page_title: Gauls
section_title: Physical appearance
hierarchical_section_title: Gauls / Physical appearance
caption_attribution_description: English: Head of the so-called “kneeling youthful Gaul”. Alabaster, Roman copy of the 1st–2nd century CE after a Pergamene original of the 3rd BC. Left hand and right arm are modern restorations. Français&#160;: Tête du «&#160;jeune Gaulois du Louvre&#160;». Albâtre, copie romaine du du Ier-IIe siècle d'après un original pergaménien du IIIe siècle av. J.-C. La main gauche et le bras droit sont des restaurations modernes.
context_page_description: The Gauls were a group of Celtic peoples of Continental Europe in the Iron Age and the Roman period. The area they originally inhabited was known as Gaul. Their Gaulish language forms the main branch of the Continental Celtic languages.
  The Gauls emerged around the 5th century BC as the bearers of the La Tène culture north of the Alps. By the 4th century BC, they spread over much of what is now France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Southern Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia by virtue of controlling the trade routes along the river systems of the Rhône, Seine, Rhine, and Danube, and they quickly expanded into Northern Italy, the Balkans, Transylvania and Galatia. Gaul was never united under a single ruler or government, but the Gallic tribes were
  capable of uniting their forces in large-scale military operations. They reached the peak of their power in the early 3rd century BC.
context_section_description: The fourth-century Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus wrote that the Gauls were tall, light-skinned, light-haired, and light-eyed:
  Almost all Gauls are tall and fair-skinned, with reddish hair. Their savage eyes make them fearful objects; they are eager to quarrel and excessively truculent.
  When, in the course of a dispute, any of them calls in his wife, a creature with gleaming eyes much stronger than her husband, they are more than a match for a whole group of foreigners; especially when the woman, with swollen neck and gnashing teeth, swings her great white arms and begins to deliver a rain of punches mixed with kicks, like missiles launched by the twisted strings of a catapult.
  The first century BCE Greek historian Diodorus Siculus described them as tall, generally heavily built, very light-skinned, and light-haired, with long hair and mustaches:
  The Gauls are tall of body, with rippling muscles, and white of skin, and their hair is blond, and not only naturally so, but they make it their practice to increase the distinguishing color by which nature has given it. For they are always washing their hair in limewater, and they pull it back from their forehead to the top of the head and back to the nape of the neck... Some of them shave their beards, but others let it grow a little; and the nobles shave their cheeks, but they let the mustache grow until it covers the mouth.
  Jordanes, in his Origins and Deeds of the Goths, indirectly describes the Gauls as light-haired and large-bodied via comparing them to Caledonians, as a contrast to the Spaniards, who he compared to the Silures. He speculates based on this comparison that the Britons originated from different peoples, including the aforementioned Gauls and Spaniards.
  The Silures have swarthy features and are usually born with curly black hair, but the inhabitants of Caledonia have reddish hair and large loose-jointed bodies. They [the Britons] are like the Gauls and the Spaniards, according as they are opposite either nation. Hence some have supposed that from these lands the island received its inhabitants.
  In the novel Satyricon, written by Roman courtier Gaius Petronius, a Roman character sarcastically suggests that he and his partner "chalk our faces so that Gaul may claim us as her own" in the midst of a rant outlining the problems with his partner's plan of using blackface to impersonate Aethiopians. This suggests that Gauls were thought of on average to be much paler than Romans.
caption: Kneeling Youthful Gaul, Roman copy after a Hellenistic original, Louvre.
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