r writers had overlooked. In the
first place he calls attention to the veneration in which the Gauls held
the mistletoe and the tree on which it grew, provided that that tree was
the oak. Hence their predilection for oak groves and their requirement
of oak leaves for all religious rites. Pliny here remarks on the
consonance of this practice with the etymology of the name Druid as
interpreted even through Greek (the Greek for an oak being _drus_). Were
not this respect for the oak and for the mistletoe paralleled by numerous
examples of tree and plant-worship given by Dr. Frazer and others, it
might well have been suspected that Pliny was here quoting some writer
who had tried to argue from the etymology of the name Druid. Another
suspicious circumstance in Pliny's account is his reference to the
serpent's egg composed of snakes rolled together into a ball. He states
that he himself had seen such an 'egg,' of about the size of an apple.
Pliny, too, states that Tiberius Caesar abolished by a decree of the
Senate the Druids and the kind of seers and physicians the Gauls then
had. This statement, when read in its context, probably refers to the
prohibition of human sacrifices. The historian Suetonius, in his account
of the Emperor Claudius, also states that Augustus had prohibited 'the
religion of the Druids' (which, he says, 'was one of fearful savagery')
to Roman citizens, but that Claudius had entirely abolished it. What is
here also meant, in view of the description given of Druidism, is
doubtless the abolishing of its human sacrifices. In later Latin writers
there are several references to Druidesses, but these were probably only
sorceresses. In Irish the name _drui_ (genitive _druad_) meant a
magician, and the word _derwydd_ in mediaeval Welsh was especially used
in reference to the vaticinations which were then popular in Wales.

When we analyse the testimony of ancient writers concerning the Druids,
we see in the first place that to different minds the name connoted
different things. To Caesar it is the general name for the non-military
professional class, whether priests, seers, teachers, lawyers, or judges.
To others the Druids are pre-eminently the philosophers and teachers of
the Gauls, and are distinguished from the seers designated _vates_. To
others again, such as Pliny, they were the priests of the oak-ritual,
whence their name was derived. In view of the variety of grades of
civilisation then c