Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race - Knowledge Rush

22 Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race
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Two things, however, the Celts either could not or would
not impose on the subjugated German tribes—their language and
their religion. In these two great factors of race-unity and pride lay
the seeds of the ultimate German uprising and overthrow of the
Celtic supremacy. The names of the German are different from
those of the Celtic deities, their funeral customs, with which are
associated the deepest religious conceptions of primitive races,
are different. The Celts, or at least the dominant section of them,
buried their dead, regarding the use of fire as a humiliation, to
be inflicted on criminals, or upon slaves or prisoners in those
terrible human sacrifices which are the greatest stain on their
native culture. The Germans, on the other hand, burned their
illustrious dead on pyres, like the early Greeks—if a pyre could
not be afforded for the whole body, the noblest parts, such as the
head and arms, were burned and the rest buried.
Downfall of the Celtic Empire
What exactly took place at the time of the German revolt we
shall never know; certain it is, however, that from about the year
300 B.C. onward the Celts appear to have lost whatever political
cohesion and common purpose they had possessed. Rent asunder,
as it were, by the upthrust of some mighty subterranean force,
their tribes rolled down like lava-streams to the south, east, and
west of their original home. Some found their way into Northern
Greece, where they committed the outrage which so scandalised
their former friends and allies in the sack of the shrine of Delphi
(273 B.C.). Others renewed, with worse fortune, the old struggle
with Rome, and perished in vast numbers at Sentinum (295 B.C.)
and Lake Vadimo (283 B.C.). One detachment penetrated into
Asia Minor, and founded the Celtic State of Galatia, where, as
St. Jerome attests, a Celtic dialect was still spoken in the fourth
century A.D. Others enlisted as mercenary troops with Carthage.
A tumultuous war of Celts against scattered German tribes, or
against other Celts who represented earlier waves of emigration
and conquest, went on all over Mid-Europe, Gaul, and Britain.