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Caesar's Druids: An Ancient Priesthood

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Ancient chroniclers, including Julius Caesar himself, made the Druids and their sacred rituals infamous throughout the Western world. But in fact, as Miranda Aldhouse-Green shows in this fascinating book, the Druids’ day-to-day lives were far less lurid and much more significant. Exploring the various roles that Druids played in British and Gallic society during the first centuries B.C. and A.D.—not just as priests but as judges, healers, scientists, and power brokers—Aldhouse-Green argues that they were a highly complex, intellectual, and sophisticated group whose influence transcended religion and reached into the realms of secular power and politics. With deep analysis, fresh interpretations, and critical discussions, she gives the Druids a voice that resonates in our own time.

352 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2010

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About the author

Miranda Aldhouse-Green

39 books81 followers
Miranda Green was born in London and educated at Greycoat Hospital, Westminster. She took an Honours degree at University College, Cardiff and an M. Litt. at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. She gained a research scholarship at the Open University and was awarded a doctorate in 1981 for her thesis on Romano-Celtic sun-symbolism. She has received research awards from the Society of Antiquities of London and from the British Academy, and was awarded the Leverhulme Research Fellowship at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. After holding posts at Worthing and Peterborough Museums, she took up posts as Tutor in Roman Studies and full-time administrator at the Open University in Wales.

Until recently professor of archaeology at Newport University, Miranda's teaching experience ranges from leading undergraduate courses on Roman Britain and Iron Age Europe to managing and contributing to Newport's MA in Celto-Roman Studies. She has supervised more than twenty PhD and MPhil students to successful completion.

Miranda Aldhouse-Green is Tutor for the MA Archaeology programme, and is module leader for three of the MA skills modules (Research Methods, Writing Archaeology/Writing the Past and Speaking Archaeology). She lectures on Early Celtic Studies and contributes to the third-year undergraduate Theory course.

External responsibilities include membership of the Ancient Monuments Advisory Board for Wales, presidency of the Prehistoric Society (2004-6) and membership of the management board of the University of Wales Press.

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5 stars
14 (36%)
4 stars
13 (34%)
3 stars
9 (23%)
2 stars
2 (5%)
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0 (0%)
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
Profile Image for J.S. Dunn.
Author 4 books59 followers
October 4, 2014
As another reviewer notes, the text skips from topic to topic without warning and often no discernible nexus. Having put the most positive comment first, the balance of this review follows.

It is unclear why Green relies so much on Iron Age archaeology. It is also unclear why one would need to rely as a mature adult solely on "Classical" description of the Isles rather than its archaeology. Obviously the priestly caste did not come into existence when the Romans began to write about them. The caste of sages are labelled and described by the Romans as if the "Druids" sprang up whole from a Roman forehead --- like the tale of Athena and Zeus, mentioned here to emphasize the undue reliance on Mediterranean belief systems in Green's approach.

There is almost no effort to integrate the much older Celtic myth cycles with the role of the sages. Scant attention is paid to an obvious parallel: the brahmins of early Indian culture. Surely a culture having shared linguistics in Sanskrit with Gaelic might have something to offer for parallels in beliefs and practices, and especially compared with a bunch of militaristic Romans who show up in the Isles' dark, damp, cold climate wearing silly sandals and short, flippy-arsed tunics?

Has Green missed the memo of the past decade, that spoken Gaelic probably goes way back into the early Bronze Age? This volume makes Waddell's compilation on Celtic mythology and current archaeology look clairvoyant.

There are also statements that astonish. At page 23, "Druids would not have known the scientific reasons for the differences in the tides..." Oh, really? So all those stone alignments at megalith sites for around three thousand years preceding the Iron Age were for nothing? No one would have tied the moon phases into tidal phases? Incredible! WE might today be that stupid or heedless of our natural surroundings including celestial movements, but a people who revelled in nature and spent much time outdoors cooking, working, celebrating, and worshiping, would surely not be, megalithic observation sites or not.

The text does much examination of Classical attitudes found in classical writings and myths. This is an exercise in self-propaganda, done not for the purpose of comparison or contrast with indigenous practice in the Isles, but more as the standard, the sine qua non. Filtering the Isles through that same old Greco-Roman lens has been the logical and practical flaw for over a century in looking at the Isles' archaeology. It is almost criminal to see this emphasis on Greek and Roman dogma perpetuated on the fascinating subject of the sages of Gaelic-speaking tribes.

The text also contains serious omissions. Eg, the gold conical hats found in what is now Germany are briefly mentioned as the text skips merrily between centuries and regions, but not those gold hats found in the Iberian peninsula of earlier date. Green didn't read, or omits to mention, that the repousse symbols carefully made on the conical gold hats are thought to reflect astronomy knowledge. Curiously there is no mention of the Nebra sky disk.

The final pages indulge in a hand-wringing appeal to the effect that neo-pagans ( Neo "Druids") should not be given short shrift as being nutters. Not a very impressive finale, and not persuasive.

Any reader would be better served to read the Roman comments from source material and not from this volume, in order to draw his/her own conclusions. There is no organized archaeology to glean from this title. The 3 stars are really a 2.5 given for sheer bulk, assuming that graduate students did not do most of the actual labor on this work as is often the case in academia.
Profile Image for Vickey Kall.
Author 2 books13 followers
September 26, 2013
This is not a book you'd sit down to read through, rather a reference that jumps around a lot. The author is a brilliant scholar and throws a lot of research around, some related, some not. It's very interesting if you like archaeology, but Aldhouse-Green has her own biases and can be a bit inconsistent: for example, dismissing Caesar's non-mention of women in Gaul based on his own cultural background, yet swallowing his description of Gaullish leadership without question even though he had good reasons to be biased and untruthful. And yes, I'm revealing my own bias here.
Profile Image for Claire.
49 reviews17 followers
April 1, 2012
I really like Miranda Green as I think she's a "well balanced" historian who likes to read between the lines. In this book, she talks about druids at the time of Caesar (not druids owned by Caesar, in case there was any confusion ;)).
Profile Image for Kellene Rees.
10 reviews4 followers
July 1, 2017
I always enjoy Aldhouse -Green's work, very informative and thought provoking. Not overly academic, fairly easy to read.
Profile Image for HBalikov.
1,867 reviews747 followers
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January 27, 2011
Druids are a murky topic. Julius Caesar wrote of them in Gaul and Britain. Less is known about them than about most who lived in those times because they left no written record. Were they priests, medicants, scientists, natural philosophers? This book brings as much reseach and documentation to this topic as is available. Aldhouse-Green is a scholar who writes well enough to hold my interest and the book is well organized and indexed.

It is much more a post-doctoral treatise than a popular history
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews

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