times the formation of their Celtic speech as a distinctive language
began. Here they first became known to the Greeks, probably as a
semi-mythical people, the Hyperboreans--the folk dwelling beyond the
Ripoean mountains whence Boreas blew--with whom Hecatæus in the fourth
century identifies them. But they were now known as Celts, and their
territory as Celtica, while "Galatas" was used as a synonym of "Celtæ,"
in the third century B.C.[44] The name generally applied by the Romans
to the Celts was "Galli" a term finally confined by them to the people
of Gaul.[45] Successive bands of Celts went forth from this
comparatively restricted territory, until the Celtic "empire" for some
centuries before 300 B.C. included the British Isles, parts of the
Iberian peninsula, Gaul, North Italy, Belgium, Holland, great part of
Germany, and Austria. When the German tribes revolted, Celtic bands
appeared in Asia Minor, and remained there as the Galatian Celts.
Archæological discoveries with a Celtic _facies_ have been made in most
of these lands but even more striking is the witness of place-names.
Celtic _dunon_, a fort or castle (the Gaelic _dun_), is found in
compound names from Ireland to Southern Russia. _Magos_, "a field," is
met with in Britain, France, Switzerland, Prussia, Italy, and Austria.
River and mountain names familiar in Britain occur on the Continent. The
Pennine range of Cumberland has the same name as the Appenines. Rivers
named for their inherent divinity, _devos_, are found in Britain and on
the Continent--Dee, Deva, etc.

Besides this linguistic, had the Celts also a political unity over their
great "empire," under one head? Such a unity certainly did not prevail
from Ireland to the Balkan peninsula, but it prevailed over a large part
of the Celtic area. Livy, following Timagenes, who perhaps cited a lost
Celtic epos, speaks of king Ambicatus ruling over the Celts from Spain
to Germany, and sending his sister's sons, Bellovesus and Segovesus,