'Si fama non fallit fidem'. Les druides dans la littérature latine de l’antiquité tardive, AnTard 17 (2009) (original) (raw)
The subject of the paper are the reasons of intense, though short-lived, interest that a few Latin authors of the last years of the 4th century had in the druids. The druids, the most emblematic institution of the Gallic religion, are mentioned by Greek and Latin authors up to the beginning of the 2nd century AD. Afterwards they completely vanish from literature only to reappear in the 390ties in the works of Ammianus Marcellinus, Ausonius of Bordeaux and the anonymous author of the Historia Augusta. In older scholarship it was quite widely accepted that the druidic episodes in three lives of emperors in the HA can be treated as proving the revival of indigenous Gallic priesthood in the 3rd century, and that Ausonius’ Commemoratio professorum Burdigalensium testifies to their survival at least up to the end of the 4th century. Nowadays scholars are more cautious about the actual renaissance of the druidism. But even if this revival is – as I think – a late antique literary phenomenon, the question imposes itself about the sources of the sympathetic interest in this vernacular religious institution that Latin authors of the 1st century BC and the 1st century AD treated as alien and ominous. I suggest that there are three reasons of the popularity of the druids in late antiquity, especially in the intellectual milieu of Gaul in the second half of the 4th century. Firstly, we should have in mind the vivid “ethnographic” interest of the late ancient intelligentsia, especially in one’s own people and family history. Because of their unquestionable aristocracy and antiquity the druids were attractive not only as a subject of research but also as ancestors and forefathers. Secondly, the druids were considered philosophers, indigenous Gallic representatives of Pythagoreanism – the school that the intellectuals of Late Antiquity voluntarily identified with. Thirdly, they were seen as teachers, and thus proper role models for Ausonius and his fellow-professors in Bordeaux. The re-disappearance of the druids from literature after the end of the 4th century should be linked to the disappearance of the group of Gallic pagan intellectuals and writers. In the 5th century too, there were authors interested in local history and traditions but their heroes were Christian martyrs, not heathen priests.
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