Eran Almagor reveals how the indomitable Gaul became a comic strip sensation – and transformed perceptions of ancient history in the process
OBELIX®- IDEFIX® / © 2023 HACHETTE LIVRE / GOSCINNY - UDERZO
Asterix
is a global
superstar. Since it first appeared in 1959, this juggernaut of a comic strip has been translated into more than 100 languages and dialects, spawned films and games – not to mention a theme park – and made its co-creators, René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo, France’s bestselling authors overseas.
For decades, this tale of a diminutive Gaulish warrior – with the help of his best friend, Obelix, and the magic potion prepared by the village druid – has won over readers courtesy of its heroes’ refusal to bend to a vastly superior foe: the Romans. As a staggering tally of almost 400 million global sales shows, the comic strip has proven an equally formidable foe to its rivals on the newsstands.
Yet there’s more to Asterix than sales figures. So universal has been this comic strip’s impact, so embedded is it in a whole host of nations’ cultures, that it has changed the way we look at ancient history, too.
Asterix is, of course, indisputably, distinctively French. The story is told from the point of view of the Gauls, the ancient people of what is today France. The ancient Greeks and Romans were fascinated by these barbarians of the west. Greeks called them Celts (Keltoi) and Romans named them Gauls (Galli). Yet their descriptions were rarely flattering: to the Greeks and Romans, the Gauls were an uncivilised rabble who could and should be vanquished.
In the classical division of the world’s nations, the Gauls, as a western or northern people, were courageous but lacked competence or wisdom. They were the typical ‘others’ and were hardly given a voice to express their own beliefs and opinions. When the Gauls did speak in the ancient texts, it was the Greek and Roman writers who gave them these words.
Asterix changed all that. In Goscinny and Uderzo’s imagining, the Gauls are no longer the pa
