The Roman conquest of Gaul in the late first century BCE brought the ancient Druidic order into direct confrontation with the religious and political authorities of the Roman world, and the resulting conflict, which played out over more than a century, was one of the most significant chapters in the decline of the older Celtic religion. To examine the Roman attempt to suppress Druidism is to follow the slow extinction of the Druids and the priestly class under the combined pressure of Roman political authority, Roman religious policy, and the gradual Christianization of the Roman world. As part of the larger story of Celtic religion, mythology, and spirituality, the suppression of the Druids is a turning point in the religious history of the Celtic-speaking world, and the end of the older Druidic order marks the close of one of the most distinctive religious traditions of the ancient Celtic peoples.
The Druids in Caesar’s Gaul
The Roman encounter with the Druids began, for practical purposes, with the campaigns of Julius Caesar in Gaul in the 50s BCE. Caesar’s account of the Gallic wars, in his Commentarii de Bello Gallico, includes one of the most detailed descriptions of the Druids to survive from the ancient world, and it is clear from the account that the Druids were a major force in Gallic political and religious life. Caesar claims that the Druids originated in Britain and crossed to Gaul to take up their positions, that they had authority to decide private and public disputes, that they could inflict penalties on those who disobeyed their judgments, and that they were responsible for the education of the young of noble families. The annual meeting of the Druids at the sacred grove of the Carnutes in central Gaul, which Caesar describes, was a kind of national assembly of the Druidic order, and it was a clear statement of the political importance of the Druids in the older Gallic political system.
Caesar himself, although he respected the political importance of the Druids, was also suspicious of their power. His account of the Druidic class is colored by his own political agenda, and his descriptions of the Druidic suppression of rivals, of the immoderate exercise of judicial authority, and of the practice of human sacrifice, are designed to justify Roman intervention in the older religious order. The famous wicker man of Caesar’s account, the huge effigy of wickerwork into which animals and, according to Caesar, human beings were placed and burned, striking examples of this kind of propaganda, and it has been used ever since to justify Roman claims that the Druids were barbarians in need of civilizing. The reality, as most modern scholars now agree, was more complex: human sacrifice may have been practiced in some limited forms, but the large-scale practices described by Caesar were almost certainly exaggerated for political effect.
Tiberius and the Early Suppression
The first formal Roman action against the Druids is traditionally associated with the emperor Tiberius, who ruled from 14 to 37 CE. Suetonius, in his Lives of the Caesars, reports that Tiberius issued an edict suppressing the Druids of Gaul, partly in response to a complaint that a Roman citizen had been sacrificed by the Druids in the Gallic sanctuary. The historical accuracy of Suetonius’s account is debated, since the Annals of Tacitus, the most detailed source for the reign of Tiberius, do not mention the incident, but the edict itself is generally accepted as historical. The edict, whatever its exact form, had the effect of making the formal practice of Druidism illegal in the Roman province of Gaul, and it marked the beginning of the long process by which the Roman state gradually suppressed the older Celtic religious order.
The reasons for the Roman suppression of Druidism were several. The first was political: the Druids, with their authority over the education of the young of the noble families, with their judicial power, and with their role in the annual assembly of the order, were a major obstacle to the integration of Gaul into the Roman political system. The suppression of the Druids was a necessary step in the consolidation of Roman authority, and it was pursued with the same kind of energy that the Romans had used to suppress the political institutions of the Greek cities and the religious institutions of the peoples of the eastern Mediterranean. The second reason was religious: the Romans, who were generally tolerant of the religious practices of the peoples they conquered, drew the line at practices that they regarded as cruel or impious, and the practice of human sacrifice, whether or not it was as widespread as Caesar suggests, was a clear violation of Roman religious sensibilities. The third reason was personal: the Roman authorities were uneasy about the political influence of a priestly class that claimed authority over both the religious and the political life of its people, and the suppression of the Druids was a way of ensuring that the political authority of the Roman state was not subject to the religious authority of an independent priestly class.
Claudius and the Formal Suppression
The emperor Claudius, who ruled from 41 to 54 CE, took the suppression of Druidism a step further. Suetonius reports that Claudius abolished the Druidic order entirely in Gaul, and that he did so in part because of the influence of the Greek philhellene elements in his administration, who urged a more aggressive policy toward the older religious traditions of the peoples of the empire. The edict of Claudius, whatever its exact terms, marked a decisive moment in the suppression of the Druidic order in Gaul: the formal class, with its annual assembly, its long training, and its political and religious authority, was effectively outlawed, and the practitioners of the older cult were forced either to give up their profession or to continue their practices in secret.
The formal suppression of the Druids in Gaul did not, however, mean the immediate end of the older cult. The archaeological record shows that the votive deposits at the older sanctuaries continued, in many cases, well into the second and even third centuries CE, and the persistence of the older cult in the rural communities of Gaul, away from the direct control of the Roman authorities, is well attested. The Gallo-Roman practice of interpretatio Romana, in which the older Celtic deities were identified with their Roman counterparts, also served to preserve many of the older religious practices in transformed form. The Taranis of the older cult became the Roman Jupiter of the Roman cult, the Epona of the older cult became the Epona of the Roman cult (one of the few Celtic deities whose cult was officially adopted by the Romans), and the Belenos of the older cult became the Roman Apollo. The older cult was preserved, in attenuated form, under a Roman veneer, and the persistence of the older practices in the rural communities of Gaul distinctive features of Gallo-Roman religious history.
The Assault on Anglesey
The Roman suppression of the Druids was extended to Britain, with even greater force, by the general Suetonius Paulinus in 60 CE. The assault on the island of Anglesey, off the northwest coast of Wales, was a deliberate attack on one of the last great strongholds of the Druidic order in the Roman world, and Tacitus, in his Annals, gives a vivid account of the event. The Roman army, having crossed the strait to the island, found itself facing a line of Druids and Druidesses on the shore, with their hands raised to heaven, calling down terrible curses on the Roman invaders. The Roman soldiers, struck by the appearance of the Druids, hesitated for a moment, but their officers encouraged them, and the Romans charged, drove the Druids from their positions, and set fire to the sacred groves and the Druidic sanctuaries.
The assault on Anglesey famous episodes in the Roman history of Britain, and it has become, in the popular imagination, a symbol of the end of the older Druidic order. The reality was more complex. The assault on Anglesey was part of a wider campaign by Suetonius to extend Roman control over the western parts of Britain, and the destruction of the Druidic sanctuaries was a side effect of the military campaign rather than its main purpose. The Druids of Anglesey, although they were scattered by the assault, did not disappear entirely, and references to Druidic activity in Britain continue in the Roman sources for some decades after the event. The assault, however, was a clear signal of Roman intent, and it marked a turning point in the religious history of Roman Britain.
The Survival of the Druids in the Roman Period
The Roman suppression of the Druids, despite the dramatic events in Gaul and on Anglesey, did not result in the immediate disappearance of the older religious order. Druidic activity continued in the more remote parts of the Roman Celtic world, particularly in the western and northern parts of Britain, well into the second and possibly the third century CE. The vates and the bards, the related classes of seers and poets who were mentioned in the earlier classical sources, are also mentioned in later sources, and it is clear that the older religious and intellectual traditions of the Celtic world were not simply swept away by the Roman conquest. The persistence of the older cult at the rural sanctuaries, the survival of the interpretatio Romana as a way of preserving the older deities in a new Roman form, and the continuation of the older intellectual traditions in the bardic schools of the later period are all evidence of the persistence of the older Celtic religious world well into the Roman period.
The archaeological evidence confirms the literary picture. The votive deposits at the rural sanctuaries of Gaul and Britain continue to be made well into the second and third centuries CE, and the inscriptions of the period, particularly the dedications to Apollo Grannus, Sirona, Sequana, and other local healing deities, attest to the persistence of the older cult. The persistence of the older cult in the rural communities of the western Roman provinces, particularly in Brittany, in Wales, in the Scottish Highlands, and in the western parts of Ireland, distinctive features of the religious life of the late Roman period. The interpretatio Christiana of the later Christian period, in which the older Celtic deities were identified with Christian saints, is a further development of the same pattern, and it is the reason why so many of the Christian saints of the Celtic-speaking regions are associated with the older cult sites of the Celtic world.
The End of the Druidic Order
The final disappearance of the formal Druidic order is one of the most debated questions in Celtic studies. In Gaul, the formal order seems to have largely disappeared by the second century CE, although the older practices persisted in the rural communities. In Britain, the Druids survived in some form into the second and possibly the third century, and there are references to Druidic activity in the late Roman sources. In Ireland, which was never conquered by Rome, the Druidic order survived in a form that may have been substantially continuous with the older order of the Iron Age, and the early Irish sources preserve a vivid picture of the Druidic class in the early medieval period. The formal class, however, seems to have disappeared in Ireland by the seventh or eighth century, and its functions were absorbed by the Christian clergy, by the monastic schools, and by the secular authorities.
The end of the Druidic order, in whatever form it took in each of the Celtic-speaking regions, marks the close of one of the distinctive religious traditions of the ancient Celtic world. The older order, with its long training, its political and judicial authority, and its role as the custodian of the religious and intellectual traditions of the Celtic peoples, has not been replaced by any single institution in the later Celtic-speaking world. The functions that the Druids once performed have been distributed among a number of different institutions, and the memory of the older order has been preserved in the medieval and modern literary traditions, in the popular imagination, and in the modern Druid orders that have drawn on the older tradition. The Roman attempt to suppress Druidism, although it was successful in its immediate purpose, did not extinguish the memory of the older order, and the continuing fascination with the Druids, today, is itself one of the clearest examples of the lasting hold of one of the distinctive religious traditions of the ancient Celtic world.