Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

DRUIDS. 265
there is one collateral subject, not unworthy of notice,
which relates to the female Druids.
Cfiesar, Pomponius Mela, and Strabo, speak of Druid-
esses as well as of Druids ; and it is said that an inscrip-
tion was found at Metz to this effect, " Arete Druis
Antistita." This should imply a female establishment
a Druidical nunnery. The existence of female Druids
seems to be further confirmed, by two stories, told by
Vopiscus and by tEHus Lampridius. The first ofthese,
from the information given by Diocletian himself to Max-
imian, and by him related to the author's grandfather, says
that Diocletian conceived the first hope of his future
greatness, when only an inferior officer, in an inn " apud
Tungros," from the prophecy of a female Druid, who said
" Diocletiane.jocare noli ; nam Imperator eris cum aprum
occideris." The story of Lampridius, which is in the life
of Alexander Severus, records that " Mulier Druias exe-
unti exclamavit Gallico sermone, vadas, nee victoriam
speras, nee militi tuo credas." If the Prioress Arete was
not an obstacle, it would be easy to suppose, that this
term of Druids was applied to witches, or rather to for-
tune tellers ; since the females in question appear to have
been an idle itinerant race, wandering- about the skirts
of camps and elsewhere, in their vocation. This solu-
tion might still leave the Druidical priesthood untouched,
and as Ccesar has represented it; although it is far from
impossible that the Druid magicians and the female
fortune-tellers were birds of the same nest. The appli-
cation of the term Druid to a magician, already noticed,
renders this solution easy, without infringing on the presumed
celibacy of the Druidical order. The whole may
thus prove a mere confusion of terms. Nor is it unlikely
that these were of the tribes of fortune-tellers and conjurors
who wandered about the Roman provinces, after the time
of Augustus in particular ; adding to these trades, begging
;