revival of the worship of AEsculapius, affected religious views very
strongly in other quarters of the empire. It was in this conception of
the gods as the guides of civilisation and the restorers of health, that
Celtic religion, in some districts at any rate, shows itself emerging
into a measure of light after a long and toilsome progress from the
darkness of prehistoric ideas. What Caesar says of the practice of the
Gauls of beginning the year with the night rather than with the day, and
their ancient belief that they were sprung from Dis, the god of the lower
world, is thus typified in their religious history.

In dealing with the deities of the Celtic world we must not, however,
forget the goddesses, though their history presents several problems of
great difficulty. Of these goddesses some are known to us by
groups--Proximae (the kinswomen), Dervonnae (the oak-spirits), Niskai
(the water-sprites), Mairae, Matronae, Matres or Matrae (the mothers),
Quadriviae (the goddesses of cross roads). The Matres, Matrae, and
Matronae are often qualified by some local name. Deities of this type
appear to have been popular in Britain, in the neighbourhood of Cologne
and in Provence. In some cases it is uncertain whether some of these
grouped goddesses are Celtic or Teutonic. It is an interesting parallel
to the existence of these grouped goddesses, when we find that in some
parts of Wales 'Y Mamau' (the mothers) is the name for the fairies. These
grouped goddesses take us back to one of the most interesting stages in
the early Celtic religion, when the earth-spirits or the corn-spirits had
not yet been completely individualised. Of the individualised goddesses
many are strictly local, being the names of springs or rivers. Others,
again, appear to have emerged into greater individual prominence, and of
these we find several associated on inscriptions, sometimes with a god of
Celtic name, but sometimes with his Latin counterpart. It is by no means
certain that the names so linked together were thus associated in early