Societal role and training Imaginative illustration of 'An Arch Druid in His Judicial Habit', from The Costume of the Original Inhabitants of the British Islands by S.R. Meyrick and C.H. Smith (1815), the gold gorget collar copying Irish Bronze Age examples. The Greco-Roman and the vernacular Irish sources agree that the druids played an important part in pagan Celtic society. In his description, Julius Caesar claimed that they were one of the two most important social groups in the region (alongside the equites, or nobles) and were responsible for organizing worship and sacrifices, divination, and judicial procedure in Gaulish, British, and Irish societies.Caesar, Julius. De bello gallico. VI.13–18. He claimed that they were exempt from military service and from the payment of taxes, and had the power to excommunicate people from religious festivals, making them social outcasts. Two other classical writers, Diodorus Siculus and Strabo, wrote about the role of druids in Gallic society, claiming that the druids were held in such respect that if they intervened between two armies they could stop the battle.Hutton (2007) pp. 44–45.
Societal role and training Imaginative illustration of 'An Arch Druid in His Judicial Habit', from The Costume of the Original Inhabitants of the British Islands by S.R. Meyrick and C.H. Smith (1815), the gold gorget collar copying Irish Bronze Age examples. The Greco-Roman and the vernacular Irish sources agree that the druids played an important part in pagan Celtic society. In his description, Julius Caesar wrote that they were one of the two most important social groups in the region (alongside the equites, or nobles) and were responsible for organizing worship and sacrifices, divination, and judicial procedure in Gaulish, British, and Irish societies.Caesar, Julius. De bello gallico. VI.13–18. He wrote that they were exempt from military service and from the payment of taxes, and had the power to excommunicate people from religious festivals, making them social outcasts. Two other classical writers, Diodorus Siculus and Strabo, wrote about the role of druids in Gallic society, stating that the druids were held in such respect that if they intervened between two armies they could stop the battle.Hutton (2007) pp. 44–45.
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