from
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/66820
Timothy Taylor:
Believing the ancients: quantitative
and qualitative dimensions of slavery
and the slave trade in later
prehistoric Eurasia
'...
What the Greeks were, perhaps, partly responsible for was the sharpening of the conceptual distinction between slavery and freedom in the regions from which their slaves were sourced. The legal and philosophical clarity of Greek chattel slavery must have had an effect on indigenous forms of subordination in Eurasia, beyond the point of sale where magu- became doulos, just as the symbolic grandeur of Persian imperial command inspired imitation (Taylor 1988). Thus, the emergence of a new, more inclusive (though obviously selective) cemetery style among the La Tène Celts, and their military, Männerbund expansionism, have suggested to many an entrepreneurial spirit and a particular valorization of 'freedom'. The provocative and compelling idea that 'freedom' may originally have emerged as an explicit value in meaningful contradistinction to the institution of slavery proposed by Finley and examined by Patterson (1991).
It is in this connexion that the elite neck torcs of the La Tene Celts and the Dacians (see Plate 2), inspired in part by those of Persia (the Trichtigen ring being the earliest example in a central European context), are a reflex of the existence of slave chains. Torcs in some way symbolize enslavement, not to a superior human but to a superior power. To wear a gold or silver neckpiece signalled enslavement to deity and, by that very token, freedom on earth. The Celtic invasion of the Transylvanian and lower Danube basins, culminating in the establishment of the kingdom of Tylis in the Balkans, was intimately connected to an economy of trade and raid, in which the capture of precious metal booty was at least balanced by the capture of prisoners to sell and the gaining of slave source zones. In this context, it is hard not to see their voluntary adoption of a heavy precious metal neck ring as a classic item of personal adornment as embodying a statement about their position vis-a-vis those whose necks involuntarily wore iron or rope.
We do, that is, have to explain the appearance of torcs as indicators of rank, both visually and chronologically. In Poseidonius's description of a Gaulish banquet, the chief sits (or squats) with the person he is receiving next to him, with others in the hierarchy tailing off, according to rank on either side. The shield bearers of these warriors are behind them, but the spear carriers, ambactes of a higher rank, close the circle in front of the warriors. The drinking vessels are brought around by servants, who pass from right to left in front of the feasters and Poseidonius notes, in this context, that prayers are offered to their gods in the same way, turning (as the servants have to do) to the right (Poseidonius in Atheneus IV, 36, 152; discussed by Daubigney 1979: 164f.). No mention of torcs here, but what is telling is the way that status is choreographed, and the orientation of service to chiefs is explicitly equated with the orientation of chiefs towards deities. It is just such a relational, symbolic, grammar which, I believe, we can see being activated in the appearance of precious metal neck torcs as an elite signifier. This begins no earlier than the fifth century BC, when classical trade with the late Hallstatt is already well established, and when we know from textual references that slave chains are already in use (though none has been archaeologically recorded).'
(cf. Arabic Abd-ullah "slave of god")
Ernout-Meillet
'bÅia, -ae (i.e. boiia), usité surtout au pluriel boiae f.: sans doute emprunt au gr. βοει~αι, (sc. δοÏαί) "courroies de cuir de boeuf"; a désigné ensuite toute espèce d'entraves ou dé liens; cf.P.F., 32,6, boiae i.e. genus uinculorum, tam ligneae quam ferreae dicuntur. Cf. le jeu de mots de Pl.Cap.888 sur Boius et boia: nunc Siculus non est, Boius est, boiam terit. Mot populaire d'après St-Jérôme, cf. Thes. II 2063, 24sqq., passé dans les langues romanes, M.L.1190.
I propose that the name of the name of the
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boii
meant: those with torcs/neck rings
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torc
in the manner of slaves, ie slaves to their god. If so, the Plautus quote from Captivi is not just a pun, but more straightforward, he is now a Boius, since he wear a neckring like the Boii do.
Interesting question: do torcs go together with mono- or
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henotheism ?
BTW Poseidonius' description above of a Celtic banquet would fit an interpretation as a ruling circle (of twelve?), which the neck ring would (also!) symbolize.
Hellström
http://runeberg.org/svetym/0141.html
seems to imply, cryptically, some semantic connection between Boii and boiia, but doesn't specify it.
Note also the Kronenhalsringe
http://tech.dir.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/65274
http://tinyurl.com/64zkjfe
which would have had a similar significance. Note the geographical distribution.
Torsten