Guess the nation

[Mad Vader]

Feel free to post your own puzzles in the thread.

In conversation, their speech is brief and enigmatic, proceeding by allusions and innuendo and often exaggerating to puff themselves up and put others down. They have a threatening, boastful, tragic manner, and yet their minds are sharp.

In addition to their simplicity and exuberance they have a propensity for empty-headed boasting and a passion for personal ornamentation. They wear a lot of gold...
Their vanity therefore makes them unbearable in victory, while defeat plunges them into deepest despair.

No googling please.

 

[Mamlaz]

Scythians?

 

[matmohair1]

was going to go for Cossacks until,
I read the "wear a lot of gold" part!
so yeah may be Scythians?

or Celts wearing golden torcs?

 

[Almalexia]

Reminds me of a old missionary's description of the Japanese, but that is kind of a reach.

 

[MMontage]

Celts. The authors are Greek, can't remember who exactly. Apollonios and Polybios?

 

[Mamlaz]

Celts.

Isn't that a bit...vague?

 

[Mad Vader]

Close, but no cigar yet.

They are tall, with moist white flesh...
They wear tunics dyed in every color...
They pin striped cloaks on top of thick cloth in winter and light material in summer.

When many people dine together they sit in a circle, with the most important man in the central place.

"These Romans are crazy!"

 

[Anarion]

Gauls?

 

[Mamlaz]

So tall, pale, live in a "winter is serious stuff" environment and they experienced the Romans...

Helvetii?

 

[Paronomasia12]

If it is Celtic and we have to be specific, I'm going to fly the flag and say the Iceni.

 

[IA]

Gauls?

That sounds about right

 

[Anarion]

The Asterix reference was the giveaway.

 

[PinCussion]

The Asterix reference was the giveaway.

I was thinking 'Norsemen' until he mentioned that.

 

[Swissky]

This brings to mind a book about people in Austria-Hungary from circa 1910. I only got a few snippets out of it but it reads something like : Bosniak, stupid and short but loyal and duteous.   

 

[Mad Vader]

The Asterix reference was the giveaway.

Yay! The rest of the quotes were from classic sources.

 

[Anarion]

The [...] live in astonishing barbarism and disgusting misery: no arms, no horses, no household; wild plants for their food, skins for their clothing, the ground for their beds; arrows are all their hopes; for want of iron they tip them with sharp bone. This same hunting is the support of the women as well as of the men, for they accompany the men freely and claim a share of the spoil; nor have their infants any shelter against wild beasts and rain, except the covering afforded by a few intertwined branches. To these the young men return: these are the asylum of age; and yet they think it happier so than to groan over field labour, be cumbered with building houses, and be for ever involving their own and their neighbours' fortunes in alternate hopes and fears. Unconcerned towards men, unconcerned towards Heaven, they have achieved a consummation very difficult: they have nothing even to ask for.

But among the barbarians who are settled in Thule, one nation only, who are called the [...], live a kind of life akin to that of the beasts. For they neither wear garments of cloth nor do they walk with shoes on their feet, nor do they drink wine nor derive anything edible from the earth. For they neither till the land themselves, nor do their women work it for them, but the women regularly join the men in hunting, which is their only pursuit. For the forests, which are exceedingly large, produce for them a great abundance of wild beasts and other animals, as do also the mountains which rise there. And they feed exclusively upon the flesh of the wild beasts slain by them, and clothe themselves in their skins, and since they have neither flax nor any implement with which to sew, they fasten these skins together by the sinews of the animals, and in this way manage to cover the whole body. And indeed not even their infants are nursed in the [...]'s way as among the rest of mankind. For the children of the [...] do not feed upon the milk of women nor do they touch their mother's breast, but they are nourished upon the marrow of the animals killed in the hunt, and upon this alone. Now as soon as a woman gives birth to a child, she throws it into a skin and straightway hangs it to a tree, and after putting marrow into its mouth she immediately sets out with her husband for the customary hunt. For they do everything in common and likewise engage in this pursuit together. So much for the daily life of these barbarians.

 

[MMontage]

Fenni.

Yay! The rest of the quotes were from classic sources.

I'm pretty sure the classical authors wrote about people they called keltoi.

 

[Bluehawk]

Even if I guessed the right nation, I would never have guessed the term used in the original text.

 

[Mad Vader]

Fenni.

Yay! The rest of the quotes were from classic sources.

I'm pretty sure the classical authors wrote about people they called keltoi.

All of the quotes are about Gauls or Celts there (which are likely Gauls anyway).

 

[MMontage]

Greeks made no distinction between Celts and Gauls, and neither did Romans. They just called them keltoi and galli respectively, no matter where they lived. But I'm just butt-hurt.