no sign of Roman influences in their modelling, and they may have been copied from earlier images of wood.  We also find divine figures on pre-Roman coins.[975] Certain passages in classical writings point to the existence of native images.  A statue of a goddess existed in a temple at Marseilles, according to Justin, and the Galatian Celts had images of the native Juppiter and Artemis, while the conquering Celts who entered Rome bowed to the seated senators as to statues of the gods.[976] The Gauls placed rich ornaments on the images of the gods, and presumably these were native “idols.”

“Idols” are frequently mentioned in Irish texts, and there is no doubt that these mean images.[977] Cormac mac Art refused to worship “idols,” and was punished by the Druids.[978] The idols of Cromm Cruaich and his satellites, referred to in the Dindsenchas, were carved to represent the human form; the chief one was of gold, the others of stone.  These were miraculously overthrown by S. Patrick; but in the account of the miracle the chief idol was of stone adorned with gold and silver, the others, numbering twelve, were ornamented with bronze.[979] They stood in Mag Slecht, and similar sacred places with groups of images evidently existed elsewhere, e.g. at Rath Archaill, “where the Druid’s altars and images are."[980] The lady Cessair, before coming to Ireland, is said to have taken advice of her laimh-dhia, or “hand gods,” perhaps small images used for divination.[981]

For the British Celts the evidence is slender, but idolatry in the sense of “image-worship” is frequently mentioned in the lives of early saints.[982] Gildas also speaks of images “mouldering away within and without the deserted temples, with stiff and deformed features."[983] This pathetic picture of the forsaken shrines of forgotten gods may refer to Romano-Celtic images, but the “stiff and deformed features” suggest rather native art, the art of a people unskilful at reproducing the human form, however artistic they may have been in other directions.

If the native Celts of Ireland had images, there is no reason to suppose, especially considering the evidence just adduced, that the Gauls, or at least the Druids, were antagonistic to images.  This last is M. Reinach’s theory, part of a wider hypothesis that the Druids were pre-Celtic, but became the priests of the Celts, who till then had no priests.  The Druids prohibited image-worship, and this prohibition existed in Gaul, ex hypothesi, from the end of palaeolithic times.  Pythagoras and his school were opposed to image-worship, and the classical writers claimed a connection between the Pythagoreans and the Druids.  M. Reinach thinks there must have been some analogy between them, and that was hostility to anthropomorphism.  But the analogy is distinctly stated to have lain in the doctrine of immortality or metempsychosis.  Had the Druids been opposed to image-worship, classical observers could not have failed to notice the fact.  M. Reinach then argues that the Druids caused the erection of the megalithic monuments in Gaul, symbols not images.  They are thus Druidic, though not Celtic.  The monuments argue a powerful priesthood; the Druids were a powerful priesthood; therefore the Druids caused the monuments to be built.  This is not a powerful argument![984]