Thank you for posting here.

In many instances, Celtic women were regarded as being equal to men, if not superior. The burial found in the Vix region of France provides a great deal of information about Celtic society as early as the fifth century BC.

While Poseidonius marvels at the beauty of Celtic women, Ammanius Marcellinus, writing in the 4th century, paints a less glamorous picture of the Celtic woman...

"...a whole band of foreigners will be unable to cope with one [Gaul] in a fight, if he calls in his wife, stronger than he by far and with flashing eyes; least of all when she swells her neck and gnashes her teeth, and poising her huge white arms, begins to rain blows mingled with kicks, like shots discharged by the twisted cords of a catapult" (XV, 12).

It certainly brings the image in my mind of some trucker women who wear flannel. Not only do the Roman writers express a variable amount of shock at the sight of these women, who were who were obviously larger and more buxom than the dainty Roman woman. Not only was this different than the Roman view of 'civilized' life, but there was also the note that Celtic women were promiscuous. Diodorus of Sicily tells us that "they generally yield up their virginity to others and this they regard not as discrace, but rather think themselves slighted when someone refuses to accept their freely offered favors" (V, 32).

I'm not sure if these are the references you are looking for May, but at least it is a start of finding out why the Roman writers tended to look at the Celts as barbarians. Of course, to the Romans, anything that wasn't Roman was strange and less than par.