GAUL 
– Northwest
Celtic, Senones Tribe in Gaul
Potin Unit 18mm (3.95 grams) Struck circa Circa 100-50 B.C.
Reference: De La Tour 7417; Depeyrot, NC V, 145; D&T 2641; CCCBM III 389-97
 Celtic style head right with 6 strands of hair.
Abstract horse left; pellet to left and below.

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The Senones or Senonii (Gaulish: “the ancient ones”) were an ancient Gallic tribe dwelling in the Seine basin, around present-day Sens, during the Iron Age and the Roman period.

Part of the Senones settled in the Italian peninsula, where they ousted the Umbrians between Ariminum (modern-day Rimini) and Ancona. They are described in classical sources as the leaders of the Gallic war-band that captured Rome during the Battle of the Allia in 390 BCE. They remained a constant threat until Rome eventually subjugated them in 283 BCE, after which they disappeared from Italy.

They joined Bellovesus’ migrations towards Italy, together with the Aeduii, Ambarri, Arverni, Aulerci, and Carnutes.

In 400 BCE, they crossed the Alps and, driving out the Umbrians, settled on the east coast of Italy. Their territory spanned from Forlì to Ancona and Terni, in the Ager Gallicus. They founded the town of Sena Gallica (Senigallia), which became their capital. In 391 BCE, under the chieftain Brennus, they invaded Etruria and besieged Clusium. The Clusines appealed to Rome for aid. The Romans provided support, which constituted a violation of the law of nations. The ensuing war resulted in the defeat of the Romans at the Battle of the Allia (18 July 390 BCE) and the sacking of Rome.

For more than 100 years the Senones were engaged in hostilities with the Romans, until they were finally subdued (283 BCE) by P. Cornelius Dolabella and driven out of their territory. Nothing more was heard of them in Italy. It is possible that they joined with Gallic tribes who spread themselves throughout the lands of the Danube, Macedonia, and Asia Minor. A Roman colony was established at Sena, called Sena Gallica (currently Senigallia) to distinguish it from Sena Julia (Siena) in Etruria.

A branch of the Senones (or a different tribe of the same name) settling the district which now includes the departments of Seine-et-Marne, Loiret and Yonne from 53–51 BCE were engaged in hostilities with Julius Caesar brought about by their expulsion of Cavarinus, whom he had appointed their king. In 51 BCE, a Senonian named Drappes threatened the Provincia, but was captured and starved himself to death. From this time the Gallic Senones disappear from history. In later times, they were included in Gallia Lugdunensis. Their chief towns were Agedincum (later Senones, whence Sens), Metiosedum (Melun; according to A. Holder, Meudon), and Vellaunodunum 
(site uncertain).

The Celts or Kelts were an ethnolinguistic group of tribal societies in Iron Age and Medieval Europe who spoke Celtic languages and had a similar culture, although the relationship between the ethnic, linguistic and cultural elements remains uncertain and controversial.

  Diachronic distribution of Celtic peoples:
    core Hallstatt territory, by the 6th century BC   maximal Celtic expansion, by 275 BC   Lusitanian area of Iberia where Celtic presence is uncertain   the six Celtic nations which retained significant numbers of Celtic speakers into the Early Modern period   areas where Celtic languages remain widely spoken today

The earliest archaeological culture that may justifiably be considered Proto-Celtic is the Late Bronze Age Urnfield culture of Central Europe, which flourished from around 1200 BC. Their fully Celtic descendants in central Europe were the people of the Iron Age Hallstatt culture (c. 800-450 BC) named for the rich grave finds in Hallstatt, Austria. By the later La Tène period (c. 450 BC up to the Roman conquest), this Celtic culture had expanded by diffusion or migration to the British Isles (Insular Celts), France and The Low Countries (Gauls), Bohemia, Poland and much of Central Europe, the Iberian Peninsula (Celtiberians, Celtici and Gallaeci) and northern Italy (Golaseccans and Cisalpine Gauls) and, following the Gallic invasion of the Balkans in 279 BC, as far east as central Anatolia (Galatians).

Beginning in 2010, it was tentatively proposed that the language of the Tartessian inscriptions of south Portugal and southwest Spain (dating from the 7th-5th centuries BC) is a Celtic one; however, this interpretation has largely been rejected by the academic community.

The earliest undisputed direct examples of a Celtic language are the Lepontic inscriptions, beginning in the 6th century BC. Continental Celtic languages are attested almost exclusively through inscriptions and place-names. Insular Celtic is attested beginning around the 4th century through ogham inscriptions, although it was clearly being spoken much earlier. Celtic literary tradition begins with Old Irish texts around the 8th century. Coherent texts of Early Irish literature, such as the Táin Bó Cúailnge (The Cattle Raid of Cooley), survive in 12th-century recensions.

By the mid 1st millennium AD, with the expansion of the Roman Empire and the Great Migrations (Migration Period) of Germanic peoples, Celtic culture and Insular Celtic had become restricted to Ireland, the western and northern parts of Great Britain (Wales, Scotland, and Cornwall), the Isle of Man, and Brittany. Between the 5th and 8th centuries, the Celtic-speaking communities in these Atlantic regions emerged as a reasonably cohesive cultural entity. They had a common linguistic, religious, and artistic heritage that distinguished them from the culture of the surrounding polities. By the 6th century, however, the Continental Celtic languages were no longer in wide use.

Insular Celtic culture diversified into that of the Gaels (Irish, Scottish and Manx) and the Brythonic Celts (Welsh, Cornish, and Bretons) of the medieval and modern periods. A modern “Celtic identity” was constructed as part of the Romanticist Celtic Revival in Great Britain, Ireland, and other European territories, such as Portugal and Spanish Galicia. Today, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, and Breton are still spoken in parts of their historical territories, and Cornish and Manx are undergoing a revival.