Priority Reading

JULIUS CEASAR (100 - 44BC) ON THE DRUIDS

• Julius Caesar states - As a class, the Druids take no active part in war … In their schools they are said to learn by heart an extraordinary number of lines, and in consequence sometimes to remain under instruction for as many as twenty years. Although for most other purposes, in both their public and private accounts, they have adopted the Greek alphabet, yet they still retain a superstitious objection to committing the secrets of their doctrine to writing

• With regard to their actual course of studies, the main object of all education is, in their opinion, to imbue their scholars with a firm belief in the indestructibility of the human soul, which according to their belief, merely passes at death from one tenement to another; for by such a doctrine alone, they say, which robs death of all its terrors, can the highest form of human courage be developed.

• Subsidiary to the teaching of this main principle, they hold various lectures and discussions on astronomy, on the extent and geographical distribution of the globe, on the different branches of natural philosophy, and on many problems connected with religion'

Extracts from Exploring the World of the Druids by Miranda J. Green.