Who were the ancient Druids according to Cicero and Caesar’s first hand accounts?
July 4, 2021
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| Two Druids walking through the English countryside (Source: Wikimedia Commons) |
Druid. The name has a certain vague mystique. It carries the vestige of a long lost time, when bearded men clad in white cloaks and set amongst sacred groves or forests, cut mistletoe from the oak, and divined the future. This is the popular image that the name evokes. But who were the real Druids and what did they know?
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| The Druid Grove (1845) (Source: Wikipedia) |
Regarding the historical record, obviously what can be learned about them is limited by the sources we have (the Druids never wrote anything down), principally Roman and Greek. These sources, particularly that of Cicero and Caesar are noteworthy as being first hand accounts of the Druids and their customs, and both men claim to have counted one as a personal friend, a Diviciacus.
In 60BC this Diviciacus, from the Gallic tribe known as Aedui, is said to have traveled to Rome to seek aid after the disastrous defeat of his tribe by the neighbouring Sequani. We can imagine him traversing the Alps on his way to Italy and finally Rome, where he addressed the senate and visited Cicero, with whom he discussed various subjects. Cicero specifically refers to his Gallic guest as a ‘Druid’ and records his great knowledge of divination and natural philosophy.
Nor is the practice of divination disregarded even among uncivilised tribes, if indeed there are Druids in Gaul — and there are, for I knew one of them myself, Divitiacus, the Aeduan, your guest and eulogist. He claimed to have that knowledge of nature which the Greeks call ‘physiologia,’ and he used to make predictions, sometimes by means of augury and sometimes by means of conjecture. (Cicero On Divination 41 (page 323))
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| Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic War |
Another first hand source is Caesar’s, Commentaries on The Gallic War, the most comprehensive source we have on the Druids, which records his conquest of Gaul. In the work, Caesar, by his own hand describes the Druids as highly esteemed priests who had great influence over Gallic society. This is significant, as although he had reference to earlier accounts (Posidonius), he “is also likely to have gleaned much from his personal observations as he fought his way through Gaul.”(Cunliffe, p. 67) Caesar records the following about them:
The former [Druids] are concerned with divine worship, the due performance of sacrifices, public and private, and the interpretation of ritual questions: a great number of young men gather about them for the sake of instruction and hold them in great honour. In fact, it is they who decide in almost all disputes, public and private; (Caesar, The Gallic War, p. 337)
Caesar also records that the Druids had schools where they memorised their teachings and that they never wrote down their knowledge, preferring instead to use only the spoken word:
Report says that in the schools of the Druids they learn by heart a great number of verses, and therefore some persons remain twenty years under training. And they do not think it proper to commit these utterances to writing, (Caesar, The Gallic War, p. 339)\
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| Druids inciting the Briton’s to oppose the landing of the Romans (Source: Wikimedia Commons) |
The core of their teachings, according to Caesar, was their belief in the immortality of the soul, which is described by Caesar as a weapon of war, which the Druids used to instil bravery before battle.
The cardinal doctrine which they seek to teach is that souls do not die, but after death pass from one to another; and this belief, as the fear of death is thereby cast aside, they hold to be the greatest incentive to valour. (Caesar, The Gallic War, p. 339)
This may also be Caesar’s attempt to justify his conquest by portraying the Druids as a subversive sect that needed to be combatted. Despite this, the fact this belief is recorded in other earlier sources would indicate it to be accurate. The historian, Diodorus Siculus, recounts the same belief in the transmigration of souls and that it is akin to or derived
from Pythagoras:
the belief of Pythagoras prevails among them, that the souls of men are immortal and that after a prescribed number of years they commence upon a new life, the soul entering into another body. (Diodorus Siculus, p. 173, Book V)
Concerning their teachings more broadly, Caesar claims that they have a great knowledge of astronomy, natural philosophy and the gods, which they discuss amongst themselves.
they have many discussions as touching the stars and their movement, the size of the universe and of the earth, the order of nature, the strength and the powers of the immortal gods, and hand down their lore to the young men. (Caesar, The Gallic War, p. 339)
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| 18th Century Engraving of ‘Two Druids (Source: Wikimedia Commons) |
All this seems to paint a picture of an ancient class of wise men who had knowledge of various disciplines and practices and were called, ‘Philosophers’, by ancient authors, distinguishing them from the other two revered classes; the Bards and Vates, as the geographer Strabo makes clear:
Among all the Gallic peoples, generally speaking, there are three sets of men who are held in exceptional honour; the Bards, the Vates and the Druids. The Bards are singers and poets; the Vates, diviners and natural philosophers; while the Druids, in addition to natural philosophy, study also moral philosophy. (Strabo, Geography, Book IV Chapter IV, p. 245)
These three classes of men are also found to be in existence in early medieval Irish texts which appear to corroborate the earlier ancient sources. A king in early medieval Ireland was supported “by a religious philosopher (drui), a seer (fili), and a poet (bard) – a system closely reflecting the Druids, Vates, and Bards of the pre-Roman Gauls.” (Cunliffe, Druids: A Very Short Introduction, p. 92)
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| Romans murdering Druids and burning their groves (Source: Wikimedia Commons) |
The Druids were suppressed and wiped out in Gaul and Britain by the conquering Romans under Tiberius. Something of their tradition still survived in Ireland as related above, but even there they were cast as dangerous magicians and conjurers by a suspicious church.
Up until the 16th Century some vestiges still remained as bards and storytellers but were all but slowly diminished by the encroachment of the British colonial bureaucracy (those empires at it again).
Even though Druids no longer exist (the ancient variety at least), the vague outline of their presence can still be sketched from these ancient accounts that have survived.
Sources:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Druid
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Caesar/Gallic_War/6B*.html
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cicero/de_Divinatione/1*.html
Cunliffe. B, Druids: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford,
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Diodorus_Siculus/5B*.html
h
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diviciacus_(Aedui)
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Strabo/4D*.html#ref125
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