That teaching, alas! has not been enshrined in Cicero’s sonorous page, but Lucan in his _Pharsalia_ corroborates Cæsar:--
‘The Druids now, while arms are heard no more, Old mysteries and barbarous rites restore: A tribe who singular religion love, And haunt the lonely coverts of the grove. If dying mortals’ doom they sing aright No ghosts descend to dwell in dreadful night, No parting souls to grisly Pluto go, Nor seek the dreary silent shades below: But forth they fly immortal in their kind And other bodies in new worlds they find. Thus life forever runs its endless race, And like a line death but divides the space. A stop which can but for a moment last, A point between the future and the past. Thrice happy they beneath their northern skies Who that worst fear, the fear of death, despise!’
In another passage the same poet describes in dark colours the gloomy rites of the barbarous priests; their rude, misshapen images, and the scene of their ritual in the sacred wood, smeared with human blood.
But of their ritual we really know nothing, apart from the fact of human sacrifices, which, in extreme cases, they justified by the dogma that ‘unless for the life of a man man’s life be rendered the wrath of the immortal gods cannot be appeased,’ and excepting their veneration for the mistletoe.[5]
The power of this priesthood was not confined to things spiritual. The Druids acted as a court of public arbitration, and the most important private suits, especially cases of murder and homicide, were submitted to their judgment. Now Britain was the headquarters of Druidism, but once a year, it is recorded by Cæsar, a general assembly of the order was held within the territories of the Carnutes, and there the sacred rites were celebrated, the young priests, after a prolonged course of training, initiated, and the Arch-Druid annually elected. It is probable that these ceremonies took place at Chartres--although it is possible that the claim of Dreux, of Senantes, of Alluyes, or of other neighbouring places which can boast Druidical remains, may be as well grounded.
But, at least, it is evident that the _Pays Chartrain_ was a stronghold of priests rather than of fighters, and, perhaps, it was for this reason that in the early years of the Gallic War, the Carnutes, who among the Celtic Gauls were subject to the Remi (Reims), took but little part in the active resistance to Cæsar’s arms. They had, in fact, welcomed rather than resisted the Proconsul, regarding him as their champion and liberator from the invasion of the Helvetii and the threatened dominion of the Germans. But when he began to meddle with their institutions they grew restive, and determined to throw off the Roman yoke. For, before