Customer Reviews

Caesar's Druids: An Ancient Priesthood

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With a bibliography of several hundred learned journal articles and books,many in French,German,etc, and well over 1000 end notes to these sources,this is a book for the serious student. The 13 chapters,divided and sub-headed into maybe 200 sections,include major topics such as the question of barbarism or savagery,priests and power,sacrifice,oracles and shamans,calendars,sacred grounds,the tool kit,doctrine,gender,rebellion against Rome,and the rather nebulous,even dubious,survival of these various ancient and early medieval ways into our own times.

The author is Professor of Archaeology at Cardiff University,Wales.

I would have liked to have seen more speculation as to the mental world,such as comparisons with Greco-Roman or Germanic ideas about nature. It was nice to read about the very sacred Tara site in Ireland; and to read all the various Roman source quotes,which actually show how little has come down to us in writing. Caesar's writings about his wars in Gaul[="France"]are central among the Roman sources

However archaeology alone just can't animate a corpse's world view except in a very materialistic fashion. So I miss the poetry. Even a brief on proto-Indo-European[linguistic]"culture" would have been welcome. Also unconsidered were the recent genetic findings about,for example,the ancientness of the British genealogy:The dominance of Celtic & "pre-Celtic[Iberian]" ancestry.

No serious student of ancient and early medieval west European Druidism should overlook this book. The discussions of regional and temporal variations in "Druidness" are particularly educational,as are the arguments against scholars who doubt the religiousness of the druids--e.g. Nora Chadwick who considers them to be "philosophers". However,if you want much "religion"/philosophy this is not the place to find it--admitting that such information is actually largely unavailable.