HKB
These victims were generally taken from among the criminals, as being more agreeable to the gods; but if there were no criminals to be had, the innocent themselves were sacrificed.
Cæsar, who, according to the custom of his countrymen, gave to the divinities of foreign peoples the names of those of Rome, tells us that the Gauls honoured Mercury above all others. They raised statues to him, regarded him as the inventor of the arts, the guide of travellers, and the protector of commerce.[123] They also offered worship to divinities which the “Commentaries” assimilate to Apollo, Mars, Jupiter, and Minerva, without informing us of their Celtic names. From Lucan,[124] we learn the names of three Gaulish divinities, Teutates (in whom, no doubt, we must recognise the Mercury of the “Commentaries”), Hesus or Esus, and Taranis. Cæsar makes the remark that the Gauls had pretty much the same ideas with regard to their gods as other nations. Apollo cured the sick, Minerva taught the elements of the arts, Jupiter was the master of heaven, Mars the arbiter of war. Often, before fighting, they made a vow to consecrate to this god the spoils of the enemy, and, after the victory, they put to death all their prisoners. The rest of the booty was piled up in the consecrated places, and nobody would be so impious as to take anything away from it. The Gauls rendered also, as we learn from inscriptions and passages in different authors, worship to rivers, fountains, trees, and forests: they adored the Rhine as a god, and made a goddess of the Ardenne.[125]
[Sidenote: Institutions]
IV. There were in Gaul, says Cæsar, only two classes who enjoyed public consideration and honours,[126] the Druids and the knights. As to the people, deprived of all rights, oppressed with debts, crushed with taxes, exposed to the violences of the great, their condition was little better than that of slaves. The Druids, ministers of religion, presided over the sacrifices, and preserved the deposit of religious doctrines. The youth, greedy of instruction, pressed around them. The dispensers of rewards and punishments, they were the judges of almost all disputes, public or private. To private individuals, or even to magistrates, who rebelled against their decisions, they interdicted the sacrifices, a sort of excommunication which sequestrated from society those who were struck by it, placed them in the rank of criminals, removed them from all honours, and deprived them even of the protection of the law. The Druids had a single head, and the power of this head was absolute. At his death, the next in dignity succeeded him; if there were several with equal titles, these priests had recourse to election, and sometimes even to a decision by force of arms. They assembled every year in the country of the Carnutes, in a consecrated place, there to judge disputes. Their doctrine, it was said, came from the isle of Britain, where, in the time of Cæsar, they still went to draw it as at its source.[127]
The Druids were exempt from military service and from taxes.[128] These privileges drew many disciples, whose novitiate, which lasted sometimes twenty years, consisted in learning by heart a great number of verses containing their religious precepts. It was forbidden to transcribe them. This custom had the double object of preventing the divulgation of their doctrine and of exercising the memory. Their principal dogma was the immortality of the soul and its transmigration into other bodies. A belief which banished the fear of death appeared to them fitted to excite courage. They explained also the movement of the planets, the greatness of the universe, the laws of nature, and the omnipotence of the immortal gods. “We may conceive,” says the eminent author of the Histoire des Gaulois, “what despotism must have been exercised over a superstitious nation by this caste of men, depositaries of all knowledge, authors and interpreters of all law, divine or human, remunerators, judges, and executioners.”[129]