julius Caesar, who tried to place Roman equivalents on them. Caesar refers to six gods, whom he equates with Mercury, Jupiter, Mars, Minerva, Apollo, and Dis Pater (Pluto). This unfortunate interpretatio Romana has merely confused their identity and functions, but some of them are clearly cognate with the gods of Britain and Ireland, Ogmios and Belenus, for example.

While the Irish and British Celtic “origin myths” have survived, we have no such myths about the origin of the Gauls. However, from Livy we can trace a story about the start of the Celtic spread through Europe. Livy, who was raised in Cisalpine Gaul, was undoubtedly recording a native Celtic tradition, and Henri Hubert believes his source was the Celtic writer Cornelius Nepos (ca. 100–ca. 25 b.c.). Livy says that the Celts were ruled by Ambicatos.

Gaul was so fertile and populous that the immense multitude threatened to be hard to rule. So the King, being old and wishing to relieve his kingdom of its excess population, declared that he would send his sister’s sons, Bellovesos and Sigovesos, who were energetic youths, to whatever country the gods should indicate by omens, and they could take as many men as they wished, so that no people should be able to resist their advance. The omens assigned the Hercynian Forests [central Germany] to Sigovesos, and to the more fortunate Bellovesos, the road to Italy.

Another Latinised Celtic historian, Trogus Pompeius, compared the Celtic migrations through Europe with the Roman ver sacrum (sacred spring), when, in times of emergencies, the overpopulated community expelled their members aged twenty years to go where they pleased and found new communities. The story of the early Celtic migrations through Europe was certainly accepted by the Celts of Cisalpine Gaul in Livy’s time. It has become obvious that the fabulous and epic nature of Livy’s histories, so unlike most Latin accounts, is full of Celtic traditions. It was first pointed out by Camille Jullian that Livy was born in Patavium (Padua) and grew