Agro

Hello everyone!

I'm new at this forum, but I'll start with a question right away

I'm in a Belgian re-enactmentgroup called "Furor". We re-enact Celtic warriors during the Roman invasion in Belgium, the so-called Gallic Wars (aka "Bello Gallico"), in 58 BC, late La Tène-period.

We hear a lot, and we have picked up that people thought Gallic warriors used battle-axes during warfare. However, archaeological investigation hasn't found any battle-axes yet. It is known that the image of a Gallic warrior with a battle-axe is an invention of Romanticism.

However, there are writings that Germanic warriors used battle-axes. Hypothetically, this might also apply to our regions, since we were on the artificial border between Gauls and Germanic tribes.

We have looked in many books, but we haven't found any detailed mentioning of Germanic battle-axes.
Funny enough, the books about battle-axes go from the "Corded Ware"-culture, which stopped around 1800 BC and used axes, mostly for ceremonial use, directly to the Franks, which starts around 200 AC, who had throwing axes called Francisca.

These axes are not useful for us, so I hope any of you could help me out?
Many thanks in advance!

Scipio

The only reference I can think of (and I am by no means an expert on this) is in Gregory of Tours' Annals, where he frequently refers to the Franks' double-headed axes. Still, that's the 6th century AD. There have been a lot of debates over whether the Franks were mostly new immigrants or had lived in Gaul or at the borders of the Empire for a long time. If the latter is true, it is possible that axes were already in use in the first century BC.

Livy and Cicero wrote about the wars, so you could try getting a digital copy of the texts and do a search for "securis" and it's stems (actually, just search "secur" and it should find them). securis = axe, by the way.

GhostFacedKing

I think it's likely that unless the warroirs where wealthy,they could have used the type of axe they used for wood chopping,which the Vikings did.But that's just my assumption.

vid

Can you name particular works where they wrote about wars?

Scipio

Well, the Livy is in the History of Rome, though I'm afraid I can't remember which volume - they're arranged into decades usually so it shouldn't be too much of a problem to find the right years. There are (if I remember correctly) letters of Cicero which discuss the Gallic Wars - I think there are some cheap editions of his correspondences. Also, Caesar's Commentaries are worth a punt.

vid

english text of Livy here. It indeed contains some axe references: 1.40, 2.18, 3.36, 3.45, and 3.57. I think these should be ideally checked by latin-speaker in original language.

English text of Caesar's Comentarii: here. Found only one reference to "axe" in OCRed version at archive.org, none in this translation.

I cannot help with Cicero until I know precise letters to look for.

Lucius

Thank-you, vid.

vid

Thank to Scipio, I just did the googling based on his info.

BTW, if anyone is really interested, I'd suggest to ask at freeratio.org, in the "Biblical Criticism and History" section, there are some very knowledgable people regarding ancient writings.

galteeman

The osprey books are great for this sort of thing. you can look inside any of them on their site.
http://books.google.com/books?id=M1R...age&q=&f=false

http://books.google.com/books?id=ZEa...age&q=&f=false

Agro

Thanks guys for answering me.
Seems like there are no writings about axes during the La Tène nor Hallstatt-period in our regions, nor with Germanic tribes.