p
it
i í ;
120 CRANIA BRITANNICA. [CHAP. V.
Vocontian Gaul, of equestrian rank at Rome, was put to death for no other reason than having
one of the vaunted Druidical amulets, the serpent's egg, in his bosom during a law-suit *. The
cui-ious statement ah-eady cited from Mela t , written about this time, is proof both that human
sacrifices had been eflfectuaUy put down, and likewise that whatever individual emperors may
have attempted, the Druidical religion thus purified was tolerated; though by the introduction
and encouragement of the Roman cult it must have lost much of its influence J.
Human sacrifices survived much longer in. Britain than in Gaul, and in the north of the
island, beyond the Roman power, may have been extinguished only with the spread of Christianity,
in the sixth century. It is often supposed that the entire system in South Britain expired with
the destruction of the Druids and their groves, by Suetonius Paulinus, A.D. 61. Many of the
Druids may-have joined the refugees in Mona, but it is not credible that the whole were there
congregated, nor is this implied in the narrative of the historian §. The subsequent silence as
to Druids in Britain is no proof that they did not exist. The native diviner, aruspex rusticus,
who conducted Severus to the temple of Bellona on his return to Eburacum, was probably a
Druid II. In Gaul there are frequent traces of them after the first century. The Gaulish
philosopher, who, late in the second century, explained to Lucian the figure of Hercules Ogmius,
can only have been a Druid H- In the third centm-y the Druidesses of Gaul are repeatedly
named as foretelling events of high import to the state. The defeat of Alexander Severus and
the mutiny of his soldiers was thus foretold **. Aurelian consulted certain Druidesses as to
whether the empire would be continued in his family t t . Diocletian conceived his iirst hopes of
empire, when serving in Gaul, from the prediction of a Druidess of the Tungri, whose words
incited him to the assassination of Aper iJ. In the play called Querulus is a cui-ious allusion to
Druidical usages in the north-west of Gaul. " On the Loire," it is said, " the capital sentences
of the oak are pronounced, and written on bones. There rustics plead, private persons decide, and
everything is lawful. If rich (as our Greek says), thou shouldst be called Patus, " Greater things
there are which we conceal§§". This paxt of Gaul, now Brittany, where the Roman language
probably never supplanted the Celtic, was doubtless that in which Druidical institutions
lingered longest. In the adjoining country of the Baiocasses lived a family, expressly described
as of Druidical stock, who at the beginning of the fourth century became professors of rhetoric
in the school of Burdigala, retiring from their hereditary charge of the temple of Belenus, the
Armorican Apollo, whose priests Ausonius says were called Faterce by the Mystics || || (or
* Pliny, lib. xxix. § 12.
t " Ut ab ultimis ceedibus temperant, ita nihilominus ubi
devotos altaribus admoTcre, delibant." (Mela, lib. iii. c. 2.)
The writer has rendered ¿eZiioni (p. 117) by "tasted their
blood," &c.; but it has been suggested to him, that it may
perhaps answer to the Greek aTapx<^trdait and denote the cutting
off the hair from the victim^s forehead, and casting it on
the fire, as the preliminary rite of sacrifice.
J The Druids were in full activity in the reign of Vespasian
(70A.D.), long after the persecution of Claudius. Tac. Hist,
lib. iv. e. 54.
§ Tacitus, Ann. lib. iv. c. 29, 30.
II Spartian, Sever, e. 22. ^ Lucian, Here. Gallic.
** Lamprid. Alex. Sever, c. 60 (A.D. 235). The Druidess
exclaimed in the Gallic language, " Vadas, nec victoriam speres,
nec militi tuo credas!"
t t Vopisc. Aurel. c. 44.
i i Vopisc. Numerian, c. 12-14. The words of the prediction
were—" Imperator eris, cum aprum occideris."
Querulus sive Aulularia, Act. i. Sc. 2. (Plaut. Par. 1832.
vol. iii. p . 557.) This play, which is probably of the third or
fourth century, was, from the similarity of its title and plot to
the Aulularia of Plautus, at its discovery attributed to him ; but
in his time, 200 B.C., the Loire was unknown to the Romans.
I I I I Ausonius, Prof. Burd. Carm. IV. X. Three generations
of the family are specified by their names, all connected with
Apollo: Phcebicius the old warden; his sons Phoebicius and
Attius Patera, whose agnomen Patera is explained—
Tibi Pateree, sic ministros nuucupant
ApoUinares mystiei."
The son of this Attius Patera was Attius Tiro Delphidius—
" Natoque de Delphis tuo."
The Roman and Gallic worship of Apollo were clearly combined
in this Armorican temple.
CHAP. V.] HISTORICAL ETHNOLOGY OE BRITAIN. 121
Druids) devoted to his worship. The Druidical religion had been much modified by Roman, and
other forms of paganism, and thus when Christianity became the state reUgion of Rome, it
rapidly declined. Hence when Amonianus, late in the fourth century, describes the system,
he speaks of it as having a past rather than present existence.
The Britons, like the Celts of the contment, were without enclosed temples. Religious
scruples, as to confining the deity within waUs, such as existed among the ancient Persians and
Germans*, added to their ignorance of architecture, may have led to tHs result and to he celebration
of their worship in the open air. Of the groves (iX.o«) and other sacred places {.pa), in
the east of the island, in which. Dion says, the Britons sacrificed and feasted after the success of
Boadiceat, we have no description, though like the sacred groves in Mona, they probably
contained altars for haman sacrifice and augury J. Lucan describes, with every accessory of terror
and superstition, the grove of oaks, near Massilia, held in supreme reverence by the Gauls, where
were direful altars, trees stained with human gore, dismal springs, and the shapeless images of
their gods hewn from the stocks of trees §. There were many such places in Gaul, and one great
central one in the district of the Carnutes. Csesar, who was weU acquainted with them, and did
not refrain from their plunder ||, nowhere names them temples or even groves, but simply sacred
places^. He describes the treasures of all kinds, dedicated to the divinity, piled up withm
them, the pillage of which was an almost unheard-of sacrilege. This treasure often consisted of
cold which, Diodorus says, was carelessly thrown into the sacred places (¡epi koI .e^e.,) • .
Strabo gives a similar account of the treasures in the hieron of the Gauls at Tolosa, which no
one dared to touch. Here, 106 B.C., Ca^pio obtained the great booty of gold and sûver, which
Posidonius says had been deposited in certain shrines (.,.0«) t t and sacred lakes. The old
Celtic name for a consecrated place, as seen in a poet of the sixth century, was nemetH
Vernemetum in Gaul was a great fane, and Drynemetum in Asiatic Galatia, where the council
of three hundred met§§, was a hieron in an oat grove {derw, oak, nemet, a sacred place).
Once only is there mention of a roof in comiection with a Celtic hieron, which, like the thatch
of the Gallic and British houses, was of perishable materials, and renewed annuaUy || ||. It is
* Herodotus, lib. i. c. 131. Cic. fiep. lib. iU. c. 9. Tacitus,
Germ. c. ix. " Nec cohibere parietibus deos, * * * lucos
ac nemora consecrant, deorumque nominibus appellant secretum
ilUid, quod sola reverentia vident." Comp. c. xxxrx.
t Dion. ap. Xiph. lib. Ixii. § 7. Strabo (Ub. iv. c. 4. § 5)
speaks of the sacred places of the Gauls as the scene of human
sacrifices similar to those in this kieron of Andraste.
J Tacitus, Ann. lib. xiv. c. 30.
5 Lucan, lib. iii. v. 399.
Ü Suetonius (Jul. c. 54) " fana templaque deum douis referta
expilavit."
IJ "Loci consecrati." B. G. lib. vi. c. 13, 17. The Cisalpine
Gauls had also their consecrated spots, B.C. 216 and 223,
called temples by Livy, Ub. xxiii. c. 24. Polyb. lib. ii. c. 32.
* * Diodorus, lib. v. c. 27. These sacred treasures remind
us of the tapu of the New Zealanders—property of all sorts
openly exposed, which no one dared to approach but the
priest. Angus, New Zealand, 1847, pi. 48.
t t Strabo, hb. iv. c. 1. § 13. The word ariKos, as applied
to the temples of the Greeks, signified the inner cell or sanctuary
i but as used here by Posidonius, it may merely imply
soml rude structure where the divbity was supposed to reside.
or where some sacred symbol was displayed. Such may
have been the use of certain " coves" of large stones in and
near several presumed British temples, as Abury and Eollrich.
In Greece, in the earliest times, the adyta of the
temples were rude megaUthic structures, as appears from the
description of the very ancient one at Delphi, consistmg of five
stones only.
" Nomine Vememetis voluit vocitare vetnstas
Quod quasi fanum ingens Galhca Hngua refert."
Venantius Fortunatus (Bishop of Poictiers), lib. i c. 9.
See also VI. De sacris sylvarum qua Nimidas meant, in
the " Indieulus Paganiarum," the curious catalogue of Pagan
superstitions forbidden at the Council held under Carloman,
in the diocese of Cambray iu 743. There was a Vernemetum
in Britain as well as Gaul. Nemet, hke the Greek
temenos and Latin templum, seems to signify a piece of land
cut off from common purposes and dedicated to religion.
The word occurs in Nemetacum, Augustonemetum, and other
names.
Strabo, lib. xii. c. 5. § 1.
nil lb. lib. iv. c. 4. § 6.