Caesar’s Druids

In Caesar’s Druids, Miranda Aldhouse-Green returns to a theme she has previously tackled, extending her consideration of it.

The druids are at once the most multifaceted and the most enigmatic cadre identifiable in the Iron Age societies of western temperate Europe, essentially its Gaulish (west of the Rhine) and southern British parts – hence the author’s use of ‘Gallo-British’ to describe them.

Philosophers, theologians, priests, judges, guarantors of political institutions, educators of the young and magicians among other roles, what is known historically about them derives from Classical authors. They wrote about these ‘outsiders’ from a variety of perspectives, some favourable, others hostile, some well-informed, others given to fantasy. Relatively few speak independently and with first-hand knowledge.

Druids reappear much later in the historical record, this time distorted through the lens of the early Christian monasteries of Ireland: another time, another country, other druids.

The longest of these texts (which provides the volume’s title) occurs in Caesar’s Gallic War in a much-debated passage on the characteristics of his adversaries inserted within the sixth book of the commentaries he sent south, at a time (53 BC) when he needed to reassure the Roman senate which was financing the war. This undoubtedly coloured his report.

Although Aldhouse-Green frankly acknowledges that “there exists not one vestige of archaeological evidence that can be linked unequivocally to the Druids,” she deploys a range of arguments to link a range of artefacts to ritual practices. She also interprets iconographic traits and relates these to religious specialists, and thus potentially the druids.

Such arguments are derived from ritual practices in ancient Mediterranean societies, ethnographic analogies from the Plains Indians east to the shaman tradition of Siberia, traits
recorded by Classical authors for Germans further east, and anthropological theory. Individual readers will doubtless find, as did this reviewer, some cases more convincing than others; and some not at all.

It is plainly on the quest for ‘professional ritualists’ – including the identification through archaeology of the sites where they may be recognisable – that the author concentrates. Here her consideration of the evidence is at its most authoritative for southern Britain, including, perhaps more especially, the survival and resurgence of certain traits during Romano-British times.

What the book’s thematic structure rather underplays is that evidence relative to later prehistoric specialist ritualists, such as druids, extends over several centuries. There is thus every reason to imagine that their roles and influences changed greatly through time and over space.

The druids’ status as priests, highlighted by Caesar, is thus less stressed in other ancient sources. Nor is Aldhouse-Green much concerned to set Caesar’s druids (or indeed any others) into the context of their contemporary, and sometimes rapidly-changing, societies.

These are among aspects stressed in Jean-Louis Brunaux’s near-contemporary treatment (Les Druides: des Philosphes chez les Barbares, 2006) of the same subject, which appeared too recently to be considered by Aldhouse-Green.

With a useful supporting apparatus, albeit some rather disappointing illustrations, Aldhouse-Green’s very readable book is an authoritative platform from which further study of the ancient druids can develop. 

Ian Ralston is a professor at Edinburgh University. His most recent book (with John Hunter) is The Archaeology of Britain (Routledge, 2009)