nian forest, but these can hardly be made use of
as evidence for the old pagan doctrine. The evidence for the latter may
be gathered from classical observers, from archaeology and from Irish
texts.

Caesar writes: "The Druids in particular wish to impress this on them
that souls do not perish, but pass from one to another (_ab aliis ... ad
alios_) after death, and by this chiefly they think to incite men to
valour, the fear of death being overlooked." Later he adds, that at
funerals all things which had been dear to the dead man, even living
creatures, were thrown on the funeral pyre, and shortly before his time
slaves and beloved clients were also consumed.[1155] Diodorus says:
"Among them the doctrine of Pythagoras prevailed that the souls of men
were immortal, and after completing their term of existence they live
again, the soul passing into another body. Hence at the burial of the
dead some threw letters addressed to dead relatives on the funeral pile,
believing that the dead would read them in the next world."[1156]
Valerius Maximus writes: "They would fain make us believe that the souls
of men are immortal. I would be tempted to call these breeches-wearing
folk fools, if their doctrine were not the same as that of the
mantle-clad Pythagoras." He also speaks of money lent which would be
repaid in the next world, because men's souls are immortal.[1157] These
passages are generally taken to mean that the Celts believed simply in
transmigration of the Pythagorean type. Possibly all these writers cite
one common original, but Caesar makes no reference to Pythagoras. A
comparison with the Pythagorean doctrine shows that the Celtic belief
differed materially from it. According to the former, men's souls
entered new bodies, even those of animals, in this world, and as an
expiation. There is nothing of this in the Celtic doctrine. The new body
is not a prison-house of the soul in which it must expiate its former
sins, and the soul receives it not in this world but in another. The
real point of connection was the insistence of both upon immortality,
the Druids teaching that it was bodily immortality. Their doctrine no
more taught transmigration than does the Christian doctrine of the
resurrection. Roman writers, aware that Pythagoras taught immortality
_via_ a series of transmigrations, and that the Druids taught a doctrine
of bodily immortality, may have thought that the receiving of a new body
meant transmigration. Thems