savagery.[1027] Pliny says nothing of the Druids as philosophers, but hints at their priestly functions, and connects them with magico-medical rites.[1028] These divergent opinions are difficult to account for.  But as the Romans gained closer acquaintance with the Druids, they found less philosophy and more superstition among them.  For their cruel rites and hostility to Rome, they sought to suppress them, but this they never would have done had the Druids been esoteric philosophers.  It has been thought that Pliny’s phrase, “Druids and that race of prophets and doctors,” signifies that, through Roman persecution, the Druids were reduced to a kind of medicine-men.[1029] But the phrase rather describes the varied functions of the Druids, as has been seen, nor does it refer to the state to which the repressive edict reduced them, but to that in which it found them.  Pliny’s information was also limited.

The vague idea that the Druids were philosophers was repeated parrot-like by writer after writer, who regarded barbaric races as Rousseau and his school looked upon the “noble savage.”  Roman writers, sceptical of a future life, were fascinated by the idea of a barbaric priesthood teaching the doctrine of immortality in the wilds of Gaul.  For this teaching the poet Lucan sang their praises.  The Druids probably first impressed Greek and Latin observers by their magic, their organisation, and the fact that, like many barbaric priesthoods, but unlike those of Greece and Rome, they taught certain doctrines.  Their knowledge was divinely conveyed to them; “they speak the language of the gods;"[1030] hence it was easy to read anything into this teaching.  Thus the Druidic legend rapidly grew.  On the other hand, modern writers have perhaps exaggerated the force of the classical evidence.  When we read of Druidic associations we need not regard these as higher than the organised priesthoods of barbarians.  Their doctrine of metempsychosis, if it was really taught, involved no ethical content as in Pythagoreanism.  Their astronomy was probably astrological[1031]; their knowledge of nature a series of cosmogonic myths and speculations.  If a true Druidic philosophy and science had existed, it is strange that it is always mentioned vaguely and that it exerted no influence upon the thought of the time.

Classical sentiment also found a connection between the Druidic and Pythagorean systems, the Druids being regarded as conforming to the doctrines and rules of the Greek philosopher.[1032] It is not improbable that some Pythagorean doctrines may have reached Gaul, but when we examine the point at which the two systems were supposed to meet, namely, the doctrine of metempsychosis and immortality, upon which the whole idea of this relationship was founded, there is no real resemblance.  There are Celtic myths regarding the rebirth of gods and heroes, but the eschatological teaching was apparently this, that the soul was clothed with a body in the