Celtic Troop Types and Organization
No Celtic group employed a regular military as we would understand it. Organisation was according to clan grouping and social class. The Celtiberian term Uiros Uiramos may denote a war leader, while their immediate companions were known in Gaulish as *ambaxtoi ("those who accompany") a term which passed into Latin and from which our own word ambassador ultimately derives.
The earliest encounter with the Romans in 387 BC resulted in all of Rome apart from the Capitoline Hill falling to a confederacy of Gaulish tribes led by Brennus of the Senones. Little or no detail is given of the methods of warfare of these Gauls except that according to Plutarch some were armed with swords and some were mounted. In 280 BC another Brennus led a formidable Celtic army South to attack Greece and Thrace. According to Pausanias this force included large numbers of cavalry, organised in a system called Trimarchisia (*tri- *marko- "three horse") dividing them into teams of three, only two of which would be mounted at one time. Brennus' expedition would have originated in Pannonia and Noricum, a region which later became famous for producing high quality steel for weaponry.
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