ind.
These privileges enabled them to recruit their ranks--for they were
not an hereditary caste--from the pick of the national youth, in spite
of the severe discipline of the Druidical novitiate. So great was the
mass of sacred literature required to be committed to memory that a
training of twenty years was sometimes needed. All had to be learnt
orally, for the matter was too sacred to be written down, though
the Druids were well acquainted with writing, and used the Greek
alphabet,[53] if not the Greek language,[54] for secular purposes.
Caesar's own view is that this refusal to allow the inditing of their
sacred books was due to two causes: first, the fear lest the secrets
of the Order should thus leak out, and, secondly, the dread lest
reading should weaken memory, "as, in fact, it generally does." Even
so, amongst the Brahmans there are, to this day, many who can not only
repeat from end to end the gigantic mass of Vedic literature, but who
know by heart also with absolute accuracy the huge and complicated
works of the Sanscrit grammarians.

H. 4.--Caesar further tells us that the Druids taught the doctrine of
transmigration of souls, and that their course of education included
astronomy, geography, physics, and theology. The attributes of their
chief God corresponded, in his view, with those of the Roman Mercury.
Of the minor divinities, one, like Apollo, was the patron of healing;
a second, like Minerva, presided over craft-work; a third, like
Jupiter, was King of Heaven, and a fourth, like Mars, was the
War-god.[55] Their calendar was constructed on the principle that each
night belongs to the day before it (not to that after it, as was
the theory amongst the Mediterranean nations), and they reckoned
all periods of time by nights, not days, as we still do in the word
"fortnight." For this practice they gave the mystical reason that the
Celtic races were the Children of Darkness. At periods of national
or private distress, human sacrifices were in vogue amongst them,
sometimes on a vast scale. "They have images [_simulacra_] of huge
size, whose limbs when enclosed [_contexta_] with wattles, they fill
with living men. The wattles are fired and the men perish amid the
hedge of flame [_circumventi flamma exanimantur homines_]." It
is usually supposed that these _simulacra_ were hollow idols of
basket-work. But such would require to be constructed on an incredible
scale for their limbs to be filled with men; and it