Note 473 — Chapter VII

The continental evidence has been collected together in convenient shape by modern scholars: thus Mr. Stock, in his work on Cæsar de bello Gallico, notes and compares the evidence of Cæsar, Strabo, Diodorus Siculus, Ammianus Marcellinus, Mela, Lucan, and Pliny as it has been interpreted by modern scholars (see pp. 107-113), and he is followed by Mr. T. Rice Holmes in his study of Cæsar's Conquest of Gaul, pp. 532-536. The Druidic cult of belief in immortality, metempsychosis, ritual of the grove, augury, human sacrifice, is all set out and discussed. These are the continental Druidic beliefs and practices, and they may be compared with the Druidic Irish beliefs and practices in Eugene O'Curry's Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, lect. ix. and x. vol. ii. pp. 179-228, and Dr. Joyce's Social History of Ancient Ireland, i. 219-248, where "the points of agreement and difference between Irish and Gaulish Druids" are discussed. Mr. Elton notices the difference between the continental and the British Druids, but ascribes it to unequal development (Origins of Eng. Hist., 267-268). Cæsar's well-known account of the wickerwork sacrifice is very circumstantial. It is not repeated by either Diodorus or Strabo, who both refer to individual human sacrifice. Pliny introduces the mistletoe, oak, and serpent cults, and the other three authorities are apparently dependent upon their predecessors.