Message:

<p>[QUOTE=&quot;GinoLR, post: 16103341, member: 128351&quot;]Nice medal, but it seems to me this woman is not a personification of France, this is <i>Gallia</i>, a personification of Gaul. And Gaul is not exactly France: the Gauls spoke Celtic tongues when the French speak a Latin language, Gaul was seen as France without her Roman and Frankish heritage... In the early 20th c. all French schoolchildren could read in their textbooks &quot;Our ancestors the Gauls...&quot; There were many jokes about that, because the kids in the French West Indies had the same syllabus and had to learn the same textbook, but most of them were black children with African origins...</p><p><br /></p><p>Gallic identity is just one side of the French. Gauls are seen as undisciplined, rustic, etc. President Macron, when the Yellow Jackets were rallying and rioting in Paris, called them &quot;Gauls resistant to any change&quot;. The word &quot;gauloiserie&quot; means &quot;horny joke&quot;. In the French popular culture the Gauls have become a myth, most accurately illustrated by the famous comics &quot;Asterix&quot;.(created by René Goscinny, whose parents were Jewish immigrants from Poland and Ukraine, and Albert Uderzo, born an Italian...)</p><p><br /></p><p>Being a myth, their image is very far from the true historical Gauls. On this medal Gallia is wearing a helmet that actually was never a Gaulish one. We know today it is a helmet of the late Bronze age... But c. 1900 people believed it was typically Gaulish and, with wings added (why did they add wings? I don&#039;t know), it was seen as the very symbol of the Gallic identity. It became in the 20th c. the logo of the French most popular (and cheapest) cigarettes brand. In the army before 1980 you could even have them for free!:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1533963[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

Your name or email address:

Do you already have an account?

• No, create an account now.
• Yes, my password is:
• Forgot your password?

Stay logged in