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What are the the strengths and weaknesses of Caesar's, Pliny the Elder's, and Tacitus's information about the Celtic Druids between 58BC and 61AD?...

We learn most about the Druids from Julius Caesar who, being a warrior, statesman, and priest, was very eager to learn about the Druids during Rome's conquest of Britain. It is known Caesar was friends with an historically proven Druid named Diviciacus, who supported Roman conquest, and Caesar probably learned much about Druid customs, beliefs, and practices from him. One strength of Caesar's account of the Druids in his book The Gallic Wars is that, though he is describing superstitions and practices he is not likely to agree with, his tone remains objective. He writes with the same tone an anthropologist might use in giving an account of the ways of an unknown people.

In his book The Gallic Wars, Caesar describes the Druids as priests in charge of answering questions of theological importance, resolving conflicts, leading private and public sacrifices, and doling out punishments for crimes. They were considered to be even higher in social status than kings. He spends a great deal of time detailing all the facts he knows about their religious rights, treatment of citizens, and even treatment of women. Caesar particularly speaks of the Druids' use of human sacrifices in their religious rights. According to Caesar, Druids "think that unless the life of a man be offered for the life of a man, the mind of the immortal gods can not be rendered propitious" (Bk. 6, Ch. 16). He continues further to describe public and private human sacrifices. He even describes the Druids as frequently building "[human] images of enormous size" woven out of willow branches; the Druids would then fill these images with live humans and set the images on fire (Bk, 6, Ch. 16). Interestingly, throughout chapters 13 through 20 of Book 6, Caesar remains completely objective in tone since all he is doing is reporting facts. He shows no emotional reaction towards the facts.

In contrast to Caesar, Pliny the Elder gives a very emotionally reactive account of the Druids. First, he takes his account of the Druids one step further by accusing them of cannibalism as well as of conducting human sacrifices. He ends his account of the Druids with the following very emotional and judgemental statement:



Such being the fact, then, we cannot too highly appreciate the obligation that is due to the Roman people, for having put an end to those monstrous rites, in accordance with which, to murder a man was to do an act of the greatest devoutness, and to eat his flesh was to secure the highest blessings of health. (Natural History, Bk. 30, Ch. 4)



He also frequently refers to the Druids' beliefs in healing arts as fraudulent. Giving a very emotionally charged account of the Druids is one of Pliny the Elder's weaknesses, making his account of the Druids the less reliable of the two if either account can truly be considered reliable.

All in all, while Caesar portrays the Druids as strange, even barbaric, his words show he holds greater respect for the Druids than Pliny the Elder held.

As far as reliability goes, while historians and archeologists used to think these accounts of human sacrifices and cannibalism were just political propaganda, they now have archeological evidence of individual human sacrifices, mass sacrifices, and cannibalism. A mummy archeologists have found and named the Lindow Man shows evidence of a brutal, ritual death. In a cave in Alveston, England, archeologists found evidence of a mass ritual slaughter of 150 people. Bones in the Alveston cave even signify cannibalism though archeologists can't be certain how often Druids practiced cannibalism (James Owen, "Druids Committed Human Sacrifice, Cannibalism?," National Geographic News).

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