Religion

Of the three non-military classes generally named by the ancients, two, the Druids and vates, were responsible for the spiritual and ritual life of the Gauls (Strabo 4.4.4, Diod. 5.31.5). The course of study to become a Druid could last up to twenty years, and consisted mainly of memorizing an enormous corpus of verses and teachings that was never written down. The Druids thus incorporated the accumulated wisdom of their people. Caesar tells us that they also practiced divination, preached transmigration of the soul, dispensed justice, and studied the natural sciences such as astronomy (Caes. BG 6.14-16). A fragmentary bronze inscription found at Coligny, France, outlines winter and summer holy days on a combined 62-month lunar and solar calendar (fig. 3.1). Female practitioners included the black-clad furies (Druidesses?) of Mona (Anglesey) (Tac. Ann. 14.30), the maenads living on an island at the mouth of the Loire (Strabo 4.4.6), and the sorceresses named in the lead tablets from Larzac. Human sacrifice was apparently performed under all manner of circumstances, even divination (Diod. 5.31). Prisoners of war were routinely offered up. The sacrifice of criminals was propitious for the prosperity of the land (Diod. 5.32; Strabo 4.4.4). Many well-preserved bodies of tortured and killed victims have been discovered in the peat bogs of northern Europe, Britain, and Ireland - recently the well-preserved fourth - to third-century bc finds at Clonycavan and Old Croghan near Dublin. However, their relationship vis-a-vis the “Celts” is unclear.

Many of our weapons finds are from watery contexts such as rivers, streams, springs, or lakes. In the case of lakeside dwellings, some accidental or incidental loss may be expected, but some deposits are clearly deliberate, such as the hundreds of weapons and wagon fittings found at La Tene in Switzerland, or those at Llyn Cerrig Bach in Anglesey, which include such horrific items as slave-gang chains. Many weapons found in ritual deposits have been “killed,” bent completely out of shape and rendered useless. Inscribed tablets, jewelry, textiles, coins, and anthropoid sculptures are other common watery deposits.

At a sanctuary at the center of the oppidum of Gournay-sur-Aronde, a sequence from the fourth century bc through to the Roman period has been excavated. Thousands of “killed” weapons were exposed to rust away in a ditch outside a square enclosure surrounding sacrificial pits, together with thousands of animal bones and the remains of decapitated humans. Fifty kilometers away at Ribemont-sur-Ancre hundreds of disarticulated human long-bones were stacked in a square formation, while other skeletons were merely halved and left in place. A roofed structure over a ditch displayed the bodies of dozens of fully armed warriors, decapitated and propped upright. The building, bodies and all, was left to deteriorate and collapse into the ditch below (Brunaux 1999). Ribemont is usually interpreted as a victory monument displaying the vanquished foe. Alternatively, it may have commemorated fallen comrades. An enormous amount of cooperative effort went into the configuration of these sites. We can only imagine the social and psychological dimensions.

The find contexts of “Celtic” arms and armour suggest that there was a profoundly religious aspect to the practice of warfare. Coupled with evidence from burials, these deposits suggest beliefs in chthonic powers as well as a lively afterlife filled with fighting and feasting, analogous to scenes in early Celtic poetry. Freestanding sculptures of men in armour sitting cross-legged at Roquepertuse and Entremont have been interpreted as warrior deities. Decapitated heads form part of the iconography. According to Poseidonios the “Celts” “hang the heads of their slain enemies from the necks of their horses when they leave a battlefield and then hang them up on a peg when they get home” (Strabo 4.4.5, cf. Diod. 5.29). Livy’s account of the death of Postumius explicitly makes the religious connection: “the Boii took his severed head in a procession to the holiest of their temples. There it was cleaned and the bare skull was adorned with gold, as is their custom. It was used thereafter as a sacred vessel on special occasions and as a ritual drinking-cup by their priests and temple officials” (23.24). No gilded skulls have been found in the Keltike, but there is ample archaeological evidence of decapitation, defleshing, dismemberment and manipulation of the corpses of warriors. Conspicuous display of decapitated heads is attested at various sites in France and Iberia.

Since Aristotle, the “Celts’ ” lack of fear of injury or death seemed to the Greeks to border on the insane (e. g. Eth. Nic. 3.7). This incomprehensible trait contributed to their characterization as utterly strange and barbarian. An enemy who has no thought for bodily harm is highly motivated to perform reckless feats of daring and to fight to the death (Diod. 5.29). Complete freedom from any fear of death is often attributed to a belief in quasi-Pythagorean reincarnation (Caes. BG 6.13, 6.14.5; Diod. 5.28). We are left again with a conceptual divide which the Greeks and Romans attempted to bridge in their own familiar terms.