iven, might be either a grove or a temple. Caesar uses the same phrase
for sacred places where the spoils of war were heaped; these may have
been groves, but Diodorus speaks of treasure collected in "temples and
sacred places" ([Greek: en tois hierois chai temenesin]), and Plutarch
speaks of the "temple" where the Arverni hung Caesar's sword.[959] The
"temple" of the Namnite women, unroofed and re-roofed in a day, must
have been a building. There is no evidence that the insular Celts had
temples. In Gallo-Roman times, elaborate temples, perhaps occupying
sites of earlier groves or temples, sprang up over the Romano-Celtic
area. They were built on Roman models, many of them were of great size,
and they were dedicated to Roman or Gallo-Roman divinities.[960] Smaller
shrines were built by grateful worshippers at sacred springs to their
presiding divinity, as many inscriptions show. In the temples stood
images of the gods, and here were stored sacred vessels, sometimes made
of the skulls of enemies, spoils of war dedicated to the gods, money
collected for sacred purposes, and war standards, especially those which
bore divine symbols.

The old idea that stone circles were Druidic temples, that human
sacrifices were offered on the "altar-stone," and libations of blood
poured into the cup-markings, must be given up, along with much of the
astronomical lore associated with the circles. Stonehenge dates from the
close of the Neolithic Age, and most of the smaller circles belong to
the early Bronze Age, and are probably pre-Celtic. In any case they were
primarily places of sepulture. As such they would be the scene of
ancestor worship, but yet not temples in the strict sense of the word.
The larger circles, burial-places of great chiefs or kings, would become
central places for the recurring rites of ghost-worship, possibly also
rallying places of the tribe on stated occasions. But whether this
ghost-worship was ever transmuted into the cult of a god at the circles
is uncertain and, indeed, unlikely. The Celts would naturally regard
these places as sacred, since the ghosts of the dead, even those of a
vanquished people, are always dangerous, and they also took over the
myths and legends[961] associated with them, such, e.g., as regarded the
stones themselves, or trees growing within the circles, as embodiments
of the dead, while they may also have used them as occasional places of
secondary interment. Whether they were ever led to