Note 1273 — Chapter V

The question may be asked, If there were Druids in South-Eastern Britain, why does Caesar not tell us what part they took, or whether they took any part, in the campaign of Cassivellaunus? As all readers of his memoirs have remarked, he is equally silent in regard to the political activity or the political apathy of the Druids of Gaul. ‘A singularly powerful priesthood,’ says Prof. Haverfield (Eng. Hist. Rev., xviii, 1903, p. 336), ‘numbering political leaders, like Divitiacus, among its ranks, might be expected in a national crisis to take some definite line, requiring notice in the Commentaries. Yet omit two chapters, and so far as the Commentaries go, the Druids might never have existed.’ M. Camille Jullian (Vercingétorix, 1902, pp. 107-11) argues that they did take an active part in the rebellion of Vercingetorix, but that Caesar chose to ignore the fact: Caesar ‘a laïcisé à outrance l’esprit et l’histoire de la Gaule.... Nul ne croira que la Gaule n’ait pas appelé prêtres et dieux à son secours’. Prof. Haverfield, who naturally asks ‘What motive had Caesar for this?’ suggests that an analogy ‘to these powerful non-political priests ... is provided by various priestly collegia at Rome, which include political leaders, but which in their augural or other capacity take no political action’, and maintains that the Druids, ‘as Druids, uttered no word against Caesar or for him’. But if so, why, at a time when their power had certainly diminished, did they aid and abet the insurrection of Civilis (Tacitus, Hist., iv, 54)? I would suggest that Caesar may have bought over the Arch-Druid (B. G., vi, 13, § 8)—and his use of secret-service money is one of the matters which he did not mention—and that if individual Druids did take part in a crusade, he may not have thought their action sufficiently important (if he was aware of it) to be worth recording.