brought to them from everywhere around. It was thought, Caesar says,
that the doctrine of the Druids was discovered in Britain and thence
carried over into Gaul. At that time, too, those who wanted to make a
profounder study of it resorted thither for their training. The Druids
had immunity from military service and from the payment of tribute. These
privileges drew many into training for the profession, some of their own
accord, others at the instance of parents and relatives. While in
training they were said to learn by heart a large number of verses, and
some went so far as to spend twenty years in their course of preparation.
The Druids held it wrong to put their religious teaching in writing,
though, in almost everything else, whether public or private affairs,
they made use of Greek letters. Caesar thought that they discouraged
writing on the one hand, lest their teaching should become public
property; on the other, lest reliance upon writing should lessen the
cultivation of the memory. To this risk Caesar could testify from his
own knowledge. Their cardinal doctrine was that souls did not perish,
but that after death they passed from one person to another; and this
they regarded as a supreme incentive to valour, since, with the prospect
of immortality, the fear of death counted for nothing. They carried on,
moreover, many discussions about the stars and their motion, the
greatness of the universe and the lands, the nature of things, the
strength and power of the immortal gods, and communicated their knowledge
to their pupils. In another passage Caesar says that the Gauls as a
people were extremely devoted to religious ideas and practices. Men who
were seriously ill, who were engaged in war, or who stood in any peril,
offered, or promised to offer, human sacrifices, and made use of the
Druids as their agents for such sacrifices. Their theory was, that the
immortal gods could not be appeased unless a human life were given for a
human life. In addition to these private sacrifices, they had also
similar human sacrifices of a public character. Caesar further contrasts