servants-at

Updated: May 12, 2025

If thus the system of -ambacti- among the Celts was not an ancient and national, but a comparatively recent institution, it is looking to the relation which had subsisted for centuries between the Celts and Germans, and which is to be explained farther on not merely possible but even probable that the Celts, in Italy as in Gaul, employed Germans chiefly as those hired servants-at- arms.

Theodor Mommsen - The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5)

If thus the system of -ambacti- among the Celts was not an ancient and national, but a comparatively recent institution, it is looking to the relation which had subsisted for centuries between the Celts and Germans, and which is to be explained farther on not merely possible but even probable that the Celts, in Italy as in Gaul, employed Germans chiefly as those hired servants-at- arms.

Theodor Mommsen - The History of Rome, Book V : The Establishment of the Military Monarchy