From the Introduction of the book by Peter Ellis

"The Druids"

(1994) 

OTHERS SAY:

Finally, a book that separates fact from mythology, telling us

what we can and cannot know about the ancient Druids. This

remarkable book by a leading historian of the Celts offers much

for the academician as well as the general reader. Fascinating

reading!

-JOSEPH A. KING

author of Ireland to North America

The Druids penetrates the veil of fiction and folklore by

painting a compelling picture of a central aspect of Celtic

society that has been shrouded in mystery for centuries. The

author's insights are extremely fresh, based on impeccable

scholarship, and presented in an engaging style certain to

interest readers from all backgrounds. Once again Peter

Berresford Ellis has made an invaluable contribution to Celtic

studies.

-PETER CHERICI author of Celtic Sexuality: Power, Paradigms, and

Passion

A thoughtful, comprehensive, and highly informative study that

corrects many of the ill-founded theories propagated concerning

the Druids. It is one of the best books available on the topic.

Ellis approaches his subject with realism, respect, and

impeccable scholarship, providing a balanced view not only of the

Druids but of Celtic society and achievements in general. His

book will be equally valuable to the scholar and the interested

reader.

-GLENYS GOETINCK

author of Peredur: A Study of Welsh Tradition in the Grail

Legends

"THE DRUIDS" by Peter Ellis

INTRODUCTION

IDENTIFYING THE DRUIDS

IF this were an academic dissertation, I would probably choose

the subtitle 'An introductory argument'.... In no field is it

more necessary to ask the right questions than when attempting to

discover the Druids. The simple truth is that one person's Druid

is another person's fantasy. The Druids have been conjured in a

wide variety of perceptions, as to who they were, what they

believed and what they taught, since the sixteenth century. The

basic problem is that no Druid, nor sympathetic contemporary

observer, ever committed to writing the necessary unequivocal

information for our latter-day understanding. We have to search

diligently among many sources to come up with our answers and, as

Levi-Strauss implies, the result of the search depends on what

questions we ask.

In spite of several references to Druids in Greek and Latin

writings and in spite of the traditions recorded in the native

Celtic literatures, we are still far from being absolutely

knowledgeable.

It is true that we possess a few respectful Greek sources; but

the bulk of the 'Classical' observations consist of the

anti-Celtic propaganda of the Roman Empire. There has been a

tendency for scholars to accept these sources as giving us facts

written in stone which are not to be questioned. By the time the

Celts themselves came to commit their knowledge to writing, they

had become Christianized and, not surprisingly, the Druids

continued to get 'a bad Press'. Their portrayal remains an

extremely biased one. And when some of the 'gentlemen

antiquarians' of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries felt

that they could see the Druids in a more sympathetic light, they

romanticized them out of all recognition to what their role in

Celtic society originally was.

Most people these days would be able to make some response if

asked to define a Druid. In fact, the Druids have achieved

something of a unique place in the folklore of Western Europe and

its New World offshoots. They captured the imagination of the

ancient world as no other group of people ever did and they still

have a tremendous impact on the esoteric life of the modern

world. The Celtic scholar, Nora Chadwick, has commented: 'The

fascination of the subject is everlasting.' Apart from a vague

acknowledgement that the Druids were the intellectual class of

the ancient Celts, they are usually perceived as variations of

religious mystics and priests.

Many will remember being taught at school that the Romans saw the

Druids as bizarre, barbaric priests who indulged in the most

horrendous human sacrifices, searching for auguries in the

entrails of their victims. According to others, they were simply

ancient patriarchal religious mystics, generally portrayed in

white robes and beards, who worshipped nature, particularly

trees, and who gathered in stone circles to perform their

religious rites at the time of the solstice. To some they were

powerful magicians and soothsayers. To others merely bards and

prophets. How many would immediately conjure Merlin of Arthurian

Saga fame as the archetypal Druid? No doubt a good many modern

children would see the Druid through the eyes of Goscinny and

Underzo, in Asterix le Gaulois, where the character of the Druid

is known in the English translations as 'Getafix', originally

Panoramix, supplying magic potions from his mystical cauldron.

Those readers who have encountered Celtic mythology, and the

early sagas of Ireland and Wales, will know that the Druids are

depicted as an all-powerful and essential element in society. By

Christian times they had, more or less, been reduced to the

status of wizards and soothsayers.

Others will associate the Druids as something to do with the

recreation of the Welsh, Breton and Cornish Gorseddau and the

romantic movement of the late eighteenth century. The robed

figure of the ArchDruid of Wales is now an easily recognizable

one, thanks to the press and media coverage of the Gorsedd

ceremonies - particularly the Welsh Gorsedd - as part of the

National Eisteddfod.

However, in England, people popularly associate Druids with

earnest looking, white-robed men and women who continue to hold

mystic ceremonies at the time of the summer solstice in stone

circles such as Stonehenge and even at such sites as Parliament

Hill or Tower Hill in London. Indeed, there still exist

descendant groups of the Ancient Order of Druids formed by

enthusiasts in London in 1781. Sir Winston Churchill was

initiated into the Albion Lodge of the Order in 1908. These

gatherings, of course, have nothing to do with Celtic culture,

ancient or modern, and the 'mystic' incantations of these

particular Druids, to the sun and pagan deities, are chanted in

English.

Indeed, Druids have also been hijacked by the 'New Age' movement

and conjured to their philosophies. An offering which has been

reprinted several times now, The Mind of the Druid, by Dr E.

Graham Howe, has a foreword by David Loxley, claiming to be

'Chief Druid of the Druid Order'. Again, this work has absolutely

nothing to do with ancient Celtic philosophy, but, sadly, Druids

are commercially acceptable in the new wave of esoterica and

alternative religious thought. Any half-baked philosophy can have

the word 'Druid' or even 'Celtic' attached to it and be assured

of an enthusiastic, if somewhat gullible, following.   

The first problem, then, is - who is right in their perception of

the  Druids? The simple answer is rather like the logic found in

Alice in Wonderland. Everyone is wrong but everyone has glimpsed

a tiny part of the reality, so everyone is right and we all get a

prize! Readers will recall the story of the blind men being asked

to define an elephant by touch. One, feeling a leg, claimed

that the elephant was like a tree, another, feeling its trunk,

claimed it was like a snake, yet a third, feeling an ear, thought

the elephant was a large winged creature and so on and so forth.

This is precisely what has been happening over the last three

hundred years in the case of the Druids. Definitions are derived

from small items of knowledge and no one seems to have perceived

a totality of information to give an accurate picture of who they

were and why they have survived into our modern folklore.

(I think Isabel Hill Elder did do that in her work, "Celt, Druid

and Culdee - Keith Hunt).

This work, which is an attempt to present the Druids to a general

readership, sets out to demonstrate the role of the Druids in

ancient Celtic society; what we know of their teachings, and how

they imparted their knowledge without the aid of writing. This

oral tradition existed not because they had no knowledge of the

art of writing but because they placed a religious prohibition on

committing their knowledge to that form, in order that such

knowledge should not fall into the wrong hands. It thus took

between twelve and twenty years of study to reach the highest

level of learning among them. This prohibition on committing

their knowledge and philosophy to writing has been a great

stumbling block for modern scholars attempting to understand

exactly what they believed and taught; that, combined with the

periodic destruction of native Celtic books and manuscripts by

conquering forces. Indeed, it is argued that when the Celtic

civilization first became known to the Greeks, the Greeks called

them the Keltoi, which was a Celtic word used to describe meaning

'the hidden people'. Celt is seen by some linguists as being.

cognate with the Old Irish ceilid, used in Modern Irish as ceilt

- to hide or conceal. It is also argued that the word kilt,

entering English in about 1730 from Scottish Gaelic, meaning the

distinctive short skirt of male Celtic dress, comes from this

same root word. However, it should be pointed out that others

have contended that the word kilt derived from the Scandinavian

languages, kilte meaning 'to tuck up'. This latter derivation

seems a little too plausible.

The Druids were no simple barbaric priests or priestesses.

Indeed, nothing in the accounts really suggests a priesthood nor

does any Classical writer call them priests or sacerdotes. This

is not to say that some Druids were not called upon to oversee

religious functions. 

I would suggest, as many other scholars in this area have now

done, that the Druids were the parallel caste to the social group

which developed in another Indo-European society - the Brahmins

of the Hindu culture. They formed the intellectuals, or learned

class, of Hindu society and were deemed the highest caste. While

they had a priestly function, they were not solely priests. 

So, too, with the Druids; they were a caste incorporating all the

learned professions. The caste not only consisted of those who

had a religious function but also comprised philosophers, judges,

teachers, historians, poets, musicians, physicians, astronomers,

prophets and political advisers or counsellors. Druids could

sometimes be kings or chieftains, such as Divitiacus of the

Aedui, but not all kings were necessarily Druids.

Our earliest and most extensive sources, as I have pointed out,

are from Greek and Roman writers. In other words, from writers

alien and often extremely hostile to Celtic culture.

Significantly, the Greek sources are generally more respectful to

the Druids, particularly the Alexandrian School of writers, while

the Latin sources are universally hostile. Yet, as I have said,

these sources have, in the main, been accepted without question

even by scholars who are usually more critical of source

material. Imagine, the culture and history of the American

Indians from the perceptions of nineteenth century white American

settlers being accepted without question. What a curious,

prejudiced view we would have of the Native Americans.

Imagine, too, the commander of a foreign army which has been sent

to conquer and destroy a people then writing a book about the

culture and customs of those people and it being regarded by

subsequent generations as written totally without prejudice. Yet

we are asked to accept Julius Caesar's accounts of the Celts and

Druids as totally accurate. Had General, Lord Chelmsford, written

an account of the culture and philosophies of the Zulu nation,

following his conquest of Zululand in 1879, we might have had

some reservations in accepting everything he wrote as being

without prejudice. Yet many would have us believe that the

passage of time makes for unquestioning accuracy. We can accept

that Chelmsford would very likely have been prejudiced, but that

Julius Caesar's comments on the Celtic civilization and the

Druids are beyond reproach. This is not to say that Caesar was

totally inaccurate to the point where he should be dismissed.

Indeed, from native Celtic sources, we can confirm several of his

observations. 

We should question everything, especially if it comes from

sources hostile to Celtic civilization. 

The cultural prejudice of both the Greek and Roman sources must

be taken into account when they speak of matters pertaining to a

culture they generally deemed as barbaric or inferior.   

When Christianity replaced the pre-Christian Celtic religion and

the Druidic proscription on writing down the native history and

philosophy was ended, the Celts poured out a wealth of

literature. 

Indeed, Irish became Europe's third written language. From early

Irish and Welsh sources there are many references to the Druids

and, in a few places, they do confirm some of the information

found in Greek and Roman sources.

What emerges from a close study of the sources is that the

commonly held belief, that the Romans attempted a widespread

repression of the Druids because they were horrified by Druidic

priestly practices, is no more than a conjecture which has become

an accepted historical myth. There is, indeed, evidence that the

Romans attempted to abolish the Druidic caste although Nora

Chadwick argues that the attempt was not as widespread as later

historians would have us believe. Certainly such an attempt was

not the result of Roman sensitivities about the religious rites

practised by the Celts. As an intellectual class, the repository

of Gaulish and British cultural and national resistance to Roman

conquest, it would be inevitable that Rome would attempt to

suppress them. It is a traditional imperialist maxim that to

conquer a nation you must first subvert or remove the class which

is most dangerous to your objectives, that is - the

intellectuals.

Professor Jean Markle, in his "La Femme Celte" (1972) makes the

following argument as to why the Romans attempted to suppress the

Druids:

     When Rome spread its empire over the whole Mediterranean 

     and into part of Western Europe, care was taken to eliminate

     anything that might harm its socio-political organization.

     This is very evident in Celtic countries: the Romans pursued

     the Druids until they disappeared into Gaul and later into

     Britain. The Druids represented an absolute threat to the

     Roman State, because their science and philosophy

     dangerously contradicted Roman orthodoxy. The Romans were

     materialistic, the Druids spiritual. For the Romans the

     State was a monolithic structure spread over territories

     deliberately organised into a hierarchy. With the Druids it

     was a freely consented moral order with an entirely mythical

     central idea. The Romans based their law on private

     ownership of land, with property rights entirely vested in

     the head of the family, whereas the Druids always considered

     ownership collective. The Romans looked upon women as

     bearers of children and objects of pleasure, while the

     Druids included women in their political and religious life.

     We can thus understand how seriously the subversive thought

     of the Celts threatened the Roman order, even though it was

     never openly expressed. The talent of the Romans in ridding

     themselves of the Gallic and British elites is always

     considered astonishing, but this leaves out of account the

     fact that it was a matter of life or death to Roman society.

Pliny the Elder (AD 23/24-79) seems to be the first to raise

questions bout the reasons for the decline of the Druids and

certainly has no hesitation in attributing it to Roman

repression. Yet one cannot really take seriously the claim that

this was done because of Roman outrage against a religion they

associated with human sacrifice when Rome itself was so used to

mass sacrifices. Eminent men from the nations that Rome had

conquered were dragged though the streets, chained to the

chariots of her victorious generals, and ritually strangled in

the Tullianum at the foot of the Capitol to propitiate Mars, the

Roman god of war. Vercingetorix, the famous leader of Celtic

resistance to Caesar in Gaul, met his end here. It can hardly be

believed that the Romans, especially during the reigns of such   

emperors as Caligula and Nero, could be shocked by human

sacrifice.

It is only the Romans course, who would have us believe in their

sensitivity to human sacrifice. The curious fact is that no

Insular Celtic literature, nor traditions, provides evidence for

the practice of human sacrifice as a religious rite.

When Augustus excluded the Druids from Roman citizenship by

forbidding Roman citizens to practise Druidical rites, when

Tiberius banned the Druids by a decree of the Roman Senate and

when Claudius attempted to 'wholly abolish' them in AD 54, it was

not, I believe, in disapproval of 'inhuman rites' practised by

the Druids, but to wipe out an intellectual class who could, and

did, organize national revolt against Rome.

Further, my argument is that the Druids were not entirely

suppressed in the Celtic lands under Roman rule as is commonly

thought. Nor would I accept Nora Chadwick's contention that they

perished by slow strangulation from the superimposition 'of a

higher culture on a lower'. Mrs Chadwick, for example, claims

that when the inhabitants of the chief town of the Aedui in Gaul,

that is Bibracte (Mont-Beuvray), were transferred to the new

Roman town of Augustodunum (Autun), and their oral Druidical

school was replaced by a Romanized university, the Druids were

driven into the backwoods where they eventually perished. On the

contrary, I believe that the Druids remained and adapted to the

new culture.

The great Gaulish intellectual Decimus Magnus Ausonius (C.AD

310-c.393) provides us with some fascinating evidence in this

respect. He was the son of a physician of Burdigala (Bordeaux)

where he taught for thirty years before being appointed as tutor

to Gratian, son of the Emperor Valentinian 1. When Gratian

succeeded as emperor, Ausonius became prefect of Gaul and finally

consul in AD 79. He was nominally Christian, but without any

deeply committed feeling. He wrote one discourse on the

properties of the number three, so closely associated with

Druidic teachings. Ausonius came from an educated Celtic family

which would have been of the Druidic caste before Roman

proscription.

Ausonius himself admits that his contemporary Delphidius, famous

for his eloquence, and a likely teacher of his, also descended

from a Druidic family. Delphidius' father was Attius Patera, a

famous rhetorician, whose own father, Phoebicius, had been an

aedituus or 'temple guardian' of the Celtic god Belenus at

Bordeaux until he had been persuaded to become a teacher in the

local Latin university.

Ausonius' own maternal grandfather was banished by Victricius,

the Roman bishop of Rouen (C.AD 330-c.407), with the two local

chieftains, to Tabellae (Dax) on the Adour for taking part in an

insurrection of the Aedui. In Parentalia, Ausonius also tells us

that his maternal grandfather practised astrology in secret and

implies that he was from a Druidic family. Victricius was an

ex-Roman soldier who converted to Christianity while he was still

serving and stationed in Gaul. He was an implacable opponent of

'Pelagianism', which Rome claimed to be an attempt to revive the

concepts of Druidism. And, most interesting of all, Ausonius had

an aunt called Dryadia which means 'Druidess'.

With the arrival of Christianity, the Druids began to merge

totally with the new culture, some even becoming priests of the

new religion and continuing as an intellectual class in much the

same way as their forefathers had done for over a thousand years

previously. We find an interesting reference in a 'Life of

Colmcille' that, when the Irish missionary arrived on the island

of Iona, he encountered two Druids who were bishops and who

claimed that they had already planted the Christian faith there.

Colmcille did not believe that they had been properly ordained

and ordered them to depart, which they did. Many early Celtic

Christian saints were referred to as 'Druids'. According to the

earliest known surviving biography of a British Celtic saint,

written about the end of the sixth century AD, 'A Life of

Samson,' Samson's teacher, the famous Illtyd (C.AD 425-505) was

'by descent a most wise Druid'. In the life of the seventh

century AD British Celtic saint Beuno (which survives in a

manuscript written in 1346) we are told that his last words, as

he lay dying, were that he saw the Holy Trinity and the saints

and Druids. Beuno was the father of St. Gwenfrewi, more popularly

known as Winifred of Gwytherin in Denbigh.

The late fourth, early fifth century AD, Celtic Christian

theologian Pelagius, of whom Victricius so strongly disapproved,

was eventually declared a heretic after his conflict with

Augustine of Hippo. Pelius, was accused of attempting to revive

Druidic philosophy on Nature and Free Will. Pelagius' argument

was that human beings had free will, while Augustine believed    

in predestination. We Bear how the Bishops of Rome despaired of

the hold Pelagain philosophy had in the Celtic Church during

subsequent centuries. This is not so surprising if such a

philosophy was simply a centuries old cultural attitude passed

down by generations of Druids. The ninth century AD Welsh

historian, Nennius, says that when the Celtic king Vortigern was

excommunicated by Germanus of Auxerre (C.AD 378-448) for adhering

to the teachings of Pelagius, he invited twelve Druids to assist

him in his councils. We shall consider the matter of Pelagianism

in the discussion on the Druids as philosophers.

The father of St.Brigid of Kildare was a Druid named Dubhthach 

who is often wrongly associated with Dubhthach Maccu Lugir, who

taught Patrick about the Irish law system. Significantly, there

were no recorded Christian martyrdoms in Ireland and indeed

scarcely any among other Celtic peoples. Those few martyr which  

occurred in Britain, for example that of Alban in C.AD 287, were

the result of antagonism among the Roman occupiers and not the

native Celts. 

In Irish ecclesiastical records we have a comment on the

extensive land holdings of converted Druids being granted by them

to the Church. Adomndn's 'Life of St. Columba' certainly

indicates that the Druids were regarded as belonging to the same

class as the leaders of Celtic Christianity.

The adoption of Christianity in Ireland did not lead to the

abolition the Druids but simply to their transformation. 

Father Joe McVeigh, in his polemic work 'Renewing the Irish

Church: Towards an Irish Liberation Theology' (1993), points

outs:

     The first Christian missionaries to Ireland did not attempt

     a root and branch eradication of the Celtic Druidic

     tradition and beliefs. Instead, the new religion absorbed

     the holy mountains and the innumerable holy wells and gave

     them a Christian name. (It has been estimated that there

     were approximately 3,000 holy wells some of which, like Doon

     well in Donegal, remain in use.) This popular or vernacular

     religion, separate and distinct from the institutional

     hierarchical Church, has, from the outset, been a

     vibrant characteristic of Irish Christianity.

I believe that this transformation of the Druids occurred in

other Celtic societies as well.

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 of

Celtic society had any rights at all. No other observer goes so

far as this, nor do the native sources indicate such a situation.

Indeed, native sources demonstrate a contrary state of affairs.

Again we encounter the bellicose propaganda of the conqueror

attempting to find justification for his conquests. If the people

are being treated like slaves by their own ruling class, then the

logic is that their conquest is justified.

Druids were recognized by Irish law even after the introduction 

of Christianity. The civil law of Ireland was first known to have

been codified in AD 438 as the Senchas Mor.' The criminal law,

contained in the 'Book of Acaill,' was codified shortly

afterwards. The Druids still had a place in these codices, which

gives authority to the idea that they were not suppressed nor did

they disappear with the onset of Christianity. Indeed, a Druid

was entitled to a position in society although, so far as any

religious practices were concerned, the 'Bretha Crolige' puts the

Druid on the same social level as a cainte (satirist) or a diberg

(brigand), and as a religious functionary the Druid was reduced

to a sorcerer or prophet. Indeed, the Irish word Druidecht came

to mean sorcery, magic or necromancy while the Welsh word Derwydd

meant a prophet.

So, with Christianity, the perception of the function of the

Druid was already changing within Celtic society.

Under ancient Irish law the provision of sick maintenance,

including curative treatment, attendance allowance and nourishing

food, was made available to all who needed it. The Druids were

'entitled to sick maintenance (othrus) only at the level of the

boaire (literally, a cow-chieftain or local magistrate), no

matter how great his rank, privilege or other rights'. It is

obvious from this qualification that a Druid still attained to

high rank. Indeed, as both the civil and criminal law code of

Ireland survive in their completest form in the 'Leabhar na h

Uidre' (Book of the Dun Cow) dating from the late eleventh or

early twelfth centuries, it might be remarked that there had been

no amendment of the laws relating to the Druids by that time. Two

reasons can be argued: one, that the Druids still existed with a

definite, if diminished, role in Irish society;  two, that the

Druids had vanished and so no one bothered to change the laws. A

comparison here might be that it was not until 1951 that the

English judicial system finally scrapped the medieval laws

relating to the prohibition of witchcraft.

This work has been arranged in order to attempt the easiest

presentation to the general reader. The initial chapters

present the Celtic world to which the Druids belonged, together

with their origins in that world. Next, we consider our sources

concerning the Druids; firstly, how they were perceived through

the foreign eyes of the Greeks and Romans, and secondly, the

Celts themselves, albeit Christianized Celts, perceived these

influential figures in their national ancestry. 

The reader will note a heavy reliance on Irish sources. This is

because there is a veritable treasure trove of Irish material

which remains near to the original pre-Christian source.

Druids, of course, were both male and female and we shall examine

some of the prominent female Druids or Druidesses.

In religious terms just what did Druids believe, and what were

their rituals? What we know from Classical and native

sources, together with archaeological evidence, is presented

together with an examination of the controversial matter of

whether they did or did not, practise the rite of human

sacrifice. (I will present you with this in full as given and

investigated by Ellis in "Druids #4" in this series - Keith

Hunt).

Once again, relying on both Classical and native sources, we

discuss the wisdom of the Druids in those areas of knowledge in

in which Classical sources claim the Druids had especial renown.

We examine them, among their other occupations, as philosophers,

as historians, a physicians, seers, astrologers, and magicians.

Finally, we examine how the Druids came to be revived and have

developed as part of our modern folklore.

This book, as I have stated at the beginning, is no more than a

modest attempt at an introductory argument about the reality and

the legend of the Druids. As Nora Chadwick has already stated,

there can be no doubt that the Druids were the most enlightened  

and civilizing spiritual influence in prehistoric Europe. Yet in

trying to recreate the historical reality of the Druids, myths of

white bearded sages, of rites at the summer solstice in megaliths

belonging to an earlier culture than the Celts, have developed

into wild theories and speculations, to poetic romanticism and

mystical dreaming and outright literary forgeries.

If, however, at the end of this work, the reader comes nearer to

glimpsing even a little of the reality of what was once

'Druidism', then this book will have served its intended purpose.

                                ..........

I here also present to you the basic truth of the famous

Halloween night as it is now pictured in the celebrations of our

modern times. Here again, many (including the Worldwide Church of

God under HWA), mis-applied, through lack of proper in-depth

research, what the original teaching and understanding was

believed by the Druids on this special night of October 31 and

November 1. It was NOT what has been often attributed to them.

QUOTE: 

On one night of the year the Otherworld became VISIBLE to

mankind. this was the feast of SAMHAIN (31 October 1 November),

when the gates of the Otherworld were opened and the inhabitants

could set out to wreak vengeance - on those living in this world

who had wronged them. The ancient belief survived into

Christianity in a TRANSMUTED FORM as Halloween, the evening of

All Hallows or All Saints' Day being on 1 November. The MODERN

idea is that it is the night when witches and demons and spirits

from Hell set out to ensnare unsuspecting souls....

END QUOTE, p.178,179

Ahhhh, did you NOTICE IT?  The ORIGINAL belief and teaching of

the Druids was NOT what is taught and practiced today, and is NOT

what is commonly taught as what the Druids taught and believed.

The Druids taught that those in the otherworld who had BEEN DONE

WRONG by some still living in this world, could come back and

take vengeance on them. It was a teaching of "if you do wrong to

people, they will have the chance in the next life to come back

and take revenge on you." The Druids were NOT teaching that

witches, demons, evil spirits, were set free to ensnare and harm

people. This is as Ellis stated a "modern" idea, and was NOT the

thought or teaching of the Druids at all. 

Oh for the want of correct research into things before you spout

off some fanciful wrong ideas on what the Druids taught. Of

course these wrong ideas have been perpetuated in some

Encyclopedias (the writers of the article not knowing what they

were taking about either...so the wheel keeps turning) which have

been quoted by ministers of the WCG and written in various

religious articles on the Halloween subject. 

Now, you have the truth of the matter. Yes, the Druids did teach

and believe in the "immortal soul" doctrine, but what they taught

about the October 31st feast or celebration, is NOT what is

taught that they taught. It was for them, in their religion, the

day when people who did wrong to others (who had now passed on to

the Otherworld), would have revenge, or punishment, come upon

them, from those they had wronged. It was then a Druid teaching

that taught in essence, "You better do GOOD to people in this

life, not EVIL, for if you do evil to people, you will have

revenge come upon you one day, by the people you  did evil to."

Part One

                 FROM THE BOOK "THE DRUIDS"

                             by

                         Peter Ellis

But before we leave the subject of rites and rituals, we should

deal with the most controversial rite ascribed to the Druids: the

practice of human sacrifice. The question of whether the Celts

did or did not practice such sacrifice has been the subject of

much controversy between scholars during the last two centuries.

A Greek poet named Sopater of Paphos, in Cyprus, born in the time

of Alexander the Great and living to mention Ptolemy 11

(285-246 BC), writes that the Celts of Galatia sacrificed their

prisoners to their gods by burning them after a victory. This

reference survives in the work of the Greek author Athenaeus of

Naucratis (c.AD 200). Diodorus Siculus, the Greek historian

(c.60-30 BC) also speaks of the execution of prisoners by the

Galatian Celts:

     The Galatian general returning from the pursuit, assembled

     the prisoners and carried out an act of extreme barbarity

     and utter insolence. He took those who were most handsome

     and in the strength and flower of their youth, and having

     crowned them, sacrificed them to the gods, if indeed any god

     could receive such offerings.

These references to the slaughter of prisoners have to be treated

for what they are. There is not an army in the world in any

historical epoch who has not been guilty of slaughtering

prisoners after a battle. We must also remember the high degree

of hysteria with which the Greeks regarded the Galatian Celts,

especially after the invasion of Greece in 290 BC. Pausanias,

(fl. CAD 160), the Greek traveller and geographer, goes on record

to accuse the Celts of practising cannibalism after their defeat

of the Greek armies of Athens, Pocis, Aetiolia and Thessaly. He

further implies that this was normal Celtic behaviour. According

to Caesar, and he is always a questionable source, during the

Roman siege of the Celtic hill fort of Alesia (Alias Ste Reine),

a Celtic chieftain, Critognatus, proposed that the starving city

hold out by eating its own dead. This was an extreme resort. The

Celts were eventually forced to surrender. Alesia and

Vercingetorix, their king, was taken as captive to Rome, to be

sacrificed to the Roman god of war, Mars.

Thus we have to be careful as to what is propaganda and what is

truth. So far as the Celts eating the Greeks during their

invasion in 290 BC, the story falls into the 'bogeymen'

propaganda that is always spread in such circumstances, such as

the fabricated stories of German atrocities in Belgium at the

opening of the Great War in 1914. As Rudyard Kipling, a leading

disseminator of the stories, cynically told an audience of

Scottish university students after the war, the first use that

the first man made of the gift of language was to lie about his

neighbours.

The first contentious mention of human sacrifice as a deliberate

act of religious worship by the Celts is made by Caesar and

Strabo, apparently quoting Poseidons as a source.

According to Strabo: 'They used to strike a man, whom they had

devoted to death, in the back with a knife, and then divine from

his death-throes; but they did not sacrifice without a Druid.' He

goes further:

     We are told of still other kinds of sacrifices; for example,

     they would shoot victims to death with arrows, or impale

     them in temples, or, having built a colossus of straw and

     wood, throw into the colossus cattle and animals of all

     sorts and human beings, and then make a burnt offering of

     the whole thing.

Even if we accept this at face value, there is nothing to suggest

that the Druids were responsible for the sacrifice, only that

their presence during it was essential. It has been pointed out

that Strabo gives the Druids the position as judges and it can be

argued that their presence was probably that of officials to

check procedure and prevent miscarriage of the law.

Diodorus actually differentiates between the Druids and the seers

who divine by human sacrifice. He says that on great occasions

the 'vates' nominate a person as a sacrifice and, after plunging

a dagger into him, they read the future from the manner of his

fall and the twitching of his limbs and the flow of blood. He

adds that it was not the custom to make the sacrifice without a

Druid, for it was a saying that offerings acceptable to the gods

had to be made through those acquainted with their nature. He

concludes that in internal wars among the Celts both sides would

obey the Druids. Even when two armies were about to open battle,

if a Druid stepped between them they would be forced to desist.

Caesar emphasizes that it was upon occasions of danger, whether

pubic or private - the Celts of Gaul immolated human victims, or

vowed to do so, employing the Druids as to the conducting of

these sacrifices. He adds that in order to appease the gods, a

life must be paid. 'Others make use of colossal figures composed

of twigs which they fill with living men and set on fire.' Caesar

adds a new twist to this, when he says that the victims were

preferably criminals but if the supply failed then the innocent

were used. This passage corresponds in general very closely with

those by Strabo and Diodorus and it may be safely assumed that

he, too, was using the same source.

Caesar's contemporary, Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) in his

oration in 64 BC, 'Pro Fonteio,' mentions the prevalence of human

sacrifice among the Gaulish Celts as if it were a well-known fact

at the time. But whether this was merely something he had picked

up from Poseidonius, the source of Strabo, Diodorus and Caesar,

is a moot point.

Certainly, Pomponius Mela of Tingentera (near Gibraltar) C.AD 43,

who wrote in that year 'De Chorographia,' the earliest surviving

Latin work on geography, which gives information on the Druids

not found elsewhere, reports that the Celts had once made human

sacrifices but that they were now a thing of the past. 'At one

time they believed a man to be highly pleasing as a sacrifice to

the gods.' However, Mela does not refer to the Druids as being in

any away connected with sacrifices. But he says of the Celts:

     'They have, further, their eloquence and their Druids,

     teachers of wisdom, who profess to know the greatness and

     shape of the earth and the universe, and the motion of the

     heavens and of the stars and what is the will of the gods.'

Mela certainly borrows some material from Caesar, such as the

passage: 'One of their dogmas has become widely known so they may

the more readily go to wars; namely that souls are everlasting,

and that among the shades there is another life.'

Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, Lucan, (AD 39-65) from Cordoba, a

grandson of Seneca the Elder, is concerned to support Rome's

imperial policies and justifies the repression of the Druids

because of the 'barbaric rites and a forbidding mode of worship

in deep groves'. In this he seems to be hinting at the ritual of

human sacrifice.

Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (b. C.AD 70) in his 'Lives of the

Caesars,' speaking of Claudius' reign, mentions that the religion

of the Druids was 'cruel and savage' and thus hints at human

sacrifice, like Lucan, but again without actually stating so.

We have a clearer reference from Tacitus who speaks of human

sacrifices in Mona (Anglesey). He says that when Suetonius

attacked Anglesey, the Druids 'lifting up their hands to heaven,

and pouring forth maledictions, awed the Romans by the unfamiliar

sight'.

After the conquest: 'A force was next set up over the conquered,

and their groves devoted to cruel superstitions were cut down.

They deemed it a duty, indeed, to cover their altars with the

blood of captives, and to consult their deities through human

entrails.' 

Petronius Arbiter (d. AD 65) is quoted by Marius Servius

Honoratus (c. fifth century AD) on the rite of the emissary

sacrifice, whereby a person is chosen to be sacrificed to the

gods. In ancient Greece, where of course sacrifice was practised,

the victim was called pharmakos, a scapegoat. Petronius refers to

this custom in Marseilles:

     Whenever an epidemic broke out at Marseilles, one of the

     poor of the town offered himself to save his fellow

     citizens. For a whole year he had to be fed with choice

     goods at the town's expense. When the time came, crowned

     with leaves and wearing consecrated clothes, he was led

     through the whole town; he was heaped with imprecations, so

     that all the ills of the city were concentrated upon his

     head, and then he was thrown into the sea.

While Marseilles was a Greek colony, founded in the sixth century

BC, and this practice was undoubtedly a Greek custom, it has also

been argued that Marseilles was on the Gaulish seaboard and that

it was probably a Celtic custom. Lactantius Placidus, giving a

commentary on the work of the Celtic writer, Caecilius Statius,

from the Cisalpine Gaulish town of Mediolanum (Milan), talks of a

similar custom which he attributes to his fellow Celts. Statius

was brought to Rome as a slave c.223/222 BC, following the Roman

invasion of the Celtic territory. Freed, he became the chief

Latin comic dramatist of his day. According to Placidus' comments

on Statius:

     The Gauls had a custom of sacrificing a human being to

     purify their city. They selected one of the poorest

     citizens, loaded him with privileges and thereby persuaded

     him to sell himself as victim. During the whole year he was

     fed with choice food at the town's expenses, then when the

     accustomed day arrived, he was made to wander through the

     entire city; finally he was stoned to death by the people

     outside the walls.

The passage is so similar to the comment on the Massiliot custom

that it seems obvious that they both have a common source. But

was it Greek or Celtic?

If such a basic philosophy as the need to propitiate their gods

through human sacrifice had such prevalence among the Celtic

peoples, one might expect some mention of it to emerge in the

extensive Celtic literature, especially as these traditions were

set down by Christianized Celts who would seize the chance to

impugn their pagan past and revile the Druidic traditions.

O'Curry in his 'Manners and Customs o f the Ancient Irish,'

maintained: 'in NO tale or legend of the Irish Druids which has

come down to our time, is there any mention of their ever having

offered human sacrifices'. There is, however, one specific

reference to human sacrifice as a religious rite but not

connected with Druidical observation. But it is one reference in

the whole corpus of Celtic literature and even its veracity is

questionable as it is open to interpretation.

This SOLE reference to human sacrifice as a SPECIFIC religious

rite in general practice comes from the twelfth century

compilation of Irish place-names, the Dindshenchas (sometimes

given as Dinnsenchus), recording traditions much older than the

period it survives from. The Dindshenchas was recorded by a

Christian scribe, of course, and mentions human sacrifice only

twice in the account of the naming of Tailltenn and Magh Slecht.

The first reference is to Patrick preaching at Tailltenn and

arguing against the 'burning of the first born progeny', while

the second reference is to the worship of the idol Cromm Cruach

at Magh Slecht.

Cromm Cruach (sometimes Crom Croich) was an early golden idol who

was reported to have twelve stone gods to serve him and who was

worshipped by the king Tigernmas (Lord of Death) on Magh Slecht

(Plain of Cutting/Slaughter). To Cromm Cruach human sacrifices

were offered in the form of 'the firstlings of every issue, and

the chief scions of every clan.' This concept of the 'first born'

as sacrifices seems more in keeping with Hebrew Biblical

tradition, via Christianity, than Celtic custom. Importantly, as

already pointed out, the concept of primogeniture, which stresses

the importance of the first-born male, or, indeed, female, was

lacking in the Celtic social order. A foreign concept has been

introduced which places the whole validity of the Cromm Cruach

story under question. We are told that for Cromm Cruach 'they

would kill their piteous wretched offspring with much wailing and

peril, to pour their blood around Cromm Cruach. Milk and honey'

(again this seems more a Biblical analogy than a pre-Christian

Celtic one) 'they would ask from the idol in return for

sacrificing one third of their healthy issue. Great was the

horror and the fear of the idol. To him noble Gaels would

prostrate themselves. From the worship of the idol with many

slaughters, the plain is called Magh  Slecht.' (Slecht. cutting,

hewing, slaughter.)

But this story is, in fact, presented in the form that Tigernmos

and his idol were a social aberration and were soon overthrown by

the Druids.

In the 'Leabbar na Nuacbongbbala' (Book of Leinster), there is a

prose account of the idol and the death of Tigernmas with a

multitude of his people while in the act of frenzied worshipping,

an echo of the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah which might have seized

the imagination of the Christian writers. But there is not a word

about human sacrifice in this particular account, neither was

it mentioned by the later writers such as Seathrun, Ceitinn,

Ruaraidh O Flaithbheartaigh (Roderick O'Flaherty) or in the

reference given in the 'Annales Riogbachta Eireann' (Annals of

the Four Masters). Also, earlier in the ninth century AD, when

the 'Tripartite Life o f St. Patrick' claimed it was Patrick who

overthrew the idol, rather than the Druids, no mention of human

sacrifice is made. In fact, in Patrick's own 'Confession,' his

biography, in which he strongly criticizes pagan practices, there

is no reference to human sacrifice. Nor does any of the early

Celtic saints 'Lives' mention such a rite. It seems obvious that

the prejudice of the Christians had NO GENUINE 'human sacrifice' 

material at all to seize upon.

There are a couple of other references which might well imply the

existence of human sacrifice but as a very ancient custom long

since abandoned by the end of the FIRST millennium BC. This

custom, however, is to be found in most early European societies.

These references are connected with the ancient superstition that

sprinkling the blood of some human victim on the foundations of a

building, about to be erected, provides for its safety and

stability. This custom has been found in Hindu culture, among the

Greeks, Slavs and Scandinavians. In a Life of Colmcille, it is

recorded that one of his disciples, Odran, a British Celt,

offered to die so that his sacrifice and burial would scare away

the demons that infested Iona. There are oral traditions relating

to this, to the effect that Odran was buried under the

foundations of Colmcille's church. According to Alexander

Carmichael's 'Carmina Gadelica' (1900), there are oral traditions

found throughout the Hebrides of persons killed and buried, or

even buried alive, under the foundations of newly erected

buildings to ensure stability. But is this a tradition from the

Celtic or the Scandinavian traditions, which were also prevalent

among the Western Islands?

This custom is certainly reflected in 'Historia Brittonum' by

Nenmus, the Welsh historian writing C.AD 829, which records that

when Vortigern decided to build Dinas Emrys he consulted his

Druids who told him that in order for the structure to last

forever, a child, who had no father, should be sacrificed and his

blood sprinkled on the foundations. Such a child was found. But

the boy had great wisdom and argued the morality of the sacrifice

with the Druids so successfully that he was released. The boy was

Merlin. This story actually corresponds closely with an ancient

Irish tale, 'The Courtship of Becuma', copied into the fifteenth

century AD 'Book of Fermoy' from an earlier source. In this story

a blight comes to the country because of a great crime committed

by a woman. The Druids say that the only way to remove the blight

is to sacrifice a child, the son of a couple who would have

certain characteristics. The child's blood should be sprinkled on

the doorposts of Tara. The child is found and about to be killed

when a wondrous cow appears and is slain instead. The doorposts

are sprinkled with its blood and the blight removed. There are

also certain similarities between this and the Greek story of

Iphigeneia, the sister of Orestes, whom Agamemnon was forced to

sacrifice on the order of the seer Calchas. Artemis substitutes a

deer for her on the sacrificial altar.

There is one other oblique Irish reference to this concept. In

the Sanas Cbormaic (Cormac's Glossary), written by Cormac Mac

Cuileannain of Cashel (d. AD 836), Emain Macha, the great palace

of the kings of Ulster, received part of its name due to the

sacrifice of a man at the time of its building. The fanciful

etymology gives 'em' or 'ema' (blood), 'ain' or 'uin' (one),

'because the blood of one man was shed at the time of its

erection'.

Of all the Classical writers, it is Pomponius Mela who seems the

most accurate in recording that any tradition of human sacrifice

among the Celts had ended long before the time he was writing,

that is c. AD 46.Indeed, while there is much material on the

rites and superstitions of the pagan Irish there is hardly

anything, apart from the story of Cromm Cruach. This might be

argued as supporting a claim of a human sacrifice tradition but

the story actually shows Cromm Cruach as an aberration to the

norms of society.

Even Mrs Chadwick, in her study 'The Celts,' while inclined to

believe the Romans, has to admit: 

     'There is little direct archaeological evidence relevant to

     Celtic sacrifice ....' 

In her attempt to find something, she refers too the evidence of

bodies preserved in a bog in Denmark, but while she has to admit

that they are 'beyond the boundaries of the Celtic world proper'

she still tries to link them up with the motifs on the Gundestrup

cauldron. She has the scholastic grace to say that human

sacrifices are 'apparently represented on the bowl from

Gundestrup'.

     The much more plentiful archaeological evidence,

     corroborated by classical literary references to various

     offerings of inanimate objects, often of considerable value,

     in rivers, lakes, sacred groves and the like, and the

     possibility of animal sacrifice, suggest hat human sacrifice

     among he Celts, although of great ritual significance,  may

     have been practised,appear commonly at time of communal

     danger or stress, rather than as part of regular ritual 

     observance.

This comment by Mrs Chadwick makes many conceptual leaps. Why the

offering of inanimate objects should lead one to believe that the

people who made them also practised human sacrifice escapes one,

as does the reason why human sacrifice should be of great ritual

significance when there was no native literary or archaeological

evidence to support it. And how is it that it was commonly

practised at the time of communal danger when the only authority

for such a statement is the sole and questionable opinion of

Caesar? 

Mrs Chadwick's comments rely on an acceptance that the enemies of

the Celts were accurate in their observations.

Indeed, as Jean Louis Brunaux states in 'The Celtic Gauls':

     Archaeological clues relating to the question of human

     sacrifice have for a long time been scarce and equivocal.

     The presence in graves of skeletons without a skull or the

     strange position of some burials with hands behind the back

     as though tied, have indeed been cited, but no formal proof

     of sacrifice as opposed to exceptional funereal customs has

     been identified.

The excavations at Gournay-sur-Aronde in France show some eighty

skeletons of bodies that had apparently been divided into

quarters.

If the deaths were violent, no trace has been left on the

remains. Brunaux seems to imply that this was a funeral practice

after people had died naturally. Similarly, the excavation at

Ribemont-sur-Ancre in 1982, showed bones meticulously arranged

belonging to some 200 individuals. But these excavations, along

with those at Mirebeau and Saint-Maur, are more likely to be of

Celtic cemeteries rather than evidence of sacrifices.

Part Two

                    From Peter Ellis' book

                        "The Druids"

                           (1994)

The argument that archaeology has finally produced evidence of

of human sacrifice is based on the discovery of 'Lindow Man' on

Friday 1 August 1984, workers engaged in peat cutting on Lindow

Moss, near Wilmslow, on the southern outskirts of Manchester,

found a well-preserved human leg. The police supervised the

search for further remains and a complete head and torso were

found. Radio carbon dating eventually placed the body to AD

50-100. The British Museum were called in and in 1986 produced a

preliminary study, 'The Body in the Bog.' In 1989, the leading

Celtic scholar, Dr Anne Ross, together with Dr Don Robins, of the

Institute of Archaeology at the University of London, published a

book, 'The Life and Death of a Druid Prince.'

The facts were that the body was that of a man of about 25/30

years who was in fairly good health apart from a mild

osteo-arthritis. He wore a fox-fur amulet on his arm. The skull

had been fractured at the crown and the jaw broken. The neck had

been dislocated, consistent with hanging. There were lacerations

on the preserved skin tissue. A post-mortem showed that the man

had been hit twice from behind with an instrument such as an axe

which probably rendered him unconscious. He was then garroted by

a knotted cord of animal sinew which had cut into the skin. At

the same time, a sharp blade had been plunged into his jugular

vein. Then he had been dropped into the bog.

Now how had these facts then led to the identification by Drs

Ross and Robins that this was a ritual human sacrifice? And

further, that the victim was a 'Druid Prince'? Indeed, the

conjectures get more imaginative. The fur amulet caused the

authors to suggest that the man's name was Lovernios, that is

'fox' from the Gaulish 'lovernios,' cognate with the Welsh

'llwynog,' Breton 'louarn' and Cornish 'lowarn.'

But what is the basis for such conjectures? The basis is that the

'human sacrifice' report of the Romans is accepted without

question.

The authors argue:

     Their (the Celts) penchant for human sacrifice shocked even

     the Romans, inured as they were to the horrors and carnage

     of the amphitheatre. Surrender to an enemy never figured

     largely in the Celtic order of battle. Prisoners of war, as

     we learn from Julius Caesar, were usually sacrificed to the

     gods. Caesar reports how captives were burnt in giant wicker

     cages ...

Caesar, with due respect to him, says NOTHING OF THE KIND. On the

subject of sacrifices he says that criminals were chosen in

the first place. References to Celts not taking prisoners of

war, found in other Classical writings, could well have been

simply a warning to Greek or Roman soldiers not to contemplate

surrender and making them fight without quarter. But that's as

maybe And, as we have seen, the 'wicker man' report was not even

an original one by Caesar but a rehash of Poseidonios.

The authors, Ross and Robins, refer to the traditions found in

Scotland. 

     'It is in Scotland that the clearest traces of human

     sacrifice in connection with Beltain have been noted. This

     evidence is supported by Welsh oral lore and there is more

     than a hint of it in Ireland. In all cases the victim was

     chosen by means of the burnt piece of festival bannock.'

Now this is departing a little from what the evidence ACTUALLY

shows, which I have cited above. 

The introduction of a burnt bannock into the proceedings is

simply to reinforce the authors' arguments, because traces of a

burnt bannock were found in the stomach of Lindow man. Indeed, at

no time do the authors present their exact sources or evidence

for the statement.

Also surprising is the statement:

     The Celts believed in capital punishment, but they turned it

     into a religious act, making an execution into a sacrifice

     .... Captives were vowed to the gods before battle, and for

     this reason could not be sold or given away. They had to be

     offered. Human beings were sacrificed in order to propitiate

     the god of blight and crop failure.

Presumably this is the authors' own imaginative interpretation of

Caesar's remark  that the sacrifices among the Gauls were usually

of criminals. 

Again, the authors are simply accepting the authority of the

Roman general and their own interpretations what he meant.

In contravention to this statement we find the Celtic law systems

are opposed to capital punishment and to slavery in the form

understood by Greece and Rome. Again one has to ask, what is the

evidence for the statement 'the Celts believed in capital

punishment', other than the throwaway line by Caesar? Laurence

Ginnell in is study 'The Brehon Laws (1894) comes to a contrary

statement: 

     'There is ample evidence of various kinds that the whole

     public feeling of Ireland was opposed to capital punishment;

     and still more was it opposed to the taking of the law into

     one's own hands without the decision of a court.' 

This is not to say that there was no capital punishment at all.

     'At this day no one is put to death for his intentional

     crimes as long as eric-fine is obtained', says the

commentary on the 'Senchus Mor.' 

Dr Joyce explains:

     'the idea of awarding death as a judicial punishment for

     homicide, even when it amounted to murder, does not seem to

     have ever taken hold of the public mind in Ireland.' 

Indeed, Edmund Spenser and Sir John Davies, and other early

English settlers in sixteenth and seventeenth century Ireland,

commentating on the eric-fine for homicide instead of capital

punishment, denounced it as 'contrary to God's laws and man's'.

According to Dr Joyce: 

     'There is no record of any human sacrifice in connection

     with the Irish Druids; and there are good grounds

     for believing that direct human sacrifice was not practised

     at all in Ireland . . .'

'The Life and Death of a Druid Prince' is a polemic, but too

loaded with conceptual leaps of imagination to be acceptable as

proven fact. Although as Dr I.M.Stead of the British Museum

comments, 'The archaeologist would be hard put to produce a more

convincing example' (of human sacrifice), more convincing

examples do need to be found before we can truly come to the

conclusions drawn by the authors.

The deduction one is really drawn to is that the idea of

widespread  human sacrifice among the Celts was mere Roman

propaganda to support their imperial power in their invasion of

Celtic lands and destruction of the Druids.

Additionally we can argue that we have more evidence of human

sacrifice occurring widely both in Greek and Roman civilizations.

Unlike Celtic literary tradition, Greek literature is full of

traces of human sacrifice customs, particularly the slaughter of

young virgins before a battle.    

The best known historical example is the mass ritual sacrifice of

Persian prisoners before Salamis in 480 BC. Among the Romans

there are many specific references to human sacrifices,

notably in 228 BC an during the Second Punic War to propitiate

wrathful war deities. Livy himself records that the Romans made

human sacrifices after the defeat of Cannae in 216 BC. Among the

sacrifices to appease the gods, two Celts were buried alive under

the Forum Boarium. During the lifetime of Plutarc(AD 46-c.120)

human sacrifices were still being made. In the time of the late

Republic an early Empire, children were sacrificed in rites to

conjure the spirits of the dead. During the reign of Claudius,

foreign captives were being buried alive at Rome to ameliorate

the gods of war. Prisoners of war, like the Numidian king,

Jugartha, and the Celtic leader Vercingetorix, with  their

families, were held for long periods - six years in the case of

Vercingetorix - in the deep underground prison of Tullanium below

the Capitol before finally being ceremonially sacrificed in

honour of Mars. Even Roman patricians, such as the followers of

Lucius Sergius Catilina (d.62 BC) were ritually slaughtered

here. During the second and third centuries AD, Tatian,

Tertullian and Minucius Felix reported that human sacrifices were

being carried out during festival of Latini.

Above all, when examining Roman sensitivities, one has to

remember the violent and bloodthirsty culture of the Roman

'circus'. The spectacle of prisoners and slaves fighting to the

death before enthusiastic spectators had been recorded in Rome

from the third century BC. By the time of the emperor Marcus

Ulpius Traianus (Trajan AD 98-117), a time when it is recorded

that the Roman empire was at its 'greatest', Trajan himself could

put five thousand pairs of gladiators into the arena and force

them to fight to the death. As an 'interval' to the proceedings,

tens of thousands of criminals were led into the arena and

ritually slaughtered for the further entertainment of the masses.

It was Decimus Junius Juvenalis, the satirical poet Juvenal,

writing during this period, who wrote the famous statement: 'The

people who have conquered the world have only two interests -

bread and circuses.'

In the early empire, during the course of a single day in the

Circus Maximus, three hundred prisoners had to fight each other

to death; twelve hundred men and women, condemned by law, were

slaughtered, most of them killed by wild animals, and, as a

special feature, it was announced that twenty girls would be

forced to copulate with wild beasts. Slaughter of, and by, wild

animals was a particular feature of Roman 'entertainment'. When

Titus Flavius Vespasianus (AD 79-811), who became emperor on the

death of his father Vespasian, finished the Colosseum begun by

his father, a total of nine thousand wild animals were killed in

fights with men and women (venationes) to mark the 'grand

opening'. The number of men and women slaughtered is not

recorded.

Even when Flavius Valerius Constantinus Augustus (C.AD 285-337)

became emperor and a Christian, allowing Christians total freedom

of rights within the empire, in AD 313, he allowed the

continuance of the bloodthirsty spectacles. Even Pope Dionysius

(AD 259-268) is recorded as owning gladiators and attending the

games. Ironically, it was not until the fifth century, when Rome

was invaded by those they called 'barbarians', that those 'bar-

barians' put an end to the bloody and violent spectacles.

Bearing this in mind one has to look at the Romans' expression

of profound disgust and distaste for human sacrifice, as applied 

to the Druids, as rather meaningless and an act of high political

cynicism.

Finally, we have to agree with the conclusion of Doctor  

Brunaux:

     In the present state of research, knowledge of human

     sacrifice rests upon the texts that have a tendency to

     distort the reality of the facts and to exaggerate their

     frequency in order to make them more sensational. In this

     area, despite important discoveries, archaeology has nothing

     new to contribute. The absence of conclusive evidence,

     despite more and more numerous excavations, tends to

     confirm the hypothesis that the practice was rare. The

     ancient ethnographers had not actually witness any of these

     deeds with which they reproach the Celts. While exploring

     Gaul, like Poseidonios, they can only have seen skulls

     nailed above doors of houses and sanctuaries, for which

     there is some archaeological proof.