La langue gauloise dans le De Bello Gallico

Abstract

The mentions of the Gallic language in De Bello Gallico are rare and fleeting. Apart from a few words, to be counted on the fingers of one hand, druids, vergobretus, all that we learn of Gallic in Caesar consists of toponyms and anthroponyms. The present research, which is also sometimes based on small details, therefore tends to determine, or to try to determine, whether, from the time of the conquest, there was a terrain in Gaul that was favourable to Romanisation. In other words, does Caesar’s conquest mark the barely perceptible beginning of a change in language, or is it merely an episode that helped to accelerate a linguistic process that had already begun and was part of the irreversible trends of history?

Keywords

• history
• Celtic
• Gallic (language)
• Caesar (Julius)
• dialect variation