A Brief History of the Celts

by Peter Berresford Ellis

  Strabo, in his Geographia, says:

  . . . the Druids, in addition to the science of nature, study also moral philosophy. They are believed to be the most just of men, and are therefore entrusted with the decision of cases affecting either individuals or the public; indeed in former times they arbitrated in war and brought to a standstill the opponents when about to draw up in line of battle; and murder cases have been mostly entrusted to their decision . . . These men, as well as other authorities, have pronounced that men’s souls and the universe are indestructible, although at times fire or water may (temporarily) prevail.

  Diodorus makes a similar statement and quotes Timagenes as the authority on the Druids. Both Strabo and Diodorus divide the Gaulish intellectual class into Bards, Vates and Druids. ‘The Bards are singers and poets; the Vates interpreters of sacrifice and natural philosophers . . .’ We find some confirmation of this when the insular Celtic records cite the same classes of intellectuals in Ireland – Drui, Bard and Fili.

  We can only quote Timagenes from the quotations of other writers. In disfavour with the emperor, he burnt his works before he left Rome. However, Ammianus Marcellinus (c. AD 330–395), a Greek from Antioch, quotes him extensively and mentions that the Druids had an organisation, a corporate life (sodalicis adstricti consortis). Caesar also says that they were a highly organised fraternity.

  All the Druids are under one leader, whom they hold in the highest respect. On his death, if any one of the rest is of outstanding merit, he succeeds to the vacant place; if several have equal claims, the Druids usually decide the election by voting, though sometimes they actually fight it out. On a fixed date in each year they hold a session in a consecrated spot in the country of the Carnutes, which is supposed to be the centre of Gaul.

  The Carnutes were the Celtic tribe in the region between the Seine and the Loire. The chief town of the tribe was Cennabum which is present-day Orléans.

  Diodorus gives a much more comprehensive description of the Celts of Gaul than do his contemporaries, and he dwells on their belief in the immortality of the soul. There can be little doubt however that Strabo and Diodorus are ultimately deriving their information from a common source for they appear to be following a similar text. But Strabo’s work was a pointed attack on the Celts which was written as a justification for the conquest of Gaul and subsequent attempts to suppress the Celtic intelligentsia and their centres of learning.

  Caesar, at least, is quite clear on who the Druids are. He calls them ‘an intellectual class’.

  The Druids officiate at the worship of the gods, regulate public and private sacrifices [rituals], and give rulings on all religious questions. Large numbers of young men flock to them for instruction, and they are held in great honour by the people. They act as judges in practically all disputes, whether between tribes or between individuals; when any crime is committed or a murder takes place, or a dispute arises about an inheritance or a boundary, it is they who adjudicate the matter and appoint the compensation to be paid and received by the parties concerned. Any individual or tribe failing to accept their award is banned from taking part in sacrifice [religious service] – the heaviest punishment that can be inflicted upon a Gaul. Those who are under such a ban are regarded as impious criminals. Everyone shuns them and avoids going near or speaking to them, for fear of taking some harm by contact with what is unclean; if they appear as plaintiffs, justice is denied them and they are excluded from a share in any honour.

  Because of the special position of the Druids in society, Caesar informs us:

  The Druids are exempt from military service and do not pay taxes like other citizens. These important privileges are naturally attractive; many present themselves of their own accord to become students of Druidism, and others are sent by their parents and relatives. It is said that these people have to memorise a great number of verses – so many that some spend twenty years at their studies.

  What is interesting is that Caesar adds:

  The Druidic doctrine is believed to have been found existing in Britain and thence imported into Gaul; even today those who want to make a profound study of it generally go to Britain for the purpose.

  This seems to imply that there were colleges and schools in Britain and, indeed, in Ireland.

  Caesar’s description of the Druids dwells mostly on their religious aspect and so, to the undiscerning reader, they appear simply as a priesthood. We have already discussed in Chapter 2 his comments on the fact that the Druids were forbidden to commit their teachings to writing. Another of his observations, echoed by the other writers, is:

  A lesson which they take particular pains to inculcate is that the soul does not perish, but after death passes from one body to another; they think that this is the best incentive to bravery, because it teaches men to disregard the terrors of death.

  Caesar points out:

  They also hold long discussions about the heavenly bodies and their movements, the size of the universe and of the earth, the physical constitutions of the world, and the powers and properties of the gods; and they instruct the young men in all these subjects.

  We will deal with the cosmological ideas and beliefs of the Celts in Chapter 9.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BC), who was acquainted with the princeps of the Aedui, Diviciacus, says he was also a Druid.

  The system of divination is not even neglected among barbaric peoples, since in fact there are Druids in Gaul; I myself knew one of them, Diviciacus, of the Aedui, your guest and eulogist, who declared that he was acquainted with the system of nature which the Greeks call natural philosophy and he used it to predict the future by augury and inference.

  Pliny the Elder was of a family of Roman colonists who settled among the Celts of the Po valley after their conquest. His Naturalis Historia is his chief and only surviving work, in which he gives one of the most complete accounts of the Druids as natural scientists, doctors of medicine and magicians. As Pliny was himself fascinated by magic, it is understandable that he should dwell on this aspect. Pliny was the first writer to bring the oak grove into our popular picture of Druids, as well as mistletoe.

  The Druids – for so they [the Celts] call their magi – hold nothing more sacred than the mistletoe and the tree on which it grows provided that it is an oak. They choose the oak to form groves, and they do not perform any religious rites without its foliage, so that it can be seen that the Druids are so called from the Greek word.

  Pliny thereby opened the floodgates for writers to conjure images of Druids and oaks and mistletoe. Lucan in his Pharsalia has the Druids parading around eerie enchanted woods in secret groves. Lactantius Placidus, in his commentary on the Thebais of Publius Statius, talks of the Druids as ‘those who delight in oaks’ and speaks of such groves as ‘dense and ancient, untouched by human hand and impervious to the beams of the sun. There the pale and uncertain light serves only to increase the awe and ominous silence.’

  Pliny becomes lyrical on the Druids and oaks.

  Anything growing on those trees they regard as sent from heaven and a sign that this tree has been chosen by the gods themselves. Mistletoe is, however, very rarely found, and when found, it is gathered with great ceremony and especially on the sixth day of the moon . . . they prepare a ritual sacrifice and feast under the tree, and lead up two white bulls whose horns are bound for the first time on this occasion. A priest attired in a white vestment ascends the tree and with a golden pruning hook cuts the mistletoe which is caught in a white cloth. Then next they sacrifice the victims praying that the gods will make their gifts propitious to those to whom they have given it. They believe that if given in drink the mistletoe will give fecundity to any barren animal, and that it is predominant against all poisons.

  One cannot help but agree with the Celtic scholar Nora Chadwick when she describes this as a ‘picturesque fantasia’ ranking with stories of King Alfred and the burning of the cakes or Cnut and the waves or Bruce and the spider. It has become a classic of
universal popular knowledge but without substance.

  Cornelius Tacitus gives us invaluable information on Druids as historians when, in his Histories, he speaks of attempts to stir up insurrection in Gaul in AD 69.

  The Gauls began to breathe new life and vigour, persuaded that the Roman armies, wherever stationed, were broken and dispirited. A rumour was current among them, and universally believed, that the Ratians and Sarmatians had laid siege to the encampments in Maesia and Pannonia. Affairs in Britain were supposed to be in no better situation. Above all, the destruction of the Capitol announced the approaching fate of the Roman empire. The Druids, in their wild enthusiasm, sang their oracular songs, in which they taught that, when Rome was formerly sacked by the Celts, the mansion of Jupiter being left entire, the commonwealth survived that dreadful shock; but the calamity of fire, which had lately happened, was a denunciation from heaven in consequence of which, power and dominion were to circulate round the world, and the nations on their side of the Alps were in their turn to become masters of the world.

  The fact that in AD 69 the Druid historians of Gaul retained a knowledge of the defeat and occupation of Rome in c. 390 BC is fascinating and shows clearly how well the oral traditions were kept by the Celts. This should persuade us to pay more attention to the histories of Ireland dealing with ancient times but not committed to writing until the Christian period. Oral tradition must have been just as reliable as written tradition.

  The early surviving sources about the Druids are written in support of Rome and its conquest of the Celts and suppression of the Druids. In AD 54 the Roman emperor Claudius officially prohibited the Druids by law. It was an obvious move for Rome to make: in order to conquer any people and absorb them, you first have to get rid of their intellectuals and destroy their cultural knowledge. It is only later that there emerged a group of Greek scholars, mainly in the school of Alexandria, who began to examine older Greek sources and develop a less bellicose and more appreciative view of the role of the Druids. This group was mainly concerned with gathering sources and traditions and meticulously citing their authorities, creating encyclopedias rather than producing first-hand empirical observations.

  Professor Stuart Piggott tended to be dismissive of ‘all second-hand library work, with no empirical observations’ or ‘field work among the Celts’. As opposed to the Roman-orientated accounts which sought to denigrate the Celts and Druids, he believed that the Alexandrian texts idealised the Druids. Certainly we could go so far as to say that the Alexandrian school was not concerned with propaganda in support of the Roman empire.

  It is thanks to the Alexandrian school that we have references to earlier writers who had studied the Celts and the Druids but whose work no longer survived in its entirety. Timaeus (c. 356–260 BC) was used extensively as an authority by Diogenes Laertius and Clement of Alexandria. Soton of Alexandria (fl. 200–170 BC) was another major source quoted. Greek writers from Herodotus (c. 490–425 BC) to Alexander Cornelius Polyhistor (b. c. 105 BC) are quoted, although they did not use the specific term ‘Druid’ to describe Celtic intellectuals.

  Dion Chrysostom (first century AD) was the first figure of importance in the new school and he had indeed conducted ‘field work’, having come from Bithynia next to Galatia and travelled widely there among the Celts. He is highly respectful of the Druids whom he compares, accurately, with the Brahmins of Hindu society. He mentions their intellectual attainments, crediting them with advances in branches of ancient wisdom, and describes their political influence.

  The Celts appointed Druids, who likewise were versed in the art of seers and other forms of wisdom, without whom the kings were not permitted to adopt or plan any course, so that in fact it was these who ruled and the kings became their subordinates and instruments of their judgement, while themselves seated on golden thrones, and dwelling in great houses and being sumptuously feasted.

  It is from the Alexandrian school that we first hear of the similarities between Druidical teaching and Pythagorean teaching, although opinion differed as to the direction in which this knowledge had travelled. Hippolytus (c. AD 170–c. 236) claimed that the Druids adopted Pythagorean ideas through the agency of Pythagoras’ slave Zalmoxis, a Thracian who, according to Hippolytus, took the teaching to the Celts. Clement of Alexandria (c. AD 150–211/216), on the other hand, argued that Pythagoras picked up his ideas from the Celts, specifically the Druids.

  In fact, the reincarnation philosophy of Pythagoras and his followers is only superficially the same as the teaching of the Celts. We will discuss this matter in more detail in Chapter 13.

  It was Diogenes Laertius who wrote that the Druids taught in triads and that the basis of their philosophy was ‘to honour the gods, to do no evil, and to practise bravery’. Laertius quotes from a writer called Aristotle who wrote a work called Magicus. However, this Aristotle is not to be confused with the famous Aristotle (384–322 BC), the pupil of Plato. The Aristotle who wrote Magicus was writing in the second century BC, and his is one of the earliest works to mention the Druids and deal with Celtic philosophy.

  By the time the Celts started to commit their knowledge to writing in their own tongue, not only had their world become very much reduced in size but they had become Christian. This very act of becoming Christian was the means whereby the Druidic proscription on committing their knowledge to writing was lifted. Yet, at the same time, the general Christian attitude was to depict their pagan forefathers, especially the Druids, in as biased a manner as the pro-Roman writers had, but for different reasons.

  In the emerging Christian world, the Druids were generally portrayed as opponents to Christianity, upholders of the ancient religion, and thereby were relegated to the role of shamans, magicians and ‘witch doctors’ although the degree of prejudice varied from writer to writer. There existed a sufficient number of writers, particularly among the early Irish scribes, who were still respectful of the Druids as an intellectual class and, indeed, held the view that the early Celtic saints were Druids, members of that class.

  The references in the Irish texts and in the law texts agree that the Druids were regarded as the intellectual class in Ireland as well as in Gaul and Britain, and that their number included all the learned professions. The scholar P.W. Joyce listed eight points of similarity between the Irish and the Gaulish Druids, according to textual evidence.

  As Christianity began to absorb the Celtic peoples, the Druids, both male and female, as the intellectuals, were the first to encompass the new learning. The fact that many of the early Celtic saints, male and female, were Druids or the children of Druids is significant. Christianity did not fight a battle with the Druids; the Druids absorbed the new religion and were the first to start promulgating its beliefs, thus giving rise to the phenomenon we now call the Celtic Church.

  The term ‘Celtic Church’ is not strictly an accurate one because the early Christian churches among the Celtic peoples were in most essentials based on the Roman Christian ethos. Neither was there an identifiable organisation with a central leadership. Nevertheless, the Celtic population had developed their own form of Christianity and its ideas and customs were firmly based on their own cultural expression. It produced several fascinating early Church philosophers, such as Hilary of Poitier and the famous Pelagius. It was Pelagius who was accused of trying to ‘revive Druidic natural philosophy’ and was eventually excommunicated by Rome after a conflict with Augustine of Hippo (AD 354–430).

  For some centuries afterwards, Rome continued to accuse the Celts of following the teachings of Pelagius. In fact, all they were doing was following their own centuries-old philosophical outlook. This is amplified in Chapter 13.

  Unfortunately, during the seventeenth century, in Germany, France and England, romantics began to reinvent the Druids having, in the wake of the Renaissance, discovered references to them in works such as Caesar’s. Today there are countless ‘Druidic movements’ throughout the world, none of which has anything to do with the Druids of r
eality; with the Druids who were the intellectual class of Celtic society in the ancient world.

  5

  CELTIC WARRIORS

  The ancient Celts have been painted by classical writers as savage and making war for no reason at all except the ‘fun’ of it. They were, according to these writers, merely simple, barbaric children. As Strabo says: ‘The whole race . . . is madly fond of war, and they are high-spirited and quick for battle, but otherwise simple . . .’ Pausanias says that ‘they rushed on their enemies with the unreasoning fury and passion of wild beasts. They had no kind of reasoning at all. They slashed with axe or sword and blind fury never left them until they were killed.’ Livy, Florus and many others speak of Celtic warriors ‘fighting like wild beasts’.

  This is the image of the Celts that has been passed down even to the present day. Is it a just view? After all, the very people producing these descriptions of the Celts were also the same people who were conducting a systematic war against them. The conquerors always write the history books and we see the conquered through their prejudiced eyes.

  Discerning historians have begun to read the ancient texts more carefully. For example, it is generally accepted that a Celtic horde, for no reason at all, swept down on Rome in July 390 BC and attacked it. In fact, the story of Rome’s conquest was not that simple.