Sacrifice: The Posidonius Of Apameia

971 Words2 Pages

Posidonius of Apameia also observed that Celtic religion and culture were the concern of three priestly classes. These were the druids, the bards, and between them an order best known by the Gaulish term vates, equivalent with the Latin vates "seers". Another early written account of the druids was by Julius Caesar in 59-51 B.C. He wrote it in Gaul, he described prestigious men that were divided into druids or nobles. In her book, Caesar’s Druids Miranda Aldhouse-Green argues that the druids were by priests, on the basis that in Caesar’s descriptions of the druids the functions he describes as being those who preside over ritual is essentially the behavior of priests (Aldhouse-Green 2010:11).
We often imagine druids as wise old men and this …show more content…

There is very little other reliable evidence for widespread human sacrifice among the Celts, as writers like Strabo and Caesar are not to be completely trusted due to ethnic bias. There are some who do attribute a human sacrifice ritual to the druids, such as some kind of wicker man ceremony involving human sacrifice but there is no archaeological evidence for this (HÓgáin 2006:114). Sacrifice may or may not have included human offerings, but because the druids wrote nothing down, the evidence for human sacrifice by the druids themselves is controversial. Some attribute the Bog bodies to the druids, where people were sacrificed by choking them with garrote and then throwing them into bogs. Due to there being little recorded archaeological evidence of human sacrifice that has been discovered most historians today consider human sacrifice as relatively rare within Celtic culture (Aldhouse-Green …show more content…

Rituals and practices in devotion to nature took the form of tree worship, sacrifices of goods to water, rivers and lakes, reverence to sacred springs and holy wells, and stone circles and burial mounds aligned with the path of the sun (Wood 2014:34-36). Anglesey is an island on the north coast of Wales, it is thought to have been a druid center of worship and stronghold. While the iron age is often short on evidence, in this case there is archaeology does however provide evidence for the religious expression of the Celtic people. The tradition of offering gifts to the gods is well documented by the archaeological record at the site of Llyn Cerrig Bach on Anglesey. Here, between 300 BCE and CE 100, chariots, weapons, tools and metal work items were thrown from the island into a lake. The site of Llyn Cerrig Bach today a marsh was once a natural lake, more 150 objects, many of which were martial in function, have been excavated from the site, dating within the period second century BCE - first century CE (Koch 2006 :1180). These items appear to have been deliberately cast into the lake as offerings to the Gods. The site of Llyn Cerrig Bach, which is located near the west coast of Anglesey, was discovered during World War II while building a military airfield. It was investigated by Sir Cyril Fox, Keeper

Open Document