of years they came to
life again, the soul then entering into another body. He says that there
were certain 'philosophers and theologians' that were called Druids who
were held in exceptional honour. In addition to these, the Celts, he
says, had also seers, who foretold the future from the flight of birds
and by means of the offering of sacrifices. According to him it was
these priestly seers who had the masses in subjection to them. In great
affairs they had, he says, the practice of divination by the slaughter of
a human victim, and the observation of the attitude in which he fell, the
contortions of the limbs, the spurting of the blood, and the like. This,
he states, was an ancient and established practice. Moreover, it was the
custom, according to Diodorus, to make no sacrifice without the presence
of a philosopher (apparently a Druid in addition to the sacrificing
seer), the theory being that those who were authorities on the divine
nature were to the gods intelligible mediators for the offering of gifts
and the presentation of petitions. These philosophers were in great
request, together with their poets, in war as well as in peace, and were
consulted not merely by the men of their own side, but also by those of
the enemy. Even when two armies were on the point of joining battle,
these philosophers had been able, Diodorus says, to step into the space
between them and to stop them from fighting, exactly as if they had
charmed wild beasts. The moral which Diodorus draws from this is, that
even among the wildest of barbarians the spirited principle of the soul
yields to wisdom, and that Ares (the god of war) even there respects the
Muses. It is clear from this account that Diodorus had in mind the three
classes of non-military professional men among the Celts, to whom other
ancient writers also refer, namely, the Bards, the Seers, and the Druids.
His narrative is apparently an expansion, in the light of his reading and
philosophical meditation, of information supplied by previous writers,
notably Posidonius. The latter, too, appears to have been Julius Caesar's
chief authority, in addition to his own observation, but Caesar does not
appear expressly to indicate the triple division here in question. The
account which he gives is important, and would be even more valuable than
it is had he told us how far what he describes was written from his own
personal information, and the degree of variation (if any) of