Druidic Rituals and Roman Administrators (original) (raw)
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Quid de Druidibus poetae et scriptores antiqui ac viri docti archeologiae periti tradiderint
Quid de Druidibus poetae et scriptores antiqui ac viri docti archeologiae periti tradiderint, 2007
The text is a Latin summary of the author's MA thesis - entitled "The Ancient Druids in View of Graeco-Roman Literature and Archaeological Findings" - defended in July 2007 at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland. The primary object of this thesis has been to reconstruct a historically veritable image of the druids. Ancient Greek and Roman literary testimonies have been subjected to a careful analysis, which additionally entailed their juxtaposition against the copious archaeological finds available to us today. This approach has led to the resolution of some of the controversies hitherto obfuscating the picture of the Celtic wise men. To start with, the bias on the part of the sources forming the so-called Posidonian tradition has been ascertained. This literary school of thought consists of authors who approve of the expansion policy implemented by the Roman Empire; consequently, their writings often border on demagogic propaganda, as they zealously depict the druids as savage barbarians eagerly practicing human sacrifice. A careful analysis of archaeological finds has served to establish that the druids did indeed sacrifice human beings – however - only in utmost emergencies, which, incidentally, was a common practice in every other contemporaneous culture, including that of the Greeks and the Romans. Secondly, the specific character of the druidic organisation has been demonstrated. Being a typical Indo-European form of priesthood, it nonetheless constituted a truly unique phenomenon, to which there was no equivalent elsewhere in the ancient world. Moreover, Nora Chadwick’s theory denying the priestly functions of the druids has been challenged. Thirdly, the statements left by the writers of the Alexandrian tradition have been asserted against the assumptions made by Stuart Piggott, who claims that Celtic tribes were never able to develop a philosophical system comparable with that of the Pythagoreans or the Brahmins. Finally, a dynamic picture of the druids has been conveyed by means of setting them against the political and cultural background of their times. They have been presented to the reader as priests, educators, judges, philosophers, historians, prophets, magicians, astrologers and astronomers, as well as medicine men and poets. Argumentum Dissertationis Academicae sub eodem titulo in Universitate Jagiellonica anno MMVII defensa.
Manipulating the Past. Re-thinking Graeco-Roman accounts on ‘Celtic’ religion
IN: Fraude, Mentira y Engaños en el Mundo Antiguo, ed. by Franciso Marco Simón, Francisco Pina Polo and José Remesal Rodríguez. Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona (Colleccio Instrumenta, vol. 45), pp. 35-54, 2014
Did druids really exist? Did Celts perform human sacrifice? The aim of this paper is to scrutinise our sources on Celtic religion. We can see that our sources are not only unreliable, but they were also consciously used to manipulate the readers’ image of Celts. Rome’s long-standing fear of the Galli had made way for a fear of the druids by the 1st century A.D. The Romans were increasingly interested in the Celts/Galli in the 1st century B.C., catalysed by Caesar campaigning in Gaul and Britain. But despite first-hand knowledge, authors used obsolete topoi. The reasons for this changed through time and the ‘Celts’ became increasingly instrumentalised. This leads us to another important question: can we use these Graeco-Roman sources for the study of Celtic religion? Are the information on deities, rituals, priesthoods, re-incarnation and Pythagoreanism reliable? These are some of the questions addressed in this paper.
Internal aliens: northern Gaul in the early empire
In 48 A.D. the Roman emperor Claudius delivered a speech to the senate where he proposed that aristocrats from all of Gaul would be allowed to enter the senatorial class. He tried to solve the “Gallic problem”, the problematic relation between Rome and the foreign Gauls, who had been their enemies for so long. This event was of great importance for northern Gaul, which had been part of the empire for less than a century, as they now got the opportunity to take part in the empire as Romans. Of course, this evoked a response from the Roman aristocracy and the following debate showed different views on the Gauls. This literature shows us that the Roman image of Gaul is far more complex than earlier perceived. With the completion of the Gallic provinces under Augustus, the problem was not solved. Examining this relation is difficult because, to the Romans, the label “Gaul” included all Gauls and the discussion mainly focused on the natives of the Three Gauls. These northern Gauls had, of all Celtic people, been opposed to Rome for the longest period, but were also attributed with the wars between Rome and Narbonese and Cisalpinian tribes. While Cisalpina and even Narbonensis assimilated into the Roman empire, the Comatan Gauls were preserved as the dangerous Gauls of the past. They could not be Roman because they were too different. This played a large role in the debate and shows that even after Augustus the “Gallic problem” existed in the minds of Rome.
Beyond "polis religion" and sacerdotes publici in Southern Gaul
in: Richardson and Santangelo (ed.), Priests and State in the Roman World. (PAwB 33) Stuttgart: Steiner 2011, 2011
Can we use the "polis religion" model for understanding religious activities in the Roman provinces? No! Models based on Classical Greece and religious institutions in Rome are not helpful for understanding developments in the Roman provinces, like here in the case of southern Gaul. There, we see the importance of individualisation in a highly connected world. Even in major cities in this highly "Romanized" province, the nature of the religious activities is non-Roman and not controlled by a pro-Roman "ordo". This paper looks at a number of cites, like Nemausus / Nîmes, Glanum, Aquae Sextiae / Aix and her territory. Despite the wealth of epigraphic evidence, we can recognise that "public priests" are marginal in shaping the religious activities in this region.
I will present two case studies of a Late Antique and an Early Medieval text which chose idiosyncratic ways of operating between the polarities of Christianity and paganism when describing the wisdom traditions of outgroups or ‘ethnically presented’ past groups. The cases are those of the Res gestae of Ammianus Marcellinus and the Cosmographia Aethici of ‘Pseudo-Jerome’. At the first glimpse, there is barely anything linking these two texts, beyond the fact that both are written in a Latin that is idiosyncratic to say the least. There are, however, some interesting commonalities between my two texts today – and they come particularly to the fore when attention is paid to the way both Ammianus and Pseudo-Jerome handle the theme of barbarian sages and the pagan wisdom tradition – the ‘alien wisdom’ of Arnaldo Momigliano. One important shared aspect is that both of these writers inhabit a doubled role in-between paganism and Christianity. In some ways, the Cosmographia is trying to conjure up the world that Ammianus operated in, but from a Merovingian point of view.
International Ancient Warfare Conference, UCD, Dublin, 28 June 2018, 2018
Polybius has traditionally been ignored as an ethnographic author in the tradition of Herodotus. This is mainly due to the lack of ethnographic digressions as they appear in the work of the Halicarnassian. However, a closer look at Polybius' scattered descriptions of the Celts throughout his own Histories shows a vivid interest not only in the character of the Gauls, but also in the macro models of his predecessors who explained the differences between different peoples in the oecumene with different paces of development, the climatic nature of the respective regions and other philosophically inspired theories. The paper will show that Polybius used these arguments to make the Celts appear more primitive and dangerous than they actually were as to convince his readers that the Romans, who had often fought against this 'Barbarian' foe, were the defenders of civilisation and should be accepted as rulers over the Greek world.