But votive altars, statues, and temples, although they embodied older beliefs, belong, as we have seen, to the period when the Celts had fallen under the dominion of Rome. The Cisalpine Gauls, if Livy[1203] and Polybius[1204] are to be believed, worshipped in temples: but the holy places of the Western Celts were groves,[1205] and perhaps stone circles which they inherited from the people of the Bronze Age. Such simplicity was of course not peculiar to the Celts and the Germans.[1206] The Pelasgian Zeus had no temple: the oldest sanctuary of Jupiter on the Alban Mount was a grove of oaks.[1207] Not a single statue of pre-Roman date has ever been found in Britain; not one in Gaul later than the close of the Palaeolithic Age. Caesar indeed says that the Gallic Mercury was represented by numerous _simulacra_; but if these were statues, it is inexplicable that none of them has ever come to light; and perhaps we may accept the suggestion that Caesar was thinking of menhirs, which had been erected long before the first Celt set foot in Gaul,[1208] but which, like the formless stones that the Greeks venerated as figures of Hermes,[1209] were, he supposed, regarded as possessed by the spirit of the great national deity. On the menhir of Kernuz in Finistère a rude Mercury was sculptured in Roman times.[1210] The conjecture may be well founded that the Druids, like the priests of Israel, were opposed to anthropomorphism;[1211] but it is not needed to explain the lack of native statues of Celtic gods.[1212] The Romans, according to Varro, had for many years no sacred images:[1213] like the Celts, like the Germans, who also, even in the time of Tacitus,[1214] deemed it derogatory to the majesty of the gods to ascribe to them human form, they were content to recognize manifestations of divine will; and even when their temples were being crowded with the works of Greek art, their ancient Vesta remained shrouded in awful mystery.[1215] But, while the Druids may have been as hostile as Israel to Gentile abominations, the Celts in general were as receptive as the Romans, and readily accepted the services of foreign sculptors.
The evidence of interments, from which we tried to glean some information as to the religion of the Bronze Age, remains much the same during the later period; and the noticeable changes do not seem to have much significance. British customs differed somewhat from those of Gaul. Inhumation, which had almost entirely ceased in that country in the second century before Christ, continued everywhere in Britain except in the territory of the Belgae; and even there cremation was not universal.[1216] In the more southern districts nearly all the interments which have been explored were unmarked by any tumulus; while in the cemetery of Aylesford the urns which contained the cremated remains were placed in small cylindrical pits set in what has been described as a family circle.[1217] When barrows were erected their form was still circular: but they were generally much smaller than those of the Bronze Age: they were grouped in much greater numbers;[1218] and they were never more than structureless heaps of earth or stone.[1219] Although the contracted position was still common, skeletons have been found extended in this country, as generally in Gaul;[1220] and, as in Wiltshire in the Bronze Age, the head generally pointed towards the north.[1221] On the other hand, ornaments and weapons were placed in graves more frequently than before:[1222] animals were still occasionally interred;[1223] and flint chips and stones were still sometimes deposited in or along with urns.[1224] But rites which in the Bronze Age could only be inferred are attested in the Iron Age by eye-witnesses. We learn from Caesar[1225] that it was a custom of the Gauls to immolate the dead man’s cherished possessions, even his favourite animals, on the funeral pyre; and that not long before the time of his oldest contemporaries slaves and retainers had been sacrificed.