Osprey Publishing’s Celtic Warrior is #30 in the Warrior series. It is a 64 page booklet written by Stephen Allen and illustrations by Wayne Reynolds including 10 color plates.

The book is laid out similar to the Pictish Warrior booklet. Allen has eight pages on introduction and short history of the Celts. Eleven pages are given to the Celtic warrior, culture including feasts, and religious beliefs.

Thirty pages are given to appearance, weapons, and battle. Allen gives some space to chariots that figure so prominently in Irish mythology and Roman campaigns in Britain. I did not realize that Gauls used chariots in the Battle of Telamon against the Romans. He mentions in some battles, Celtic horseman dismounting to fight on foot.

There is an index, bibliography, and then the obligatory detailed descriptions of the color plates. This makes for a nice companion volume to Pictish Warrior.

This is a good introduction if you are unfamiliar with the military history of the Celts. The Celts were grinding up Macedonian Successor armies a generation after Alexander the Great. They killed one of the Ptolemies. The Galatians cut their way into the heart of Asia Minor and terrorized the surrounding areas until Attalus of Pergamum finally defeated them. They must have gotten swordsmen under the Macedonian pikes the way the Romans later did and the Spaniards with the Swiss pikemen.

The Romans got their helmets, armor, swords including Gladius hispaniensis and the Spatha, and javelins from the Celts. The Roman Legion was a force uniformly outfitted like Celtic nobles fighting in close order as heavy infantry.