No name in connection with Celtic religion is more familiar to the
average reader than that of the Druids, yet there is no section of the
history of Celtic religion that has given rise to greater discussion than
that relating to this order. Even the association of the name with the
Indo-European root _dru_-, which we find in the Greek word _drus_, an
oak, has been questioned by such a competent Celtic scholar as M.
d'Arbois de Jubainville, but on this point it cannot be said that his
criticism is conclusive. The writers of the ancient world who refer to
the Druids, do not always make it sufficiently clear in what districts
the rites, ceremonies, and functions which they were describing
prevailed. Nor was it so much the priestly character of the Druids that
produced the deepest impression on the ancients. To some philosophical
and theological writers of antiquity their doctrines and their apparent
affinities with Pythagoreanism were of much greater interest than their
ceremonial or other functions. One thing at any rate is clear, that the
Druids and their doctrines, or supposed doctrines, had made a deep
impression on the writers of the ancient world. There is a reference to
them in a fragment of Aristotle (which may not, however, be genuine) that
is of interest as assigning them a place in express terms both among the
Celts and the Galatae. The prominent feature of their teaching which had
attracted the attention of other writers, such as the historian Diodorus
Siculus and the Christian theologian Clement of Alexandria, was the
resemblance of their doctrine concerning the immortality and
transmigration of the soul to the views of Pythagoras. Ancient writers,
however, did not always remember that a religious or philosophical
doctrine must not be treated as a thing apart, but must be interpreted in
its whole context in relation to its development in history and in the
social life of the community in which it has flourished. To some of the
ancients the superficial resemblance between the Druidic doctrine of the
soul's future and the teaching attributed to Pythagoras was the essential
point, and this was enough to give the Druids a reputation for
philosophy, so that a writer like Clement of Alexandria goes so far as to
regard the Druids of the 'Galatae' along with the prophets of the
Egyptians, the 'Chaldaeans' of the Assyrians, the 'philosophers of the
Celts,' and the Magi of the Persians as the pioneers of philosophy among
the barbarians before it spread to the Greeks. The reason for the
distinction drawn in this passage between the 'Druids of the Galatae' and
'the philosophers of the Celts' is not clear. Diodorus Siculus calls
attention to the Druidic doctrine that the souls of men were immortal,
and that after the lapse of an appointed number of years they came to
life again, the soul then entering into another body. He says that there
were certain 'philosophers and theologians' that were called Druids who
were held in exceptional honour. In addition to these, the Celts, he
says, had also seers, who foretold the future from the flight of birds
and by means of the offering of sacrifices. According to him it was
these priestly seers who had the masses in subjection to them. In great
affairs they had, he says, the practice of divination by the slaughter of
a human victim, and the observation of the attitude in which he fell, the
contortions of the limbs, the spurting of the blood, and the like. This,
he states, was an ancient and established practice. Moreover, it was the
custom, according to Diodorus, to make no sacrifice without the presence
of a philosopher (apparently a Druid in addition to the sacrificing
seer), the theory being that those who were authorities on the divine
nature were to the gods intelligible mediators for the offering of gifts
and the presentation of petitions. These philosophers were in great
request, together with their poets, in war as well as in peace, and were
consulted not merely by the men of their own side, but also by those of
the enemy. Even when two armies were on the point of joining battle,
these philosophers had been able, Diodorus says, to step into the space
between them and to stop them from fighting, exactly as if they had
charmed wild beasts. The moral which Diodorus draws from this is, that
even among the wildest of barbarians the spirited principle of the soul
yields to wisdom, and that Ares (the god of war) even there respects the
Muses. It is clear from this account that Diodorus had in mind the three
classes of non-military professional men among the Celts, to whom other
ancient writers also refer, namely, the Bards, the Seers, and the Druids.
His narrative is apparently an expansion, in the light of his reading and
philosophical meditation, of information supplied by previous writers,
notably Posidonius. The latter, too, appears to have been Julius Caesar's
chief authority, in addition to his own observation, but Caesar does not
appear expressly to indicate the triple division here in question. The
account which he gives is important, and would be even more valuable than
it is had he told us how far what he describes was written from his own
personal information, and the degree of variation (if any) of religious
practice in different districts. However, Caesar's statements deserve
the closest consideration. After calling attention to the division of
the Gaulish aristocracy into two main sections, the Druids and the
Knights, he proceeds to speak of the Druids. These were occupied, he
says, with religious matters, they attended to public and private
sacrifices, and interpreted omens. Moreover, they were the teachers of
the country. To them the young men congregated for knowledge, and the
pupils held their teachers in great respect. They, too, were the judges
in public and private disputes: it was they who awarded damages and
penalties. Any contumacy in reference to their judgments was punished by
exclusion from the sacrifices. This sentence of excommunication was the
severest punishment among the Gauls. The men so punished were treated as
outlaws, and cut off from all human society, with its rights and
privileges. Over these Druids there was one head, who wielded the
highest influence among them. On his death the nearest of the others in
dignity succeeded him, or, if several were equal, the election of a
successor was made by the vote of the Druids. Sometimes the primacy was
not decided without the arbitrament of arms. The Druids met at a fixed
time of the year in a consecrated spot in the territory of the Carnutes,
the district which was regarded as being in the centre of the whole of
Gaul. This assembly of Druids formed a court for the decision of cases
brought to them from everywhere around. It was thought, Caesar says,
that the doctrine of the Druids was discovered in Britain and thence
carried over into Gaul. At that time, too, those who wanted to make a
profounder study of it resorted thither for their training. The Druids
had immunity from military service and from the payment of tribute. These
privileges drew many into training for the profession, some of their own
accord, others at the instance of parents and relatives. While in
training they were said to learn by heart a large number of verses, and
some went so far as to spend twenty years in their course of preparation.
The Druids held it wrong to put their religious teaching in writing,
though, in almost everything else, whether public or private affairs,
they made use of Greek letters. Caesar thought that they discouraged
writing on the one hand, lest their teaching should become public
property; on the other, lest reliance upon writing should lessen the
cultivation of the memory. To this risk Caesar could testify from his
own knowledge. Their cardinal doctrine was that souls did not perish,
but that after death they passed from one person to another; and this
they regarded as a supreme incentive to valour, since, with the prospect
of immortality, the fear of death counted for nothing. They carried on,
moreover, many discussions about the stars and their motion, the
greatness of the universe and the lands, the nature of things, the
strength and power of the immortal gods, and communicated their knowledge
to their pupils. In another passage Caesar says that the Gauls as a
people were extremely devoted to religious ideas and practices. Men who
were seriously ill, who were engaged in war, or who stood in any peril,
offered, or promised to offer, human sacrifices, and made use of the
Druids as their agents for such sacrifices. Their theory was, that the
immortal gods could not be appeased unless a human life were given for a
human life. In addition to these private sacrifices, they had also
similar human sacrifices of a public character. Caesar further contrasts
the Germans with the Gauls, saying that the former had no Druids to
preside over matters of religion, and that they paid no attention to
sacrifices.
In his work on divination, Cicero, too, refers to the profession which
the Druids made of natural science, and of the power of foretelling the
future, and instances the case of the AEduan Diviciacus, his brother's
guest and friend. Nothing is here said by Cicero of the three classes
implied in Diodorus, but Timagenes (quoted in Ammianus) refers to the
three classes under the names 'bardi,' 'euhages' (a mistake for 'vates'),
and 'drasidae' (a mistake for 'druidae'). The study of nature and of the
heavens is here attributed to the second class of seers (vates). The
highest class, that of the Druids, were, he says, in accordance with the
rule of Pythagoras, closely linked together in confraternities, and by
acquiring a certain loftiness of mind from their investigations into
things that were hidden and exalted, they despised human affairs and
declared the soul immortal. We see here the view expressed that socially
as well as intellectually the Druids lived according to the Pythagorean
philosophy. Origen also refers to the view that was prevalent in his
time, that Zamolxis, the servant of Pythagoras, had taught the Druids the
philosophy of Pythagoras. He further states that the Druids practised
sorcery. The triple division of the non-military aristocracy is perhaps
best given by Strabo, the Greek geographer, who here follows Posidonius.
The three classes are the Bards, the Seers (ouateis=vates), and Druids.
The Bards were hymn-writers and poets, the Seers sacrificers and men of
science, while the Druids, in addition to natural science, practised also
moral philosophy. They were regarded as the justest of men, and on this
account were intrusted with the settlement of private and public
disputes. They had been the means of preventing armies from fighting
when on the very verge of battle, and were especially intrusted with the
judgment of cases involving human life. According to Strabo, they and
their fellow-countrymen held that souls and the universe were immortal,
but that fire and water would sometime prevail. Sacrifices were never
made, Strabo says, without the intervention of the Druids. Pomponius
Mela says that in his time (c. 44 A.D.), though the ancient savagery was
no more, and the Gauls abstained from human sacrifices, some traces of
their former practices still remained, notably in their habit of cutting
a portion of the flesh of those condemned to death after bringing them to
the altars. The Gauls, he says, in spite of their traces of barbarism,
had an eloquence of their own, and had the Druids as their teachers in
philosophy. These professed to know the size and form of the earth and
of the universe, the motions of the sky and stars, and the will of the
gods. He refers, as Caesar does, to their work in education, and says
that it was carried on in caves or in secluded groves. Mela speaks of
their doctrine of immortality, but says nothing as to the entry of souls
into other bodies. As a proof of this belief he speaks of the practice
of burning and burying with the dead things appropriate to the needs of
the living. Lucan, the Latin poet, in his _Pharsalia_, refers to the
seclusion of the Druids' groves and to their doctrine of immortality. The
Scholiasts' notes on this passage are after the manner of their kind, and
add very little to our knowledge. In Pliny's _Natural History_ (xvi,
249), however, we seem to be face to face with another, though perhaps a
distorted, tradition. Pliny was an indefatigable compiler, and appears
partly by reading, partly by personal observation, to have noticed phases
of Celtic religious practices which other writers had overlooked. In the
first place he calls attention to the veneration in which the Gauls held
the mistletoe and the tree on which it grew, provided that that tree was
the oak. Hence their predilection for oak groves and their requirement
of oak leaves for all religious rites. Pliny here remarks on the
consonance of this practice with the etymology of the name Druid as
interpreted even through Greek (the Greek for an oak being _drus_). Were
not this respect for the oak and for the mistletoe paralleled by numerous
examples of tree and plant-worship given by Dr. Frazer and others, it
might well have been suspected that Pliny was here quoting some writer
who had tried to argue from the etymology of the name Druid. Another
suspicious circumstance in Pliny's account is his reference to the
serpent's egg composed of snakes rolled together into a ball. He states
that he himself had seen such an 'egg,' of about the size of an apple.
Pliny, too, states that Tiberius Caesar abolished by a decree of the
Senate the Druids and the kind of seers and physicians the Gauls then
had. This statement, when read in its context, probably refers to the
prohibition of human sacrifices. The historian Suetonius, in his account
of the Emperor Claudius, also states that Augustus had prohibited 'the
religion of the Druids' (which, he says, 'was one of fearful savagery')
to Roman citizens, but that Claudius had entirely abolished it. What is
here also meant, in view of the description given of Druidism, is
doubtless the abolishing of its human sacrifices. In later Latin writers
there are several references to Druidesses, but these were probably only
sorceresses. In Irish the name _drui_ (genitive _druad_) meant a
magician, and the word _derwydd_ in mediaeval Welsh was especially used
in reference to the vaticinations which were then popular in Wales.
When we analyse the testimony of ancient writers concerning the Druids,
we see in the first place that to different minds the name connoted
different things. To Caesar it is the general name for the non-military
professional class, whether priests, seers, teachers, lawyers, or judges.
To others the Druids are pre-eminently the philosophers and teachers of
the Gauls, and are distinguished from the seers designated _vates_. To
others again, such as Pliny, they were the priests of the oak-ritual,
whence their name was derived. In view of the variety of grades of
civilisation then co-existing in Gaul and Britain, it is not improbable
that the development of the non-military professional class varied very
considerably in different districts, and that all the aspects of Druidism
which the ancient writers specify found their appropriate places in the
social system of the Celts. In Gaul and Britain, as elsewhere, the
office of the primitive tribal medicine-man was capable of indefinite
development, and all the forms of its evolution could not have proceeded
_pari passu_ where the sociological conditions found such scope for
variation. It may well be that the oak and mistletoe ceremonies, for
example, lingered in remote agricultural districts long after they had
ceased to interest men along the main routes of Celtic civilisation. The
bucolic mind does not readily abandon the practices of millennia.
In addition to the term Druid, we find in Aulus Hirtius' continuation of
Caesar's _Gallic War_ (Bk. viii., c. xxxviii., 2), as well as on two
inscriptions, one at Le-Puy-en-Velay (Dep. Haute-Loire), and the other at
Macon (Dep. Saone-et-Loire), another priestly title, 'gutuater.' At
Macon the office is that of a 'gutuater Martis,' but of its special
features nothing is known.