Celtic religion in pre-Christian times / by Edward Anwyl.

  • Edward Anwyl
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Celtic religion in pre-Christian times / by Edward Anwyl. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    THE DEUIDS AND PYTHAGORAS human life. In addition to these private sacrifices, they had also similar human sacrifices of a public character. Csesar further contrasts the Germans with the Gauls, saying that the former had no Druids to preside over matters of religion, and that they paid no attention to sacrifices. In his work on divination, Cicero, too, refers to the profession which the Druids made of natural science, and of the power of foretelling the future, and instances the case of the iEduan Diviciacns, his brother’s guest and friend. Nothing is here said by Cicero of the three classes implied in Diodorus, hut Timagenes (quoted in Ammianus) refers to the three classes under the names ‘ bardi,’ ‘ euhages ’ (a mistake for ‘ vates ’), and ‘ drasidse ’ (a mistake for ‘ druidse ’). The study of nature and of the heavens is here attributed to the second class of seers (vates). The highest class, that of the Druids, were, he says, in accord¬ ance with the rule of Pythagoras, closely linked together in confraternities, and by acquiring a certain loftiness of mind from their investigations into things that were hidden and exalted, they despised human affairs and declared the soul immortal. We see here the view expressed that socially as well as intellectually the Druids lived according to the Pythagorean philosophy. Origen 5i