Belgae

The Belgae (/ˈbɛldʒiː/ BELL-jee, /-ɡaɪ/ -⁠gye) were a large confederation of tribes living in northern Gaul, between the English Channel, the west bank of the Rhine, and the northern bank of the river Seine, from at least the third century BC. They were discussed in depth by Julius Caesar in his account of his wars in Gaul. Some peoples in southern Britain were also called Belgae and had apparently moved from the continent. T. F. O'Rahilly believed that some had moved further west and he equated them with the Fir Bolg in Ireland. The Roman province of Gallia Belgica was named after the continental Belgae. The term continued to be used in the region until the present day and is reflected in the name of the modern country of Belgium.

The consensus among linguists is that the ethnic name Belgae probably comes from the Proto-Celtic root *belg- or *bolg- meaning "to swell (particularly with anger/battle fury/etc.)", cognate with the Dutch adjective gebelgd "very angry" (weak perfect participle of the verb belgen "to become angry") and verbolgen "being angry" (strong perfect participle of obsolete verbelgen "to make angry"), as well as the Old English verb belgan, "to be angry" (from Proto-Germanic *balgiz), derived ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European root *bhelgh- ("to swell, bulge, billow"). Thus, a Proto-Celtic ethnic name *Bolgoi could be interpreted as "the people who swell (particularly with anger/battle fury)".

In Julius Caesar's Latin terminology, Belgium was a geographical region comprising territories of the Bellovaci, Ambiani, Atrebates, and Veromandui. These four communities are widely thought to have been the original Belgae in Gaul.

Caesar also defined the Belgae in a broader sense when he described them as inhabiting the northernmost of the three major divisions of Gaul at the time of his conquests (58–51 BC), along with by the Aquitani in the southwest, the Gauls in the biggest central part, who in their own language were called Celtae. Each of these three parts, he wrote, differed in terms of customs, laws and language. He noted that the Belgae, were "the bravest, because they are furthest from the civilization and refinement of [our] Province, and merchants least frequently resort to them, and import those things which tend to effeminate the mind; and they are the nearest to the Germans, who dwell beyond the Rhine, with whom they are continually waging war". Ancient sources such as Caesar are not always clear about the things used to define ethnicity today. While Caesar or his sources described the Belgae as distinctly different from the Gauls, Strabo stated that the differences between the Celts (Gauls) and Belgae in countenance, language, politics and way of life was a small one, unlike the difference between the Aquitanians and Celts. The fact that the Belgae were living in Gaul means that in one sense they were Gauls. This may be Caesar's meaning when he says "The Belgae have the same method of attacking a fortress as the rest of the Gauls".

Inconsistently, Caesar in Bello Gallico, II.4 also contrasted them with Gauls:

So Caesar used the word "Germani" in two ways. He described a group of tribes within the Belgic alliance as the "Germani", distinguishing them from their neighbours. The most important of these tribes in relation to Caesar's campaigns were the Eburones. The other way he used the term was to refer to those related tribes east of the Rhine, who were not Celtic. So the Germani among the Belgae are called, based on Caesar's account, the Germani cisrhenani, to distinguish them from other Germani living east of the Rhine in what he understood to be their homeland. However, the later historian Tacitus was informed that the name Germania was known to have changed in meaning:

In other words, Tacitus understood that the collective name Germani had first been used in Gaul, for a specific people there with connections beyond the Rhine, the Tungri being the name of the people living where the Eburones had lived in later imperial times, and was later adopted as a collective name for the non-Celtic peoples beyond the Rhine, the other, better-known way that Caesar used the term.

The cultural cohesion of Belgium as Caesar sketched it is suggested by the maintaining of these borders, more or less, in administrative divisions (pagi) mapped out later by the Romans and still evident in the parishes of the Carolingian era. Archaeology suggests cultural continuities from the third through the first centuries BC within this subregion, inhabited in the time of Caesar by Bellovaci, Ambiani, Atrebates, and Veromandui.