that it passed into other bodies after death . This belief was identified by later the writers , such as Diodorus Siculus , with the Pythagorean doctrine , but probably incorrectly , for there is no evidence that the druidic belief included the notion of a chain of successive lives as a means of ethical purification , or that it was governed by a doctrine of moral retribution having the liberation of the soul as the ultimate hope , and this seems to reduce the druidic creed to the level of ordinary religious speculation . Of the theology of druidism , Caesar tells us that the Gauls , following the druidic teaching , claimed descent from a god corresponding with Dis in the Latin pantheon , and it is possible that they regarded him as a Supreme Being ; he also adds tath they worshipped Mercury , Apollo , Mars , Jupiter and Minerva , and had much the same notion about these deities as the rest of the world . In short , Caesar ' s remarks imply that there was nothing in the druidic creed , apart from the doctriny of immortality , that made their faith extraordinary , so that it may be assumed that druidism professed all the known tenets of ancient Celtic religion and that the gods of the druids were the familiar and multifariours deities of the Celtic pantheon .
The philosophy of druidism does not seem to have survived the test of Roman acquaintance , and was doubtless a mixture of astrology and mythical cosmogony . Cicero ( De Divin ., i , xli , 90 ) says that Divitiacus boasted a knowledge of physiologia , but Pliny decided eventually ( Natural
History , xxx , 13 ) that the lore of the druids was little else than a bundle of superstitions . Of the religious rites themselves . Pliny ( N . H ., xvi , 249 ) has given and impressive account of the ceremony of culling the mistletoe , and Diodorus Siculus ( Hist ., v , 31 , 2-5 ) describes their divinations by means of the slaughter of a human victim . Caesar having already mentioned the burning alive of men in wicker cages . It is likely that these victims were malefactors , and it is accordingly possible that such sacrifices were rather occasional national purgings than the common practice of the druids . The advent of the Romans quickly led to the downfall of the druidic order . The rebelion of Vercingetorix must have ended their intertribal organization , since some of the trives held aloof from the conflict or took the Roman side ; furthermore , at the beginning of the Christian era their cruel practices brougth the druids into direct conflict with Rome , and led , finally , to their official suppression . At the end of the 1st century their status had sunk to that of mere magicians , and in the 2nd century there is no reference to them . A poem of Ausonius , however , shows that in the 4th century there were still people in Gaul who boasted of
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