About Druids

One of the earliest recorded descriptions of druids comes from Julius Caesar, who encountered them in the conquest of Gaul in the 1st century BCE. In Book 6 of his Commentarii de Bello Gallico ("Commentaries on the Gallic War"), he has a few chapters on the social structure of Gaul. He lists two groups that were prominent in Gallic society, druids and nobles. Unfortunately, we should be careful what we take as fact, since a lot of what he wrote was hearsay, and some comes from an account a century earlier by another politician, Posidonius.

Posidonius decided in the 90s BCE to travel the world. He studied the Celts in Gaul, describing customs like nailing skulls to doorways as trophies. The Celts told him that they honored druids, whose descriptions caused Posidonius to describe druids as philosophers. Posidonius' writing on the lands of the Celts is lost, but was quoted by others, such as Caesar.

Julius Caesar commented on the role of human sacrifice, including of innocent people, and the option of burning alive hundreds of people to protect the larger population from famine or plague. The legend of the "wicker man" (seen above), entrapping several people in the wicker-made construct and burning the whole, comes from one line of Caesar's, which is believed to have been inspired by the stories of Posidonius:

They have images of immense size, the limbs of which are framed with twisted twigs and filled with living persons. These being set on fire, those within are encompassed by the flames.

The 1st-century Greek geographer Strabo also mentions this practice, saying that innocent people would be sacrificed inside if there were no criminals handy to use.

Caesar also discusses the divinities to whom the druids sacrificed, mentioning Dis (the Roman god of the underworld), from whom Caesar says the Celts believe they were descended. Another was the goddess Brigid, associated with healing and smithcraft and nature (among other things), who may have been Christianized centuries later as St. Brigid.

We'll go into more of the civil culture of druids tomorrow.