Celtic Mythology and Religion

DRUIDISM. 73
to be twofold, that they do not wish either their
system to be made public, or their pupils to fail
cultivate their memory by trusting to writing, as
generally happens when books can be resorted to.
Their chief doctrine is that souls do not perish, but
pass after death from one individual to another,
and this—the removal of the fear of death—they
think the greatest incitement to valour. They
theorise largely on astronomy, on the size of the
universe and the earth, on nature, and on the power
and might of the gods, and in these matters they
instruct the youth.
to
Caesar further on tells that the
Druids presided at the human sacrifices, and in the
7th book he gives us to know that the iEduan
magistrates, at least, were elected by them.
Cicero,
in his treatise on " Divination," written a few years
later, introduces his brother Quintus as saying
" The principles of divination are not overlooked
among barbarous nations even, as, for instance, in
Gaul there are the Druids,
one of whom Divitiacus,
the iEduan, I knew ; he was a guest of yours and
great in your praises. He professed to know natural
philosophy, which the Greeks call
'
physiology,'
and he used to tell partly by augury, partly by
conjecture, what was to happen in the future."
Cicero's contemporary, Diodorus Siculus, tells
us that among the Gauls were bards, certain
philosophers and divines named Druids, and soothsayers,
adding that " the system of Pythagoras
held sway among them," that is,
F
the doctrine of the