I
n some early Celtic tribes the descendance of the mother seems to have been predominat and the women seem to have been free, proud and sexually rather promisc. Caesar reports, that in Brittany some women shared several husbands among each other. When rebuked by the Emperess Julia Augusta because of her loose morals, the wife of the Caledonic Prince Argentocoxus answered:
"We fulfill the necessety of nature much better than Roman women do, for we have intercourse openly with the best, whereas you are abused secretly by the least!"
Those brave, strong and tall women were to be found even at battlegrounds. Whether they wore weapons and took an active part in the fighting or else only encouraged their men by yelling and shouting and cared for the wounded couldn't be proofed, but the former seems likely if we hear what Ammianus Marcellinus has to say:
"When a Celt starts to quarrel with someone and his wife, who is grey- eyed and much stronger than him, comes to his assistance, no gang of strangers will take up with him, especially when, grinding her teeth, she waves her snowwhite arms and starts to distribute fistbeats and footkicks alternately"
