Page 443 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

3^0 Bronze and Iron [1090-1020 b.c.]

east and west and where there was a sizable town. On the slopes
above the town the guide pointed out the small timber temples,
each belonging, he said, to one of the cantons, and, down by the
river, the shingled roof of the imposing hall of assembly. There, on
the following day, after they had eaten and slept, they met the
chieftains of the Alpine confederacy. They were noncommittal
men, in homespun cloaks and tunics, and deeply suspicious of the
motives of the Celtic king. They even seemed disturbed by the
fact that his envoys wore trousers, a sign that the Celts had for­
saken European ways and in spirit allied themselves with the
hordes from the Russian steppes.
But the Master of the Horse turned the point against them.
One could move with history, he said, or one could stand fast
with tradition. The future lay with the trousers, which were de­
signed for horse riding, just as the future lay with the riders of
horses rather than the drivers of chariots. The Alpine cantons
could remain a tunic-wearing backwater if they chose. But the
future lay here in the central mountains of Europe, where the
road from east to west crossed the road from north to south. If all
the peoples of the Alps stood together, they could dominate Eu­
rope.
Three days later he took, as he had expected, a noncommittal
answer back to the capital. But among the concessions granted to
the Celtic nation was freedom of passage along the Amber Road.
In the course of the next ten years, the younger generation
throughout the Alpine cantons did in fact adopt trousers. And
contingents of the Alpine peoples served with the Celts in the
campaigns that in those years were waged against the inhabitants
of the upper Rhine valley and the Bavarian forests. The Amber
Road was opened for trade once more, and blond-mustached
Celtic tradesmen chaffered with Phoenician ship captains and
Etruscan importers in the half-Asiatic markets of Tarquinii in
Etruria, or even as far as the new Phoenician colonies in Sicily. In
these years the Celts took part in the Vai Camonica games, and
themselves added carvings of their warriors and their gladiators
to the picture book of the rocks.
Before the Master of the Horse died, he finally saw the two
peoples merged into a Celtic confederacy, and saw Celtic customs