copy such circles
themselves is uncertain, since their own methods of interment seem to
have been different. We have seen that the gods may in some cases have
been worshipped at tumuli, and that Lugnasad was, at some centres,
connected with commemorative cults at burial-places (mounds, not
circles). But the reasons for this are obscure, nor is there any hint
that other Celtic festivals were held near burial mounds. Probably such
commemorative rites at places of sepulture during Lugnasad were only
part of a wider series occurring elsewhere, and we cannot assume from
such vague notices that stone circles were Druidic temples where worship
of an Oriental nature was carried on.

Professor Rh[^y]s is disposed to accept the old idea that Stonehenge was
the temple of Apollo in the island of the Hyperboreans, mentioned by
Diodorus, where the sun-god was worshipped.[962] But though that temple
was circular, it had walls adorned with votive offerings. Nor does the
temple unroofed yearly by the Namnite women imply a stone circle, for
there is not the slightest particle of evidence that the circles were
ever roofed in any way.[963] Stone circles with mystic trees growing in
them, one of them with a well by which entrance was gained to Tir fa
Tonn, are mentioned in Irish tales. They were connected with magic
rites, but are not spoken of as temples.[964]

ALTARS.

Lucan describes realistically the awful sacrifices of the Gauls on cruel
altars not a whit milder than those of Diana, and he speaks of "altars
piled with offerings" in the sacred grove at Marseilles.[965] Cicero
says that human victims were sacrificed on altars, and Tacitus describes
the altars of Mona smeared with human blood.[966] "Druids' altars" are
mentioned in the Irish "Expedition of Dathi," and Cormac speaks of
_indelba_, or altars adorned with emblems.[967] Probably many of these
altars were mere heaps of stone like the Norse _horg_, or a great block
of stone. Some sacrifices, however, were too extensive to be offered on
an altar, but in such cases the blood would be sprinkled upon it. Under
Roman influence, Celtic altars took the form of those of the conquerors,
with inscriptions containing names of native or Roman gods and
bas-reliefs depicting some of these. The old idea that dolmens were
Celtic altars is now abandoned. They were places of sepulture of the
Neolithic or early Bronze Age, and were originally covered with a mound
of earth. During the era o