relations of Church and State, or on classical literature. Echoes of it are found in Tertullian and in Minucius Felix, and then it lay forgotten until Origen gave it new life. A good deal of the neo-Platonic polemic naturally went back to Celsus, and both the ideas and phrases of the True Word are found in Porphyry and Julian, though the closing of the New Testament canon in the meantime somewhat changed the method of attack for these writers.
Of more importance than these matters is the light which the book sheds on the strength of the Church about the year 180. It is of course easy to see that Celsus had no apprehension of the spiritual needs even of his own day which it was the Christian purpose to satisfy, that he could not grasp anything of the new life enjoyed by the poor in spirit, and that he underrated the significance of the Church, regarding it simply as one of a number of warring sections (mostly Gnostic), and so seeing only a mark of weakness. And yet, there is all through an undercurrent which runs hard against his surface verdicts, and here and there comes to expression. He is bound to admit that Christianity has been stated reasonably; against the moral teaching of Jesus he can only bring the lame charge of plagiarism, and with the Christian assertion that the Logos is the Son of God he completely accords. Most suggestive, however, is his closing appeal to the Christians. “Come,” he says, “don’t hold aloof from the common regime. Take your place by the emperor’s side. Don’t claim for yourselves another empire, or any special position.” It is an overture for peace. “If all were to follow your example and abstain from politics, the affairs of the world would fall into the hands of wild and lawless barbarians” (viii. 68). Forced to admit that Christians are not infructuosi in negotiis, he wants them to be good citizens, to retain their own belief but conform to the state religion. It is an earnest and striking appeal on behalf of the Empire, which was clearly in great danger, and it shows the terms offered to the Church, as well as the strength of the Church at the time. Numerically, Christians may have formed perhaps a tenth of the population, i.e. in Alexandria there would be fifty or sixty thousand, but their power in a community was out of all proportion to their mere numbers.
Literature.—Th. Keim, Celsus’ Wahres Wort (1873); Pélagaud, Étude sur Celse (1878); K. J. Neumann’s edition in Scriptores Graeci qui Christianam impugnaverunt religionem, and article in Hauck-Herzog’s Realencyk. fur prot. Theol., where a very full bibliography is given. See also W. Moeller, Hist, of the Chr. Church, i. 169 ff.; A. Harnack, Expansion of Christianity, ii. 129 ff.; J. A. Froude, Short Studies, iv.
CELT, or Kelt, the generic name of an ancient people, the bulk of whom inhabited the central and western parts of Europe. (For the sense of a primitive stone tool, see the separate article, later.) Much confusion has arisen from the inaccurate use of the terms “Celt” and “Celtic.” It is the practice to speak of the dark-complexioned people of France, Great Britain and Ireland as “black Celts,” although the ancient writers never applied the term “Celt” to any dark-complexioned person. To them great stature, fair hair, and blue or grey eyes were the characteristics of the Celt. The philologists have added to the confusion by classing as “Celtic” the speeches of the dark-complexioned races of the west of Scotland and the west of Ireland. But, though usage has made it convenient in this work to employ the term, “Celtic” cannot be properly applied to what is really “Gaelic.”
The ancient writers regarded as homogeneous all the fair-haired peoples dwelling north of the Alps, the Greeks terming them all Keltoi. Physically they fall into two loosely-divided groups, which shade off into each other. The first of these is restricted to north-western Europe, having its chief seat in Scandinavia. It is distinguished by a long head, a long face, a narrow aquiline nose, blue eyes, very light hair and great stature. Those are the peoples usually termed Teutonic by modern writers. The other group is marked by a round head, a broad face, a nose often rather broad and heavy, hazel-grey eyes, light chestnut hair; they are thick-set and of medium height. This race is often termed “Celtic” or “Alpine” from the fact of its occurrence all along the great mountain chain from south-west France, in Savoy, in Switzerland, the Po valley and Tirol, as well as in Auvergne, Brittany, Normandy, Burgundy, the Ardennes and the Vosges. It thus stands midway not only geographically but also in physical features between the “Teutonic” type of Scandinavian and the so-called “Mediterranean race” with its long head, long face, its rather broad nose, dark brown or black hair, dark eyes, and slender form of medium height. The “Alpine race” is commonly supposed to be Mongoloid in origin and to have come from Asia, the home of round-skulled races. But it is far more probable that they are the same in origin as the dark race south of them and the tall fair race north of them, and that the broadness of their skulls is simply due to their having been long domiciled in mountainous regions. Thus the “Celtic” ox (Bos longifrons), from remote ages the common type in the Alpine regions, is characterized by the height of its forehead above the orbits, by its highly-developed occipital region, and its small horns. Not only do animals change their physical characteristics in new environment, but modern peoples when settled in new surroundings for even one or two centuries, e.g. the American of New England and the Boer of South Africa, prove that man is no less readily affected by his surroundings.
The northern race has ever kept pressing down on the broad-skulled, brown-complexioned men of the Alps, and intermixing with them, and at times has swept right over the great mountain chain into the tempting regions of the south, producing such races as the Celto-Ligyes, Celtiberians, Celtillyrians, Celto-Thracians and Celto-Scythians. In its turn the Alpine race has pressed down upon their darker and less warlike kindred of the south, either driven down before the tall sons of the north or swelling the hosts of the latter as they swept down south.
As the natives of the southern peninsula came into contact with these mixed people, who though differing in the shape of the skull nevertheless varied little from each other in speech and colour of their hair and eyes, the ancient writers termed them all “Keltoi.” But as the most dreaded of these Celtic tribes came down from the shores of the Baltic and Northern Ocean, the ancients applied the name Celt to those peoples who are spoken of as Teutonic in modern parlance. The Teutons, whose name is generic for Germans, appear in history along with the Cimbri, universally held to be Celts, but coming from the same region as the Guttones (Goths) by the shores of the Baltic and North Sea. Again, the Germani themselves first appear in the Celtic host destroyed by Marcellus at Clastidium in 225 B.C. All the true Celtae or Galatae in France had come across the Rhine; the Belgic tribes in northern France were Cimbri, who also had crossed the Rhine: in Caesar’s day the Germans were still constantly crossing that river, and so-called Gauls who lived near the Germans, e.g. the Treveri, closely resembled the latter in their habits, while in later times were to come Goths and Franks from beyond the great river. It is then not strange that the Gallic name for a henchman (ambactus) is the same as the Gothic (ambahts).
The earliest invaders, under the name of Celtae, had occupied all central Gaul, doubtless mixing with the aboriginal Ligurians and Iberians, who, however, maintained themselves respectively in the later Provence and in Aquitania. The Celts had firmly established themselves by the 7th century B.C. and we know not how long before, the Bituriges (whose name survives in Berri) being the dominant tribe. In the Alps and the Danube valley some of the Celts had dwelt from the Stone Age; there they had developed the working of copper, discovered bronze (an alloy of copper and tin), and the art of smelting iron (see Hallstatt). The Umbrians, who were part of the Alpine Celts, had been pressing down into Italy from the Bronze Age, though checked completely by the rise of the Etruscan power in the 10th century B.C. The invention of iron weapons made the Celts henceforth irresistible. One of the earliest movements after this discovery was probably that of the Achaeans of Homer, who about 1450 B.C. invaded Greece (see Achaeans), bringing with them the use of iron and brooches, the practice of cremating the dead, and the style of ornament known as Geometric. Later the Cimmerians (see Scythia and Cimmerii) passed down from the
