The Celts

The Celts were a Pagan people. Their lands sprawled from Gaul to Ireland to Britain and into Northern and Southern Italy. The “Celtic civilization emerged around 700 BCE” (Jones 79). The Celtic culture eventually began to bump heads with Rome. Although the Romans and the Celts both shared Pagan roots, the Celts differed from Romans and Grecians. The Celts “were slaves to superstition…and believed that in order to preserve their own lives in battle they must sacrifice an equal number of others” (Jones 84). At a time when Rome had outlawed human sacrifices, the Celts believed they must sacrifice humans to preserve themselves in battle. Sacrificing humans is one of the many traits that made the Romans view the Celts as barbarians.

The Celts had no written language. What we know of the Celts comes from Roman historians. With no written language, the spoken word was treasured among the Celts. Because of this, Bards (singers/ poets) were very important in Celtic society. It seems that the Celts had three branches of office for men to obtain. These positions are Bards, Vates and Druids. The “Bards were singers and poets, the Vates were seers and scientist, and the Druids were scientists and moral philosophers, the judges and arbitrators of both private and public disputes” (Jones 84). Druids also taught “the immortality of the soul; Caesar had mentioned that they taught that the soul would pass into another body after death” (Jones 85). The druids were also present in human sacrifices. In the essays of Strabo he states:

The heads of enemies held in high repute they used to embalm in cedar oil and exhibit to strangers, and they would not deign to give them back even for a ransom of an equal weight of gold…The used to strike a human being, whom they had devoted to death, in the back with as saber, and then divine from his death-struggle. But they would not sacrifice without the Druids. We are told of still other kinds of human sacrifices; for example, they would shoot victims to death with arrows, or impale them in temples or having devised a colossus of straw and wood, throw into the colossus cattle and wild animals of all sorts and human beings, and make a burnt-offering of the whole thing.

Human sacrifices were done in the wilderness. Much like the early Roman culture, the Celts worshiped outdoors - they did not posses temples that housed their gods. Nature plays a pivotal role in pagan faiths. Tree groves served as temples instead of elaborate buildings. “These groves were dread places, held in great awe and approached only by the priesthood” (Jones 81). Besides groves and trees, “wells were also sacred, often associated with healing… (Also) each well was associated with a particular deity” (Jones 83).

Although women were not given priestly positions in the Celtic culture, they worshiped deities and followed female rulers. “Tacitus…reported that the Celts made no diction between male and female rulers” (Jones 85). Although the Celts were loyal to their leaders, both male and female, they “seem to have been devoted to individual achievement and prowess, rather than to collective pursuits such as nationalism” (Jones 86).