Romans and Druids

To their north the Romans clashed with Celts whom they called Gauls. The Celts lived in the southern half of Germany, the Netherlands, parts of Poland, Russia, a part of Spain and in Britannia (Britain) and Ireland. They were an Indo-European people, at least in language. They were craftsmen and traders with coinage. Theirs was an iron civilization. They put decoration on their swords, helmets and brooches and participated in lavish burials for their dead. They have been described as a confident people, with some among them possessing swagger and some possessing elegance.

In religion, the Celts were polytheistic and animist. They participated in animal and human sacrifices, Believing as they did that spirit -- or gods -- permeated all aspects of what people today call nature, they had a reverence for nature that would diminish among monotheists.

Celts are described as having hill tops, streams and lakes that they viewed as sacred, and plants such as mistletoe. They saw fire as a cleansing spirit, and like just about everybody else they are believed to have had purification rituals. Wikipedia describes two bonfires side by side with people walking between the fires as a ritual of purification. "Sometimes," adds the author of this article, "cattle and other livestock would be driven between the fires, as well."

The Celts came south in 390 BCE and, with twice the military force of the Romans, they penetrated Rome's walls and slaughtered old men, women and children. They looted and burned and fought the Romans for seven months. Then they returned north, leaving Rome in ruins and the Romans with an unfavorable impression of them. It would be 800 years before another foreign army would devastate the city.

It was the Romans who expanded against the Celts, in the late 100s BCE in southern France, then called Gaul by the Romans. This was the part of Gaul where Celtic towns existed, Transalpina Gaul, near the coast, unlike heavily forested northern Gaul.

In 58 BCE the Romans sought order in Gaul and intervened in warring that had been taking place among the Celts. Julius Caesar was in charge, and he put his observations about the Gauls into a book that modern scholars have studied. Caesar expressed horror at the human sacrificing practiced by the Gauls. The Romans were not far from human sacrifice themselves, and in general they were tolerant of gruesome displays, like gladiator contests and torturous executions of conquered leaders such as strangulations or dragging them through the streets. The Romans were tolerant toward the great variety of religious beliefs, but as conquerors of the Celts the Romans wished to think of themselves and to portray themselves as a civilizing force. And as conquerors they wanted to get rid of the Celtic elites as competitors -- as it was to be with Hitler in 1940 when he wanted wanted to rid Poland of its intellectuals.

Leaders of the Celts were Druids. In his book, A Brief History of the Druids, Peter Berresford Ellis writes that, "There is no support at all for Caesar's contention that in Celtic society ' the (ordinary) people are treated almost like slaves' and that only the Druids and the warrior class had any rights at all." Celtic societies were more communal than Roman society. Celts did not rule each other with the authority that societies did that were divided between wealthy aristocracies and poor common people. Women were treated more as equals, as was common in communal societies, than they were in Roman society. Druids were both male and female. The Druids can be described as priests with some authority alongside those chosen leaders that we label as king. They have also been described as healers. The Druids have been described as ambassadors in time of war and by the website "British Express" as a sort of glue holding together Celtic culture, but not as a hereditary caste. Wikipedia describes that as having "enjoyed exemption from military service as well as from payment of taxes." According to Peter Berresford Ellis, Caesar described all men of rank among the Gauls as either Druids or nobles, and Caesar claimed that Druids punished members of their society by forbidding their attending religious festivals.

As guardians of religion, the Druids were in charge of religious schools, where study involved memorizing. Apparently the Gauls had no writing. They were still in the oral tradition. It is written that it could take up to twenty years of learning to become a Druid. Peter Berresford Ellis quotes Caesar:

With regard to their actual course of studies, the main object of all education is, in their opinion, to imbue their scholars with a firm belief in the indestructibility of the human soul, which, according to their belief, merely passes at death from one tenement to another; for by such doctrine alone, they say, which robs death of all its terrors, can the highest form of human courage be developed. Subsidiary to the teachings of this main principle, they hold various lectures and discussions on astronomy, on the extent and geographical distribution of the globe, on the different branches of natural philosophy, and on many problems connected with religion. (Julius Cesar, "De Bello Gallico", VI, 13)

There was the question of extermination of the Druids as opposed to Druids continuing to function with Roman conquest. Extermination worked hardly better than it had by Roman emperors who wanted to exterminate Christianity. Druids must have continued to be of some influence in Celtic society after conquest. Augustus Caesar found it necessary to forbid Druid practices among Roman citizens in Gaul. His successor, Tiberius, had the Senate decree a ban on Druid practices altogether.

When the Romans conquered the British Isles -- which they never did completely -- they extended their hostility toward the Druids. In year 60 CE, Rome's governor in England, Suetonius, attacked the known heartland of the Druids, the island of Anglesey. But the Druids survived. According to Peter Berresford Ellis, when Christianity first arrived in England the Druids merged with the new Christianized culture, "some even becoming priests of the new religion and continuing as an intellectual class." Ellis writes that law codified in 438 in Christianized Ireland gave recognition to Druids, which "gives authority to the idea that they were not suppressed nor did they disappear with the onset of Christianity."