Robert Wiśniewski
D
EEP WOODS AND VAIN ORACLES:
DRUIDS, POMPONIUS MELA AND TACITUS
T
he title of the present article may elicit boredom from a classical scholar.
For it is true that much has been said about the Druids. Even if we pass over the
huge literary production that falls short of scholarly criteria, the number of papers
trying to answer who the Druids were, what the main area of their activity was,
why they were persecuted by the Roman administration and when they finally
disappeared from Gaul, not to mention minor questions, is vertiginous.
Still it seems that a modest dossier of classical sources dealing with Druids,
though profoundly exploited, has sometimes been read and analyzed separately from
its literary context. My paper is focused on the value of two historical accounts which
have come to us from Pomponius Mela and Tacitus, the last authors to have some
actual knowledge about the role of this emblematic institution of the Gallic civilization
in their own times. My minimal objective is to assess the veracity of their narratives.
The more ambitious goal is to contribute to answering the question of how long the
Druids survived in Gaul, even if this contribution will not be very constructive.
A seemingly additional but, in a sense, essential aim is to show how little the literary
existence of some religious institutions may have in common with their real life.
Even though we owe our knowledge of the Gallic religion mostly to
excavations, the Druids are elusive in archaeological record. There are no inscriptions
which contain the title (although it is by dint of epigraphy that we have learned
1
a term for a kind of priest used in Roman Gaul – gutuater ). One might admittedly
suspect traces of Druidism in human sacrifices, which were strongly associated
1
See W. Van Andringa, La religion en Gaule romaine: piété et politique (Ier-IIIe siècle apr. J.-C), Paris
2002, 217–218.
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with it by literary sources, but in Gaul all vestiges of such immolations come from
the pre-Roman period. The latest one, from the sanctuary in Acy Romance
(Ardennes) dates from the 2nd century BC, and it does not seem that the men
buried there were killed in the manner described by Greek and Roman authors.2
One might discern also a trace of Druidic activity in the famous Celtic lunisolar
Coligny Calendar, made probably in the 2nd century AD and preserved in fragments
of the bronze tablet.3 It is true that some literary texts, to which I shall return
shortly, attest to the link between Druids and astronomy. However, the existence
of this link in times before the conquest should not be automatically transposed
onto the Roman period. Even if Druids really dealt with the measurement of time
in the 1st century BC, someone who made a Celtic calendar in the 2nd century AD
did not have to be a Druid. Moreover, the fact that the preserved calendar was
produced in the Roman era does not imply that the inventors of the system were
still active then.
That is why the set of sources concerning Druids consists of literary texts
only. Nothing indicates that anyone wrote about them earlier than in the 1st century
BC. The first author who certainly took an interest in Druids was Posidonius of
Apamea, the Stoic philosopher, ethnographer and historian who had travelled to
Gaul before he settled as a teacher at Rhodes where he died c. 51 BC. His works,
which had a far-reaching impact upon his contemporaries, have survived only in
fragments; the most important for our purpose has been preserved by Strabo, who
writes that there are three kinds of men especially reverenced among the Gauls:
bardoi, ouateis and Druidai (Strab. IV 4,4–5). To the last he attributes the study of
nature (physiologia) and moral philosophy. He says also that they judge both public
and private cases, frequently prevent battles, preach the immortality of the soul and
the indestructibility of the world, renewed by periodical cataclysms (which sounds
quite Stoic). It is also Posidonius who is almost certainly the source of the passage in
Strabo about human sacrifices that the Gauls offer, always in the presence of Druids.
The victims would have been shot with arrows, crucified in temples, burnt in
a colossus of hay and wood or pierced by a sword – in the last case the convulsions of
the dying man would have been considered as an oracle. However the geographer
does not limit himself to quoting the text of Posidonius. He adds on his own that the
Romans forbade this custom, but he does not reveal the source of this information.
2
3
144
B. Lambot, ‘Les morts d’Acy Romance (Ardennes) à La Tène finale. Pratiques funéraires, aspects
religieux et hiérarchie sociale’, in Etudes et documents. Fouilles. 4: Les Celtes. Rites funéraires en
Gaule du Nord entre VIe et Ier siècle avant J.-C., Namur 1998, 75–87. For other archeological
material see M. Green, Dying for the gods. Human sacrifice in Iron Age & Roman Europe, Stroud
2002, 87–89, 97–109, 122–125, 195–196.
G. Olmsted, The Gaulish Calendar, Bonn 1992, although some scholars date the calendar to an
earlier period, even before the conquest.
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Deep Woods and Vain Oracles: Druids, Pomponius Mela and Tacitus
It is from Posidonius, too, that Timagenes draws, who lived not much later
than him and whose testimony is preserved by his contemporary Diodorus Siculus
and by the late ancient historian Ammianus Marcellinus (Amm. XV 9,8). The
former describes the Druidic divination by human sacrifice and the doctrine of the
immortality of the soul (D.S. V 31,2–3). Apart from this information, which is
identical with what Strabo says, Diodorus mentions the Pythagorean character of
the beliefs of the Gauls, who maintain that after death souls transmigrate to other
bodies (D.S. V 28,6). Ammianus enumerates three classes of Gallic sages: bards,
euhages (probably the same group as ouateis in Posidonius), and Druids, whom he
also describes as Pythagoreans. It is difficult to say if all this knowledge comes from
Posidonius; the possible source of the connotation of Druids with Pythagoreans is
Alexander Polyhistor, who appears to be the only Greek author known to us whose
acquaintance with the Druids would not be totally founded on the work of the
philosopher of Rhodes.
The one ancient author to write about Druids who should have known
them quite well is of course Caesar. Nevertheless, in spite of years that he spent
in Gaul, it is certain that his knowledge of the subject also derives mostly from
Posidonius, whom he after all probably met personally, during his studies at
5
Rhodes.4 In Gallic War all the information concerning Druidic sacrifices, their role
in private and public lawsuits, their doctrine of immortality and the transmigration
of the soul, their teaching concerning gods, nature, the size of the earth, the
movement of stars (again a very Posidonian interest), and about human victims
burnt in a colossus of osiers, seems to come from Posidonius. Caesar’s, as well as
Strabo’s and Diodorus’, debt to Posidonius is beyond any doubt. The analysis of
the relevant passages in these authors makes it clear that the similarities between
them do not result only from the fact that all three describe the same historical
phenomenon, but from their use of the same source, which we can securely
identify as Posidonius.6 This does not mean that in the course of eight years Caesar
learned nothing new about Druids. There is no proof that Posidonius wrote about
the Druidic education of the youth from noble families, about the twenty-year
4
5
6
Caesar was a student of Apollonius Molon: Plut. Caes. 3,1.
Caesar writes about Druids in the sixth book of Gallic War, in chapters 13–14; 16; 18; 21.
A serious attempt to reconstruct the Posidonian description of Gaul was made by J.J. Tierney,
‘The Celtic Ethnography of Posidonius’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 60 (1960),
189–275, who was reproached for not fully taking into account that the similarities between
several descriptions could result from similarities in the described reality. But even D. Nash,
who severely, although not always justly, criticizes Tierney’s method, does not doubt that the
resemblance of the Druidic passages proves their textual dependence upon Posidonius, see
D. Nash, ‘Reconstructing Poseidonios’ Celtic ethnography: some considerations’, Britannia
7 (1976), 111–126. The testimonies and fragments of Posidonius are now collected and analyzed
by I.G. Kidd, Posidonius, vol. I-III, Cambridge 1989–2004.
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period of this training, about exclusion from the community – the severest
punishment for a Gaul, about the chief Druid elected by his colleagues in an
assembly in the forest of the Carnutes, about the British roots of Druidism (and
travelling to Britain to gain more accurate knowledge of the system), about their
opinion that Dis Pater is the forefather of the Gauls (and some calendrical
consequences of this belief). Even if we cannot exclude that Caesar found all this
in Posidonius, it is much easier to infer that he acquired this information during
his stay in Gaul, most probably from the only Gallic Druid we know by name – the
Aeduan aristocrat Diviciacus.
What Posidonius said about Druids was known also to Cicero, who studied
under him at Rhodes.7 Like Caesar, Cicero knew or at least met Diviciacus – it is
thanks to him that we know that Diviciacus was a Druid. However, all Cicero has
to say about Druids is that they were versed in divination and that Diviciacus was
learned in natural philosophy, which Cicero calls physiologia,8 using the same word
as Posidonius does when describing activity of the Druids in the passage quoted
by Strabo. Hence it is justified to suspect that even before meeting Diviciacus
Cicero, again like Caesar, knew what to think about Druids and that this meeting
changed neither his opinion nor – probably – his knowledge of them.
Strabo concludes the short list of Greek authors interested in Druids. From
the 1st century AD onwards the word Druidai will appear in Greek literature only
in catalogues of barbarian philosophers, alongside Egyptian priests, Persian magi,
Indian gymnosophists and samanaioi, and Assyrian ‘Chaldeans’. Such catalogues
we can find in Dio Chrysostom, Diogenes Laertius, Clement of Alexandria,
Origenes, Hippolytus of Rome, and Cyril of Alexandria.9 This whole tradition
comes probably from Alexander Polyhistor, whose knowledge, however, derives
from some literary source.10 So the only Greek author known to us who seems to
have firsthand information about Druids is still Posidonius.
In the Latin literature the situation is different. After Caesar and Cicero
there were others who mentioned Druids. Alongside two authors named in the
title of the present paper these were: Lucan, Pliny the Elder and Suetonius.
Nevertheless the works of these three authors do not offer any information
concerning the activity of contemporary Druids, and they do not even permit us
to determine if the Druids still existed in the late first or early second century.
What Lucan writes about them in the early sixties of the 1st century (Luc.
7
8
9
10
146
Cicero refers to him frequently, usually as Posidonius noster, cf. Cic. Fin. I 2,6; Cic. N.D. I 6,4.
Cic. Div. I 90.
D. Chr. Or. 49,7–8; Diog. Laert. I 1 and 6; Clem. Al. Strom. I 15,71; Origenes, C. Cels. I 16; Hipp.
Haer. I 25 and Cyr. Adv. Iul. IV PG 76,706B.
N.K. Chadwick, The Druids, Cardiff 1966, 61.
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Deep Woods and Vain Oracles: Druids, Pomponius Mela and Tacitus
I 450–458) comes from Caesar and – directly or indirectly – from Posidonius.11
Suetonius, more than fifty years later, refers to the fact that Augustus forbade Roman
citizens to take part in religio Druidarum, and Claudius utterly abolished it (Suet. Cl.
25,5). Only Pliny, who also mentions the prohibition of Druidism (this time by
Tiberius: Plin. Nat. XXX 12–13) seems to have some independent knowledge about
the character of the activity of the Druids, whom he describes in the famous passage
about picking mistletoe (XVI 249–251) and in two other places where he refers to
their competence in the field of magic and medicine (XXIV 103; XXIX 52–54).
However Pliny’s information about the Druids, even if precious, comes from sources
which we usually cannot identify.12 Only in one passage does Pliny appear to tell us
about some contemporary practices: he says that one Vocontian eques was sentenced
to death by Claudius for possessing a magical stone which was praised by the Druids
as a means to win in a legal suit, but even here the Druids appear in the background
and it is difficult to say if they were really active under Claudius (Nat. XXIX 54).
That is why the authors treated as the most serious witnesses to the function of
the Druids in conquered Gaul are Pomponius Mela and Tacitus. Their writings pass for
the latest testimonies of the actual existence of the Druids in Gaul in the 1st century
AD, testimonies especially important as they provide some information about the
character of their activity during the first hundred years of the Roman rule. Pomponius
Mela seems to prove that they were forced to go underground, Tacitus in his turn that
they were hostile toward the Romans and took part in the last uprising against their
occupation. Both authors would thus attest that the Druids were still active in Gaul
respectively in the beginning of the forties and in 69 AD, that they were enemies of
Rome, and that under occupation they remained in concealment until open rebellion
broke out. My question is if the these testimonies may be interpreted in such a way.
In his Description of the World, written in AD 43, Pomponius Mela writes
about the Gauls as follows:
Habent tamen et facundiam suam magistrosque sapientiae Druidas. Hi terrae mundique
magnitudinem et formam, motus caeli ac siderum, et quid dii velint scire profitentur. Docent
multa nobilissimos gentis clam et diu, vicenis annis, aut in specu aut in abditis saltibus.
Unum ex his quae praecipiunt in vulgus effluxit, videlicet ut forent ad bella meliores, aeternas
esse animas vitamque alteram ad manes. (Mela III 18–19, ed. A. Silberman, Paris 1988)
And yet, they have both their own eloquence and their own teachers of wisdom,
the Druids. These men claim to know the size and shape of the earth and of the
universe, the movements of the sky and of the stars, and what the gods intend. In
secret, and for a long time (twenty years), they teach many things to the noblest
11
12
In spite of what is often said, there is no explicit link in Pharsalia between the Druids (Luc. I
450–458) and the sacred grove near Marseilles, which was cut down by order of Caesar (Luc. III
399–425).
J.F. Healy, Pliny the Elder on Science and Technology, Oxford 2000, 21–22.
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Robert Wiśniewski
males among their people, and they do it in a cave or in a hidden mountain defile
[or: “in secluded groves”]. One of the precepts they teach – obviously to make them
better for war – has leaked into common knowledge, namely that their souls are
eternal and that there is a second life for the dead.13
There is no doubt that the quoted passage depends on the Gallic War which
is Mela’s source of information about Druidic teaching, the twenty-year period of
education, its purpose and main elements, i.e. the magnitude and form of the
earth, the motions of the stars, the will of the gods, and the immortality of the
soul.14 Nevertheless some scholars draw attention to the only phrase that may shed
light on the activity of Druids contemporary not to Caesar but to Mela himself.
The phrase in question is one that says the teaching took place ‘aut in specu aut
in abditis saltibus’, which is often interpreted as evidence of underground education,
kept secret to avoid Roman persecution.15 I think that this interpretation is
unjustified, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, in fact this remark is, no less than the
others, founded on the text of Caesar. In Gallic War VI 14 he maintains that
Druids do not use scripture, which in his opinion is intended to exercise the
memory and to prevent their teaching from being divulged among ordinary people
(neque in vulgum disciplinam efferri velint). What Mela writes about the caves and
deep forests (or defiles) seems simply to convey the same message in more visual
terms.16 The next sentence in which he presents what of this doctrine leaked out
13
14
15
16
148
I quote the translation of E.F. Romer, Pomponius Mela’s Description of the World, Ann Arbor 1998.
The parallel passage in Caesar reads: Druides a bello abesse consuerunt neque tributa una cum
reliquis pendunt; militiae vacationem omniumque rerum habent immunitatem. Tantis excitati praemiis
et sua sponte multi in disciplinam conveniunt et a parentibus propinquisque mittuntur. Magnum ibi
numerum versuum ediscere dicuntur. Itaque annos nonnulli vicenos in disciplina permanent. Neque fas
esse existimant ea litteris mandare, cum in reliquis fere rebus, publicis privatisque rationibus Graecis
litteris utantur. Id mihi duabus de causis instituisse videntur, quod neque in vulgum disciplinam efferri
velint neque eos, qui discunt, litteris confisos minus memoriae studere: quod fere plerisque accidit, ut
praesidio litterarum diligentiam in perdiscendo ac memoriam remittant. In primis hoc volunt persuadere,
non interire animas, sed ab aliis post mortem transire ad alios, atque hoc maxime ad virtutem excitari
putant metu mortis neglecto. Multa praeterea de sideribus atque eorum motu, de mundi ac terrarum
magnitudine, de rerum natura, de deorum immortalium vi ac potestate disputant et iuventuti tradunt
(Caes. Gal. VI 14, ed. W. Hering, Teubner, Leipzig 1997).
So Chadwick, The Druids, 73–74 (even if she is conscious that Mela’s description depends on
Caesar, cf. p. 30, 52); D. Rankin, Celts and the Classical World, (2nd ed.), London 1996, 290;
P.B. Ellis, A Brief History of the Druids, New York 2002 (first published as The Druids, London
1994), 64; D. Romain, E. Romain, Histoire de la Gaule. VIe siècle av. J.-C. – Ier siècle ap. J.-C., Paris
1997, 509. Long ago this information was treated more prudently by T.D. Kendrick, Druids and
Druidism, Dover 2003 (1st ed. 1928), 87.
This connection is probably due partly to the pathetic impression obtained by setting the
mysterious figures in the remote places. On this role of forests in Tacitean narration (who
describes the sacred grove of the Druids cut down by Romans on Mona) see E. Aubrion,
‘La forêt et le désert, lieux hostiles et lieux de refuge dans l’œuvre de Tacite’, in P. Defosse (ed.),
Hommage à Carl Deroux, vol. II: Prose et linguistique, Médecine, Bruxelles 2002, 21–29.
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Deep Woods and Vain Oracles: Druids, Pomponius Mela and Tacitus
to the common people (quae praecipiunt in vulgus) clearly proves that the reason
they secluded themselves was to keep their doctrines secret from all uninitiated
persons and not particularly from Romans.
Another reason not to accept the usual interpretation is the fact that the
vision of clandestine study groups hiding from Roman patrols is wholly anachronistic. The occupying administration’s capacity to control everyday life was
highly limited. With the exception of the army on the Rhine frontier and one
urban cohort in Lugdunum, there were no regular troops in Gaul which would
have been able to perform police functions. What is more, De chorographia was
written in years 43–44, at the very beginning of the reign of Claudius and so
probably before his ban on Druidism. Hence the interpretation of the text of Mela
as describing Druids going underground is so obviously untrue that one should ask
how this idea occurred in scholarly literature. It is possible that its origin lies in an
analogy sometimes used to help visualize the function of the Druidic schools in
1st century AD Gaul. They would have resembled Irish hedge schools, established
early in 18th century, after the Penal Law forbade Catholics from teaching.17 These
schools existed in a reality completely different from that of the Roman Gaul.
Nevertheless the teachers who ran them have been quite often portrayed as the
heirs of the bards and Druids.18 The vision of the hedge schools may be not just
an analogy but the actual source of the cited interpretation of the passage of
De chorographia. This interpretation must be rejected. And by rejecting it we must
also say that Mela knew nothing more about Druids than he read in Caesar and
that the quoted passage does not tell us anything about their activity in the early
empire.
Tacitus mentions Druids twice. In the Annals, when describing the Roman
landing on the Island of Mona (Anglesey) in AD 60, he writes about the sinister
figures of Druids standing on the shore and putting curses on approaching
legionaries:19
17
18
19
Rankin, Celts and the Classical World, 290; Ellis, A Brief History of the Druids, 64.
See e.g. K. Jackson, ‘The international folktale in Ireland’, Folklore 47 (1936), 263–293, on p. 265;
hedge schoolmasters as continuators of Druids and bards in the poetry of W.B. Yeats: E. Hirsch,
‘And I myself created Hanrahan: Yeats, folklore and fiction’, ELH 48 (1981), 880–893, on pp.
884–885. For Patrick Pearse, one of the leaders of the Easter Uprising in 1916 and the founder
of St. Edna’s School Druids were the first in a long line of Celtic teachers that he wanted to
continue, see E. Sisson, Pearse’s Patriots. St. Edna’s and the Cult of Boyhood, Cork 2004, 36.
No need to add that such a vision of the history of education, widespread especially in
neo-Druidic milieu, is not shared by scholars of modern and 19th century Ireland, see e.g.
A. McManus, The Irish Hedge School and its Books 1695–1831, Portland 2002.
I quote the Teubner edition of H. Heubner, Stuttgart 1994, and the translation by J. Jackson
in the Loeb Classical Library, Cambdridge, Mass., 1937.
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Stabat pro litore diversa acies, densa armis virisque, intercursantibus feminis, quae in
modum Furiarum veste ferali, crinibus disiectis faces praeferebant; Druidaeque circum,
preces diras sublatis ad caelum manibus fundentes, novitate adspectus perculere militem,
ut quasi haerentibus membris immobile corpus vulneribus praeberent. (Tac. Ann. XIV 30,1)
On the beach stood the adverse array, a serried mass of arms and men, with women
flitting between the ranks. In the style of Furies, in robes of deathly black and with
dishevelled hair, they brandished they torches; while a circle of Druids, lifting their
hands to heaven and showering imprecations, struck the troops with such an awe
at that extraordinary spectacle that, as though their limbs were paralysed, they
exposed their bodies to wounds without any attempt at movement.
It is not easy to tell whence Tacitus derived this picturesque scene. He could
have learned about the assault on Mona from his father-in-law, Julius Agricola,
who had served in Britain as tribune under Suetonius Paulinus at precisely this
time, and who captured Mona during his governorship in Britain several years
later. It is also possible that he used some literary text.20 In any case the presence
of the Druids on an island never before touched by the foot of Roman soldier does
not seem strange. More intriguing is a passage in the Histories21 where the author
claims that Druids appeared a few years after the landing on Mona, this time in
Gaul, during the revolt of Civilis:
Galli sustulerant animos, eandem ubique exercituum nostrorum fortunam rati, volgato
rumore a Sarmatis Dacisque Moesica ac Pannonica hiberna circumsederi; paria de
Britannia fingebantur. Sed nihil aeque quam incendium Capitolii, ut finem imperio adesse
crederent, impulerat. Captam olim a Gallis urbem, sed integra Iovis sede mansisse
imperium: fatali nunc igne signum caelestis irae datum et possessionem rerum humanarum
Transalpinis gentibus portendi superstitione vana Druidae canebant (Tac. Hist. IV 54,1–2).
The Gauls had plucked up fresh courage, believing that all our armies were
everywhere in the same situation, for the rumour had spread that our winter
quarters in Moesia and Pannonia were being besieged by the Sarmatae and Dacians;
similar stories were invented about Britain. But nothing had encouraged them to
20
21
150
Agricola’s tribunate: Tac. Agr. 5. M.Th. Raepsaet-Charlier, ‘Cn. Iulius Agricola: mise au point
prosopographique’, ANRW II 33,3 (1991), 1805–1857, esp. 1841 and 1856, dates it to 61 AD.
There is some disagreement about the year of the outbreak of the Boudiccan revolt (and thus
the year of the assault on Mona): 61 (the Tacitean date) or 60, see K.K. Carroll, ‘The date of
Boudicca’s revolt’, Britannia 10 (1979), 197–202. However this is not important for our purpose,
since we know that Agricola was a tribune under Suetonius Paulinus, and not his successor
Petronius Turpilianus; and it was Suetonius Paulinus who attacked Mona (in 60 or 61). Landing
on the island during Agricola’s governorship: Tac. Agr. 18,3. N.J. Reed, ‘The Sources of Tacitus
and Dio for the Boudiccan Revolt’, Latomus 33 (1974), 926–933, argues that Tacitus’ account of
Boudicca’s uprising relied on the memoirs of Suetonius Paulinus via Fabius Rusticus. For other
possible written sources of Tacitus, see E.W. Black, ‘The first century historians of Roman
Britain’, OJA 20 (2001), 415–428.
The text is that of H. Heubner’s Teubner edition, Stuttgart 1978. I quote the translation of
C.H. Moore, in the Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, Mass., 1931.
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believe that the end of our rule was at hand so much us the burning of the Capitol.
‘Once long ago Rome was captured by the Gauls, but since Jove’s home was
unharmed, the Roman power stood firm: now this fatal conflagration has given
a proof from heaven of the divine wrath and presages the passage of the sovereignty
of the world to the peoples beyond the Alps’. Such were the vain and superstitious
prophecies of the Druids.
The passage above is taken very seriously by modern scholars. The testimony of
an author who possibly had some direct knowledge of Gaul22 seems to prove that in
AD 69 Druids still played an important role in Gaul, in spite of the alleged suppression
of their religion by Claudius. This is the last moment when they appear in our sources,
only to vanish until the late 4th century. So the mention is obviously important for the
chronological reasons, but not only. It is also, beside the passage from the Annals quoted
above, the sole direct witness of the hostility of the Druids toward Romans, hostility
which would have been the reason for the early imperial repression of Druidism.
But Tacitus’ account is taken in earnest not only by the supporters of
23
a political explanation for the suppression of Druidism, even if there are few
scholars who do not share the common opinion. G. Walser considered the oracle
of the Druids a rhetorical dramatization of the civil war, and J.F. Drinkwater, in
one phrase of his Roman Gaul, remarked that the whole passage seemed to reflect
rather the old terror Gallicus, which had been still haunting Romans in this period,
than real events of 69,24 but such voices remain isolated.25
22
23
24
25
See. R. Syme, ‘Tacitus on Gaul’, Latomus 12 (1953), 25–37, and more recently A.R. Birley,
‘The life and death of Cornelius Tacitus’, Historia 49 (2000), 230–247, on pp. 233–235.
R. Syme generally agrees that Druidism as described by Caesar did not exist in Gaul in this
period but he does not reject Tacitus’ information: ‘Tacitus on Gaul’, 32 n. 11, similarly in
Tacitus, Oxford 1958, 457–459. More recent studies: R. Dyson, ‘Native Revolts in the Roman
Empire’, Historia 20 (1971), 239–74, on 266; C. Letta, ‘Amministrazione romana e culti locali in
età altoimperiale – il caso della Gallia’, Rivista storica italiana 96 (1984), 1001–1024, on
1017–1018; A. Momigliano, ‘Some preliminary remarks on the “religious opposition” to the
Roman Empire’, in Opposition et résistances à l’empire d’Auguste à Trajan (Fondation Hardt.
Entretiens 33), Genève 1987, 103–133, on 109; reprinted in A. Momigliano, On Pagans, Jews,
and Christians, Middletown, CT, 1987, 120–141, on 125; P.A. Brunt, Roman Imperial Themes,
Oxford 1990, 487; Ch. Guynovarc’h, F. Le Roux-Guynovarc’h, ‘Remarques sur la religion
gallo-romaine: rupture et continuité’, ANRW II 33,1 (1982), 423–455, on 441; J. Webster, ‘At the
end of the world: Druidic and other revitalization movements in post-conquest Gaul and
Britain’, Britannia 30 (1999), 1–20, on 14–16; see also n. 25 below.
G. Walser, Rom, das Reich und die fremden Völker in der Geschitschreibung der frühen Keiserzeit, Basel
1951, 109–110; J.F. Drinkwater, Roman Gaul, New York 1983, 39.
Walser’s opinion was strongly rejected by G. Zecchini, ‘La profezia dei druidi sull’incendio del
Campidoglio nel 69 d.C.’, in M. Sordi (ed.), I santuari e la guerra nel mondo classico, Milano 1984,
121–131. In his opinion the theme of translatio imperii which appears in the Druidic oracle
excludes its Roman authorship. Given that the knowledge of this concept – well known to
Romans – among Druids is highly speculative, I incline to a conclusion quite opposite to that
of Zecchini.
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In my opinion Drinkwater and Walser (at least as far as the Druids are
concerned) were right. First of all, it is highly improbable that in the 1st century
AD the Druids in Transalpine Gaul would have remembered that more than four
hundred years earlier their distant relatives had captured Rome, at least if we do
not assume that Druids frequented Roman schools and read Livy. There is no
doubt, however, that this event was perfectly remembered by Romans themselves,
and it was certainly a Roman who was the author of the alleged oracle of the
Druids, which presents the future geographically from the Roman perspective: the
Gauls and Germans are ‘transalpine peoples’ only when viewed from Italy. One
need only ask if the prediction was invented in the City in 69, by Tacitus a half
century later, or by some unknown author from whom Tacitus drew his account.
It is difficult to choose between these possibilities. It is certain that the year 69
was a shock for the Romans, who might then have made some catastrophic
predictions attributed to barbarian seers. What is more, the conviction that the lot
of Rome and her empire is connected with that of the Capitoline Temple is earlier
than Tacitus.26
On the other hand, the arson of Capitol has a very special place in the
Histories: it is announced at the very beginning of the work (Hist. I 2). In the third
book (Hist. III 72), relating in a highly pathetic and gloomy tone the struggles and
the fire in the City,27 Tacitus contrasted the sack of Rome by the Gauls which had
spared Capitol with the fratricidal war which had led to the most deplorable
crime since the foundation of the City (facinus luctuossimum foedissimumque) – the
burning of the temple of Jupiter. It is probable that in the fourth book he went
a step further and made this contrast even stronger by making a sinister oracle
himself and putting it in the mouth of the hostile seers. It is possible too, that
he attached more importance to the sack of Rome by the Gauls than the
majority of his contemporaries did. When writing about the famous speech of
Claudius on the opening of the senate to the Gauls, he says that the main
argument of the project’s opponents was precisely the recollection of the capture
of the City by the ancestors of this people and that the emperor referred to this
argument (Ann. 11,23–24). Now, the text of this speech is preserved on the
well-known bronze tablet from Lyons (ILS 212). Although the monument is
damaged and a part of the inscription is lost, it seems certain that the whole
section in which the emperor talked about the history of contacts between the
26
27
152
As Walser (Rom, das Reich und die fremden Völker, 110) justly remarks, evoking Horace, Carm.
III 3,42 and I 37,6; see also Verg. Aen. IX 446–449.
S. Döpp, ‘L’incendio del Campidoglio: sullo stile di Tacito, Hist. III 72’, Ekaismos 14 (2003),
231–241, demonstrates how important and significant was this event to Tacitus’ view of
Roman history.
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Gauls and Romans is preserved, and we read there only about the campaigns of
Caesar; there is not a word about the sack of Rome. So it is generally accepted that
the mention of this fact was added to the speech as it appears in the Annals by
Tacitus himself.28
That the text of the oracle comes from Tacitus, or anyway from a Roman,
seriously lowers the credibility of the whole passage about the role played by
Druids in the revolt of Civilis, but it does not disqualify it completely. Even if they
did not pronounce such oracles, they could encourage people to fight in other
ways. But what is disquieting is the similarity of their literary function in the
Tacitean descriptions of struggles in Gaul and Britain. Both in the Histories and in
the Annals Druids appear as ominous though insufficient foes of Rome: on Mona
they throw curses on landing soldiers, and in Gaul they announce the fall of the
empire, in both cases arousing anxiety in the Romans. Nevertheless, ultimately
their curses turn out to be vain and their predictions false. Mona is captured and
the revolt of Civilis collapses. These analogies incline me to think that the whole
passage about the participation of Druids in the events of 69 is a creation of
Tacitus, inspired by an account of the landing on Mona heard once from Agricola
or read in some literary text.29 The purpose of this passage was to underline the
dramatic link between two events of the year of four emperors: the burning of
Capitol and the uprising in Gaul.30 Of course to introduce Druids into the story in
this capacity was reasonable only if Tacitus’ audience knew that they were Gallic
seers. Now, it appears that in early 2nd century such knowledge was common in
Rome. For if Caesar, Cicero, Pomponius Mela, and even Pliny the Elder feel obliged
to explain what the Druids are, none of the 2nd century authors, Suetonius or
Tacitus, see such a need. Tacitus could rely on a widespread preconception,
common at least in his milieu thanks to the works of the earlier authors.31
One can ask if Tacitus did not shrink from consciously placing the Druids
in the events in which they had actually taken no part. I would say that he did
not, for we can find at least one close analogy for this literary device. Shortly after
28
29
30
31
M.T. Griffin, ‘The Lyons Tablet and Tacitean Hindsight’, CQ 32 (1982), 404–418, esp. p. 406
with references to the preceding studies. I fully agree with Griffin’s judgment that this point
was added to the speech by Tacitus, but I am not persuaded that the absurdity of the argument
indicates that it was added only to discredit the opposition.
The first possibility would easily explain how Tacitus had learned of the story when writing
Histories, about ten years before he began to work on Annals (Agricola died in 93, the Histories
were composed about 105–106, the Annals not earlier than c. 120).
On the dramatizing function of omens and divination in general in Tacitus, see P. Grimal,
‘Tacite et les présages’, REL 67 (1989), 170–178, on pp. 175–176.
It is possible that already in AD 60 Roman officers commanding the assault on Mona were able
to identify the malefic figures standing on a shore as Druids simply because they had read about
them before.
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relating the assault on Mona, Tacitus describes some omens which accompanied
the outbreak of the revolt of Boudicca, in particular those which preceded the
rebels attack on Camulodunum. The text reads:
Inter quae nulla palam causa delapsum Camuloduni simulacrum Victoriae ac retro
conversum, quasi cederet hostibus. Et feminae in furorem turbatae adesse exitium canebant,
externosque fremitus in curia eorum auditos, consonuisse ululatibus theatrum visamque
speciem in aestuario Tamesae subversae coloniae; iam Oceanus cruento adspectu, ac
labente aestu humanorum corporum effigies relictae, ut Britannis ad spem, ita veteranis ad
metum trahebantur. (Tac. Ann. XIV 32,1)
Meanwhile’ for no apparent reason, the statue of Victory at Camulodunum fell,
with its back turned as if in retreat from the enemy. Women, converted into
maniacs by excitement, cried that destruction was at hand and that alien cries had
been heard in the invaders’ senate-house: the theatre had rung with shrieks, and in
the estuary of Thames had been seen a vision of the ruined colony. Again, that the
Ocean had appeared blood-red and that the ebbing tide had left behind it what
looked to be human corpses, were indications read by the Britons with hope and
by the veterans with corresponding alarm.
The same list of omens we find in Cassius Dio, in the beginning of his
account of the revolt (D.C. 62,1,2); the same except that it lacks the sign which
opens the series in Tacitus: the falling and turning face-down of the statue of
Victory. This difference was noted by E.W. Black, who recognized that Dio and
Tacitus were using the same list of omens from an earlier writer, but ‘Dio has
simply reproduced it, Tacitus has adapted it, and added to it, presumably from
other earlier historians’.32 I suppose that Tacitus in fact exploited an earlier source,
but not necessarily one relating to the war in Britain. Now, the turning or falling
of the statue is by no means a frequent omen in Roman literature. Apart from the
passage quoted above it occurs only in two other places – once more in Tacitus, in
Histories (statuam divi Iulii in insula Tiberini amnis sereno et immoto die ab occidente in
orientem conversam; Hist. I 86,1) and once in Suetonius (ac non multo post comitia
secundi consulatus ineunte Galba statuam Divi Iuli ad Orientem sponte conversam; Vesp.
5,7). Both authors describe the same omen, the turning eastward of the Deified
Julius statue on Tiber Island, and both place it among other signs accompanying
the events of the year of four emperors (although not in the same moment).33 As
we can see, the omens in Camulodunum and in Rome have similar function. The
turning of statue of the first emperor presages the forthcoming change of ruler; the
32
33
154
Black, ‘The first century historians of Roman Britain’, 416.
Although Suetonius’ Lives were written later than Histories, the omen appears more congruous
in Suetonius, who mentions it among signs announcing the reign of Vespasian. The turning of
Deified Julius eastward points to the direction from which the future emperor will come. In
Tacitus, who dates it to the reign of Galba, the fact that the statue turned eastward in
particular has no importance.
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turning of the statue of Victoria back to the enemies, the defeat of the Romans.
I think that the situation here is the same as in the case of the Druids from Mona
and from Rhineland: Tacitus did not draw the episode of Colchester statue from any
external source; he just copied it from the history of 69 and pasted it into the
account of the revolt of Boudicca (in the case of the Druids the direction is the
opposite). What is different in the two cases is the veracity of the sign/prophecy. The
omen observed in Rome and Camulodunum revealed the truth (Tacitus has a respect
for the presages which appear in a consecrated place), the prophecy of the Druids
turned out to be false (because the author regards Druidism as vana superstitio).34
Does my argument mean that the image of the Druids as sinister Gaulish
prophets took root in Roman consciousness only after the disappearance of the real
Druids from Gaul? This conclusion would be too hasty. My intention was to
demonstrate that in the analyzed passages neither Mela nor Tacitus betrays any
knowledge about actual Gallic Druids contemporary to them. I would incline to
think that they simply did not have such knowledge. But to formulate here
categorical judgments may be dangerous. It is all the less possible to prove that in
the early empire in Gaul Druids did not exist anymore. Of course, the fact that not
only Mela’s and Tacitus’ but already Caesar’s information about them seems to be
drawn mostly from readings35 is somehow disquieting, but ancient authors were quite
often ready to shape their opinion on the basis of literature rather than eye-witnesses
even if eye-witnesses were at hand. What is more, the laws mentioned above, issued
by Augustus, Tiberius and Claudius would be an argument for the persistence of the
Druids in 1st century. They should not be considered a priori as a struggle against the
chimera of Gallic superstition and not against a real phenomenon.
In any case it appears that independently of what was really happening in
Gaul, already in 1st century AD Romans formed their vision of the Druids
exclusively on the basis of literature. The literary Druids were in fact anti-Roman,
but I doubt if the conviction about such character of their activity was as real cause
of the repressions applied by successive emperors. If I interpret Mela’s account
correctly, such conviction is not attested by any 1st century source, i.e. by any
author before Tacitus.36 The reason for this repression was probably, as Roman
34
35
36
Tacitus’ estimation of omens depended on several factors. As a rule he accepted the truthfulness
of traditional Roman signs and those which took place in consecrated places, see Grimal, ‘Tacite
et les présages’, 174–175.
This point was stressed a long time ago by J. De Witt, ‘The druids and Romanization’, TAPhA
69 (1938), 319–332, esp. pp. 322–324. So Tierney, ‘The Celtic ethnography of Posidonius’,
211–218; against Nash, ‘Reconstructing Poseidonios’ Celtic ethnography’, 115–116 and passim.
Adherents of the thesis of the hostility of the Druids towards Romans used to cite two more
examples. The first is a Gutuater who incited the Carnutes to rebel against Romans; he is
mentioned in the last book of Gallic War (VIII 38), written by A. Hirtius (Ch. Guyonvarc’h,
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authors themselves suggest, another conviction, rooted much earlier both in Greek
and in Roman literature: the belief that Druids practiced human sacrifice. That
could be true even if this belief had little in common with reality already at the
time of the conquest: it does not appear that Caesar anywhere met such
immolations. All he knew about them was drawn from Posidonius.
If the 1st and 2nd century AD authors tell us only about literary Druids, what
can we say about the real ones? On the basis of the surviving sources not much.
However, if the description of the Druids in the texts has nothing in common with
the reality of Gaul and so does not prove the endurance of the phenomenon up to
the revolt of Civilis, it also should not be considered as showing the contrary. We
are not able to say when exactly the Druids disappeared. Their end, which was
probably caused more by the fast Romanization of local elites than by imperial
laws, did not of course mean the end of the native Gallic religion, which is well
testified by its material remains. But the servants of this religion certainly neither
played a social role nor were called by the name of the Druids.
Robert Wiśniewski
r.wisniewski@uw.edu.pl
Institute of History
University of Warsaw
Krakowskie Przedmieście 26/28
00–927 Warsaw, Poland
‘Gaulois gutuater “[Druide] invocateur” irlandais guth “voix”’, Ogam 18 [1966], 104–109).
The other example is Mariccus (Tac. Hist. II 61), who stirred up the revolt of the Boii and
declared himself a god (on both cases: Zecchini, ‘La profezia dei druidi’, 127). I am persuaded
that both examples are not accurate. We have no proof that gutuatri/gutuatres (?), known only
from three Gallo-Roman inscriptions (which otherwise bear evidence of their definitely
favorable attitude towards Rome, see n. 1), had anything in common with Druids. There is no
ground to make them a kind of a minor, auxiliary priestly college. But first of all Gutuater from
Gal. VIII 38 is the same person whom Caesar mentions, alongside a certain Conconnetodumnus,
in Gal. VII 3,1 as one of two chiefs of the Carnutes. For Caesar Gutuater is certainly a proper
name, and one could consider him a priest only by assuming that Caesar erroneously treated
as a name what was in fact a title. That would be the only such case in Gallic War; for
convincing arguments against it, see Ch. Goudineau, ‘Le gutuater gaulois. Idéologie et histoire’,
Gallia 60 (2003), 383–387. As for Mariccus, according to Tacitus he was a man of humble origin
(e plebe Boiorum), so he could not be a Druid, for the Druids belonged to the noblest families.
G. Bowersock, ‘Mechanisms of subversion in the Roman provinces’, in Opposition et resistances
à l’empire d’Auguste à Trajan (Entretiens Fondation Hardt 33), Genève 1987, 291–320, on p. 311,
conscious of this fact, thinks that Mariccus just cooperated with Druids. One could reply that
certainly not everyone who calls himself a god is a priest, and it is usually not priests who are
the first to recognize such claims.
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