Celtic Religion eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 50 pages of information about Celtic Religion.

Celtic Religion eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 50 pages of information about Celtic Religion.

In his work on divination, Cicero, too, refers to the profession which the Druids made of natural science, and of the power of foretelling the future, and instances the case of the AEduan Diviciacus, his brother’s guest and friend.  Nothing is here said by Cicero of the three classes implied in Diodorus, but Timagenes (quoted in Ammianus) refers to the three classes under the names ‘bardi,’ ‘euhages’ (a mistake for ’vates’), and ‘drasidae’ (a mistake for ’druidae’).  The study of nature and of the heavens is here attributed to the second class of seers (vates).  The highest class, that of the Druids, were, he says, in accordance with the rule of Pythagoras, closely linked together in confraternities, and by acquiring a certain loftiness of mind from their investigations into things that were hidden and exalted, they despised human affairs and declared the soul immortal.  We see here the view expressed that socially as well as intellectually the Druids lived according to the Pythagorean philosophy.  Origen also refers to the view that was prevalent in his time, that Zamolxis, the servant of Pythagoras, had taught the Druids the philosophy of Pythagoras.  He further states that the Druids practised sorcery.  The triple division of the non-military aristocracy is perhaps best given by Strabo, the Greek geographer, who here follows Posidonius.  The three classes are the Bards, the Seers (ouateis=vates), and Druids.  The Bards were hymn-writers and poets, the Seers sacrificers and men of science, while the Druids, in addition to natural science, practised also moral philosophy.  They were regarded as the justest of men, and on this account were intrusted with the settlement of private and public disputes.  They had been the means of preventing armies from fighting when on the very verge of battle, and were especially intrusted with the judgment of cases involving human life.  According to Strabo, they and their fellow-countrymen held that souls and the universe were immortal, but that fire and water would sometime prevail.  Sacrifices were never made, Strabo says, without the intervention of the Druids.  Pomponius Mela says that in his time (c. 44 A.D.), though the ancient savagery was no more, and the Gauls abstained from human sacrifices, some traces of their former practices still remained, notably in their habit of cutting a portion of the flesh of those condemned to death after bringing them to the altars.  The Gauls, he says, in spite of their traces of barbarism, had an eloquence of their own, and had the Druids as their teachers in philosophy.  These professed to know the size and form of the earth and of the universe, the motions of the sky and stars, and the will of the gods.  He refers, as Caesar does, to their work in education, and says that it was carried on in caves or in secluded groves.  Mela speaks of their doctrine of immortality, but says nothing as to the entry of souls into other bodies.  As a proof of this belief he speaks of

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Celtic Religion from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.